We are incrementally adding changes to our site, replacing portions of our old theme with a new one.

Upgrading a theme is harder than it looks. Initially we almost completed designing a theme with blue motif. In our internal feedback (and from Google) our existing theme fared better than our new theme. So we went back to drawing board. We decided to incrementally add changes to the existing theme.

We added a menu bar and a footer to start with. A much improved headline section is coming next following by a full CSS design. The sidebars will also be changed to incorporate more modern looks and the now popular TechCrunch like ad boxes.

We also upgraded our LightCache plugin (WordPress plugin with intelligent caching which offers more than 200% better performance than wp-cache 2 or wp super cache in heavily loaded sites) to use both disk-cache and memcached (when available). The memcached enhancement appears to have reduced the load to much lower level. Much more testing needs to be done. We are using the blog for live testing at this moment, without constant monitoring to prevent unexpected downtime. So far there has been none.

So, how do you like our new theme? Any suggestions?