If the site’s migration to a larger server wasn’t bumpy enough, then it was when disaster struck elsewhere.

You’ve no doubt all noticed it: our homepage is but a bare skeleton (see above image).

But first, some background.

Ten years ago we paid a web developer a small fortune to build The AIMN. We liked what he came up with and for those ten years we’ve put on the same face, so to speak.

Unfortunately the theme (template) we’ve for those ten years is being phased out by the creator, and hence, it is no longer supported. In a nutshell, if something goes wrong… there’s nobody to fix it. We’ve had a developer look at it but the word came back that it is irreparable.

So we now have a site that simply isn’t up to scratch. The obvious one is the lack of thumbnails on the front page with the annoying, offensive little message that “An error occured during creating the thumbnail.” Yuck.

That’s just one of the problems. There are more, but you don’t see them.

We have to get a facelift. There is no other option.

However…

We won’t be paying a king’s ransom to a web designer to rebuild the site… The AIMN doesn’t make enough money so we’ll be taking that task on ourselves and just go running to the designer for any finishing touches.

Over the next week or so we’ll play around with some new themes – we’ve selected a few – so we’ll continue to look different until we pick the winner.

There’s only one hurdle: reluctance. We hate the thought of saying goodbye to the old, but I’m sure we’ll all embrace the new (eventually).

PS: Perhaps you could give some feedback on the themes we experiment with.