SouthernGospelBlog.com » Blog Updates

Site Update: Accounts

Daniel J. Mount — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:56:14 +0000

As has always been the case, you can join in on this site’s discussions without an account. I just enabled accounts for two reasons:

I thought they would circumvent the minimum word length restriction that has annoyed some of our concise commenters. Unfortunately, I was wrong!
They are now the way to have your name double as a link to your website. Despite having two other levels of anti-spam security in place, there were still dozens of spam comments to clear out each day, so as an anti-spam measure, the URL portion of the comment form has been removed.

For information on registering, check out our new account page.

Blog Update: Tags

Daniel J. Mount — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:15:57 +0000

When this site launched in fall 2006, the only post organization option was categories. That was fine with me, since my brain is wired to have everything neatly categorized. When WordPress added tags a few years ago, I coded it out of this site’s design since tags struck me as unappealingly scatterbrained—and since they would take weeks to go back and add in!

I finally took the plunge, and here is the result. It’s now in the right-hand menu, and incorporated in a “for more posts about” link in most posts.

To participants in the Thousand Comment contest—try using this to find more posts on your favorite groups and topics. This site has had 758 comments this week, which means there are 242 to go to trigger the grand prize!

Site Outage

Daniel J. Mount — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:34:32 +0000

Yes, the site was down for a few hours overnight. It was an issue with the host, and fortunately that is fixed.

Launching Documents

Daniel J. Mount — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:00:41 +0000

Over the weekend, I launched a new section of the site, Documents - http://www.southerngospelblog.com/documents/. The initial concept is to make available some of the research documents I’d prepared to help with my commentary here, but perhaps over time the concept will grow to include other interesting and useful content.

Adding your picture

Daniel J. Mount — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:40:30 +0000

I’ve enabled Gravatars on this site, which means that a little picture will appear next to the name of each commenter. You don’t need an account on this site to have one; it is connected to your email address and will display on all gravatar-enabled sites (which include Gospeleer, Nate’s Southern Gospel Blog, Coomer Cove, Musicscribe, Phil on Southern Gospel, and, today, Burke’s Brainwork).

It is a fairly simple process to sign up for a gravatar; visit www.gravatar.com and follow the instructions there.

If you’d prefer a step by step video, there’s a handy one on Lauren Talley’s site, http://www.laurentalleyonline.com/gravatar-howto/. (And, naturally, the gravatar would also work there.)

Deleting Links Page

Daniel J. Mount — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:33:33 +0000

I am constantly looking for ways to improve this site’s usability. A recent request to add a link to my links page has prompted the thought that a static links page is not all that useful. So I will be deleting that page.

It’s not like I am going to be stingy with links, only receiving them and not reciprocating. Every week, I have linked and will continue to link to other sites that prompt the week’s posts.

So whether you’re a fellow blogger, an artist, or someone else who would like a link, here’s how to get a link from this site: Produce content so compelling that I cannot help but write about it. When I do that, I’ll throw a link in as a bonus.

Post Email upgrade

Daniel J. Mount — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:13:36 +0000

A minor blog upgrade: I am switching to a different method of delivering posts via email. There are now options of getting weekly emails or an email when each post comes out (rather than once a day, which can be 20+ hours afterwards).

For those of you who haven’t subscribed, notice the new “subscribe” widget in the right column of the site.

If you love Southern Gospel but don’t always remember to stop by, this is a great way to keep up with current happenings.

Hold on to your seats…

Daniel J. Mount — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:33:18 +0000

Next week, I will be debuting a new concept.

Before I do that, though, one order of business must first be handled, clearing out the queue of CD reviews. So hold on to your seats, because you will see quite a few over the next few days.

Announcing a Photo Gallery

Daniel J. Mount — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:00:44 +0000

There have been one or two previous photo galleries on this site. They were fairly unwieldy, though, and didn’t survive server moves.

This afternoon, I had some spare time, so I installed another photo gallery, this one built right into WordPress. View it here, or by going to the top right menu bar and selecting “Gallery.”

Layout Tweak

Daniel J. Mount — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:33:11 +0000

I am experimenting with a layout tweak that has only one column for the main content, instead of the smaller boxes. Is it better or worse?