diff --git a/_layouts/welcome.html b/_layouts/welcome.html
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..3f5981793
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_layouts/welcome.html
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+{% include header.html %}
+    <div class="grid_3 alpha sidebar">
+      <div><img src="/images/vagrant_chilling.png" class="left" /></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="grid_9 omega welcome">
+      {{ content }}
+    </div>
+{% include footer.html %}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/css/screen.css b/css/screen.css
index dc3e1abae..189f8dc2a 100644
--- a/css/screen.css
+++ b/css/screen.css
@@ -242,8 +242,9 @@ blockquote {
   margin-top: 5px;
 }
 
-/* WORKAROUND FOR GITHUB PAGES BUG */
-.highlight + .highlight { display:none; }
+.welcome {
+  padding-left: 10px;
+}
 
 /* -------------------------------
               SIDEBAR
diff --git a/index.md b/index.md
index f2b850f0b..f88fe5513 100644
--- a/index.md
+++ b/index.md
@@ -1,19 +1,21 @@
 ---
-layout: default
+layout: welcome
 title: Welcome
 ---
+Welcome to **sane development environments**.
 
-<img src="/images/vagrant_chilling.png" class="left" />
+While web technologies have progressed leaps and bounds in the past decade,
+the techniques used for web development have remained rather stagnant. Ten
+years ago, a PHP developer would start up Apache and MySQL on their local
+machine and use that to "develop." Today, with the rise of more complex web
+applications, complete with message queues, multiple database backends,
+custom worker processes, and more, its surprising to see that this method of
+development remains largely unchanged.
 
-Vagrant is a tool set out to **change the way web developers work**.
-
-Vagrant quickly and seamlessly builds and provisions virtual machines for
-development using [Sun's VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org). Using vagrant,
-developers can continue to manage project files using their own system and editors,
-but all the servers, processes, etc. actually run within a virtualized environment.
-Vagrant allows ports to be forwarded so you can still test a web service, for example,
-by forwarding the virtual machine's port 80 to some port on the host machine and
-visiting it in any browser.
+Vagrant is **here to change that.** By providing automated creation and
+provisioning of virtual machines using [Sun's VirtualBox], Vagrant provides
+the tools to create and configure lightweight, reproducible, and portable
+virtual environments.
 
 Are you ready to use vagrant to revolutionize the way you work? Check out
 the [getting started guide](/docs/getting-started/index.html).