Made quite a few changes to the site over the last few days – some more noticeable than others. Internally I’ve reorganised a lot of stuff to make more use of Movable Type “Template modules”:http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mtmanual_templates.html#template%20modules to cut down on the reproduced code. I’ve also added a new category for “static” files, and used the “CatEntries”:http://markpasc.org/code/mt/CatEntries/ plugin to filter out this category from feeds, indexes etc. There does seem to be a small glitch with it though – if I try using the tag in the monthly date archive it gets confused and shows me everything I’ve ever published, so I’ve gone back to using a normal @MTEntries@ tag for these pages. I have added two static pages, I’ve finally got around to adding a proper About page, and have also added a Colophon so you can work out exactly what MovableType plugins I’m using.
Most of this was done in an attempt to clean the interface up a bit – you should notice the controls for each post are simplified and a bit more contextually sensible. I’ve also removed the ‘Recent Entries’ sidebar entry as it was adding too much clutter, and I’ve also got rid of comment popups as they were annoying me. Also gone were the huge amount of lines that I was using everywhere – I may of gone too far the other way, but it seems much more pleasing to me. In comes a list of Related Entries thanks to the “MT plugin”:http://mt-plugins.org/archives/entry/relatedentries.php of the same name, but I’m only displaying this on the individual entry pages, and I’ve also merged Trackbacks and comments together using “SimpleComments”:http://mt-plugins.org/archives/entry/simplecomments.php (both plugins courtesy of “Adam Kalsey(Adam Kalsey – Measure Twice)”:http://kalsey.com/blog/).
Next up is to fix the comment display and better differentiate trackbacks from comments, sort the sidebar out as its pig ugly, rationalise the categories, and add a Contact page. I’m also considering adding a stylesheet switcher to test out some different fonts/colour schemes. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not I’ll get any of this done before I start my new job on Monday.
Anyway, enough blogging – I’m off to see “Zatoichi”:http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/zatoichi.html.
magpiebrain 
3 Responses to “Site changes a plenty”
You’ve removed my from your blogroll :((((
Agh! Sorry Sam – was tweaking my Bloglines subscription. I recreated it and left some people off by accident – it should be sorted now 🙂
For the record, I actually read far more than is on my blogroll – my current bloglines setup has over 70 feeds in it. I just tend to pick the sites I read the most, or the sites of people I know.