Small change to the blog

The widget I used for Followers stopped working properly. I couldn't find a solution or work-around to the problem, so I've removed it for now. Hopefully this won't inconvenience anybody who was following this blog. I'll keep looking for a solution.

Link maintenance

Just a small change to my blog's links. 'Under Blogs of Interest' I've added Pergelator. He's commented some in here and that's how I found his site. It is a very nice mix of different topics and interests. At the risk of having him inundated with a Flareslaunch, which is mainly my faithful spam bots following a new link to post herbal Viagra ads, be sure to check him out.

 

Sunday Open Thread

I use these open threads to report on any site maintenance I've been doing.

Some of you may have noticed that about a week ago, for a brief period of time, there was a post rating mechanism under the posts. These interfered with the polls so I removed them. 

In thinking about it, I also realized that, since this blogging business is only a pastime to me, I didn't really want a rating system that might cause me to chase traffic rather than just posting whatever nonsense interested me.

At the same time I was fiddling with the rating system, I also replaced the icons that allow one to share a post on various social media sites. It always aggravated me when the box would pop up if you moved you mouse over one, so I switched to a version without that automatic pop-up feature. 

In the right rail I moved the 'Recommended' links under the 'Blogs of Interest' to group my links to other sites. This required me to move list of 'Contributors' to the far right rail so both they and the blog links would be visible without scrolling down the page.

The most ambitious thing I've done is add a 'By Category' list to the right rail (under the list of Contributors). This allows visitors to review posts in just their area of interest while ignoring topics that don't interest them. I don't know how much people really use things like that, but from time to time I have done that on other sites.

The problem with adding that feature is I've long used the labels to make cheesy jokes, so I'm having to sweep back through all of the posts to tag them properly. At the moment I'm working my way through 2009, and dreading the work 2006 is going to entail. 

Occasionally I am making minor edits to the older posts, but I am not changing their content, only cleaning up any malformed HTML that is causing problems with the site's template.

Sunday Open Thread

Nobody much comments on Flares, so I'm joking with the Open Thread title. I use these posts as information dumps about tweaks I'm making to Flares into Darkness. 

In the far right rail I've added a link list titled 'Recommended'. These are sites like Instapundit, Hot Air, etc. that would dominate the top of my blogroll if I put them there. I segregated them because I like the fact that the blogroll cycles sites with new posts to the top, and I don't want the smaller blogs buried by the aggregaters and group news sites.

I also moved Jim Miller and Lileks to that area because they weren't providing feeds when they posted new articles. This meant they were always at the bottom of my blogroll, and that made them look dormant when they were in fact active. I don't want them to be inadvertently overlooked.

I've added Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion and Fausta's Blog to the blogroll. I was surprised that Fausta's wasn't already linked. Wasn't she one of the original blogs in our blogroll? I must have forgotten to add her when I redid the template. At any rate, her -- and her weekly tango videos -- are back.

I've also mentioned wanting to expand into the Indian blogsphere. I've been poking around trying to find accessible Indian blogs and have added the first: Sepia Mutiny (in the 'Recommended' section). It's actually an Stateside blog maintained by Americans of Indian descent, so it is a bit of a cheat. None the less, it provides a different perspective on politics and cultural issues and is an interesting read. 

Finally, I have opened up the commenting considerably. Anonymous comments are now allowed. It is hard to imagine, aside from spambots, comments ever being an issue on Flares, but we'll see if this policy change causes a problem or not.

Saturday Night Open thread

Of course I'm joking with the title of this post. Flares doesn't generate a lot of comments -- lately even my beloved Chinese Spambots have deserted me -- so an open thread would be asking for more humiliation than I've already invited with my polls. I've been doing a wee bit of blog maintenance, and just wanted to mention the changes.

First, speaking of comments, I've added the ability for people to log on using OpenID. That choice is now available in the box that pops up when you go to add a comment. 

Secondly I've added a couple of new links to the top of the two right rails. Realizing our email was nowhere to be found on the site, I've added a 'Contact Me' button to the rightmost rail. It pops up a form that will send an email to us. At the moment I have that email going to my account. I know we have a yargb account at gmail, but for the life of me I can't remember or find the password to it. If anybody knows, send it on to me and I'll switch the contact form to point to it.

I've also added a 'Log into Flares' button to the top of the inner rail. I'm always amused at the thought that newer viewers of the blog must wonder why there is such a humongous list of contributors when it must seem I'm the only one posting. A bit of history -- we started out as a group of commentors from Roger Simon's pre-Pajamas Media blog and grouped together so we had a place to post articles without the need to individually maintain a blog. Most have moved on, but  from time to time the other folks still do post articles. So, I'm just entertaining myself by keeping the candles burning -- besides, our archives still get a fair amount of traffic. Nothing sadder than a dormant blog.

Anyway, back to the 'Log into Flares' button. I've gotten a couple of emails lately where contributors had forgotten their password, changed email addresses or weren't sure their accounts were active. It occurred to me some folk might not even remember where to go to add an article. That link takes you to our dashboard where you can login if'n you get the urge.

Finally I've added a couple of links: Bob's Blog and ISRO. The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) link is part of my latest scheme -- linking to Indian sites to cover that neglected part of the Anglosphere.

By the way, in the likely event that my joke is too obscure, the picture of Duchamp's bicycle wheel readymade is in homage to Charles "Nuttier than a Fruitcake" Johnson of LGF who, in between obsessing over Creationism, has posted a seemingly infinite series of articles featuring pictures of bicycle wheels, spokes, chains, pedals and the like.