And just like that, a blog is reborn.

Once I came to the realization that I had to reinvent this site in order to find my blogging muse again, it was easy.

First the name, duh…no explanation needed. The tagline… it’s been a bit of a mantra around the Sohn home lately. It’s a reason, not an excuse. I think it applies to almost everything, don’t you?

Design-wise, I was looking for a free WordPress theme that worked with widgets, was 3 columns and was easy to read. I think I found all that in Brian Gardner’s Vertigo Electrified. The “S” in the header stands for “Sohn” but it might as well as stand for “Simplify” which I believe is going to be a bit of a priority for me in 2008. The theme is clean, with lots of white space but just that hint of color.

Aside from the header (and Mr. Gardner is even nice enough to include the fonts in the theme download) there wasn’t too much I had to change.

• In the original version, the post date and category didn’t show in archives and searches. But this information did appear on the home page and individual posts, so it was easy enough to find the code and copy/paste into the correct .php files.
• I had to change 2nd column in the bottom navigation from monthly archives to yearly archives (moving access to montly archives up to the sidebar). That’s what happens when you have a 5 year-old blog. It made that bottom section huge. I still have to figure out where those 1969 posts are.
• I changed AdSense to match the new theme, opting for a single block. Again, simplify. Maybe I’ll add more “stuff” in the sidebars, maybe not. There may be some tweaking here and there as but for now, I think things are functionally where I want it and we’ll see where it goes.

The site appears to look just fine in Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 7 (which is more than I can say for the previous theme). If you see anything funky, let me know.

So how about them Macs lately, huh? 😉