The past two months has seen a lot of changes to this blog. For one, I’ve changed the look yet again and have also added and removed a few other features.
Cosmetic Changes
I got rid of the header. With the new theme, the header looked totally out of place and occupied a good amount of surface area. The cosmetic changes have also worked well for adsense, which has doubled, but again not as much as what most others are making!
However, for those interested in advertising on this blog, you’ll now have you ads well above the fold!
New Comment Feed
I’ve been asked by many to include a comments feed. I added the comment feed about a month and half back and already have around fifty subscribers.
All those interested can subscribe to the feed at https://ajaydsouza.com/comments/feed/ or http://feeds.feedburner.com/ajaydsouza/comments. The former, which redirects to the latter is recommended.
For those you prefer the traditional method of email subscriptions, that is also available.
The Comments feed is the best way for you to keep track of any or all comments on this blog. You can also subscribe to receive comments from individual posts via email while commenting.
More Pages Available for Advertisement
I have put up more pages for sponsorship via TLA (aff.). You can check them out on the Sponsorship Program page.
You can also buy ads via BlogAds. Thilak has been kind enough to give me an invite for the same.
Talking about advertisements, the Sponsors list to the right is now displayed sitewide, that is over 1000 pages of this blog several of which are PR4-PR6. And it’s only $65 a month.
Listen to my posts
I was pondering this a while and thought of using Talkr, but Ted from Botcast Network offered to this for me for free! I’ve signed up with Amazon’s S3 to ensure that I don’t trouble him too much.
I must mention that working with Ted was amazing. He’s a patient and professional person and was quick at getting his job done. I’m the one who took a lot of time to get this post up and thank him 🙂
Before I forget, the URL of the Podcast is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ajaydsouza/podcast
Plugins
Plugins Removed
I bought Angsuman’s Translator Pro as Everton says its got him some traffic.
I didn’t see the same on this blog, but what I did see is increased CPU usage, infact it was the reason my VPS went offline on Feb 4th. Even with WP-Cache, the CPU usage is well over 6%. It had to go. Angsuman offers free upgrades, so I am hoping when he does improve this, I’ll get an upgrade and it will be back out here.
I’ve also knocked off Popularity Contest and Share This. The former is a great plugin, but it doesn’t work with WP-Cache. Share This is good as well, but I’m trying to cut down on plugins.
Plugins Replaced
I replaced UTW with http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/simple-tagging-plugin/. I like the ease of use of Simple Tagging and the autofill that it offers. The tags are also easier to manage and I got reports of it being lighter.
Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam has also been removed, because my blog visitors weren’t too happy with the Captcha. It’s place has been taken by Math Comment Spam Protection.
WP-ContactForm III has replaced PXS Mail Form as I started getting email spam via it.
Plugins Added
I’ve also added WP-Cache again. The real purpose was Translator Pro, but have decided to continue using the same, until I run into problems. Few hacks for WP-Cache and my pages are now being gzipped before being served 🙂
Dean’s Code Highlighter now lets me post my code very well. I don’t post much code, but it makes the little I do look good!
I added Show Top Commentators today to display all the top commenters on this blog. It shall display in the sidebar all across this site. I’ve set it to list the top 10 commenters and their links are also displayed. This is really fantastic for all of you who comment because you’re getting free links from a PR6 site. All you have to do is comment!
That’s all that comes to mind right now. What have you to say about the changes? Has it made it easier for you to browse this blog?
Are you facing any problems? Do comment and let me know.
I still don’t get the point of having a translator plugin. How useful is it?
Did you contact Angsuman about the translator plugin? Mine doesn’t add any additional load anymore.
I’ve taken your lead and added top commentators to my blog
I contacted Angsuman at one point of time and he suggested WP-Cache. But, even with it the CPU Usage and Memory is 6%.
Without the plugin the load is under 2.5.
Hmm ok. he made a lot of changes to my server that helped. Have you tried global translator? I think it’s a bad idea to have no translation option
I tried Global Translator on Techtites, but it didn’t work at all.
I’m gonna contact Angsuman again and see what he has to say.
This is really good stuff to have visibility to. Thanks for keep track of these things and letting us see what sort of applications and plug-ins are adding value to your blog.
As per Evertons suggestion, I bought Translator Pro, but its causing a resource hog now!! My CPU usage is well over 5%.. damn it… I’m on a shared host and LunarPages would kill me!!
I should have taken your advice 🙁
@Mark, you can checkout my Plugins Page.
@Binny, it is to get search engine traffic mainly, from foreign engines.
I have added Simple Tagging after reading it here.
I used the mail form to contact you but I suppose you didn’t receive it coz there was no reply.
I enjoy fiddling with my blog and changing it and trying to make it better. But it’s nothing since I’m a newbie on the blogosphere. This post of yours opens up the myriad ways of making yr blog better and better. Congrats!
But I was wondering whether yr readers face this confusion with yr blog. Whether it’s a tech blog or a blog with some amazing thoughts on “The Road called Life”.
In any case, you have a nice blog going. And congrats for the MBA!
Ranjan, firstly thanks.
The purpose of this blog is my life and things that I have learned. I don’t like classifying it as a Technology blog. I prefer calling it Personal.