That’s much better. We’ve got some room to breath now that the ugly gray layout is gone. For anyone who hasn’t been here before, I’ve just changed to this current red layout after being buried under the void of gray for a few weeks.

I wanted to take a few minutes and detail some of the changes because, well, some of them are for you to use, rather than myself.

First we have the new rating system. It’s a five star system that prevents anyone from voting twice, and it is located at the end of every post. It’s really nifty, all you have to do is click the star that represents the rating you want to give that particular post (1 through 5), and then it adds your vote and tally’s the vote count, and average rating without ever reloading the page. Very easy to use, and doesn’t ask you to do anything more than point and click.

Next we have the news ticker, you may miss it if you’re not watching closely. It is at the top of the right sidebar above the Category listing. I will be placing various little tidbits of news here and there, sometimes a piece of news will link to an article on this site, sometimes it will link to another site, and even still, sometimes it will not link anywhere.

Then there is the featured section at the top of the page, which is a huge upgrade here at BrokeSanity.com. You may notice that each of the three columns has the word “Featured:” followed by the name of a category on this site. For now, the featured post for each of the three categories is the most recently added post to that category. Okay, I think I’ve said category enough. It’s just another little way that I am making the freshest content stand out for you guys.

I’ve also reconfigured my photo gallery, and it works much better now than it did before. I have changed the photos a bit though, and considering that toward the bottom of that page, you get images of gas pumps and the election 2008 logo, I thought someone might wonder why they’re there. It’s just a way to keep all of my needed images on the site in an organized way. For the most part, it’s safe to ignore them, but if you like ‘em, go for it.

That’s about it for the updates, aside from the new slideshow in the bottom bar of each page, but it just shows the images in my photo gallery at random. I guess it’s nice if you’re really bored.

So just remember, I run this site because I want to, but I need your input to keep at it. So feel free to comment on any post, to rate any post, and to tell as many people as you can about this site, if you want. I’m secretly wishing for a front-page spot on dig or some other social book-marking site; how else will I know if my site can withstand such a load?