Well, it’s finally done! I’ve been meaning to redesign tow.com for what seems like an eternity. My old custom content management system was getting quite creaky and unwieldy. The site is now powered by WordPress, a “state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.” Updating the site in the past was a time-consuming process of creating several config files, uploading the images, and running some publishing scripts. With WordPress, all I have to do now is type the text and upload the pictures!
I hope that you like the new design. I was interested in keeping the site clean and uncluttered while adding a little bit of color and spice.
Over the next several weeks, I’ll be importing the old photojournal entries into WordPress. I don’t want to create link rot with my old URLs, so I still have to redirect them to the new WordPress ones. How much a hit would a mod_redirect for 400+ entries be? I’m not looking forward to copying comments from the old entries into WordPress. Maybe I’ll keep them where they are.
Add the thumbnails of my old entries to the list of headaches. In the past, I created these drop-shadowed thumbnails that adorned the gallery pages. I’ve since moved to displaying my thumbnails using CSS. Now I have to deal with all of the thumbs with drop-shadows in the JPEG’s! Argh! *sigh* The things you have to do when updating the site.
tow.com 
Good job getting the new site live Adam – a bunch of work, but it’ll be worth it.
Adam Redesigns
Adam has redesigned his site and is now running on WordPress. I plan to do the same for alexking.org once I get all the kinks out on my new kingdesign.net site.
Great job Adam, hope you find a way to script the conversion of those old entries. :)
nice!
I don’t like that the ads are so prominent in your journal, and other parts of your site. there had to be a way to make them less … intrusive.
How about now? I pushed the ads some more to the right and adjusted their opacity. I’ll probably do a little more tweaking of the design over the next few days.
Overall the redesign is good. Nice to see more colour.
However with fixed column widths the ads are floating in a column of blue that is a third of my screen. I’m running at 1280X1024.
Everything would probably look better at 1024×768.
Will take some getting used to. But a good looking site from the get go, Adam!
Moving the ads to the bottom makes everything look a whole lot less obtrusive now. Has anyone done a study on how placement of AdSense ads affects clickthrough rates?
I get good click throughs in the areas of my site that would attract people searching for things like travel and photography. The journal section of my site gets virtually no clicks because… the content is generally inane, and because the adsense stuff is at the bottom. i am unwilling to let adsense intrude upon my site’s user experience.
I should clarify: ads in the sidebar on my site are generally integrated to look as if they are part of the site. ads in the journal section of my site are all at the bottom, as they are on ADam’s new design (which I like a lot better). :)
Welcome to WordPress world!
Like the new site design Adam! Looks great – I know that it takes a while! -so fair play to you for getting it done.
Absolutely fabulous: a very professional & cool design!
– Lorenz
Great Job, Adam! The new site looks really simple and cool. Zen of Palm. eh?
Good to hear from you again, Najeeb, and thanks for the comments! Yes, I prefer the clean and simple approach to web sites.
Oops! The old RSS feed stopped being updated, and I didn’t even know there had been a redesign until I happened to check out your site in my browser.
It might be helpful if you put a note in the old RSS feed that there’s a new design and a new feed URL.
Looks nice!
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve added an entry on the old site explaining the new look and feel.
In my version of Firefox on the PC, the menu drop downs don’t work properly. They show up one at a time as you mouse over them from the top, but nothing happens if you just mouse over the main category.
I liked the old design better, it think it had more personality… Of course, you have to weigh the trade-off between individuality and time savings from using standard software. How happy are you with WordPress? I toyed around with it last week-end, and felt it was slow as molasses.
For me the new WorDpress kicks ass. The old version was not even half good as this one :)
Adam,
Great site! I am curious as to how you post the photos to your site. I have seen the photo plugin on Alex King’s site, but that is for WP v1.2. Did you just modify it for 1.5. If so, can you offer me some insight about how you did it? I am trying to add this feature to my WP site and any tips would be a big help.
Thanks!
Right now, it’s a hack using the custom options and code in the template files. I’ve been meaning to turn the code into a WP plug-in, but I haven’t yet found the time. Eventually, I’ll get around to it and post it to the web!
it’s nice to see there are other Tow’s out there on the west coast. I was kinda hoping that tow.com was not in use, oh well at least it’s a fellow Tow:)
Al Tow
Brookline, Mass
Adam,
I really like the image on the frontpage that show full size image but it become a thumbnail when it move down the post. If you can offer me some detail how to modify the template I would appreciate. I have spent over three weeks and still can’t figure it out.
I would really appreciate if you share this tip with me. I can even compensate for your time. I am very frustrate with this try and error, about to give up on WordPress altogether.
Thanks!
William
Great website redesign! I am coming back to the bay area and plan on attending the next COBA meeting! Thanks! see you at the next meeting!!!
Nice blog.I like this.
Nick
http://www.yahoo.com
Adam, the WordPress will release version 2.0 soon. Will you be upgraded to the new version and release this theme to the public soon. Thanks
I liked your site more when you updated more frequently with pictures of yourself and events you attended.
Excellent redesign. I’ve been meaning to upgrade to WP 2 as well. WordPress just keeps getting better and better.
The site looks impressive with lots of nooks and crannies. I liked the new one. Great job!
My name is Ruby i am working on a big project at high school about blogs. I hope you don’t mind me mailing a few words on this text as my tutor needs to see it. Your blog is really good by the way.
Hey Adam, everybody’s busy and elated to ve a new and attractive site. But i wanna CONGRATS you for your successful redesigning and appreciate for the good work.