This weekend I’ve made a few upgrades to the site, a software upgrade, a few new plugins as well as some tweaks to clean things up. Hopefully these changes will make the site a bit more useful, and remove some clutter from the main page, so that you are presented with content, and all the ’extras’ will be tucked away.

I’ve upgraded to the newly released WordPress 2.0.5, the software that power this site. As a rule, WordPress is an extremely easy install. This upgrade would have been simple, had I not forgotten about a few core files that I modified. After reverting to the previous version, I had the files patched and uploaded within a few minutes.

All in all, this process went quite well. The database performance updates made the install well worth it.

I’ve added a couple new plugins to add some additional functionality, here’s the list:

• Auto Shutoff Comments – This is a handy plugin that closes comments after 30-days, this will help cut-back on the spam that comes through.
• Related Posts – This, in theory, adds links to similar posts below each post (when viewed on its own page, not on the home page). So far I’ve not been completely impressed with the links, but I’ll leave it for a while and see how it does.
• Socible – This is one I really had to debate, there’s not much more I hate than sites that remind me of a NASCAR race car. I’ve set this up to only display on the single post view, and will only offer Reddit, digg and del.icio.us. This is another one I’ll keep for a bit then see if it’s worth keeping around.

I’ve rebuilt my about page to include some additional data and take a more readable format. I’ve also added a new page that details my bayonet collection. To clean things up slightly, I’ve updated the code that adds the Technorati tags so that it will only show in the single post view, and no longer appear on the main page.