One thing I’ve thought about before is turning off the “nofollow” attribute in my comments to allow people to get a link that counts for something when they post on my blog. Obviously I’d need to monitor my comments more closely, but I can only see that as being a good thing. It could also spark “shallow” commenting that is designed purely to get a link out from the blog, rather than to promote actual discussion, which is definitely not what I’m looking for.

What sparked this post is a video Matt Cutts just posted, here’s what he has to say about the idea:

I’d really appreciate some feedback on this one, what do you think about the idea? Is it a bad way to encourage commenting? Would it work? Have you done the same or done it and changed back?

• Related posts: I’d thought about this before I redesigned, but then forgot to put it in. I’ve added a simple plugin (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) that pulls in related posts by category and tags. It’s capable of comparing title and body text, but I’ve opted against using that. The related posts on this site show at the bottom of a post, just before the comments. I thought it would be handy for articles like the HAProxy load balancing guide, or for finding all my posts about scaling.
• Bordered content: When I first put this design live, the content was on a white background, inset straight into the blue of the overall page background. Whilst that was fine, I thought it could use a little further visual separation, so I’ve added a deeper blue border, which I feel gives it a nice little lift.
• Highlighted comments: Just as a little added extra, I discovered that Wordpress 2.9 makes it incredibly easy to highlight comments written by the post author, so I’ve thrown in a highlight for my comments on the blog. Perhaps best for those who want to quickly scroll past everything I say.
• Archive pages no longer have a full post at the top: They’re now simply a list of posts, no featured entry, etc. – except on the home page.
• Previous / Next are now buttons: Restyled the links as buttons.
• Consolidated CSS: Rolled reset.css into dancryer.css, to drop the number of hits to the server by one.

I realise these are all very tiny changes, none of which are likely to make a difference to your reading of the site, or not doing so – whichever the case may be. I set out aiming to improve the site iteratively, changing little bits at a time and gradually improving it, I’m hoping these little changes will eventually build up and make it a great design.

I’d really appreciate any feedback you may have, no matter how big or small, whether it’s to say you’re not fond of the colour of the links, or that you simply like the site. Either is great, drop me a comment below.

I decided to go for something simple and lightweight, as I like to think that if people come here at all, it’s for the content. My old design was nice, but it wasn’t particularly easy on the eyes when reading long posts, and was quite image heavy overall. The new site also has everyone’s favourite “share this” type links throughout, so you can spam other people with my stuff, if you so desire.

Let me know what you think! Your opinions and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I’m going to keep looking for other old entries, preferably from between 2007 and now. Anything I come across will be posted here.

Obviously, what I should really be doing is blogging here and now, but I thought the old content would make a cool addition to this site.