Using the Drupal Gravatar integration module, all comments will now be able to use your own avatar for all comments instead of the site default one.

While not really a huge deal, I think this will add a bit more personality to the site and bring the comments to life. It's a bit more appealing and personal when reading to actual put a face on someone than to see the standard icon.

So, if you have a Gravatar account, be sure to use that email address when commenting. Feel free to test it out below.

Oh and always, if you have anything else you'd like to see here, that might make the site more usable, please let me know. I'm working on a new CAPTCHA but it might be awhile before I get it implemented. It'll likely be a jQuery implementation instead of using the Drupal CAPTCHA module that I'm using now.

Well, I've finally finished my redesign. It took about a month and half of "here and there" work, but I think it paid off. I've tested it across Firefox and IE quite extensively so everything should pretty much be in order. I hope to review it in Safari over the next couple days.

Features

One of the features I've added is an AJAX search. I wanted to eliminate page reloads when a visitor wants to find something and also allow for an alternative way to navigate. For instance if you're searching for a blog post and don't find what you want through the results, all you have to do is type "blog" and voila! The blog page loads on the fly. This particular functionality works for all 4 primary pages (blog, lifestream, portfolio, contact) and I'll likely add to this feature overtime.

As you probably notice, there's currently a few discrepancies with my live site. This has been done on purpose. Why? Well, because as much as I love playing around with websites, Drupal, jQuery, etc., I tend to get a little lazy when it comes to my own site.

To keep myself on track, I decided to create a new theme on and put it on top of my live site instead of in a sandbox. For the most part, this is transparent since I haven't enabled the new theme. However, when it comes to changing the design of my fragmented content (known as "blocks" in Drupal), the content and code changes but doesn't have access to the new theme's CSS.

I'm in the process of finally redesigning my site. The 960 GS really got me motivated and has mad things MUCH easier.

My redesign will be taking place on the Drupal platform. I decided to stick with it after briefly using WordPress for a clients site. I just didn't find WordPress as intuitive and I love Drupal's codebase and theme'ing capabilities.

All in all, the site will be simple by design and utilize whitespace better. I've decided to implement a few trendy elements, but largely stayed away from them where I could so I wouldn't feel like I had to redesign my site in 6 months.

As an avid fan of Drupal, their community, and someone who promotes the CMS at every given opportunity, I'm considering doing the unthinkable...moving to WordPress. I currently run several sites from the same Drupal 6.x codebase, and while the more involved sites will still run Drupal, I want something a little lighter weight for the blogs I run.