The new look is about 85% complete, but I got sick of the previous design and decided to put it up anyway. You’ll notice it’s not as fancy as previous designs, but that’s ok because that’s what I was going for.

Why the switch?

That’s easy. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been busy lately. But that’s only part of the reason why I haven’t been blogging. I was frustrated with the fact that I wasn’t being inspired to blog about things and staring at my previous design didn’t help me. This might sound weird, but a lot of my ideas to blog came about while staring at previous designs. Weird, but hey, it’s how I roll.

The previous four months have been challenging, to say the least, and the next few months will be even more challenging. I knew that if I didn’t do it now, I would never have time to do it. I’ve been playing around with creating my own Wordpress themes for awhile now, but I’ve never actually used one on my own site. This time, I took a full day to work out the code and put together a theme. To be honest with you, I didn’t do that much. I had a lot of help along the way.

Who helped?

That’s a great question, with a couple of different answers.

Blueprint CSS: There’s been a lot of “buzz” around this CSS framework developed by Olav and I’ve been following it for awhile. I decided to test it out, and it seemed to work for me while local testing. The true test, however, lies in real world usage. I decided to use it for my site and see how it works out.

Christian Montoya’s Comments Template: Trying to develop my own comments template alone would have taken awhile, but why should I do it, when someone else already has?

What’s New?

Not much really. But here’s a short list.

• I’ve taken away the traditional site navigation methods and have put all the links into an intro paragraph. I think it looks kind of snazzy.
• Each page (About, Contact, Archives) has a special sidebar, thanks to page templates.
• I happen to think that it’s more content-centric, which should be the case in any personal site.
• Things are a bit more organized. By this I mean that I’m not plastering links to other places all over my front page. That really took away from the content I think. The sidebars are not finished as of yet, but you’ll see what I mean when I’m completely done.

What’s to come?

Another great question. If you’ve noticed, my recent posts have been a bit longer in length (minus the one about my ride in an ambulance) and I plan on writing more of these posts. It’s been awhile since I’ve sat down to write an actual post and taking time out to write a decent one has been fulfilling. I also plan on continuing the mixtapes and some other things that I haven’t had the time for these past few months.

Also, be on the look out for the “completed” look. I don’t even know what the final version will look like, but most of the design is done, and I only have to change, add, and delete a few things.

I’m going to introduce a special section to the site. A lot of people have asked me questions about being Trans and I’d like to make the answers into special posts. I’m going to open up a special “Ask Josh a Question” section and I’ll answer your question in a post in the relative future. So look out for that, as I’m going to start writing more about trans issues until my next big project comes along. You’ll see that in the very near future.

Bugs?

I know a few bugs lying around the new theme, but if you happen to catch any, please let me know so I can fix them. Thank you and I hope you enjoy the new look.