"The suspense is terrible ... I hope it will last."

As Willy Wonka said, “We have so much time and so little to see. Wait a minute! Strike that. Reverse it.”

That quote kind of sums up the changes to my website. If you’d just gotten comfortable in the old site design, you may be having difficulty getting adjusted in the new one. But please do try to make yourself cozy. Plop down, squirm around a little if need be, and hopefully you’ll be feeling right at home again.

I made so many changes that in all likelihood you didn’t catch all of them. The most obvious ones are those I mentioned in my last post – the design and the moving of the Journal. Some have mentioned that the white text on black is a little rough on the eyes, particularly in the smaller fonts. In an effort to make it a little easier to read, I’ve made the font size on the Journal a little bigger. On the excerpts, I’ve altered the font shade a bit so it's more gray than white. Please let me know if these alterations are any improvement at all. I strongly encourage all feedback, be it positive or negative.

Other changes that are not so noticeable but quite significant are in the About Me section. Not only is there a new photo, there’s a full bio as well – something absent from the old site. I’ve also added an Author Interview which gives you a little insider information about my upcoming novel, Lost in the Ivy. In addition, on the Links page I’ve started an Authors section with a list of authors that I’ve “met” via the Murder Must Advertise online forum.

There have been some tangible enhancements as well that can be found on the sidebar. These include a link so that you can recommend my website or my book to others and a Guestbook. Also, you may have noticed that you can now “subscribe” to my blog. There are RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom feed links so that you now are able to keep posted on updates to my blog without even entering my website. Using any of the NewsReader, or aggregator, services that I’ve provided links for, you can have my blog entries delivered to you through a web browser or from within Microsoft Outlook (Win), depending on the NewsReader you choose to use.

I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve, so keep poking around over the coming days.

To quote Willy Wonka again, “The suspense is terrible … I hope it will last.”

Update on Wednesday, April 20, 2005 at 10:22AM by Randy Richardson

The next trick up my sleeve has been revealed for all to see. Now you'll find on the sidebar a module titled What's New. This will keep you updated on recent updates to my blog and inform you when a reader has posted a comment to one of my entries. Hopefully this will make it easier for you to keep track of the many changes that are taking place on this website.