Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

Today I upgraded the software that manages this blog and added some new features. Along the way something managed to wipe out the list of categories. Ugh!

Within the last week I added a new feature which gives you the option to share each individual post with friends. At the end of each post you’ll see a “share/save” option. Just mouse over this and you’ll get a list of options such as emailing a link, bookmarking the post, or using sharing services such as Digg & Delicious. Email addresses are not collected by me so no need to worry about that. Of course you are still free to just copy & paste the post URL to send to others. One step forward.

Today I added a feature that I’ve wanted for a long time — a listing of the posts with the most comments for the last week. Over in the right sidebar between the calendar and recent comments is now the posts that have received the most comments in the last seven days. I have the option to change the number of days so I might make it five, ten or even fifteen days. For now I’ll stick with seven days. This feature is great because it quickly lets a reader see the most recently active posts. Another step forward.

I hadn’t upgraded the WordPress software that manages this blog since switching to it in November 2006. The upgrade took far less time than it took to upgrade my iPhone to 2.0! In the process though it managed to wipe out the names for my nearly 60 categories. Restoring that table of names from my backup is beyond my limited abilities so fixing that goes on the list for the programmer that I need to keep on a retainer. Two steps back.

Also on that list for the programmer is to figure out how to get comments to display paragraph breaks.
So enjoy the new features and my apologies for the missing category names.