Dangerous Intersection is still under construction

We're still tweaking things at Dangerous Intersection, adding new features, looking at them, and sometimes removing them. It reminds me of the quote by Oscar Wilde:

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Instead of commas, though, I'm dealing with WordPress plugins. It's an adventure experimenting with these open-source tweaks. Sometimes they work brilliantly. Sometimes, they don't work at all. Sometimes they cause a "fatal error." The good news is that I have successfully installed WordPress 2.71, which allows lots of new features. I've also updated the design template I'm using (to WP-Vybe 1.1). This combination allows for nested comments. If you want to reply to a comment rather than to the post itself, you now have that option. Just look for "reply" attached to each comment. One of the newer features is "popular posts" (on the left sidebar). I did want to disclose that this list is computer generated based upon relatively recent page-views. I don't tweak that list at all. Regarding the comments sidebar (right site), I realize that it's looking a bit raggedy these days. I'm still working on that. One cool new feature, however, is that I have downloaded a plug-in that groups the recent comments by post. If you find one of the posts to be interesting, you can find all of the recent comments regarding that post grouped together (well, up to five of the most recent posts--I wanted to make sure that I left room for the recent comments of multiple posts, even if one of the posts draws an inordinate number of comments. I've heard quite a few comments that this site is often running slowly. I agree. We're going to make some technical adjustments to address that. I hope to see an improvement over the next couple of weeks.

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Dangerous Intersection is under construction – and a note about Gravatar

As you can tell, there have been quite a few changes to the site design of Dangerous Intersection. There are many more changes to come. Therefore, if you see something that looks not quite right for the next couple of weeks, we're probably working on it. It's taken many hours of work--I now know ten times as much about WordPress as I did one month ago. But it's also been fun and educational. WordPress is a most impressive system, with perhaps too many choices. Too many choices, did I say? Sign up for Gravatar! You can personalize your comments with your own image. Truly, it's EASY. It will take 5 minutes at most, assuming you have an image of yourself ready. It's totally free. With Gravatar, you have total control over the image you'd like to use as author of comments (your photo will be displayed next to each comment you make). You can change it any time you want, Total control. Ownership society! Just visit Gravatar - Set up an account with the email address you normally use when you leave comments and choose a password

Continue ReadingDangerous Intersection is under construction – and a note about Gravatar