As regular visitors of PoliGazette will have noticed already, some changes took place today. The first and most spectacular change is the header.

We used a temporary header which was workable but it was not intended to last. Our very own Jason had put it in place so that we would distinguish ourselves from other news and opinion websites and the site would have an authentic feel to it.

That worked, but we were still waiting for a better header. I asked readers whether they would like to design one. Several people responded but those whose proposals were serious did not, in the end, find the time necessary to work on the project.

But then another reader, who is a great website designer, logo designer, etc. Velda of NovaPages, said she had experimented a bit one evening. The result, she said, was quite doable. So I contacted her asking whether I could see what she had created: I was instantly blasted away. She then did some more work and replaced the star which we had at first with a compass: this looked even better and I asked her whether she would care to put it in place.

She did, and you all can see the result now: the header has been replaced by a more professional and cleaner one. The colors were chosen on purpose (they are our colors): the American and Dutch flag have the red, white and blue in them and blue stands for Democrats, of course, while red stands for Republicans). The compass too was chosen on purpose: we try to take a balanced approach to whatever subject we write about at PoliGazette.

Not only did Velda design the header she also took the time to put it in place (for which I owe her a great deal of gratitude as well). She changed the search box, removed a white box around it and pulled it up; the result was, in my opinion, stunning.

Shortly after Velda was done I asked a good friend of mine, Mikail of Ela Design (he told me to warn readers that his own site isn’t finished yet), whether he could make the site wider; I am using a laptop with a 17-inch screen. The width was not even remotely used fully. So he logged in and fixed that. He also changed the color around the text into blue so it fit nicely with the header and he made the texts easier to read (by making the letters a bit darker).

So, that’s that. The website has been changed considerably today and I, for one, am delighted with the result. A major thank you to both Mikail and Velda for the improvements.