New and Improved, Again

Going along the lines of my template A.D.D., I got tired of staring at that clean, white background with very little content on it.

I’ve been learning a ton of new tricks with CSS and HTML lately at work, so I really wanted to put them to the test with an updated look for the ole’ Haggis. The result is mostly done by Nik Iliadis, who did the original WordPress template design (and what genius work it is), and I just modified the hell out of it and made it my own.

I really wanted something more artistic for my blog, which I feel has been missing since I refreshed the last time–at no fault but my own. I basically kept all the new sections and functionality from the last one (the mini-pictures, the archive section, most commented pages, etc), plus a few new features:

User Selectable Backgrounds
A bonus feature of using the skin, every visitor to this site can now pick their own personal background from the seven I have provided at the top. All seven of these images were photographed by me on my various journeys across the country. There’s a few from NYC, a few from the Bahamas, a few from the Rocky Mountains, and a couple from the Salt Flats in Nevada. When you select your background, the site will always display that image when you return. Neat, huh?

Related Articles
I had this on my old Moveable Type page around version 3 or 4 of The Daily Haggis, but it never quite worked correctly. This one works a lot better, plus has a lot more customizable options.

Flickr Link
I have taken down the Coppermine photo gallery i’ve been using for years. The upkeep and use I got out of it was minimal. I finally got around to uploading a lot of my photos to Yahoo! Flickr, so I am now linking to it instead of the previous gallery.

The Return of the Gravatar
If you haven’t noticed, you’ll see an icon next to my name when I make comments. This is a feature I offered once before, but took down when I changed templates last time. Gravatar is a free service that allows you to submit a personal icon to its system, and whenever you are on a Gravatar-enable blog it will display your picture when you enter the normal information to comment (ie email address, blog address).

That’s it for now. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the new look!