Based on Michael Kwan’s recommendations in his review of my blog, I have been doing some housecleaning.

The first thing I did, which wasn’t Michael’s recommendation but something I’ve been meaning to get to for a long time, is to fix the sidebar so that it has a shaded background on more than just the main page.

Oops, before that I did fix the avatars in comments so that the text no longer runs into the images, which was one of Bobby’s pet peeves, and mine as well, but yesterday I finally sat down and figured out how to do it.

Next, I made the RSS Subscription buttons and text larger. I may do something more later to make them pop out a little more. One of Michael’s suggestions was to make it more prominent.

After that, I removed the Meta list from the sidebar, something I’ve also been intending to do for a long time. Michael didn’t mention it, but I think it’s one of those things that just screams “WordPress NEWBIE!” Since I’ve been using WordPress for nearly a year now, I don’t think I qualify any more as a newbie. So, removing the Meta list is a graduation of sorts.

Next, I changed the Top Commentators. Here were the previous ones, for the record:

Top Commentators (all-time, through July 9, 2008):
Pete (152)
Michelle Gartner (118)
Joanne (111)
Debo Hobo (69)
Rolando (53)

Thank you to all of my commentators. Henceforth, which is something I had planned to do in January (well, to at least refresh it anyway), the list will be updated weekly. So, you best comment frequently if you want to keep your name up there.

Blog Sparring
Many of you will, of course, remember Joanne, my blog sparring partner. I don’t remember the last score, but I now (again) have a higher Technorati rank than she does, even though mine’s been going down, down, down, and she hasn’t blogged in almost two months. So, I WIN! Of course, it is kind of an empty victory, as she isn’t around for me to really rub it in. I hope she is doing well, whatever she is doing, which is maybe still teaching yoga to bears, or something. No, that was supposed to be in the Fall, so who knows what she’s been up to…

Okay, next I changed the most Popular Posts in the sidebar to my most Notable Posts. Some of the Popular Posts were only made popular by spammers trying to comment on them all the time, so it’s difficult to tell what the truly popular posts are. So, I just picked some I wanted to highlight and swapped them out.

After that, I did some more link cleaning…

Formerly Hot Blogs
You know, if a blog hasn’t been updated in a while, I don’t think I can consider them “hot” anymore. So, here are a few of the casualties of a cold-spell of their own making.

A Blog That Lies - No new posts since last year. Alex was one of the first additions to my Hot Blogs list. And, he did my first “free” review (I won a contest).

ChrisBloczynski.com - Nothing for a couple months. I was the second place winner in his first contest.

NetBusinessJournal.com - No new posts since last year, and now it’s just an error message. Tom even knew Polish.

I wish all of them the best of luck in their current endeavors and if any or all of them return to blogging, I might re-add them to the list. I say “might” because who knows how heartless and cold and stingy I may become with my links after I’ve finished following through on some of Michael’s recommendations…

Oh, and I just added a “Subscribe by eMail…” option.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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