After about two weeks it's time for the first major update to the site. Mostly it is behind-the-scenes stuff, but there is some new user-functionality also. Lets have a look!

One of my goals for this website was that I should be able to continue developing the code in the background, and release periodic updates when I had done some things. This way I can safely test everything before any visitors can see it. It also allows me to properly justify any changes through a post like this one.

Since this site is the 3 site I've created I think of it as version 3. At release it was 3.0, so naturally I think of this release as 3.1. The largest changes are design and how I handle visitors.

New font?

After viewing my site at different browsers, monitors and OS I've decided that the font that looked nice on my monitor was not the overall best. So for the moment I've rolled back to a neutral, web-safe Arial. This is a sans-serif font that is very easy to read, without being as wide as Verdana. I hope you like the change.

Remember me!

When posting a comment you now get a choice for the site to remember you. What this means is that a small cookie is stored on your computer, which the site recognizes and brings back your information the next time. I recommend that you use this feature on your private computer, where you do most of your browsing. Of course, no sensitive information is stored, only a random key that the site can associate with your user. Adding comments are really easy then, since all your information is inserted for you, and you only have to write the comment.

Another cool feature is that the news section also can select the news that has happened since the last time you visited, or rather, the last time you reset your stream. Every time you press reset your visit is added, and the next time you browse, only news since then will show until you press reset again. Difficult to explain, very easy to use.

News

As well as the above I've added more feeds to the news. Only the ones relevant for this page is pre-selected, but you can select the other if you want to see. If you have enabled Remember me you can even store which feeds that should show up by default. I think I will add many more feeds later. The names are links to the RSS-feeds, and if you hover the mouse over them you can read a short description.

I have created an RSS-feed for the photo-gallery. Whenever I add photos the feed will be updated. You can follow it with your favorite RSS-reader, or just visit the news section where it is pre-selected.

Tags and navigation

I didn't like where I was going with the categories. After just some posts I saw that I needed many categories, and it would become messy. So I implemented tags. Tags are a typical feature on many websites today, and it's a smart and easy way to improve navigation. All posts have one or more tags that represents the content. For example 'photography', or 'Internet'. This way I can have few, but important categories.

As the number of posts increase one must be able to navigate through history as well. Now you can do that with the arrows in the info-box at the right side. While reading a post you can also go the previous and next post.

That is is for now. I could talk a long time about all the behind-the-scene features, but I think that would not appeal to all. Perhaps another time. I really hope you like the changes, and that you find them useful! I now I would, if was a regular visitor. Tomorrow I will start a three-post article called A look at web content. It discusses content, ownership, copyright and alternatives.