Finally arriving after a long, cold journey…
Well, my first post in What is eternity doing tonight? referred to “Stage 1″, perhaps because I was on a Time Crisis high, so that would explain this being stage two. Unfortunately, these are not stages in my evil plot to take over the world. Well, not yet. You can call up Owen and ask if he’s got any world-domination schemes going with the Anime Blogger Coalition.
Here’s the first half of the post from over at Eternity, incidentally:
Show ▼
And now that you’re here, welcome to version 2 of CCY’s Strangely Titled Anime Blog! I’ve changed hosting to Ikimashou thanks to the generous Randall who runs this domain, and with a new domain comes the real reason behind the switch - WordPress!
It’s definitely a blogging platform that’s more vast than Blogger, but on the flip side…the depth of it means that it’s very hard to work with! I can code but I can’t do graphic design, and so over the few days it took me to cobble this page together, I had to learn the inner workings of WordPress and some of PHP. Still, I’m happy with the overall result and I think this platform is working better already.
You’ll notice a bunch of changes, namely that everything is ridiculously blue now, and if you’ll allow me I’ll list some of them:
* The concept of the blog has changed, and by concept I mean title, and by title I mean from “What is eternity doing tonight?” to “Mega Megane Moe”. To be honest, while the first title stood out, it didn’t make any sense, was misquoted, and was a mouthful to say. So I changed to this new title, which is simple, catchy (easily shortened to M3), and still reflects a lot of who I am…which apparently is a glasses freak.
* Speaking of that I’ve created a more in-depth About page for myself, which is accessible from the top banner image. It tells more about my history and the rationale behind the title.
* But more important than that is what’s next to it, the Games page! To be honest this has nothing to do with anime, but it’s a way for me to pimp the little programs I’ve created over my years of computer science addiction, as well as get away from the slow hosting of Rapidshare and Megaupload. Check it out if that kind of stuff interests you.
* In more anime-related additions, I’ve created a new feature called “Track Two”, which is a sort of miniblog for holding episode-by-episode thoughts on life, the universe, and everything, so that I can reserve my real posts for real analytical topics. You can learn more about Track Two by clicking on the link above.
* You might have noticed that there’s a little notice bar at the top talking about Track Two as well. In fact, there are multiple of these things. This is another example of random content, something that I enjoy a lot, and so I am passing on the benefits of it to you. At the top, I have a random anime recommendation, with a made-for-advertising quote, which links to all the resources on the show I have (short of actually clicking on the category on the right; I might add that later).
* And at the bottom, I have a link to a random anime blog I read. I don’t think anyone reads the blogroll anyway, so I’m hoping that by featuring one at a time, it will gain blogs greater exposure. I’ll gradually expand this list as I continue blogging, but if you want a mention, drop me a comment and I’ll see if I can hook you up. (Here’s a hint: link swaps, cash bribes, and/or purple-haired humanoid interfaces really help in the negotiation)
* There are more random banners, each with a different tagline. Random power for the win!
* Comments are made easier, with WordPress’s comment box right on the post page. There is spam filtering enabled; I’m not sure how it works, but if your comment gets eaten, hopefully either I will catch it, or you can contact me and I’ll work this thing out.
* Generally, it’s shinier, slicker, and more professional looking, thanks to both the awesome Mandigo theme, a couple image edits I made, and of course, volumes of blood, sweat, and…actually, just blood and sweat.
* No, I haven’t gone back and tagged everything; I think categories work fine, but on a rainy day, I might reconsider this.
At this point I’m worn out from all the fixing up I’ve been doing, so if I happen to have left something broken, or forgot to port something over, let me know. I hope you enjoy the new look and features of this blog!
-CCY
This post is tagged General
9 Comments
You can code but you can’t do graphic design? You’re one up on me, at least. (Rushes off to update blogroll; one of the drawbacks to having a heavily-annotated blogroll which is intentionally disordered is that while it’s easy to find everything, finding one specific thing is a pain.)
I think the new colour scheme is easier on the eye and I like the idea of the random anime and random blog bars (serendipitous blog odysseys for the win).
[EDIT] Neither RSS feed button is working for me because . . . well, just because. Something to do with ‘XML parsing’ (does XML mean it used to be ML?)
An update for those in front of the scenes: Chris Fritz has informed me that a whole bunch of things were more broken than Kotonoha Katsura, and so I’ve been running around trying to fix things. Apparently Spam Karma 2 wasn’t working properly (eating comments faster than Yukito Tsukishiro on a magic crash), which really irritated me, so I kicked it to the curb and installed reCaptcha (which looks better anyway), which seems like it’ll work fine.
Additionally, both he and IKnight (above) mentioned that the RSS feeds, like Osaka, were a bit too spacey (or contained a line break or something), so I combed over the files looking for errant characters that I could chara-change into … not … line breaks. Unfortunately most of the files were devoid of mistakes like Konata’s devoid of chest bumps, so I’m really in despair as to what is breaking the feeds (well, one feed: the comment one works). I think I’ll go sleep on the problem and come back to it in less than 13 hours, lest I forget about it.
(Writing a reference-filled post is my way of saying “WordPress has made me crazy, thing will be fixed later.” Plus it relieves stress. XD)
Wow. Just… wow. To say that this was “an improvement” over your previous blog would be like saying that Kanon 2006 was “just that little bit more better looking” when compared to Kanon 2002. Or something. Words fail me as to how well-designed and unrecognisable your blog is, even if it’s a Mandigo theme and all. Excuse me while I pick up my jaw from the floor. I am in awe.
I still have a couple of unread posts of yours that need commenting, so look out for them soon once I get over the Winter season preview procrastination and annoying anime blog backlog. In the meantime, welcome to Ikimashou! Now with you and Hige on board, our world domination plans can finally proceed!
Now, for a few tips, if you don’t mind:
Akismet works a charm with reCaptcha. SK2 is dead anyway.
Your categories can be effortlessly converted to tags by using the in-built categories-to-tags converter from the Dashboard at Manage - Import - Categories to Tags Converter.
Get the Simple Tags plugin for tag management.
Finally, to top off the Tag Gattai synergy, you need WP 2.3 Related Posts if you’re going to show your readers posts relevant to their interests.
The Feedburner Feedsmith is great, assuming you’re using Feedburner or plan on using it in the future. Might even cure your RSS woes, too.
I’d recommend disabling the js animations to speed up page loading (it took quite awhile) under Presentation - Theme Options - Miscellaneous Options - Animations - untick “Disable js animations”, which also removes show/hide buttons in posts.
Easy Gravatars and WP Polls if you’re into that sort of thing.
I’ve got a few more plugins that I use, but I guess that should tide you over assuming that that wasn’t too overwhelming (see also One Click Installer for ease of plugin installation!). Drop me a line or hop onto the ABC channel @ Rizon if you’re ever in need of help!
The prepended newline problem does look to be taken care of. Posts and feeds no longer have it. Everything’s looking good now =D
Oh, I like this “15 minutes edit” option for the comment. I’ve seen it before on a web developer blog, back when the idea was first being explored, but I didn’t realize there was a Wordpress plugin for it.
Now if only there was something for a quick and easy per-paragraph inline post editing, for fixing those small typos I find in my posts after they’ve gone live…
This looks fun, though I didn’t see any problem with the previous blog name title, but then again, my blog’s name isn’t that normal either. Either way, I like the new setup, and am updating the blogroll to reflect the change. :3
Congrats on the successful move to Ikimashou and WordPress! It looks wayyy better than your old blogspot account. Although it does seem to be a bit too big for my resolution, the main thing is that the content area (and the content themselves) are not affected at all :D I can easily see that you put a lot of work here.
I loved how you have randomized many features and kept things minimal, especially the blogroll. Long lists of blogrolls is becoming a thing of the past and I noticed that many people have begun to keep them minimal. But it’s really interesting that you have a unique quote for each of your links. Not only does it grab more attention, it makes me want to refresh over and over to see what else you have in there *hint* *hint*
Now excuse me while I do a little bit more snooping around your new blog… And I think I’ll be spending quite a lot of time in your games section XD
Thanks for all the good feedback, everyone. ^^
Owen: I think that’s a compliment. XD I think this blog has more content than Eternity, though, so it’s not even like you can go back to the Blogger one and get, I don’t know, a Nayuki ending or something. But that’s just me continuing that silly comparison. XD Thanks for the tips on the plugins, I’ve included a few of them.
Chris: The ‘comment editing’ plug-in seems to be pretty common among anime blogs now, I would definitely recommend that any WordPress blogger pick it up. And does the feed really work now? When I add it to the dashboard on Wordpress, it updates fine, but I can’t access it directly through the bottom still. Thanks for all your highly technical support though.
TheBigN: Well, Eternity was a fun blog title, but this one’s easier to comprehend, and more accurately reflects my scary obsessions. Although, I was -this- short of making a page devoted solely to listing every single meganekko I ever saw in anime, but that didn’t pan out.
Nekonron: I have a widescreen lappy, maybe that’s why. Everyone else in 4:3 (or whatever), how does it look? And to be honest, my blogroll on the right is all the links that can show up at the bottom. Maybe when it gets longer I’ll crop the sidebar one. And please, do spend all the time in the games section. That needs love. XD
The feeds look good on my end, looking at the RSS, and Opera has no problem with them. Opera’s very strict, so that’s a ringing endorsement with there.
For a gallery of gals in glasses, I’d say http://robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/meganekko/ would be hard to top if only because of the headstart it’s gotten, and the amount of contributions put into it. Maybe see if they already have anyone you know, and if not, submit it? That is assuming it’s taking new content, as it hasn’t been updated for content in over a year.
As for width, if I have Opera full-screen on my 4:3, there’s no problem, but I tend to not maximize windows. I’d say cropping off about 130px of overall layout width should make the layer more comfortable for small width resolutions/browser sizes, but the entire content area is going to be visible either way, so I don’t think there’s really a need for it. Just my thoughts.
If I were going to nitpick about the layout any, it would be the pagebreaks and non-wrapping in the footer.
Keep in mind, I use a larger minimum font size than default for most computers/browsers, so I expect this sort of thing, and see it all the time.
This is definitely pretty. I like it a lot. I’m so jealous. :)
Incoming Links
Leave a Reply