With that huge project I’ve been working on finally behind me (for the most part), I can finally stand to look at my PC again when I get home in the evenings. That means that I will finally update this site’s old, tired look and correct a number of issues with it.

The first on my list is installing a CAPTCHA plugin, which will require commentators to fill out an additional line when leaving a comment. I don’t intend on implementing one of those awful ones that warp text and ask you to guess what it says. It’ll be a very simple one, just like the one used by my friend and frequent commentator Joe on his own site. While Wordpress’ built-in spam protection is awesome (it has stopped over 50,000 to date), some spammers have learned to circumvent it. That’s why your comments no longer post automatically.
Other things I have in mind:

1. Replacing the wp-stattraq traffic metering plugin with Google Analytics. Not only do I like how they present my traffic data, but it doesn’t fill up my database tables with tons of rows.
2. Integrating Picasa Web Album into the site and removing the wp-gallery2 plugin, which will make it easier for us to add photos. That way you won’t see a four year old wedding picture every time you visit the site.
3. Better integration of my Twitter feed and Google Reader instead of just slapping those JavaScript scripts that are currently in the sidebar.
4. Switching to Feedburner to display the site’s feeds.
5. Bringing back the blogroll! I read lots of other blogs and I’d like to share them all with you.

That’s just off the top of my head. Who knows what else I’ll come up with as I finally get to work on this site again?

Now that blogs have become very popular, the concept of a guestbook has become antiquated. Why have a single page for comments when your visitors can comment on every single post you make?

Guestbooks still have a place on the web, even if their use is decreasing. This blog still uses a guestbook. I have long since scrapped my poorly-written script that older versions of this site used, mainly because it was susceptible to spam. I replaced it with a simple yet little-used WordPress trick: create an empty page with comments enabled. That’s it. Performing that one step effectively creates a guestbook.

There is only one issue with it: the comments are listed in the order they were originally posted, forcing users to scroll to the bottom of the list to view the latest entry. WordPress does not have a built-in way to reverse the comment order, which makes sense. It is common practice in blogs to list comments in the order they were posted, whereas guestbooks are listed in reverse order. Since WordPress is a blog platform, I can’t fault them for that.

That is where the wp-zy-roc plugin comes in. Put simply, you change a single line in that empty page I mentioned earlier (after installing and activating the reverse order plugin). Once that is done, your comments are now in reverse order. I applied the plugin to this site in less than five minutes; see them in action in the guestbook and on the You Make Kitty Scared page.

Edit: Another great plugin is the category tagging one, which creates a tag cloud. After seeing Joe’s setup for his del.icio.us links, I thought it would be a nice change from the boring old unordered list of categories that we currently use. Take a look in the sidebar and let me know what you think.

The guestbook is finally up and running again. Click on the link to the right, or on this link. Go right ahead and sign the book!

Edit: In under a month, I got 1000 spam e-mails at my work address. For me, that’s a record.

Edit: Changed the link and closed comments due to the relentless spam this page gets.