Welcome to a peek of the new button-masher.net. It's anything but fully armed and operational, so i'm hosed if a rebel fleet pops up anytime soon...

I've hacked a lot of things together in the last few months design-wise, but in the process have just succeeded in dragging the site down into unfortunate blandness. With a little inspiration from Lunaran and sock's recent re-designs, I decided it was time to roll out the first from-scratch layout this site has seen since moving to this domain.

By "from scratch," I of course mean "take Lunaran's CSS and HTML and hack it up into something not recognizably stolen."

My goal, however, wasn't ripping Matt off and taking all the credit (despite how often this may be the case). I still live pretty much in 1998 as far as HTML is concerned, so having a quick reference of some modern CSS mojo was greatly helpful in getting this new site off the ground. With the help of some extra content to fill the news page, I'm also happy to present the widest iteration of any of my sites yet - button-masher.net now proudly takes up 1000px horizontally as opposed to its former paltry 600px roots.

I've rolled out just this pared-back index for a few reasons. First, I need a sort of hostage situation to make sure I finish this thing. Second, I figure I can implement some useful feedback and roll that in before the final site goes live. And finally, I honestly have no clue how ol' Scapegoat will handle what I'm going to try to do to shift all this over. Hold me.

Enjoy this peek for now, and keep an eye out for the new digs in the next couple weeks. Please toss any feedback to kungfusquirrel at gmail dot com.

Here's a quick list of where I'm planning on going next, more for my use than yours:

• template-ize links, featured project, and now playing sections.
• figure out how to move feature and link sidebars out of base template and into news section only
• roll new design into bio/contact page for mostly-static easy mode.
• test portfolio templates on wip content.
• roll out fully updated portfolio complete with fresh higher-res screenshots of all projects.
• finalize color theme and officially flip the switch on all content.
• switch game collection page to content system and implement mini-reviews and ratings.

Good news and bad news regarding the redesign. Good news? I've successfully merged both sidebars into the content system. Bad news? I still can't figure out how to separate the sidebars on this page from the other content types.

Some good feedback so far about colors and the like. The layout seems to be a winner, but the colors are definitely too dark. I've been mocking up a few different styles in photoshop but haven't settled on anything yet. I think I'm going to keep pushing forward with the content redesign/transfer before I finalize that decision.