Cafe Arcane Redesign Thoughts

I’m starting to get that urge to redesign the site again. Every once and a while I re-skin the site and change up features (adding some, updating others and setting others to the wayside). This time around, I think I’d like to try the following:

• New WordPress Theme; although this one is one of my favorites to date, I feel its time for a change. A lot has also changed since subsequent released of the WordPress back end since 2.1 and I’d like to take advantage of those changes with a new template.
• URL Shortening Service: I’ve been using this one or that, but with the risk of them going under and sending my traffic off to other domains, I think I’d like to install and host my own. Arcane.org isn’t too long at domain names go, so I think it will be fine. Not sure if I’ll make this for myself only or also allow others to use it; liability and abuse issues there.
• Photo Gallery: I’ve been using Plogger for quite a while but support and improvements for it have fallen to the wayside. I’m very interested in NextGen for its tight integration with WordPress. Regrettably, there is not transfer/import between the two gallery applications that I know of, so we’re talking about a significant amount of manual work.
• SandBox: I’ll probably be setting up a sandbox site to test all those plugins, installs, themes and modifications. As much fun as it is to “fly without a net” some of the things I’d like to try are probably just a little too volatile to put my live site through.
• Portfolio: My use of innovative and cutting edge CSS in my portfolio is coming back to haunt me. With FF 3.5 going one way, IE 6 refusing to die and IE 8 doing lord knows what, I think its time to scale back the portfolio into something clean and simple.