Shards of Consciousness

In A Little SOAP Never Hurt Anyone I talked about SOAP (Scratch One Another Program), a program Easton Ellsworth of Business Blogwire started. Last week I was SOAPed by Michael Perlman of Educated. In the comments to that article I had said I thought we were being paired up and giving mutual advise. That obviously isn't the case, since I didn't SOAP Michael.

You may not be able to judge a book by the cover, but the cover can have a lot to do with whether the book is picked up or not. I will be the first to admit that my eye for design is not the best in the world. If I want to look nice, Lady Glynis choses my clothes. At this point, I'm not ready to contact a professional designer. I wouldn't know what to tell them other than Like this, only better  (referring to my old theme). So one of the things I did was sign up for SOAP to get an objective view of Shards' style. I asked for input on stylistic issues and how to encourage more commenting.

Michael was very helpful. He had two main suggestions - put the actual articles in white to make them stand out, and get rid of some of the exterior services from the sidebar. The results are as you see - a personalized version of Wordpress' default Kubrick theme. It's simple, still - I hope - fairly clean, and may load a tad faster for you.

The header image is from a photograph my son, Michael, took near Venice, Florida. He has a range of images available at High Resolution Wallpapers. If you go there, you'll see a sunset that was my first choice, but Lady Glynis and my daughter said it made the site look too churchy, so I set it aside.

Some details need to be worked out, yet, but I like the change. Of course, sometimes I like change just for new scenery. Now to see if the new cover encourages more people to open the book. :-)


Thank you Michael! And thank you Michael!