December 31, 2005  

Two-Oh

It may not look like much, but Ascent Stage has undergone a major revision this past week. I only just got around to addressing the corrupt database issue from a while back and in the process took care of just about everything else that was bugging me about the site this whole year. So, in no particular order, here’s what’s new:

  • Browse by Topic category is back from the dead (the corrupt db killed it).
  • Browse by Date no longer sucks (as bad).
  • Movable Type has been upgraded to 3.2 — there are more features, of course, but the best is what seems to me to be faster rebuilds.
  • Trackbacks are off for the time-being — still searching for a way to prevent trackback spam as I have done with comments (which remain open). Ideas?
  • There is now a merged RSS feed for the main blog and the marginalia, thanks to Feed Digest.
  • My account at Last.fm, the site which catalogs my music played and powers the sidebar, has been upgraded. Those of you who listen to the streaming radio from Last.fm (which would be — checking — exactly no one to date) can expect it to be faster now.
  • There is now an actual error page for 404 Not Found. It is not properly catching errors yet, but it does exist.
  • There is now a consolidated Archives page as well as a single page listing every post to date.
  • Site code has been cleaned and modularized. You care not at all, I know. But the general de-crufting makes me feel good.
  • Search results and comment previewing are (finally) formatted properly.
  • I am using Library Thing to catalog my recent reading in the sidebar. Eventually I’d like to write reviews for the books that end up in the margin, but for now I am still cataloging my library.
  • For you usability folks, I’ve changed link colors slightly to better differentiate visited from unvisited.
  • I added the now-standard RSS feed icon to denote subscribable feeds.
  • Lots of other stuff that would bore you even more than the above, if that is possible.

There are some deep links that are broken still and I’ve not fully tested in IE or Safari, but for the most part the ship is seaworthy.

So, enough with the housekeeping. Time for 2006 content.