For the two years between the time I got married and I graduated from Utah State University, my wife and I lived in a 400-square-foot apartment that we fondly refer to as “The Shoebox.”

Every so often, we’d get in the mood to rearrange the furniture. You wouldn’t think that 400 square feet gave us many options, but we managed it. The funniest part is that we’d both get in the mood to rearrange things on the same night—at about 11:00.

So I have the urge to rearrange things occasionally and to try something new. This is one of those times. In about a week, I’ll have been blogging for two years. Last year on my first anniversary of blogging, I started Gryphon Mountain Tales, “the more mythological side of the Mountain.” This year, I’ve redesigned my site visually. (If you attended my STC webinar on February 10, you got a bit of a preview in the designs of my slides.)

Wanting a change of scenery isn’t the only reason I’ve done this. A better reason is that I think the original design didn’t really fit me anymore; it didn’t fit what I’m trying to convey about myself. The new design, with its header image, tells more about me than the last one did. I’ve got a professional side, but I don’t mind acting like a cartoon character sometimes.

You may wonder why I’ve gone with a cartoon gryphon instead of the one I cobbled together from an eagle photo and a lion photo. Well, a while back I was thinking of starting a series of videos where a cartoon version of me was talking to this cartoon gryphon by the name of Gryp. But I just don’t have the time to create videos, so I let that idea fall by the wayside. But I may still do something with that idea and just keep it to blog posts.

Finally, one of my reasons for redesigning the site was to give myself more room in the sidebar by eliminating the image at the top of the sidebar and moving some of the links to a nav bar. I didn’t want to complicate the look by going with two sidebars, which I considered when first brainstorming on a new design.

I based my design on Gadget Story, which had the general layout I needed. I also worked the design out using a local installation of WordPress, which is definitely the way to go (thanks Tom for your tutorial).

I’m sure most people who read this blog don’t even visit the site. Some of you come to comment, which I appreciate. I hope that when you do visit, you enjoy the new design a little more than the old one.

Related posts (auto-generated):

  1. Launching "Gryphon Mountain Tales"
  2. Remembering Forays into Web Design
  3. Reflections on a Year of Blogging
  4. The Seer of Gryphon Mountain
  5. An Upcoming Change to Gryphon Mountain—and a CSS Tool