As Polly Peoria would say, I’ve been playing with my thingy again.
Yes, I have changed themes. The previous Mandigo Theme was a not only a resource hog, it was loading the sidebars into the browser window before it was loading the posts, which is a no-no because it also meant my site wasn’t as friendly to search engines as possible.
I have been been keeping my eye out for a customizable, easy-to-load, easy-on-the-eyes theme for months. I came across this one yesterday and decided to strike while the iron was hot.
I decided to put the blogroll, categories and archives back on the front page. Not many people were visiting the special Page I was created for these lists. So, I thought I might get a few more hits. After all, I almost never click on other sites’ “visit my blogroll page” links, but I have been known to spontaneously click on an interesting-looking category or two.
I’ll also probably start running more polls, as the wider right sidebar is more friendly to that sort of thing. Elections are coming up.
Some of the Pages will be broken until I can fix them (like the Chat Room), but it won’t be much of a problem. And some pages, I’m going to dump as soon as possible because they aren’t needed.
And I would appreciate feedback if there are readibility or loading issues (put please, try hitting your browser’s “refresh” button before complaining, ‘kay?)
Update: I’ve just gotten my first look at the page on system with a decent monitor. It looks better than I thought.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
I’ve loaded the page 3 times. Each time the top headline (in this case) Ch-ch-ch-changes is right over the top of “This ad space available. Contact me for details.” Maybe its WE and me…or maybe not.
Thanks for the tip. I’ve removed the line until I can fix the stylesheet.
A nitpick: It seems the print isn’t very dark, making it hard on older fellas such as myself to read everything. The size is okay, it just appears that the print is a shade of gray instead of black.
The BACK key takes you to the top of the postings list so one has to repeatedly scroll down…..
that’s a pain…
You haven’t found the sweeet spot yet. This site takes a L O N G time to load on my 10 meg down Insight connection in Pekin. You must be running several scripts in the background collecting who knows what. Or maybe several rss feeds. My Yahoo home page, which has many rss feeds, loads at least 5 times faster. To read the comments is often like a 300 baud experience for bb days. go figure – No, you not a fast friendly page.
I think the new format is difficult to read. The “green” color is too light and the grey print is too small, even on my 19″ monitor. The “message” takes up only one-half of the page…the stuff on the right hand side has no relevance to your message. Please go back to your previous format. Thanks