Gaia's artists and user interface team have been hard at work for quite a while on a huge overhaul of Gaia's look and navigation. The first phase of their work is almost complete, and you'll be seeing some big changes in the next few days!

Allow us to break you off a little preview. Some of you may have already seen this information posted in Gaia's staff journals, but we figured the time was right to show it to everyone!

First of all, here's a scaled-down image of what the new interface will look like:

Check out the new header and logo! The title bar has all sorts of cool features: a shortcut menu to get to some of the site's most popular features, a mail indicator that shows how many messages you have, and a little map that shows you where you are in the Gaia world. Your avatar is also present and accounted for-- at FULL SIZE, finally! No more squished pixels!

(Don't worry, Gaia hasn't taken away the gold status thingie. In that screenshot, it just happens to be hidden under the shortcuts menu.)

Other cool stuff:

These changes should be happening later this week. We hope you like the new look as much as we do!