If you look at the individual entries at Wizbang, now you will see that each author has a link. That link goes to an archive page of their last 250 stories. Author archives are not available in the standard installation of the software that Wizbang runs on (Movable Type), but thanks to an ingenious plug-in (Custom Fields) they’re now available. As soon as I iron out a small bug the author archive screen will contain more data about the author and a paginated listing of all of the authors pieces. Author archives are just the first piece of our upcoming site redesign.
The next piece is post ratings – you’ll be able to rate each story on a scale of 1 (worst) to 5 (best). Once the ratings systems is installed and stabilized there will be sidebars that list the most popular stories on Wizbang.
After ratings, I’ll be adding a community function which will allow readers to register as authors on a forthcoming “diary” section. If you’ve visited RedState or DailyKos the diary feature should be familiar. The main blog section isn’t going anywhere – it’s just getting company in the form of different sections.
The final piece in the puzzle is a new layout which brings the whole thing together in a more concise, efficient, and standards based format. We’ll be retaining the things that work well and adding stuff to better utilized space. Search, navigation, and content will be more tightly integrated into the layout – so there’s less of a sense of jumping around between the main page and the archives.
I don’t have exact time frames for each piece of the puzzle, but the process is underway.
Stay tuned, it should be interesting…
My ego may never be the same…
J.
Does this mean that Jay Tea’s ramblings will be preserved for all eternity?
Who says that advances in technology are a good thing?
Will links to past posts and comments continue to have the same url addresses? For example, I sometimes link to a comment here at Wizbang while commenting at another site. Will it still function after your updates? Here’s one to test, if you like. It’s at JustOneMinute, and it contains 3 links back to Wizbang archived items.
On the search subject, it would be so nice to easily search words within the current and archived comment threads, like it used to be during CBSgate. (I know you added the Google within Wizbang search, but it doesn’t work well.) If I go straight to regular Google, it’s worse and things don’t show up for many days after being posted, and sometimes not at all.l
Appreciate your site and what you do very much.
PS – I don’t believe the statute of limitations has yet run on CBSgate. If I were a law enforcement official involved in current or future investigations, I’d really hope you preserve all intact. There were all kinds of host and commenter contributions which may not exist elsewhere in cyberspace, and at least two, if not three, of the involved parties and an uncle of one posted at Wizbang in the midst of it all.
Any chance of separate RSS feeds for you guys, Kev?