Why, yes, my site has had a redesign. Isn’t it gorgeous? The fabulous Stephanie Leary has remade it so that it all fits neatly in WordPress.1
My request for the redesign was pretty simple:
- Make it look as much like the existing blog as possible. Only, you know, better.
- Keep it clean and simple and easily navigable.
- Set it up so I don’t have to turn to a designer every time I have a new book to add.
Stephanie succeeded on all fronts. I love it. SO MUCH.
Not only is it beautiful but there’s loads more stuff such as:
- A How To Ditch Your Fairy section with a sneak preview, a list of known fairies, a glossary,2 not to mention two deleted scenes—remember when I mentioned all the chapters I deleted? Well, now you can read a couple of them.3
- Two short stories that have never been online before. One from Gwenda Bond & Christopher Rowe‘s fabulous Say . . . zine and the other from Cat Sparks‘ equally fabo Agog! Smashing Stories anthology. Both had smallish print runs and are not so easy to come by.
- The Afterword which only appeared in the Australian edition of Magic or Madness.
The musings, which were my pre-blog blog, have been added to the Archives so they’re much easier to access than previously. They stretch back to 2002. Some of them are quite revealing and some embarrassing. A few I’m very proud of.
I was sad to leave my old site behind. It was a gorgeous design and I’ll miss it, which is why I have this page to commemorate the old site and thank its designer, Deb Biancotti, for all her work.
Please have a bit of an explore. Let me know what you think and report any typos, broken links, weirdnesses that you find. I wants it to be perfect, I does!
Here’s hoping you like the new look as much as I do.
I AM FIRST TO COMMENT ON NEW BLOG!
(rolls eyes at Patrick)
It looks very pretty, Justine. Enjoy!
Scalzi’s just jealous because I WON!!!
Snazzy. I like the swirly watermarked letters.
I love the background and the colors.
A couple of weirdnesses, though – for some reason, the scroll wheel on my mouse doesn’t work here, though it does on every other website I tested it on. And when I filled in my name and email, and now typing this comment, there’s no indication on the screen of where the cursor is. I pick the appropriate box and typing in it works, but I can’t tell I’m in the right place until the letters start appearing, if that makes any sense. I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.16, not IE, but I didn’t have either problem on your site before. It’s certainly nothing major, but it’s odd.
Nadai, I’ll check that out. Thanks for mentioning it!
Ooh! Very lovely!
I will now scurry off to the HTDYF section.
aw I LOVE your new design!
Most excellent!
^-^
BUT…!
I found a mistake (in something old I think)…
In Making Magic you wrote:
“We gave each other all sorts of brilliant ideas that improved both Midnighters Two: Touching Evil and Magic or Madness out of sight (for instance, the snow fight was Scott’s idea).”
Isn’t Midnighters Two called Touching Darkness,
not Touching Evil?
So do I win a prize?
Tehe
Wow, this looks fantastic! It really takes the best elements of the old design and makes them even better.
Congratulations, Patrick, you are clearly blessed forever now.
Thanks everyone. So pleased you likes it!
Liset: Good catch. Fixed.
beautiful! i love it. 🙂 i’ma go stay up all night reading all the new stuff! 😀
very nice – It’s all modern-y
Lovely design. The word that comes to mind is “crisp.” And I wouldn’t even have known you re-designed if not for the post, since I read almost everything on my RSS feed. Cannot WAIT to read How to Ditch Your Fairy. 🙂
I love it! Totally full of awesome and win!!
Your site is lovely! Very clean and easy to navigate…great design!
Firefox people with missing cursors: do you have your cursor back now? I’m using FF but I can see my cursor, so this is tricky to fix.
the new site is made of awsome but…
when you click on the footnote numbers it brings up a different page of the thing. On the old one it just brought down the page. It dosent matter that much but its kind of anoying.
Firefox people with missing cursors: do you have your cursor back now? I’m using FF but I can see my cursor, so this is tricky to fix.
Stephanie, I don’t have a cursor yet. I *am* getting the scroll wheel to work intermittently now, though – it works when I first call up the page, but as soon as I stop scrolling, it quits for good. Maybe it’s just my computer being wonky.
On the plus side, I’m *not* having the problem Haddy-la (#17) is with the footnotes. 🙂
it looks just lovely!
small kvetch: i don’t get a mouseover on the ‘submit comment’ and the ‘subscribe’ button, and my cursor doesn’t turn into a little hand either, so i miss a tiny bit of feedback there. also, the buttons are in a boring old serif font (is that times or something?), while the rest is all lovely and crisp.
i’m on firefox 3.0.1
Justine,
Guess what? I just got a job at the Newark Pub Library and I am feverishly spending my book budget before they take it away from me. And I get to buy your books! Hurray, power at last! Ariel
Very pretty, Justine.
I definitely have a cat fairy.
follow-up comment from work, where i have firefox 2.0.0.16 (crazy firefox version numbering), and where indeed i do *not* have a cursor in the comments field. most odd.
i’d ask my resident css-guy what might be causing this, but then he’d find out that i am not working when i should be finishing something important, and that would not be good.
Oh, I’ve found the cause: it’s a bug in Firefox. (So unusual! IE is generally the one with the bugs.) Fixing it is another story; it’s very badly documented.