Overhaul Time

I don't think I have updated the look of my blog since I've started it back in 2004.  It's always had the plain black background.

Overtime I noticed that the blogs I read have been looking better and better, yet mine remained. . . plain black.
I liked the look, it was simple and not too busy.

Thanks to a nudge from a Blogger email today, I decided to take a look at their new design tools.  I played with the tools for a while and previewed several looks.  Then I went back and looked at the blog.

BLAH!

The new one looked so much better.  I searched for that orange save button and clicked it.  POOF!

Instant transformation!  I've added a link to my Twitter messages on the left, my YouTube videos on the right, and changed the look of my Flickr photos now on the left.

I hope you like the changes as much as I do.  Based on previous performance it'll probably look this way for the next five years.

I also had a chance to look at some stats on blog traffic tonight.  I have always avoided adding a traffic counter to the blog because I don't want to get hung up on the number of viewers.  I am afraid it will discourage me with low numbers.

Google has added a tab to see stats on the draft dashboard when I log in and I spent some time with it.  It not only shows how many visitors came to the blog, it shows how they got there.   Even this month, Google sends me lots of traffic for my blog about the Gypsy's in Murphy's Village.  There are a ton of people looking into this apparently.  A while back I had to disable comments on that post because it was getting out of hand. People are very emotional about that topic.

The statistics page has a lot of information and I found it really interesting.  I don't think staring at it will increase the traffic here, so I better get to writing. . . enjoy the new look!