Second, the easiest way to redesign a site is to make a mock-up of how you want it to look, then make the changes. (I prefer to work "from the inside out", namely changing the small details first, then as a last step changing the page template, but other people like to work in the opposite direction. Scoop doesn't care, you can do it either way.)

A few things to keep in mind when making your mock-up:

• make everything very self-contained--i.e., each story summary or sidebar box should be completely contained in a start/end DIV or other block-level element. You can move each of these around or repeat them as an entire unit, so design them with this in mind.
  
• use identical repeating blocks--i.e., don't make the first story summary different from the others, because that's way harder.
  
• there's very little that limits you in the front page design; the only thing Scoop insists on, really, is that all of the front page story summaries are in one place, one after the other. The rest of the page is yours to do with as you wish. Some of the admin pages you can't change (we're working on it) but the majority of the pages users will see are completely changeable.

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