I often get credit for being the founder of RedState. Actually, the credit belongs to Josh Trevino, Ben Domenech, and Mike Krempasky. Along the way they added me and put me in charge as each of them took different career paths. Thomas Crown still gets to pull rank and along the way we added Clayton out of necessity and kept him out of friendship.

Now we’ve had our eighth birthday and it is time to kick the tires and make some changes, including to the logo. This is by far the most radical redesign of RedState we have done. A lot is still the same but looks different. Much is, however, different. Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding more bells and whistles and working out some bugs that I’m sure will crop up.

Believe it or not, this is not the redesign I wanted. I originally wanted something even more radical than this. I still do. We’ll get there. But baby steps are good things as I drag you all along on my vision for this fully operational website. Months ago I sat down with Sean Doughtie of Taproot Creative and he actually pen and inked out RedState. It was a fun, throw back experience to sketch out a site with pen and paper. But it worked.

Comments are now run through Disqus. Registration and log in are now simplified. The Morning Briefing is fixed on the side so I’m not stepping on other posts each day. There will now be a featured story or stories each day to highlight the news of the day without stepping on everyone else and key news getting buried.

Conservatives don’t like change. Some of you will need to get used to this. But as we grow and head toward our first full decade, my mission for the site remains: educate conservatives, motivate them to participate, and activate them when needed. Each time I approach the redesign, I don’t ask what to add, but what to take out.

I think we’re headed in the right direction. Special thanks to Taproot Creative, CrowdVerb, and inSourceCode for their terrific help. Here’s something to ponder — this is the first redesign where the designers and coders were actual RedState readers. It’s made a difference. It shows.

Welcome to RedState at Year 8. We’ve got so much more up our sleeves.