My Life

This morning I had taken the challenge and signed up with FeedBurner. FeedBurner, now owned by Google provides you with more options for your feeds then you could every wish for.

“FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Our Web-based tools help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web.” ~ About FeedBurner

Instead of just having a simple RSS feed on your website, or blog, you can use FeedBurner to customise that feed with a whole heap of options.

All of FeedBurner’s blog features can be seen on their website. Some nice features include “Item Clickthrough Tracking” which will monitor which articles in the feeds are clicked, this allows you to know which posts are being most viewed or read even if users are using RSS feeds to read them (therefore you’re not getting the traffic to your website/blog).

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This morning I had introduced a few new categories to my blog.

One great feature which WordPress has over Blogger is the parent and child categories. As you can see from my categories widget in the sidebar, I have chosen to create a few new parent categories to clean up my categories list by placing the associated child categories under them.

I believe this will make it easier for both myself (in terms of selecting which category to place my new posts into), and also for my readers allowing them to find posts more easily.

Having a parent and child category system (let’s take for example my new “Technology” category) makes it easier for readers to view all posts under “Technology” and at the same time view just “Software” posts. Without the parent and child category system, you could not view all “Technology” related posts, thus making readers look through more pages to find posts which they may like.

1. Let me know what you think of my new categories?
2. If you like it better without the parent/child system?
3. And what other categories or sub-categories would you suggest?

Thanks,

Marat

P.S. As you can see I’m also trying out a new theme for my blog. I like this theme mainly due to the fact that it allows for more space for the actual blog posts themselves, and it also has two sidebars which allows for more widgets Let me know what you think.

Yes that’s right folks, I have migrated my blog to WordPress.

I have done this for a few reasons, some mainly being the advanced features and aesthetics which WordPress provides that are missing in Blogger.

Don’t get me wrong, Blogger is a fantastic blogging platform but personally I believe WordPress is better.

I have rerouted my mlevit.blogspot.com website to my new WordPress one so that users who are not sure of the new website will still be able to find it.

Hosting your own WordPress will really give you unlimited possibilities in terms of plugins and widgets that are available in the WordPress community. Although having WordPress host your blog limits the amount of widgets you can have in your blog, the features and functions which are provided are still very nice.

Features include

• Internal statistics
• Post importing
• Page creation
• More advanced features

Thanks,

Marat

I have added another new blog feature which can be seen in every post just below the “Filed under” line.

This is a simple star rating feature provided by Spotback. I have always wanted to get feedback on the posts I write but have been searching for something like this for quite some time.

Spotback provides a few different versions, which are all completely customizable in every way, and the best part is… they are all free.

I would love to see your ratings.

Thanks,

Marat

Hey guys,

Today I have incorporated a new blog feature called Snap Shots.

Snap Shots will show a small popup above or below the link your mouse is hovering over displaying the page the link is pointing to.

You can test this by hovering your mouse over the words “Snap Shots” above.

This new feature will make it easier for you guys to look at the websites I link to before actually visiting the website. Plus for Wikipedia links, you will actually see the definition of words which makes it easier for you guys to quickly read the definition of a linked word without leaving the blog.

You can turn off Snap Shots by clicking the gear icon in the top right hand corner on the left of the magnifying glass of a Snap Shot window and selecting Disable for : THIS site ALL sites

Snap Shots places a cookie when you disable it. To re-enable Snap Shots please either clear your cookies or find the specific cookie and delete it.

For a full list of FAQs on Snap Shots click here.

I would love to get your feedback on this latest feature, whether you hate it or love it.

UPDATE (13:52 05/07/07):
I have just modified Snap Shots to display a small balloon icon near each link which when hovered over with your mouse will display a Snap Shot of that links location. I believe this will make it easier for those who don’t wish to see the Snap Shots of the links on every link.

Thanks,

Marat

I have decided to implement a Link Exchange.

Link exchanging like the Wikipedia suggests “is a practice of exchanging links with other websites.”

If you wish to exchange links, please fill in the Link Exchange Form. Once you have done that please link my blog (http://www.mlevit.blogspot.com) to your website. I will check your website for my link, only when my link exists on your website will I link you back.

When your link is accepted I will post your link along with your description in this post.

List of exchanged and generals links after the jump.

Exchanged Links

• ATCA chassis
  Asis is a global designer and manufacturer of complete enclosure systems for ATCA cassis, CompactPCI, and custom applications.

General Links

• Technology
  • Beta News
  • Gizmodo (AU)
  • Engadget
  • TechEBlog
  • Everything USB
  • CNET (AU)
• Video Portals
  • YouTube
  • MuchoSucko
  • MetaCafe
• Automotive News
  • Leftlane News
    Latest and greatest automotive news. Spy shots, newest cars, industry developments etc
  • Serious Wheels
    Some automotive news, but mainly all automotive pictures you’ll ever need
• IT Forums
  • MozillaZine Forum
    Firefox help forum
  • Overclockers Australia
    Computer discussions/advice on software, hardware, over clocking, new technology and products etc
  • TheScripts
    Coding forum for all your coding needs
  • Tech Forums
    For all your technical computer issues/questions
    

Thanks,

Marat

Yes yes I know, I love my little tweaks/hacks.

I’ve just added a new language selector to this blog. This is mainly for those who visit from a non English speaking country.

Clicking “View this blog in another language” will make different flags appear. The language to which the blog will be translated to corresponds to the flag you select (obviously).

If you hover your mouse over the flags a small tooltip should appear stating the language that corresponds to that particular flag.

Thanks,

Marat

I have modified the little “Read more…” feature to display “Continue reading…” which now instead of expanding the post on the main page will take you to the posts page.

The reason for this small change is to make it easier for the users to read the posts by having the full post on its own page instead of the post being expanded on the main page surrounded by other posts.

If that makes any sense

Thanks,

Marat

Hi guys,

Today I added another new feature to the website.

The new feature is a small button visible below each post that looks like this picture below

This button when clicked will open a new window as displayed below containing a number of popular social bookmark services which when clicked will automatically add that post to that service.

I had included this little feature so that for those of you who do you services like Digg, del.icio.us, Google Bookmarks, Windows Live Bookmarks or any other service for that matter can easily add any post to your bookmark collection.

Hey all,

Today I added a new feature to this blog. Some of you might have already seen it, others might have not. Larger posts will now be cut down and a “Read more…” link will be visible below them. Clicking this link will display the full post.

When the link is clicked, the link will changed to “Summary only…” and when clicked again will minimize the post.

This is for multiple reasons

1. Makes the website (blog) load faster
2. Easier to view more posts on the one home page
3. Allows users to read what they are interested in

Thanks,

Marat