We can rebuilt it, we have the technology, we can make it bigger, stronger, faster, harder. Welcome to Southern Fried Science 2.0!

Over the weekend, major changes have happened in our humble corner of cyberspace. We made the move from the wordpress.com blog network to our own, self-hosted site on the www.bluehost.com servers. In conjunction with this move, we’ve completely redesigned the site, throwing out the old paradigms and bringing in a sleeker, sexier look.

We’ve added a rotating header image, so you can enjoy panoramas from all three fry-entists adventures. We’ve switched to a 3-column format, allowing you to quickly find relevant information without having to scroll halfway down the page to find it. Underneath our bios you’ll find a twitter feed, so you can keep up with your favorite fry-entist right here on the homepage.

And if you have something cool you want broadcast on the Southern Fried Science twitter feed, or just really want to get out attention, you can tweet it to #sfriedsci.

We’ve turned our blogroll into a rotating roll. With three bloggers that read plenty of other blogs, the old format was getting unwieldy. Now you can enjoy 20 randomly picked blogs from our collection of links. Refresh the page to get more.

One of the major benefits to hosting our own site is that we can now use javascript widgets that aren’t pre-selected by wordpress.com. Expect to see plenty of experiments over the next few weeks as we try out the ones we like.

You may notice the presence of two spaces soliciting advertisements. The downside to self-hosting is that it costs money, and to offset the cost of this site we’re seeking interested parties who agree with the philosophy embodied in this blog. does this mean we’re selling out? No. After much discussion we decided to forgo the much easier route of simply using a Google Adsense widget, since that would forfeit control over what content was displayed on the blog. We’re not trying to turn a profit, just cover the cost of running the blog and maybe buy a beer or two. So no crazy flash animations, nothing offensive, sexist, or anti-science, nothing that makes noise, and no ad that runs contrary to the philosophies of the authors.

If you’re interested in advertising with us, please contact me at the e-mail address listed.

After the long and insightful discussions over what good comment moderation is and isn’t, we’ve decided to implement a new comment rating system. As always we will never censor for content, and our rules are clearly stated here. The like/dislike buttons remain, but with a twist: comments that are low rated will become opaque – they will not be deleted but will become slightly transparent so that readers know that the majority of readers dislike the comment; comments that are highly rated will be highlighted so that readers can find the creme of the crop without wading through a sea of comments; finally, comments that get both likes and dislikes in equal amounts will be highlighted as hot debates. Hopefully, this system of reader moderation will promote an interesting and thought-provoking commentariat.

Each post now has the option to “Tweet This” so you can easily share your favorite posts on twitter. In conjunction with “Tweet This”, comments made on twitter about the post will be added to the comments section, so that non-twitters can follow along with the discussion.

We are in the process of migrating some of our old posts over from the original website. At first we thought we’d just bring everything over, but a new site means a clean start, and people really don’t need to see my Google Ocean post where I just said “wooooooooooo! that is all.” For the most popular posts, we’ll bring the old comments over as well. We’re going to do this process slowly, so that nothing ends up over here with broken links or bad images.

The old site will remain online at www.southernfriedscientist.wordpress.com. Update your links and RSS feeds if they still point there.

Finally, I’d like to give a huge shout-out to my friend, office-mate, and blogfather, Kevin Zelnio, who not only inspired me to start blogging, but also helped out in the planning and implementation of Southern Fried Science 2.0.

So dredge up some oysters and fire up the grill, it’s a Fried New World.

~Southern Fried Scientist