If you’re reading this then you’ll have noticed (unless you’re on the RSS feed, in which case come and have a look) that the website has a brand new look. After a lot of thinking about it I’ve done a complete overhaul. Not only is the design new but I’ve switched my Content Management System.

For a long time I’ve been using the excellent and very adaptable Expression Engine. It’s an excellent CMS which requires a lot of coding to make it look pretty. As a result over the past 8 or so years I’ve learned a whole load of html and css from scratch. But it was working on a redesign of the site that made me finally realise that it was too much like hard work. ee is great for designers and coders but when you simply want to concentrate on content it takes too much effort.

So I’ve switched to WordPress which is far easier to use and has all the bells and whistles. Don’t get me wrong, ee is still a great CMS but I just don’t need the things that it offers and I can get everything done much faster and cleaner on wordpress.

The transition was a bit tricky, but thanks to a few helpful articles and a little trial and error I got most of it done. As far as I can tell all the articles came over along with their comments. A few things need to be manually worked on over the coming weeks.

1. None of your email addresses or URLs came over in the comments. I’m trying to catch up with them.
2. I’ve got the links to the banner images for the posts but they’re currently held in custom fields. Somewhere, I’m sure, there’s a script to move them over.
3. The old categories are gone, to be replaced with some more useful categories
4. All the tags came over! I’m particularly pleased with this because it means I get to use that nice whirly tag cloud thing over in the sidebar.

I’ve added a “podcast” category of sermons and talks and will get round to also displaying video. I want to get a proper blogroll sorted too. Finally others will get the recognition they deserve!

The new site design is the Swagger theme by Jason Bobich which I picked up as part of the extraordinarily great value themeforest web designer Pro bundle.

Overall I’m excited about the move, although also a little sad to leave my good friend ee behind. Most of all, it means I can concentrate on content more! Looking forward to seeing how it all works out, hope you’ll stick around.