Perspectives on Writing has a new design, thanks to two people who motivated me to change things.

The first person I want to thank is Nancy Cavanaugh, owner and editor of Fandangle Magazine, an online magazine for children. She kindly wrote to tell me my website colors were all wrong. At first, I didn’t believe her.

I’d had the same colors on this site since 2001. Coral and white. And I thought everything was peachy-keen. But Nancy was looking at the site with Internet Explorer, a browser I don’t normally use. I was looking at it with Firefox, and I had all white-space where the blog text was. Nancy didn’t, and was probably wondering why anyone would want a blog with such a dark background obliterating the text.

A few months ago I redesigned seven blogs within the space of a month. This was one of them. At that time I kept my coral and white colors, but installed a WordPress blog (this one) on what used to be a static page. Apparently I didn’t think to check this particular site in Internet Explorer, or I would have seen the problem and fixed it then.

Yesterday I went to our local computer center, which is a gift to the community from the Karuk Tribe. (I live in a tribally dominated small town in a forest.) I was there to visit with and train the woman I recently sold Happy Camp News to. While I was using one of their computers, which provide only Internet Explorer for browsing, I happened to drift to this site, and was aghast to see the dark coral all over the page where the text was. I’m a long-time lover of white space on websites, so it suddenly hit home as to why Nancy had emailed me telling me my colors needed fixing!

THANK YOU NANCY!!!

Later that evening I showed my boyfriend, Bob, the site, and told him my story about Nancy’s email and how grateful I was for her kindness in sending it. He looked at the site I was starting to redesign, and said, “Get rid of the pink!” I started to protest. My site has always been that color. He said it looked terrible. “Get rid of it tonight,” he said.

I hate to admit it but Bob is usually right. He will never bother reading this so I think it is safe to tell you this here.

I changed the colors, and decided to use the photographs you see at the top of each page. They are very special photographs, to me. The blue photo which is the background for the banner is the view from the top of Mt. Shasta in Northern California. What an inspiring perspective that is! It looks out over the Trinity Alps and the Marble Mountain Wilderness. The small photo in the corner is a closeup of Mt. Shasta itself, featuring an orange butterfly drinking near a spring high on the mountainside. Best water in the world, according to Bob. He’s been around the world a few times so I think he should know.

THANK YOU BOB, for inspiring me to do something different with the site. (Just in case he ever reads this.)