Things get ugly when I code. My room becomes a veritable pigpen, with piles of clothing-paperwork-shoes all over the place. I call these little piles “hutches.” Hutches are ok when they are single origin piles. I can handle a clothing hutch, but when there are belts, jewelry and business cards (broken beer bottles, wigs, ripped pantyhose), it trips me out and I can’t go in the room. So, I sleep on the couch.

Gwenbell.com version 1.0 was starting to get some hutches of its own. I added little widgets here and there and suddenly I had a side bar of things that weren’t reflecting my personal style. This redesign seeks to eliminate the hutches (and keep them off my site in the future, although I will test something if you’re in beta and ask nicely. And it’s not ugly. Down with ugly!)

If there was a hutch you’d grown to love, do let me know, either in the comments or by email. I’m flexible and can bring things back or switch them around to make this a better experience for you.

So, what’s new?

First off, we moved to three columns, to allow for some spaciousness and more goodness that includes more interactivity for your browsing and interacting pleasure. You’ll notice that main blog content is still aligned left.

Any network I’m a member of that I update regularly can be found in the far right column, as can all of my active projects. Each week, when one of my new podcasts goes out, you’ll have access to it here instantaneously! That is, if you don’t already subscribe. In which case, thanks!

The central column gives you access to my photos (coming soon- my flickr badge and I are having a rasslin’ contest), recent posts and “happy!” which is going to be a regular feature on the site. Things that make me happy but that may not necessarily need a post of their own (and may not necessarily make you happy, but I promise to do my best). Currently you can find a little snippet of me singing something to make you feel…happy! Come back often for inspiration. And speaking of coming back, if I inadvertently broke your feed during the transition, please let me know. I’ve done my best to keep those things intact while eliminating the splash page.

One final thing is that “heart of the start” is my current tag line. It took weeks of brainstorming to decide on this (which maybe doesn’t say much about my brainstorming skills) and it comes from an intersection of two parts of my life. In 2001, at my first Buddhist retreat I took a simple training that earned me the name “Lovely Teacher of the Heart.” The start part? Well, that’s easy. I thrive in startup environments and as the year 2008 progresses, I am sure that my practice in Boulder and environs will be about living passionately, sowing startup seeds and helping others do the same.

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Huge, gigantic thanks to Paul Salamone, with whom I own a growing design firm, for being tolerant, generous and inspirational during the redesign phase. We collaborated on everything, but at the end of the day, in the land of Adobe Illustrator, he is an Illustrator Wizard. You wish you were awesome as him.

But seriously, if your blog is needing some design juice, email us. If it sounds fun to us, maybe we’ll let you be a client. Send us chocolate if you want to be bumped to the top of the list.