Eleven months. Eleven months, which equals a cautionary tale about good intentions. As in mine, and my time and ability to brand a Web site.

When I migrated SteigmanCommunications.com onto a self-hosted WordPress platform in January (or, more accurately, when my friend and uber-trainer Lee Watts did this for me), I had every intention of adding design elements quickly. The problem: I thought I could do it myself. And that, at the time, meant learning hooks and understanding CSS style sheets–not my forte.

Not my forte, as in: smart business owner, take your own advice and farm out the tasks that aren’t your specialty (like accounting and Web design). So eventually I figured out that I wasn’t going to do it (and certainly wasn’t going to do it well), and hired someone who actually gets this design stuff.

If you’re reading this post via feed reader or e-mail, pop over to the site and check out the new design. It was 11 months in the making.