I’ve been looking at the website lately and have noticed that it looks a lot different than when I first started this project a couple of weeks ago.
- Updating to Wordpress 2.1.1. - This was easily the biggest improvement I could have done to the site. The ease with which the sidebar widgets help manage the stuff on the right is downright ridiculous.
- Top Commentators - Even though, it’s getting a little bit of love from Nathan, Danielle and Ed, it’s still something I feel will help contribute to the community aspect of the site.
- Post Ratings Plugin - I’ve noticed that this doesn’t get that much love, even on John Chow’s site where he gets a billion times more readers than me. Even still, I like it and know it can be a useful tool to gauge the interest levels of my readers. Thanks to Lester Chan for his hard work.
- Comments Location - Since I wasn’t getting as much comment action as I thought I should in my posts, I decided to add the Comments Numbers to the top of the post in addition to the one I have already at the bottom. I was afraid that the bottom was getting a little to cluttered, so i wanted to make sure people saw right away what the comment count was to help nudge them to a comment.
- Advertising Spots - This has probably been the most obvious change to my site. I decided to go with Amazon ads below each post over Google banners Google only allows 3 types of banners to be used on a single page at any time. This has been made possible with the PostPost plugin, which also made it possible for me to add a banner to my RSS Feeds. Along with the content additions, I have also added a couple of skyscrapers from Adbrite and Amazon. My colleagues and I have been working with Adbrite a lot in the last year and I know that they are constantly trying to improve their systems, so I thought I’d show them some love.
- GoogleShadow Button - Some of you maybe wondering what the hell that GoogleShadow thing is. Well, it was a topic that I came across in the blogosphere, which I know some of you remember - Saving the world 3000 MegaWatts a year. So, since I had an extra slot in my ixwebhosting plan, I thought I’d create a simple landing page with a black background to help do my part. I know there are discussions where LCDs use just as much energy producing a black image compared to a white image, but for the 25% of the world who use CRTs, I thought to myself - eh, why not?
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i like the googleshadow idea, even though i have a laptop and i’m still contributing to the waste. i did turn down the brightness though. does that count for anything?
Thanks for the plug on PostPost! I hope you like it! When I get some spare time, I’ll be adding some options to it!
Regards,
Doug
Good work with GoogleShadow. I too thought this idea had some merit and made a site called Blackle. Check it out, I hope you like it.