Holy damn. That took a long time.  I have literally been here for almost 14 consecutive hours trying to make this theme transfer as smooth as possible.  (I say almost because I've been up for some breaks here and there.)  For some reason, I think I did it the hard way.  Eh, whatever.  Version 5 is finally out and I couldn't be happier.  A fresh start.  First, let me go over some of the new points of this theme and then I'll get into specifics on ForTheLose.org's first ever giveaway!

New Overall Look

I know it may take some getting used to, but I've finally moved on from that blue color scheme and the skyscrapers in the header.  (The forum still sports that layout, however.)  I wanted to go for a very clean, very white, slight magazine style blog look, and I think that's just what  got.  I did my best to make sure the blog will load as fast as possible by making sure the code was uncluttered and easy to get around.

I'm also utilizing Wordpress' custom fields to add an image to each post.  This seems to be a big trend going into 2009, so I might as well jump on the bandwagon early.  Plus, I think it adds color and life to the site.  It looks bland otherwise.

There are other minor additions and tweaks that I really like.  For example, I really am lovin' the design of the tab area in the sidebar.  It came out better than I expected.  The breadcrumbs and date areas in the header fill up their respective areas nicely, and the twitter/ad areas in the footer fit in perfeclty.  Speaking of the footer, that grass image was a spur of the moment thing.  It turned out great, so I decided to keep it.

Page Changes

Almost every single page has been edited in one way or another.  Some were deleted (Lets have a moment of silence for Comics, Videos, FTL Radio, and FTL Proxy).  Others were added (Say hello to My Portfolio and Custom WP Themes).  The other pages were all optimized by 100% to look their absolute best.  Go check them out.  I can't tell you how many problems and hurdles I had to jump over to get the design perfect.  (God damn TinyMCE).

There are so many other changes to the site, that with it being 1am and the fact being that I haven't been able to actually take a good break in the past 14 hours, there's no way in hell I'm going to be going over all of them.  Let me wrap this up.  Version 5 is a big milestone for ForTheLose.org.  Things will be changing.  I'm still debating whether or not to get rid of stuff like The Sunday Funnies and stick strictly to Web Design and Wordpress related topics (most likely).  I will be posting 3-4 times a week, but they won't be your everyday thrown-together-in-ten-minutes posts, they will be useful and constructive.  Lets see how this turns out.

Shut up already.  What about the giveaway?

Alright, to celebrate the grand opening of Version 5, I'll be hosting a small giveaway.  To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post.  Only one comment per person.  On Tuesday, February 3rd, I will use random.org to choose two lucky winners who will each receive a copy of my premium wordpress theme Stitches as well as 1,000 Entrecard credits.  Sorry, no iPods or xBox's.  Not yet, at least.  I have to work with what I got.

Anyway guys, it's been a long day and I've had enough.  Hope you like the new theme as much as I do.  If you find any bugs or anything, report them in the comments.  I haven't been able to bug test or browsershot this theme when it was live yet, so I expect there to be some bugs here and there.  Just bare with me for the next two or so days as I do some tweaking.  Have a great Super Bowl-filled day!

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