I had some fun today with a site re-design. I had to dig into PHP more than I ever have before. I was not only happy with the results, but I learned a ton in the process. embrace / refrain has always had a clean and minimal look, but it was still feeling a little cluttered to me. Moving the menu to the right, toning down the font sizes, and making a new logo all combined to create a much cleaner look. I like what adding just a little color does to the overall effect.
I also added a new archives page. I have never liked typical WordPress archives, which is why I didn’t have any (at least in the menu, anyway). What I really wanted was just a listing of posts by date. That way, someone who wants to find a particular post can do so quickly. This morning, I spent some time looking around other blogs to see how they do archives. I found a few that I liked, and then set out to make my own. I still have a few tweaks that I would like to make, but overall I like it and it is very functional.