So, did you notice?

It goes without saying that we made some changes around here. You’ll be noticing new things wherever you look, so I wanted to put together a quick post to let you in on some of the finer points. But first, a massive thanks to one Karlin Johnson, our designer at Oregon Coast Design who did a fabulous job on not only this site, but on the OCD one as well. Karlin is a joy to work with and does an outstanding job. Also, of course, thanks to Ashley and Ali for their patience during all of our projects, including this one.

The design is cleaner and crisper, more contemporary, and more pleasing to the eye. I won’t say too much about the new look because it pretty much speaks for itself.

On the technical side, things should be much quicker. We’re using a newer version of the WordPress platform that has significant speed improvements, and we’ve pared down our plugins a bit. Also, there are less images to be preloaded, and we’ve begun caching local copies of the images, which means (in english) that those of you who couldn’t see the images before, should be able to now.

The navigation has been reworked to move some of our infrequently used features (links, archive) into the main menu. The archive has been significantly overhauled, and the links will be renovated in the coming weeks. The contact page is slicker now, and should be just as impervious to spammers.

Now for my two favorite new features. The first you may have already noticed. Right under the byline of each post is Ali’s exact age (to the minute) at the time the post was made. For pregnancy posts, the time to delivery is listed. Also, in the upper right corner of the page, you’ll see any posts which were made on this day in previous years. For now there’s only one previous year, but in the future it should get increasingly interesting. If there’s nothing there, it means we didn’t post on this day last year, so check back tomorrow.

Just a warning, in the future you may get some ads. They are a necessary evil, but we’re working hard to make them as minimally invasive as we can. Each ad will be handpicked by us, so there won’t be anything we don’t approve of and if you get the urge to click, please do, because it helps us to pay server costs.

Finally, a plug. We carried out this project exactly as we do each and every site we design, and it is indicative of the high-quality work we produce. If you are thinking about creating a web site, redesigning your web site, or just want to pick our brains, please contact us at Oregon Coast Design.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!