elsua’s New Look

I am finally back home, folks, after a fantastic week in Cincinnati that I would be fully detailing in an upcoming weblog post shortly, thus expect weblogging to resume as usual over the next couple of days, after the usual catchup I would need to go through now. Yes, I know, too much e-mail, too many feed updates to catch up with, but it would eventually get there. I am sure. However, when I mentioned that regular weblogging is about to get going again, I think it would be a good time now to mention something as well that I have been working on for the last few weeks. Indeed, some time ago you would remember how I was mentioning that elsua was in very much need of a facelift and perhaps some spicing up in order to try to improve the reading and commenting experience. Well, I am proud to present to you, folks, the new elsua – A KM Blog look!

You may remember how I talked about customising a new theme for this particular weblog and how for a number of weeks I was unsuccessful to modify one that would please my needs, so in the end I decided to venture myself and create a new theme: elsua 2.0 Theme 1.0. Well, I didn’t create it myself since I lack the different technical skills to be able to do a decent job, but I managed to have it created through other means that I would also detail in an upcoming weblog post where I am going to recommend a service I used for it. Very impressed overall with it. But more on that later.

For the time being let me just detail what some of the major changes have been thus far with this new theme and what you would be able to expect from here onwards. I don’t think I would be making many more changes but still, you never know. The first thing that you are going to notice is that this weblog has now got a header with a picture and a logo. Yes, indeed, for some time now I have been contemplating the idea of having a logo and in fact a good friend of mine created the one you see showing as part of the header. Thus every time you would see that logo elsewhere or over here it would be referring to elsua, to myself. Something that I identify with very much. Hope you like it. The picture itself is actually one of the many pictures that I have taken from Gran Canaria that is very special to me where you would see represented Mount Teide, from Tenerife (Highest mountain in Spain), Roque Nublo and Roque Bentaiga, two of the main symbols from the island where I live. Such a stunning place ! And very pleased with how the header came out in the end.

Ok, what else? Well, you may have noticed how I have stuck with the three column theme so that I can fit in some of the different widgets that I have been very fond of all along, plus I have been adding some more that I couldn’t get them to work in the previous theme and they are now working all right. So, all in all, you would see how my contact details are now showing up on the top left of the screen. Just underneath you would be able to see the different syndication methods I have been using all along (And stay tuned for an upcoming tip I will share because it will help improve your visibility about your overall subscribers), then I put together as well the new Plazes badge, my already existing Flickr badge, and the blogroll (Which I am in the process of updating it as well since in the last few weeks I have been adding and removing some of the different feeds, so more to come on that one soon, too!).

Then on the right column you would be able to see my profile details from Technorati, elsua’s Frappr community (To which you are more than welcome to join in, if you haven’t done it already). Then over there you will see as well a couple of widgets related to some statistics based on ClustrMaps and GoStats. Right underneath you would be able to see the different categories I have been using all along, next to the archives, most popular weblog posts, recent comments, recent weblog posts (Using Feeddigest) from both elsua – A KM blog and my other Internet weblog elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog.

Right afterwards you would be able to see the Translate This Page plugin that would allow you to translate this weblog in whatever other major language out there. Then I have finally been able to include the widget from ZoomClouds that puts together a tagcloud of my own weblog (While waiting for TagCloud to go live again), next to this weblog’s swicki and the fun widget How much is your blog worth?

And to finish things off just to mention as well that in the middle column and towards the bottom of the page you would be able to see the tagcloud from my favourite Internet social bookmarking tool, BlinkList, where you can see a representation of all of the different bookmarks I have been tagging thus far, so that you can get to check them out yourself and see if you find something worth while reading for you.

From there onwards there are some other cosmetic changes that some of you have been asking about and which we have tried to add into the final theme so you would be able to bump into them as you go along. And that would be it. As you can see this has been a rather long weblog post but I thought I would give you an opportunity to check out some of the different widgets that I have compiled together and also how they would combine with this new theme that is going to stay here with us for quite some time now. I am very pleased with the final result and hope you like it, too. Also if you are reading this weblog post from a feed client you may want to pop over to elsua.net and check out the new design. And, finally, as usual, if you would have any feedback or any glitch you may have noticed about the new design please do not hesitate to contact me offline so that I can fix it as soon as I possibly can.

Time now to do the usual catchup of the backlog with almost everything.

Tags: elsua, Metablogging, WordPress, Themes, Flickr, Plazes, ClustrMaps, GoStats, ZoomClouds, BlinkList, Swicki, Feeddigest, Gran Canaria