Yes, that’s right. I am officially the first South African blogger to be running WordPress 2.5 live. Oh, and while I’m at it, might as well throw in a redesign.
After one twitter message, some time back, I accidentally also created a personal brand for myself – The Bagley – which is something I am going to try and build over the next few months. We have Adii, Zoopedup, Foxinni and Fariq to name a few, so add to that list my friends – The Bagley.
WordPress 2.5
This blog is officially running WordPress 2.5 and all I can say is swheeeeeet! I found out that happy cog are the okes behind the redesigned admin panel and they did one stellar job. There are improvements to the layout and UI all over the place, and its going to take a few weeks to actually find all of them. The only problem WP 2.5 created for me is that it broke the popularity plugin by Alex King. So for the time being I have disabled it. Below is a screenshot of my new 2.5 dashboard:
Redesign
I’m not entirely sure how long it actually took for me to whip out this re-design, but it felt like a long time. The main aim of the redesign was to allow me some flexibility in the blog and sidebar, which I have now achieved. The previous design was very rigid and fixed – whereas now I can drag and drop widgets onto my sidebar at will. One thing I still have to add are all those blog buttons – amatomu, afrigator, Nike+ runs etc.
Buying and Giving
I have also included a personal buying and giving sidebar widget. What I’m trying to do with it is, 1. Buy myself some gadgets and neat gear and 2. give some money to a few good causes. So, all the money I make on this blog – whether it is paid advertising, or even *gasp!* an (honest) paid review – will go towards Buying and Giving. What do you think of the idea?
And… with buying cool gear, comes cool pics and reviews! These will be posted on my soon-to-be-rebranded I.T. Week.
Link Love
Calling all you link whores A-listers. It’s time to stop pretending to be my friend on twitter and actually add me onto your blog roll. For those that have, you’ll be the envy of all your friends when I add you to my Link Love list WITH a favicon. Pop me a comment or tweet and I’ll get it up. ;-) This blog ain’t PR4 for nothing yo.
So that’s about it for now. So what do you think? If you were looking for a someone to redesign your blog, would you consider me as a WP designer? (honestly?)
