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We worked through the night in order to bring the best design to you. We’ll still be doing some things under-the-hood throughout the next few days… but for all intents and purposes, the site updates are done (and we think they’re great!). We’ll be adding Facebook integration here soon, so if you’ve been waiting for that, get ready. A few quick things about about the layout:

New Logo: hopefully, this one is a little more appealing than the last one. Simple but beautiful is what we’re going for with our new look. We’ve added it to our Twitter account, the “favicon” (icon next to the url in the address bar) and the “Apple Touch Icon” (Whenever you save a bookmark to your springboard on the iPhone or iPod touch).

The Features Banner: you’ll notice that there’s a nice revolving banner at the top of the page now. It actually shows the last 5 features that we’ve written. What’s a feature? Well, it’s basically any post that we’d like to get some more attention. We went back through and pulled out the latest, most helpful articles we could find and tagged them with the Feature category. Every glimpse lasts 10 seconds, if it’s something that interests you, just click the “read more” link… if not, wait 10 seconds, the next one probably will.

4 connect icons: we put in easy connect icons at the very top of the sidebar so you can connect with us anytime from any page on the site. The bird represents our Twitter account where you can follow us or send us a tweet. The envelope is our Tips and Feedback connection: feel free to send us anything you’d like to see on the site right there. The RSS logo is a link to our RSS feed so you can subscribe or bookmark to keep up with us. Lastly, this one’s cool, there’s an AIM icon on the right that will allow you to chat with us at any time. We’re online all the time but please don’t be mad if we can’t talk ;) We’ll do our best to chat with you as much as possible!

Accounts: We’d always love it if you’d sign up for a CTA account and even set up a Gravatar. But we understand that’s sometimes a hassle so we’ve included Facebook account integration. We’ll leave the directions in the sidebar, but just click the log in link and use the “F Connect” button on the log in page.

Just underneath the Facebook statement, there’s the most important addition: sidebar tabs. In this section you’ll see Categories, Tags, Archives, Favorites and Recent Comments. It’s really a cool widget, and it saves us incredible amounts of space in the sidebar. Yay for organization!

Yes, the ads are back in place. Unfortunately, we can’t do this without them. You know what that means. Seriously, though… thanks for your support of CTA, we’ll see you Wednesday for the live-blog!