well when you were up between 2 and 3am figuring out your problems, well that's a good thing. That's when one of your best ideas come up. Ive had many of those happen to me.

Well, as you know, we talented people have fantastic tools at our disposal that help us with such things as color :p

I think the blue tone on the sides really softens the look. If I changed anything about this theme is I would soften the dark edges, maybe reduce the px width to .5 or 1

Your balance is off because if you notice all of the titles of this theme have a grey background, either drop them, or you need to match the menu with them to balance, that will create that symmetry you're looking for- kinda crazy, but I might lose that light shade of grey and go with that ##E9EFEB all across the board with menus and title backgrounds, that would really balance things out.

But you know how this goes, you really just gotta tinker...

Benn - Excellent! Were you thinking background along the sides (as I've done now), or background in the main area (that's white now). I tried it in the main blog area and it seemed a little much. I am really not good with color schemes. Wide open to any suggestions a talented man such as yourself may have!

Hi Jay,

A couple quick thoughts for you - even though you've probably already researched them..

1. Have you tried Crystaltech for hosting? They're a little bit pricey, but we're talking about a few bucks a month. They're super reliable, and their customer service is over-the-top. And they're a local company! I've used them for over 4 years now, on lots of different domains, and have never had a complaint.

2. I'm going to do a write-up on my blog tomorrow about a new blog I just finished building. (non-real estate blog, more of a hobby/community give-back project). But we built the entire thing on the blogengine.net (www.dotnetblogengine.net) platform - using REGULAR HTML instead of PHP files!! I love it! (email me offline if you want & I'll send you a sneak preview).

Just my $0.02...

I REALLY don't want to hear this - I am literally smack in the middle of transferring all of our websites and blogs over to GD's hosting services - and I use WP. But I'll torture myself and keep an eye on how it's going with you.

Christina - yeah, I've spent some quality time on the phone with GD. Their normally stellar customer service was not-so-good. They blame the problems on WordPress. A quick perusal of the WP forums shows lots of issues with GD hosting. (though surely tens of thousands of WP blgos are hosted by GD).

They do have dedicated servers, but honestly, while the traffic increase here has been significant relative to what it was, a thousand uniques a day should only be a very minor blip to a webhost. Their dedicated servers are a little pricey compared to what you can get with others. Media Temple has a pretty cool sounding "hybrid" technology that's sort of a cross between shared and dedicated servers.

Good idea about seeing if they can move me to another server. I'll try that next. I really don't want to change hosts because it's such a PITA.

Jay - have you called GD? I believe they have dedicated servers available for purchase. If their shared servers are giving you a headache, so will others. They also can move you to a server with less active sites on it.

Jay, shouldn't you be selling real estate? Just kidding :)

well when you were up between 2 and 3am figuring out your problems, well that's a good thing. That's when one of your best ideas come up. Ive had many of those happen to me.

Well, as you know, we talented people have fantastic tools at our disposal that help us with such things as color :p

I think the blue tone on the sides really softens the look. If I changed anything about this theme is I would soften the dark edges, maybe reduce the px width to .5 or 1

Your balance is off because if you notice all of the titles of this theme have a grey background, either drop them, or you need to match the menu with them to balance, that will create that symmetry you're looking for- kinda crazy, but I might lose that light shade of grey and go with that ##E9EFEB all across the board with menus and title backgrounds, that would really balance things out.

But you know how this goes, you really just gotta tinker...

Benn - Excellent! Were you thinking background along the sides (as I've done now), or background in the main area (that's white now). I tried it in the main blog area and it seemed a little much. I am really not good with color schemes. Wide open to any suggestions a talented man such as yourself may have!

Jay, a thought here, why dont you try #E9EFEB as the background, it would pop a narly effect with your header...

Hey Jay!! Just testing to make sure I did this right!

Hi Jay,

A couple quick thoughts for you - even though you've probably already researched them..

1. Have you tried Crystaltech for hosting? They're a little bit pricey, but we're talking about a few bucks a month. They're super reliable, and their customer service is over-the-top. And they're a local company! I've used them for over 4 years now, on lots of different domains, and have never had a complaint.

2. I'm going to do a write-up on my blog tomorrow about a new blog I just finished building. (non-real estate blog, more of a hobby/community give-back project). But we built the entire thing on the blogengine.net (www.dotnetblogengine.net) platform - using REGULAR HTML instead of PHP files!! I love it! (email me offline if you want & I'll send you a sneak preview).

Just my $0.02...

I REALLY don't want to hear this - I am literally smack in the middle of transferring all of our websites and blogs over to GD's hosting services - and I use WP. But I'll torture myself and keep an eye on how it's going with you.

Christina - yeah, I've spent some quality time on the phone with GD. Their normally stellar customer service was not-so-good. They blame the problems on WordPress. A quick perusal of the WP forums shows lots of issues with GD hosting. (though surely tens of thousands of WP blgos are hosted by GD).

They do have dedicated servers, but honestly, while the traffic increase here has been significant relative to what it was, a thousand uniques a day should only be a very minor blip to a webhost. Their dedicated servers are a little pricey compared to what you can get with others. Media Temple has a pretty cool sounding "hybrid" technology that's sort of a cross between shared and dedicated servers.

Good idea about seeing if they can move me to another server. I'll try that next. I really don't want to change hosts because it's such a PITA.

Jay - have you called GD? I believe they have dedicated servers available for purchase. If their shared servers are giving you a headache, so will others. They also can move you to a server with less active sites on it.

Jay, shouldn't you be selling real estate? Just kidding :)

But Brendan, I am selling real estate! ;)