You have probably noticed that this web site has had a makeover. I have been meaning to do it for more than a year but M.E. and depression have left me little productive time that hasn’t been taken up with other things. I did like the old theme that I was using, Piano Black, but it wasn’t without problems. For one thing, the main body was not wide enough which meant that most images had to be resized to fit and there wasn’t room for much text on each line. The patterned background, while pretty, was quite difficult for some people to read. A bit of an accessibility fail.

The old design

This new design rectifies those problems and a few others. The new colour scheme feels more like “me” since I have been tweaking it to how I like it. Inspiration was taken from my favourite computer game, Day Of The Tentacle. The background to the text here is smooth but if you still find it hard to read then you should look in the sidebar where there are buttons which allow you to turn on high-contrast text and to change the text size. I have a fantastic new title banner which was created for me by my sister @apricotmuffins. She has more examples of her work on her website at www.mariabovor.co.uk and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a few paying commissions

The new design no longer shows the full text of my blog posts on the front page. Instead I have space for two featured articles at the top of the page, and then headlines with a small snippet of text further down. If you would prefer to read all the articles on one page then just click on “All articles” on the menu right at the top of the page and you will see them in traditional blog format. You can also go to various categories like politics, illness etc from the menu just under the title banner.

For those who are technically minded: I’ve built this site on self-hosted WordPress using the Genesis framework. I’ve started with the Prose theme for full control-panel access to tweak fonts and colours but I’ve added my own custom home page with extra widget areas to cope with my bio and the featured articles.

I hope you like it. If you have any feedback please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment below or send me an email. And while you’re here, I’d like to take the opportunity to remind you that I have a Facebook page, a Google+ page, a Youtube channel and I’m on twitter. I’d love it if you went and liked/circled/subscribed/followed. If you have a Kindle then you can have my blog sent to it automatically for 99p per month. I’ve never seen any money from it, but if enough of you subscribe then I might!