Notice anything different around here?

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:

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.

  1. I never have to deal with Dreamweaver again! My happiness is huge. [↩]
  2. Yes, all my novels come with glossaries. [↩]
  3. It’s better than a DVD! [↩]

25 comments

  5. Nadai
    on
    #

    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.

  8. Liset
    on
    #

    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

  10. Justine
    on
    #

    Congratulations, Patrick, you are clearly blessed forever now.

    Thanks everyone. So pleased you likes it!

    Liset: Good catch. Fixed.

  13. sabrina
    on
    #

    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. 🙂

  16. Stephanie
    on
    #

    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.

  17. Haddy-la
    on
    #

    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.

  18. Nadai
    on
    #

    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.

  19. Nadai
    on
    #

    On the plus side, I’m *not* having the problem Haddy-la (#17) is with the footnotes. 🙂

  20. marrije
    on
    #

    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

  21. Ariel Zeitlin Cooke
    on
    #

    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

  23. marrije
    on
    #

    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.

  24. Stephanie
    on
    #

    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.

Comments are closed.