Housekeeping: A few small but important updates

Preliator

For once, I promise you I have a reason why I haven’t posted anything today – that isn’t laziness, that is. I’ve actually been very busy revamping the entire blog template, cleaning up junk code and so on in hopes of increasing the blog’s efficiency (and perhaps, loading speed – tell me if you notice any upswing in speed). I’ve released a slew of little touch-ups here and there (spacing, colors, etc.), and I’ve also implemented two more important changes I wish to talk about here, including a relatively minor edit that I’m rather disproportionately excited about.

First, gone is the clunky and space-consuming Facebook button underneath each post on the main page, and same for the Digg button. I’ve now moved the social networking and sharing buttons and links underneath each post in a handy-dandy little toolbar you have to open each individual page to see:

Share toolbar

Be sure to make usage of it! (Seriously, you don’t wanna know how much time I spent cracking my skull over creating and implementing that bloody thing.)

However, the second, final and by far largest change I’ve implemented is – [makes sure Uzza can hear] – Disqus! Yes, those who’ve been hanging around for more than a few months may remember that I once tried replacing IntenseDebate with Disqus last March … but the less is said about that clusterfuck, the better. The problem was that my old template (ie. the one I just overhauled) was too, well, old, and I just couldn’t implement Disqus well enough. Not this time! *insert imaginary applause here*

The improvements that come with Disqus are relatively small but quite neat nonetheless. First, commenting is made a bit easier with simpler buttons and menus and all that, and in turn I have a higher level of control including one-click deleting and banning. (Not that I expect to use them often; they’re just fun to have for control-freaks such as I.) In addition, you are able to use just about every freaking HTML tag you can probably think of, which is really, incredibly sweet. (Can’t embed images or other content, though, although any linked images are automatically attached.)

Unfortunately, there is a little setback. Y’see, because I am a freaking idiot, I managed to forget to import all the previous IntenseDebate comments before removing it to install Disqus in its place. Which means that all comments until now have been lost.

Poo.

Anyway. Now that all this is out of the way, allow me to dig into the Everest of blogging fodder that has accumulated in the past, oh, 12+ hours I’ve been busy with this update. G’day. (Or G’nite. Whichever is applicable to wherever you are. Grumble.)

Tags: Disqus • IntenseDebate