New Site Features
The site upgrade has gone pretty smoothly. I think I’ve recovered all of the previous customizations. Plus, now that I’m running the latest version of WordPress, I’ve installed lots of new plugins and enabled some new features. Here is a rundown of some of the new features.
Avatars
If you’ve checked out a post with comments lately, you’ll see the addition of avatars (i.e. the small images identifying each poster). I know that you’d rather have your own personal avatar rather than the default one (even though the default one is super cool)!! There are two easy ways to get your custom avatar.
- Register as a user on the site and email me a 40×40 pixel image that you would like to use as your avatar. Then just login and comment and you should see your personal avatar next to your name.
- Rather than establishing your avatar on many different sites on the web, you can simply create a free account at gravatar.com and upload your avatar there. Your avatar will then appear automatically when posting a comment at a gravatar-enabled site (like this one), assuming you post with the same email address that you used to create your gravatar account. This method is especially nice since you can then use your avatar all over the web whereas option 1 only works for this site.
Tags and Tag Clouds
In addition to binning posts into categories, I now have the ability to tag posts. You’ll see a list of tags associated with each post at the bottom of the single page view. There is also a tag cloud in the sidebar showing the most popular tags. Click on any tag and see a list of all the posts with that tag.
Related Posts
At the bottom of each post in the single page view, there is now a list of “related” posts. Exactly how related these posts are will depend on the tagging and matching algorithm but the hope is that this feature will highlight some older posts with related content of interest.
Recent Comments
There is new sidebar content showing the most recent comments to the site.
Lightbox
Hate clicking on an image link in a post and then having to go back after viewing the image? Well, no more. I installed a lightbox plugin that loads the image in an overlay in front of the site that is easily closed to get back to the site. This plugin also allows you to group images and navigate through them using arrows on the side of the image (or the keyboard). You can check it out using the two image links below (curious about the strange camera below- come back soon to see the post or better yet subscribe to the RSS feed to get automatic updates).
Matchbox Pinhole Camera
Matchbox Pinhole Camera 2
Hope you like the new features. Let me know what you think.
Tags: blogRelated Posts (perhaps)