Readers, I believe a brief update is on the cards; a few things have changed lately. I’ll attempt to keep you updated with the major changes:
MyWindowsPC
- ReCaptcha is being used on members’ blogs to cut spam comments for them (thanks for the suggestion Christopher.)
- MyWindowsPC Help, the official MyWindowsPC help blog has been updated and given a new name.
- Members’ posts are now being featured on the front page.
- The site activity feed is now being parsed to the sidebar of Windows Guides.
Windows Forums
- We have a new moderator: randomchaos, who joins the Windows Forums team.
- rsvr85, a Windows Forums moderator, who writes lots of guides for the forum is now writing for Windows Guides.
- I’ve deleted/deactivated over 1,000 members over the last month or so who haven’t logged in for 6 or more months or who managed to bypass the spam filters. I only did this to increase security and cut spam.
RichR.org
- I’ve updated my portfolio site with some jQuery goodness, which I decided I’d learn last weekend. I love jQuery… almost as much at Protoype. Next weekend I want to learn how to use MooTools.
- RichR.org is now on the first search results page on Google for the keyword Rich Robinson–something I’ve hoped for, for a while (considering my name is very common.)
Windows Guides
- We have two new Authors: rsvr85 and Adam.
- We’re taking applications for new, voluntary, authors/contributors.
- Translation of Windows 7 – The Pocket Guide, into 24 different languages is coming along well and I am currently working on version 1.0 of the book.
- Both the PC Maintenance Handbook and PC Security Handbook are now available.
- I’m currently working extensively on older guides, on this site, and doing the following:
- Standardizing notational conventions.
- Bringing guides up to date.
- Responding to user feedback and making guides easier to follow.
- Interlinking posts in a more intuitive way to help readers progress from one concept to another.
- Reorganizing article structure to help guides fit into a broader spectrum of concepts.
- I will be spending more time focusing more on quality and completeness in my writing; thus, over the next few months, the frequency of my posts will drop to about three per week.
- We gave away Windows 7 Home Premium last week.
- I’m getting rid of the (annoying) in-text links on Saturday.
- I will be starting an email newsletter soon so you can choose to get a daily email, a weekly-monthly digest, or both. (I’ll launch this with a promotion that I haven’t been creative enough to plan yet.)
- I’ve moved everything from http://www.mintywhite.com/ to http://www.mintywhite.com. I did this to keep the URL size down and the /tech/ seems a bit pointless now.
- We’re using a new comments system by JS-Kit (although I “broke” it yesterday by moving everything from /tech/ to / — I will fix this today fixed.)
- We have a “Re Tweet” button (which is now showing 0–zero–tweets for every post because of the /tech/ to / move.)
- The site now sports an unobtrusive toolbar at the bottom of each page. So far, people are using it a lot–so it’s staying for now :)
- There’s a featured content gallery on the front page of the site.
- The categories are slightly more granular now. i.e Windows 7 is broken down into four different subcategories:
- I’ve started a basics section (more about this soon.)
- I’m working on a new Software reviews section. I’m going to review (and re-review) programs and let you, the readers, rate the programs.
- As part of the reviews section, you can now search for software by genre:
- To accommodate the new sections and greater granularity, I’ve redesigned the toolbar at the top of the site. Site analytics tells me you are using the toolbar a lot, so it’s staying for now.
Social Networking and Contact
To focus my online social efforts, I’ve retired/frozen the following accounts:
- Digg
- Plurk
- Stumbleupon
- AIM
- Yahoo
- MSN
- ICQ
- Google Reader article sharing
I am keeping and focusing on the following networks:
Feedback?
I believe that’s all for now. Thanks for reading and I hope you’re as excited about the future as I am! What would you like to see? Let me know in the comments.
Looking for something else?
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