Like most things, websites benefit from a little TLC every now and then. Most people don’t like learning their way around a completely new design, so the trick is finding how to improve what you have without removing what you liked about the old version. For the latest update to G2D (the second in about 5 years), I wanted to keep the general layout and functionality, but improve how it looked and functioned.

One of the most important elements for me in choosing a new theme was to make sure it was mobile-friendly and responsive across multiple devices. A few years ago this didn’t bother me much, but according to Google Analytics, almost 40% of visitors to my little page – meagre as that total may be – on a mobile device these days, so it had to have that functionality.

One problem with this is the cartoon banner, which has become somewhat of a calling card, to the the point where strangers sometimes recognize me based on that alone. But finding a theme that was responsive and banner-friendly was hard. After months of part-time searching, I found the current theme from a company called BloomPixel, which seemed to meet my requirements. After a long weekend spent tweaking and Photoshopping and copying-and-pasting and general spring cleaning, I was ready to go.

Here’s what the theme looked like a few years ago when I was hosted by Squarespace:

The old design that was used from about 2009-2011. Roughly

The old design that was used from about 2009-2011. Roughly

After moving from Squarespace to WordPress, I found a theme I liked and went with that. Some CSS tweaking from a friend helped me get it the way I liked, and below is what the site looked like up to about three hours ago.

The previous design, used from about 2011-2014.

The previous design, used from about 2011-2014.

So now here we are with a new look. No theme is ever going to be 100% absolutely what you need, but this will hopefully do for the next few years. Of course…if I had taken an interest in computer science classes back when computers were huge boxes with green writing on the monitor, I may have been able to create THE PERFECT THEME. But that’s a rant for another day.

Thanks for reading.