Since I've been back from Center Parcs I've been spending quite a lot of time on the blog and been making some changes, I was planning to do these changes before my holiday but just didn't find the time. But today I have been performing the updates, you may or may not have been able to access the blog at certain points during my changes but this should of latest about 5 minutes max. This is because a couple of changes updated core files which could of briefly stopped visitors from viewing/accessing parts of the blog.

If you find any spelling mistakes in this post then I apologize in advance as I'm typing this on my laptop at 8 AM watching Channel 4's Just shoot me (Morning comedy rocks!) Anyway from top.

Category Icons

To bring some freshness to the blog I've been creating category icons and assigning them to the blogs categories (Notice the category's on the side bar) there small 16 x 16 icons that resemble something to do with the certain category, you may also notice the icons appearing in post titles. It makes the categories more interesting and defiantly makes the blog more fresh looking.

(Icons provided by FamFamFam.com)

Interactive sidebar

If noticed that the side bar has grown and now has quite alot of content within it, of course I intend for the blog to expand even further, but I have noticed that the categories section on the sidebar are taking up alot of space and thus you have to scroll down alot to get past them and see the other sections in the side bar. However there is now a solution to this! How does making the sidebar have a open and close function sound? Yes thats right, each section within the sidebar can now be opened or closed depending on user preference. So say if you want to hide the categories section. You can do that be simply looking to the right of the section title and looking for - or +.

Even better the new interactive sidebar uses cookies to record which sidebar content is open and closed so it will remember it for you (Saves you closing and opening things all the time)

(Interactive sidebar functions script powered by Dynamic Drive)

FeedBurner

When you subscribe to the blog you will now be using something called Feed Burner, We switched to Feed burner yesterday and will be basing blog subscriptions around the service. We are looking to implement even more RSS subscriptions into the blog later on in the future, however for now you can use feedburner.

If you don't want to then you can simply click the Entries RSS link on the top bar and then click subscribe to this feed.

(Check out the new FeedBurner Feed)

Sarcastic Slogan changer!

Thanks to some Javascript magic the blog slogan underneath the "James' Blog" text you will now be greeted with a new slogan on each page load. Currently there are 20 + slogans written, and once more it's random, so you won't know what your going to get. Generally, some slogans are normal, some sarcasm and some damn right weird. But hey change is good! And now you'll be greated with it every page load. REJOICE!

Twitter!

I finally created a twitter account, I never really knew what the big hype about it. But I signed up for one last night, there's a link added on the top bar labelled "James' Twitter" clicking on it will take you to my twitter, check it out if you want. Im still getting used to it, but hey we all got to learn when you start using something new!

(Too Lazy to click on the top bar? View my twitter by clicking here)

Well now James' Blog is back on schedule on the update front, check back soon for some new tutorials coming soon!