Wind of Change

Welcome to the new-look Welshrunner blog. I hope you like it because I spent a lot of time over the past few evenings designing and creating the layout and template. Yes, I love to tinker and figure out how things work, and it was only a matter of time before I shelved the standard template and made my own. It was great to be "off the leash" creatively, but I also have the type of personality that can't leave a problem unsolved - I was up until 2am this morning fixing a few annoying issues.

The concept behind the design was to replicate a runner's logbook, with a Welsh dragon blended into the header to incorporate my two themes. Practically, I wanted the flexibility of having 3 columns, and a menu system beneath the main header which allowed me to categorize, organize and pull together posts from across the blog (like my recipes and race reports). A big thanks to the guys at Smartmenus for the javascript that drives that menu brilliantly.

I haven't designed a website for a while and it was good to brush up on my CSS skills. Building a blog page out of styles is a lot like piecing a jigsaw together, and I've always enjoyed digital image manipulation. I created the graphics using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) which is the Linux version of Photoshop - it's an awesomely powerful tool and I'm very happy with the results.

I've tested the template in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, but if you find any problems in your browser please let me know.