Oh, what the heck, eh?

Apropos of what I said before, I’ve decided to bump up the testing weekend a bit, and have made a couple of changes to the plan since yesterday afternoon.

For starters, the ‘Milano’ theme is out. I’ve gone with the ‘Perogato’ theme (from the same designer) instead, with a few custom modifications (including a sexy new logo, if I do say so myself). I’ve dropped the ‘:’ from the site name as well…it’s a minor thing.

Additionally, since I actually like this theme, there’s a decent chance that it will stay in place. I have to make a few modifications to it still (e.g. adding tag support and forum discussion links), but those are minor cosmetic changes. This theme has most of what else I was hoping to end up with: a more modern feel, a featured content pane so I can highlight stories that I think are important, more and better use of jQuery and inline images, and dropdown menus for quicker access to the things that keep many of you coming back to the site: Ultima remakes, patches, and utilities.

May I draw attention to the double menu bar at the top of the site? The red bar, the good reader will note, lists what are considered, by this site at least, to be the main canonical entries in the Ultima series, from Akalabeth through to Ultima 9, including both Underworld titles. Obviously, not every remake, patch, and utility is listed, and so the complete list of categories still appears on the sidebar, but this way there will at least serve to get a goodly number of site visitors to the content they want a) more quickly, and b) without even the need to scroll down the main page.

The main page of the site will also boast more articles under this template.

Anyhow, please leave feedback in the comments form of this article, or in the related forum thread. I want to hear what everyone thinks about this redesign. And as I mentioned, this design is one I like more, but is not yet at the point where it will be an unchangeable thing; if a goodly number of people who leave comments say “I hate it!”, I’ll put the ‘Aspire’ theme back first thing on Tuesday morning, without the slightest hesitation.