When I relaunched the Ministry last month I had hoped to be able to launch simultaneously a site redesign.  Sadly, however, my disastrous coding efforts over the summer meant that it didn’t happen.

There is, though, an increasingly pressing need to overhaul things: Jeff Malek long ago ceased to develop the current, beloved dark.cash theme and it no longer comfortably coexists with the increasingly sophisticated WordPress.

Having (temporarily) abandoned plans to become a CSS coding whizz I have now therefore retained a freelance WordPress developer in Sri Lanka who is currently attempting to turn the Minister’s design (in the form of PowerPoint slides) into valid CSS code.

The new look should launch before the Ministry’s second birthday.  It is, I hope, simple but effective – an attempt to harness WordPress’s ease of use, while making it look more like a traditional website.  It adapts what I believe are the key design elements of dark.cash but strips out almost all sidebars and widgets, instead devoting valuable screen space for content.

This all reads very nicely in theory, of course, but I’m sure something will go resolutely titsup at some point along the way, so bear with me if the site goes offline for 48 hours at some point over the next few weeks: it SHOULD be a temporary state of affairs…