Well, as those who have visited this site are aware, existdissolve.com has undergone major plastic surgery. While I did enjoy the old style, I was becoming somewhat tiresome to me aesthetically, so I decided it was time for a change.

In this new design, I have striven for simplicity. The code itself is tremendously more lightweight, and there should be no significant load times unlike the previous version that took FOREVER to load the sidebar with all the content that was included there. Also, the fonts are a lot larger and easier to read, so hopefully this will cut down on the eye damage that the 11 px font size was causing many on the previous version.

In moving to this design, I have also decided to display several posts on the home page instead of the solitary article that graced the former site. I hope that this will allow me to be able to update more often with shorter posts, not fearing that a major article will be buried in the archives behind something not as significant. Moreover, I have added post snippets of even more recent articles at the bottom with links to the particular articles. Finally, the astute observer will note that I have gotten rid of the sub-pages on the old site (music, books, etc.). I will still try to keep up on these, but I am going to roll them into the normal life of the blog instead.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, part of this site design found its impetus in my desire to rework significant portions of the underlying programming logic. As I began this blog as a learning device for my programming development, I have learned how to do some things faster and better than before. Therefore, instead of trying to rework what was there (which I tried to do with a great measure of frustration), I decided to start from scratch. While it will continue to be a work in progress, I think I now have it at an acceptable place where it will work faster and more consistently while still allowing me to make needed changes and extensions.

With this complete overhaul, I have added some features that I think will be helpful to my readers.

1.) While I had cookies enabled on the previous site, the "remember me" part of the login should work better and more reliably now (hopefully). Moreover, this improved feature should require the cookie to be valid across directiories, so "http://existdissolve.com" should work the same as "http://www.existdissolve.com".

2.) There is now a "subscription" mode for the comments. That is, in the course of leaving a comment, the user may choose to subscribe to the comments section. When the checkbox is clicked, the user's email address will be added to the subscription email that will be sent everytime a new comment is added. I hope that this will engender more involved discussions in the comments as users will know when updates are made. Of course, it might get annoying too if you receive 40 emails in one day. However, I have added a subscription deletion module in the user's profile area.

3.) I have added email and print capabilities to each post. So if you find an article that you just HAVE to have, or think someone else should read, you can print the article or email it to a friend (or yourself).

4.) I have had a feed of the site for quite a while, but I have made a few minor changes that should make it perform a bit better.

5.) Soon I hope to begin podcastin. I will be trying to limit the discussion to the development of important theological topics, but I might through some other stuff in there just to keep the 2 people who will listen to it on their toes.

6.) And probably the best part of the new site is the entertainment that I have built into the site logo.  Try it out…

Well, that's about it. I hope that you enjoy the new look and new features, and please be sure to let me know if you run into any issues with the new site by emailing me at webmaster@existdissolve.com .