Milestones and inchpebbles

This is my 1500th blog post.  I started on January 10th 2002, using Blogger and free hosting on a site long gone.  These days I have WordPress and my own domain name on paid hosting.

It's time to make a new blog theme.  Some elements will stay the same: fixed width body, rotating header image, archive and category dropdowns.  Some things will go: blogroll, webrings, twitter feed.  It could get ugly while things change, but not for long

The biggest change will be font size.  I read The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard and I was shocked at how nice it was to read.  I'm going to have a much bigger font size for the site.  The default font size 16pt and it's easy to read.  The template will also accomodate pictures that are 500px wide, or wider.

Usability reports say that right sidebars are generally ignored by site visitors, though site owners use them.  I browse sidebars on other sites, but I use my own sidebar as a set of shortcuts to the rest of the site.  Longer blog posts I consider worth keeping get archived in the Thoughts section.  Knitting and Spinning have their own sections for recording stash and finished and unfinished projects.  There's a Desk Drawer for lists of books and movies I've read and watched.  I'm debating putting the sidebar at the bottom of each page, which would give more horizontal space for content.

I have a basic design worked out, now I need turn it into a WordPress template, and adapt it to the PHP I use on the rest of the site.