As Richard’s a bit busy at the moment, I’m stepping in to throw out a post outlining a bit about the new blog design – as comments about it have appeared in other threads – and comments at The Peking Duck NEVER go off topic!

😉

I won’t sully The Pond with much on who I am, nor my feelings about working on this project – you can read about all that in this post at my blog.

So, new features of PekingDuck.org:

Comments

1. Variations: As a long-time reader of the site, I always disliked the unvarying uniformity of the comments. Not the opinions carried within mind you, but the box/box/box feel of it. As such, I’ve included an alternating colour scheme that should help break up the rather long threads.

2. Gravatars: Additionally, all comments now include Gravatar support. Gravatars are Globally Recognized Avatars – which essentially means it’s a picture of you that follows you around the Web. Sign up for a free Gravatar and help personalize your comments here (and a number of other sites).

3. Moderation: There is some pretty heavy-duty spam protection to help keep the comments clean of everyone’s favourite canned ham. Generally you shouldn’t get sucked up by it, but should you post a comment and it not appear right away, it’s likely it’s just been put into moderation and will appear in its proper place as soon as it is checked. If you post more than two links in your comment, it automatically goes into moderation.

Authors

You can now view all posts by an author. Simply click their name in any of their posts.

Tags & Categories

As Richard and the other authors get comfortable with the new blogging platform (WP2.5), you should see an increased use of categories and tags to help organize the rather wide-range of topics covered here. A post’s tags and categories can be found in the posts footer.

Spread the Word

I’ve also included easy access to add the Duck’s best posts to a variety of social bookmarking platforms (including Hao Hao Report – shameless plug, I know, but I’ve got the microphone now!). I’ve tried to include the most popular ones, but if you know of any that really should be included, let me know.

RSS Feeds

The RSS feed has been changed. I (crosses-fingers) think I’ve got it set to automatically redirect old feeds, but am not sure feedreaders will pick up on that. To be safe, please update your feed to: http://www.pekingduck.org/feed

See a problem?

We’re still tweaking things ’round here, so if you see a problem with the new design, please let me know. I can be reached via my blog, my biz site, or just by contacting me at ryan *at* daobydesign *dot* com.

Hope you all like the new look – all comments offering praise accepted, all others will be swiftly deleted. 😉