Tweaking the template.

You may have noticed a few tweaks around here. There's the "Who is Althouse? ✼ How can I contribute?" in the banner. The picture of me in the sidebar is now the width of the Blogads (and no longer accompanied by my name and some added text). The post titles aren't orange-ish anymore. And the format for posting a comment is different.

The comments system is the same, but I've seen a little confusion about it. You have to "select a profile," using the drop-down menu showing 6 ID formats. You only need to do that the first time, and if you were commenting before, you've done it before. You just don't remember.

Also, there are 2 buttons: "Post Comment" and "Preview." If you feel like you're encountering a 2-step process, it's because you hit the "Preview" button. Just read the buttons, and pick "Post Comment" if you don't like previewing.

Please move beyond this initial confusion and take note of how much cleaner and prettier the comments page looks than they old orange-and-tan thing it has replaced.

Finally, you may wonder why I'm fussing with the Blogger aesthetics when I've been saying I'm moving out of Blogger onto an independent site. It's because I'm seriously considering staying with Blogger. I won't trouble you with the problems of moving a blog this big to a new site, but they are huge. I have — with the help of some good people at Google — gotten a full export of my archive (comments and all). But there are many more problems with the transition, and having experienced some nice treatment from Google, I'm quite likely to stay here now.

ADDED: I've gone back to the old comments format. The new one, while prettier, was preventing some people from posting.