It has been sometime since I last redesigned the Joomlabamboo site and for at least the last six months I've been itching to get in and do it again. Back in December I deployed the new template for our knowledgebase area and while I have some grand plans for a complete revisioning of the whole JB site I thought I would spend an hour or two and push the knowledge base template onto the blog and give it a tiny twist.

In the past I've really wanted to keep each area of the site within a uniform design but more and more I'm noticing companies that have a completely new design for the various areas of their site. I think if it's done well then it can make for quite an eclectic experience for the user and really help to personalise the different focusses that a site may have.

I've also wanted to isolate K2 from Kunena (which is our current forum software) and so the blog is now on a completely new Joomla installation. I'm sure there is a magical combination of plugin ordering and settings that will have Kunena, Mootools 1.2, K2 and jQuery all working nicely but I'm yet to find it. However as soon as I switched the K2 javascript off on the main site - and the forum - the Kunena functionality such as quick reply and bbcodes and not to mention the comment submission bug on the blog, happily started to work again. This should also help with some of the performance issues we were having on the forum.

There are still a few things that I want to implement like a footer area, site map and I'm tossing up whether to add more to the sidebar but personally like it as a simple fixed element. A major consideration was whetehr or not to move to a new commenting system. Until I find a way to port K2 comments to a more elaborate system Ill stick with the K2 core.

The new design is also hopefully going to prompt me to write some more posts as I've been a little slack recently. In the meantime I hope you like the redesign and watch out the for the new JB design in the next few weeks, months or possibly years.

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