Can I Get an Upgrade?

When Dima and I were first getting to know each other—initially online and then by phone—everytime he wanted to take our budding relationship to the "next level" he'd say, "Can I get an upgrade?" First, we upgraded from e-mail to chat, then chat to phone calls, then clearly, from phone calls to finally meeting in person. Ultimately, I guess, we upgraded to becoming husband and wife and more recently, to being parents.

The lesson in this? Upgrades are necessary if you ever want to get anywhere. Well, the blog just underwent its first major upgrade? What do you think?

Warning, this post gets increasingly technical from here, but read on. You might learn something.

1. 3-Column Layout: First, I've been experimenting with advertising, so I needed to increase my content area. I "upgraded" my plain ol' Minima template to a 3-column format thanks to tips by bizwiz at the Tips for New Bloggers blog. The easy to follow directions helped me breeze through that. The directions even included the changes necessary to upgrade the layout editor wireframe, so I can still easily add and edit page elements in Blogger. Very clever!
2. Rotating Image Header: Next, I wanted to add a photo header, so I did some tinkering on my own using Blogger's "Rounders 4" template as a crib sheet. I got it to work but it felt like needed something more, so I used Freeyasoul's random rotating banner hack to make that happen. Right now I've got 3 Lydia Violet banners rotating every time you refresh the blog's page. Keep hitting F5 to refresh the page and you'll eventually see all three of them. She's such a cutie!
3. Advertising Widgets: Finally, I added some cool widgets. The most recent is a Amazon.com search widget that lets you search for products right from Grizzarkhov. And if you make a purchase... well, we get a little kick back. Fun!

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. Thanks to bizwiz and Freeyasoul for your help. I couldn't have done it without you.