This blog has been running strong for a little over a month and a half now so I thought I'd spend some time changing some of those little annoying things that make websites less pleasant to use.  Since this process is related to the usual topics covered on this blog, I figured I'd briefly go over what changes I made an why.

New Navigation

The point of this site was to act as my portfolio (just look at the URL).  I thought that this would be made up of a blog, traditional portfolio, bio, and resume.  What I failed to account for is that three of those things only matter when I'm looking for a job.  So now the blog is the home page.  It's the primary focus of the site and the other sections are available through a navigation bar at the top right.

This is a great example of me out-hinking myself.  It should have been obvious from the beginning that this site is all about the blog but I tried to make decisions without actually consider the end use.  Lesson learned.

Email notifications on comments

A few of the posts on this site have led to conversations in the comments.  I'd imagine it's tedious to check back in to see if someone has replied to your comment, so I added a feature that will send you and email to let you know that someone else has chimed in on a conversation you're a part of.  If you want to use this, check the "Email me if other people comment on this post" option when you submit a comment.  This will only notify you about comments for that particular thread and you can unsubscribe to the notifications at any time.

Consistent Tagging

This one won't affect you a whole lot, but it will help me prepare the site for the future.  I've been having trouble using regular tags in my posts so that I can build up categories with lots of content.  My current method of using archives as a navigation tool won't work when I have hundreds of posts, so I need to use some foresight with my tagging system.  I added some features to my admin section to make this easier.

That's all for this round.  I'm sure there will be more to come.