Xatal

In my ongoing effort to organize this blog better, I’ve decided to add a Similar Posts section at the bottom of every post. My hope is that this, along with the list of most popular posts, can help readers to better find posts that they might be interested in.

Originally I was going to use the Similar Posts plugin and place the results in the sidebar, but the results really weren’t what I was looking for… in fact, they didn’t seem to be similar at all. I instead decided to use the WordPress Related Posts plugin, and the list seems much better.

I’ve decided to make a few changes to the sidebar. As of yesterday, Xatal now has 50 posts, so I think it’s finally reasonable to start highlighting the more popular ones. That way, anyone who is new and is interested in reading something else that’s interesting can find the best-liked posts.

From now on, there will be a nice list of the site’s ten most popular posts on the sidebar. They might be worth checking out, if you haven’t already. :)

I don’t feel that the sidebar should contain a bunch of content, so I decided to remove the archive links from the sidebar. Looking at my site stats, I noticed that the sidebar’s links to the archive were barely being used. The Archives link up top was being used far more, so I figure it won’t matter too much if I eliminate the archive links from the sidebar.

Normally I like to post quite frequently, but these past few weeks have been a bit busy!

I’ve been trying to take care of a lot of odds and ends around my house, including cleaning and rearranging my room. I’ve been doing some of my summer reading for college, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends. I leave in about two weeks, and I’m trying to make the most out of the opportunities I have to see these people while I can. Who knows how much I’ll see them next year.

My host went down for a bit on Thursday, and my traffic took a fall from that. Oh well.

I intend to write some good posts these upcoming days, hopefully one (or more!) will tickle your fancy!

If you haven’t noticed before, you might notice now that there are a few badges on the sidebar at the bottom of the list of stuff.

They used to be at the very bottom, but after adding one or two more it ended up taking a second line and that just looked awful, so I decided to move them onto the sidebar. I may move them once again, I’m still not sure.

I haven’t taken any time to explain them so I figure it would be nice if I did. If you’re a blogger, one or more might appeal to you too. Keep reading »

So I decided to use the weekend to make a significant change around here: the theme!

I loved the old theme, but to me it’s always extremely important to use things I’ve made myself. When it comes to something as important as a website’s appearance, I feel awful when I’m not using something I made myself.

I’m not an expert designer at all, but I like what I managed to put together enough to stick with it. It’s not perfect, but it’s something I’m glad I can at least call my own.

You’ll notice that a lot of the layout is basically the same. A lot of my inspiration came from the old theme, and I want to keep things at least a little bit similar to how they were.

Please see my Blog Information page where I give credit where it’s due for all of the various things I used in this theme that weren’t my creation. A huge thank you to everyone who created anything that used or inspired this theme!

Does anyone have any comments/thoughts/opinions on the design?

You may have noticed those new little buttons at the bottom-right corner of the screen. Or you may not.

I’d like to draw your attention to this little bugger:

"You Comment, I Follow" badge

(Thanks goes to Randa Clay for the awesome badge)

To give a basic description, by default WordPress sets links people provide in comments to “nofollow”. This means search engines don’t give any weight to that link, which is sort of like saying “The blog author does not endorse this website.” The original purpose of this is to cut back on spam, but if someone provides a link to his or her website, the only good it will do is if someone clicks it.

While I dislike spam as much as the next guy, I also want to thank those that take the time to comment me. So I’ve installed the WordPress plugin NoFollow Free to try to give at least something back. If you post a couple of comments, the rel=”nofollow” will be removed from your link. All I ask is for meaningful comments, not just some hoohah in order to take advantage of this and steal perfectly good linkjuice :]

I’d like to encourage other bloggers to do the same as well. Commenters should be appreciated.

For more information about the other badges this site uses, check out this post.

I’d just like to draw everyone’s attention to the Contact page for a bit.

With this blog, I’m trying to help answer any questions that students might have. I’m going by things I used to wonder and things I asked for help about from other people. I have a nice list of things I eventually wish to address, but that list definitely isn’t set in stone.

If you’re reading this and you have any questions, please, don’t hesitate to use that page to ask me. The other day I noticed someone found this site by searching for “half day senior year colleges look down”. Obviously, they were curious whether or not colleges look down on shorter days in their senior year. So I decided to give that a post yesterday.

If you have questions, by all means, ask. Some things I’m planning to write about at more appropriate times of the year, but I wouldn’t mind addressing them early if people are interested. You might ask me something I never thought of.

“Xatal” used to be used to host my webscripts, but now I’ve transformed it into this blog about school.

If you’re directed here looking for webscripts, go check out XatalProjects, where I’ve moved them to. I’ve updated my links on HotScripts, but it hasn’t gone through yet I guess.

Sorry about the inconvenience!