Since we're a year older here at the BlogRodent's bolt-hole on the Web (I use the royal "We," of course, any blame accruing from this blog is entirely mine--my wife happily observes), I thought it'd be a good time to effect a complete redesign. My WordPress install has gone from something pre-1.5 to something post 2.0 while my blog template has remained steadily prehistoric, and the maker of the old theme had dropped off the Web. It's long been time for an upgrade just on technical reasons, alone. Visually, I was due for an upgrade not long after launching. :: sigh ::

After carefully pawing through several dozen WordPress themes I settled on several I liked and tried them all out. If you were browsing the blog last Thursday night, you probably noticed the design dance the site was going through. Or maybe you thought you needed medication?

I settled on the WuCoco theme designed by Mike Lococo for a few reasons: 1) it was three-column, and I wasn't ready to leave that design structure. 2) It was WordPress 2.0-ready, so I didn't have to worry about the theme breaking in three weeks. 3) It was widget-enabled, which would allow me to fiddle with the contents of my sidebars without having to muck around in the template. And, more importantly, 4) It was very CSS-driven, no tables, and visually pleasing. Unfortunately, it's a big design. Anybody surfing with less than 800x600 resolution will be profoundly irritated right now.