I went back and checked, and this is the seventh time I’ve spent a blog essay detailing redesigns to my site. Normally I don’t want to waste your time with something that is relatively trivial, but enough things have moved around that I want oldcomers to know where the things are. I don’t want to move your favorite groceries into a new aisle without telling you. Also, I’d love feedback on making the side even nicer.

Here’s what I have done:

• I changed the header image from the previous hand-drawn version to the current one done in Garamond, the unofficial font of political science. I have the old header showcased in the about page for historical record.
• I moved the date of all the essay from its previously overly prominent place above the essay title to a much less prominent place at the bottom of the essay, by the part that tells you categories.
• I shrunk the size of the header and removed the tagline.
• I pushed the sidebar to the right to align the box with the header.
• I redesigned the header to pull out some clutter.
• I moved the blog search bar to the sidebar.
• I changed categories into a really cool looking but possibly distracting cloud.
• I took out the list of comments and moved them to a dedicated discussion section in the header link that should be easier to keep track of.
• I took out the blogroll list of sidebar links and moved it to a blogroll section, also linked from the header bar.
• I took the games link from the header bar and moved it into the “Projects” section.
• I changed the look of the blockquote.
• I fixed the look of comments a bit, and added a live comment preview. Hopefully there will be less need for me to edit comments when people mess up.
• I fixed the 404 Page to (1) exist and (2) be pretty helpful at finding your destination.

Please consider the comments section of this essay to be open season on feedback for the layout of the site. I’d love to hear how to improve the site look to make it more readable. I’d also like to thank Katie Lowry and Boris Yakubchik for the initial feedback that lead to all these changes, plus some comments from cl and Michael Ross.