One of the new features I talked about in Freya Dissection, was that of ‘noteworthy’ entries, or ‘favorites’. As you may recall, I sent out a call for someone to help me take an idea from concept to plugin. Jamie stepped up and offered his services free of charge, and earlier today I installed the latest version of the plugin, which works pretty much as I had hoped.
So if I can just draw your attention to the Halo 2 entry that preceeds this entry. Notice the heart? That’s an icon denoting that said entry is tagged as noteworthy. What this allows me to do, is to create a small list of noteworthy entries within a certain category. So if you go to the Games category archive, you’ll find a small list on the sidebar…
Of course, there’s more that can be done with it, but for now this’ll do. For those interested, these are the admin tools I have on my side of the blog.
Meanwhile, I have also added a few new categories, namely Book Reviews, Game Reviews, Movie Reviews and finally Narrative. I think the three former categories are self-explanatory, which leaves the Narrative category.
The concept of the Narrative category, is to have a place where I can store nostalgic anecdotes and recollections from my ‘youth’. These are the entries that I generally enjoy the most, so I suppose it is about time they receive their own space.
Of course, new categories and the noteworthy function, require a lot of work in the archives, bringing everything up to snuff, though judging from the hundred some entries I have covered so far, it’s about time!
It’s my hope that by marking and properly categorizing the archives, in combination with some of the usability changes that’re coming soon, you’ll be more inclined to exploring the blog archives more.
PS: I’ll let Jamie decide when and where he wants to release the plugin and tag the information onto this entry when he does.
Hello Michael.
I just thought I’d mention that I like the redesign and throw a question your way. Why do you use justified text in Kubrick and Freya? I am using Kubrick on my software news site and that was one of the only things I changed about it. Anyway, I enjoy reading your site and appreciate you sharing Kubrick with the rest of us.
Thanks!
Just to add to my previous comment, Jeremy Hedley says it best here.
Why do you get all the freaking cool stuff? I of course want this, or something like it now as well. My only problem is that I don’t have the patience to wait for it to be released, so I will probably just write my own implementation. Bah! More work to do.
Maybe there’s a way to have visitors vote on this. When I first saw 21 I thought it was the number of votes the entry received. Or maybe we can have it both ways: a list with the author’s favorites, and one voted by visitors. A vote would be much more clear than a simple visit (the most visited pages on my site are driven by misleading search results, for example)
It looks beautiful, I love the heart idea. You implemented it well also. One thing, are the white numbers next to the comments supposed to be invisible? Or just really hard to see? I never knew they existed until I hovered over them accidentally.
I had an idea for a plugin not too long ago that would allow visitors to vote for comments on articles, using the karma fields that are sitting unused in all our DB’s.
I seem to remember someone beat me to the punch and brought out a plugin that did something like it, might have been bunny.
I am still kicking around the idea, so something might be coming out of Sillyland along these lines some day soon.
That is just so sweet! Ever time I stop by the bonsai I am amazed. What a wonderful concept to tag noteworthy posts in the archives. I hope it becomes available as a plugin soon.
I just wanted to say that this is the most beautiful blog I have found in my travels on the web. Very inspiring.
Inspiring almost doesn’t fully describe this site. I want to incorporate every single aspect of the great, functional, and yet subtle features you use. Great stuff and I love reading your entries each time there is a new update.
The plugin will be available to download soon. I’ll let Michael know as soon as the link is up, it shouldn’t be any later than tomorrow. I agree with Ryan and Brad, a very inspirational site, and in actual fact is one of the main reasons that prompted me to start my own blog. Keep up the good work Mike!
I’ll definitely want it!
You always have wonderful ideas. For example, I love to see the number of comments next to the title.
Very very inspiring!
If you could share with us the nice “heart plugin” that Jamie did it would be great!
p.s. i confess that i´ll replace the “heart” with a “star”
I just add a keyword for “best of” entries in MT for my site. I haven’t actually done anything with it yet, but I’m sure there’s already a plugin that does something similar from the keywords.
Kevin, I am not set in stone on the whole justified vs. left aligned issue, and now that you mentioned, I am inclined to give left aligning a go…
For those of you suggesting reader-voting, know that it indeed did cross my mind as I was taking notes for Freya. Though eventually I decided against it for a number of reasons. Most importantly however, is the fact that while I rely on my readers for support and feedback in many venues, what I write is first and foremost for me.
A contrived sentence, if ever there was on, and of all places especially when uttered on or near a blog.
However, I do feel that Binary Bonsai first and foremost is me presenting my stuff to you, and not so much me asking you to rate my stuff.
Jeff, no, the white numbers aren’t really supposed to be nearly invisible, I just haven’t found out what I want yet, so I stuck with some old code I had…
I prefer range left over justified but now youve changed it I must confess it looks ..odd. I guess I’m just used to seeing BB justified.
For my money, much easier to read. Still looks great too!
Michael, this is a great idea! I could be rude and say just don’t write any unnoteworthy posts. :) But, of course it’s just a joke. I realize that every blog has at least two levels of importance.
I’m so happy to see that you took my suggestion to reconsider the alternating colors of the comments. And, as I can see you managed to create a cool new feature highlighting your own comments. It’s a winner! I was always looking for the authors comments and now it’s much easier. Another great design idea!
A few weeks ago I asked my php programmer friend to make me a rating plug-in for blogger. He managed to do it in two days and it’s very cool, but now I’m reluctant to implement it, because there are too many gadgets on that site already. :)
That is really neat. Nice job getting it up and running. _
One word: sexy!
You said here you would give away the script for free, yet I see no link on yours or Jamie’s site. Any hope in getting a copy of your script? (not the public rating script that he has, please.)
Thanks and btw. Amazing site.
–cl0ney
It’s Jamie’s script, so you’re best of asking him…
Now that The noteworthy plugin has been released — I’m so excited, but I wonder, how did you build your noteworthy page?