I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around,
and don't let anybody tell you different

-Kurt Vonnegut

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Sunday, February 19, 2006

Achieved is the Glorious Work

It is done.


The overhaul is complete: I have added a total of six new features to Judge Jonathan (all of them via Freshblog's Blogger Hacks series). Let me bore you with the details one last time - after that, everything will return to blogging as usual.

But first off, a huge sorry to anyone who has commented in the past two weeks: I realize that all your comments have stayed invisible until yesterday. The reason isn't that I'm a comment fascist, or that I care what language you comment in - it's simply that I turned on comment moderation for some reason without a clue what that was. And when I checked yesterday, there were eight comments there, waiting for me to set them free.

Long story short: Comments are unmoderated again, so comment! Which brings us to point no. 1...

Recent Comments
One of the things I always loved about comenting on Tobistar's kick-ass blog was that once I posted a comment, my name was immediately visible on his main page in the 'Recent Comments' section. Well, Blogger doesn't offer that, but this guy does. Like everything else I'll be telling you about today, it's fairly simple to implement - check the link for the Javascript code. Plus, if you feel like you need to promote your own blog, commenting often on Judge Jonathan is the way to go!

Linkable Title
Well, this one I actually figured out myself (!) - post the URL of each individual post into the "Link" field when creating it, and your title doubles as a link to the post. Plus it looks cooler - see the three dots before the title?

Favicon
Speaking of which: I liked the dots so much that I decided to use them as a favicon. The instructions are simple and can be found directly at the Freshblog. A favicon, by the way, is that little logo in the address bar of your browser.

Monthly Archives
Two improvements here. Firstly, I decided the Archive list on the sidebar was taking too much space (especially with the 'Recent Comments' section), so I turned it into a drop-down menu, and, while I was at it, switched the sorting the order around to display the latest archives first. All via Roveberg.

Secondly, I made sure that if people do choose a month to look at, they get an overview of all posts' titles (rather than their full text). See an example here. This counterintuitive Blogger default setting was avoided with the help of - well, Blogger's help section. Makes you wonder why it doesn't work like that in the first place.

Random Tagline
See that cool picture to your left? See the text below? Thing is - I don't know which one you're looking at. That's because I'm using Javascript to randomize which tagline appears (refresh this page and spot them all!). It's neat, it's simple, it gives you more space for self-promotion, and it can be found at No Fancy Name.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: del.icio.us Tags/Categories
I told you previously that Technorati kicked Google Blog Search's ass when it comes to using tags as categories.
Well, del.icio.us kicks Technorati's ass.
No more waiting for Technorati to list your latest posts - with del.icio.us, you bookmark your posts yourself. But doesn't that mean more work?, I hear you ask. Not if you use Freshblog's method. All you need is:
-a del.icio.us account
-Firefox
-the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox
-Johan Sundstrom's deluxe script to tweak Blogger

Once you've got those, you can post your tags directly into Blogger (right below the title field) - and what's more, once you've published your page, you're taken directly to your del.icio.us account, where all you have to do is click 'save' (the URL, title and tags are filled out automatically) and you're all set.

So basically, del.icio.us tags do two things for you: they give you lots of traffic (visible on del.icio.us, Technorati and other sites), and they double as categories, which you can edit easily and without re-editing your post (unlike Technorati!). You can view all of my tags/categories at my del.icio.us page.

Well, that's it folks, metablogging is over. Again, if you feel like adding any of the above features to your Blogger blog, check out Freshblog and start fiddling around with that code. But please - remember to back up your template...

By the way:


My blog is worth $5,080.86.
How much is your blog worth?


(Via Berner Gazette.)

1 comment:

shari said...

It says my blog is worth 0.00.
It did wonders for my self esteem.
:)