Just wanted to let everyone know that the site is now running on the latest version of WordPress, bringing mostly new features to the backend administration area. So far, I’m actually fairly impressed with a lot of the updates, and I’m really digging the administrative face-lift!

If you find any bugs throughout the site, which will most likely happen, please send me a quick email so I can get it sorted out. Thanks!

I had to spend a few minutes thinking about this situation. Last month, March 2008, has been the best month for the site, since it launched over two years ago. The funny part is, I didn’t really publish anything that should call for that. But, I think I might have a reason: two years worth of stuff is on the site.

It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Someone is referred to the site because of a Google search every couple minutes. I spend time looking at the stats to see what you are searching for and where you end up once you are on the site. All important information.

Any thoughts?

I spent some time this evening making some changes to the site that have been on my mind for awhile. With another project I’m doing, I was finally comfortable enough with MySql to tackle the blog.

Now in the sidebar, are three more boxes with interesting data. First, there is a “What’s Hot” box that shows 5 posts, with the date of the last comment. Hopefully this will help everyone see where people are discussing posts on the site.

There is a box below that which shows the Top 10 Pages. This simply pulls data from my Mint installation and shows the 10 pages (right now also including the homepage and the blog itself). Once again, this is meant as a way to for everyone to see where most people are going on the site.

Finally, there is a box below that which shows the top 5 commented posts of all time.

If you have any other suggestions for the site, I’d love to hear them. Also, if you are interested in implementing something similar on your site, post a comment and we’ll follow up with that!

There has been an annoying bug in the search feature of the site for several months now, but I just hadn’t had time to sit down and think about it to correct it. However, after spending my evening writing in Javascript for a class project, I sat down and fixed the bug in about 5 minutes tonight!

Simply put, using the Spotlight-like search on the site always worked, whether you were on the main page or viewing a post. But clicking the “View More Results…” link to get more than 6 results as well as excerpts, post timestamps, and the number of comments….well, that only worked if you were on the main page. That has now been fixed, so search away!

I’m still unsure how this blog got listed as a Knoxville Tennessee blog, but I’m rightly listed on the Knoxville News Sentinel list of local blogs, and evidently a few other sites as well.

In a post from Knoxify, a site dedicated to building a community and “better everyone’s life” in Knoxville, Mac Fanatic was listed as one of seven blogs chosen for being “rich in content and color”.

I’m honored to be listed on that list!

I recently had to make the decision to either renew my year hosting contract through Bluehost, or let the blog die completely. It was a difficult decision, as the contract is expensive and I feel like the site has certainly died down over the past several months.

However, the time came to renew and I figured that if nothing else, I at least wanted my own place to develop and test apps on the web, so here we are. Not exactly the brightest outlook for the site, and one that I don’t like when reviewing just how much time and effort I, and others, have put into this project.

One thing that I quickly noticed when I added a couple WebClip bookmarks to my home screen after the v1.1.3 update this week, was that the icons were useless! A miniature version of the page is fairly useless considering it’s so damn tiny on the iPhone screen.

However, someone was thinking at Apple and created an easy way for site administrators to set a custom icon to appear when users bookmark their page. You can read more into the details here, but basically you create a png image (some sources say 158×158 is much crisper and still works) at 57×57 and upload it to your root directory (of the web documents, not of the server itself) with the name “apple-touch-icon.png”.

So now if you add a bookmark to your home screen for MacFanatic.net (or any other page), there will be a distinctive glassy logo (the rounded corners and glassy effect are applied by the phone, so the image above isn’t exactly what it will look like) to help you out!

I’m well aware that the blog has died down over the last several months, especially with the podcast becoming non-existent. However, I still thought it was pretty awesome when I noticed that the site has topped 100,000 hits since I put it online (or installed Mint, but we’re not off that much).

I think it’s a pretty cool accomplishment and something that I’m proud of. For someone who doesn’t have that much time to pour into this project anymore and started this as an experiment and a hobby anyway, I’m happy.

My question to everyone is, do you still find the site useful and in what direction would you like the site to take?

The topic of additional writers has came to mind a few times in the past. For those who aren’t aware, and that seems to be most, everything that happens with this site is a direct result of my effort. However, I want the site to continue to grow and prove itself in the Mac community and it seems I have reached a fork in the road, so to speak.

The site started as a personal blog that slowly evolved into what it is today. That process has taken lots of my time and I just don’t have the time needed to keep the site moving forward at the current pace. Therefore, I’d love to have some help. If you know of anyone that would like to help in providing content for Mac Fanatic, send me an email.

Help can come in a variety of forms. I’m interested in Mac application reviews for web publication, Mac news to be posted on the blog, general help in site moderation, and of course, content for podcasts.
There are a lot of options here, so if you think you have something to offer the site, please let me know. I’d obviously prefer someone who has a bit of experience, but I’m completely open to a new blogger or writer. Everyone has to start out somewhere and it’d be awesome to have more talent on board.

Hope to hear from some people soon. By all means, share this post with others.

I know that I haven’t released a podcast in ages, but I promise I haven’t been ditching the site entirely. In the time I would have been recording these last several weeks, I have instead worked on improving the aging and cluttered site, and my efforts are now online for all to see.

Changes include:

• New logo from aspiring graphic artist, Jimmy Xander.
• Cooler ‘banner’ images that take up less space in the window
• AJAX Searching - Super cool. It’s like Spotlight, try it out now and leave some comments
• New Comment System - AJAX-goodness. Instantly preview your comment before you post, quickly reply to another comment, Gravatar support for custom avatars on comments and improved styling overall
• Other minor tweaks, security fixes, and optimizations

I’m really proud of the work I’ve done, especially the overall feel and style. The banner images turned out pretty cool and I like the intense color and sexiness. The colored ‘candy-bars’ for the search results and comments turned out better than I had hoped as well.

If you find any bugs with the new theme, a quick comment would be appreciated!