Version 25 - There, It’s done.

Upgrading WP installs on 7 different blogs. [...]

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Version 25 - There, It’s done.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 09/15/07 at 09:09:10 pm

Another weekend dedicated to another website layout… This one is a little different though, I actually spent almost 3 weeks planning and designing this template and the new features I wanted to add to the website. I think I have put more work into this version then I have in a long time in my website. I really wanted to perfect it so that I’d feel good with it being around for a long time to come.

You will notice a couple new features. One of which is I have switched from Categories to tags, so you will see a new tag cloud on the sidebar which will offer some fresh links into the buried content. I actually upgraded to WordPress 2.3 Beta 3 to get the built-in tag support that 2.3 has to offer. I really don’t like running a beta as my live blogging platform but it appears overall stable and the final release will be in a couple weeks so I figured it would be safe enough to do what I needed to get done.

You will also notice the brand new Asides posts on the sidebar which will basically act as a link blog or mini blog. I’m using a semi modified plug-in called MiniPosts2 to get this working the way I wanted. I will try to post little tidbits in there often to keep the front page fresh with interesting stuff that I come across.

The blogroll is gone, the Asides has completely replaced the blogroll. I’m going to try to link to everyone I had in my blogroll so that they still have a permanent link somewhere on the website.

Popular Entries is another new feature, again on the sidebar. The popular entries is a plug-in I’m using called popularity contest by Alex King. It appears to do a great job digging up the articles and reviews that get a lot of traffic; I thought it would be a good addition.

The last addition I wanted to bring up is the Share This link under each post which is another Alex King plug-in that supports the Share Icon Project, this will be nice for many of the reviews that are getting posted here that people might want to share or submit to social bookmarking websites.

All of the new features and things needed a new design to play with. The new layout is fairly basic and clean… Just the way I like it.

I’m really happy with the new layout and how it all turned out, I’m hoping to stick with it for a while, I guess we will see how long it lasts but I’m shooting for at least into next year before I try doing this crap again. Ugh…