More blog updates

We now have comment numbering!  We no longer have comment nesting!  As I already reported, we now have e-mail comment notification!  We now have text boxes of flexible size!

Most of our dreams have come true in regards to this blog and its move to Patheos.  First, thanks to you readers for your suggestions.  Second, thanks to the Patheos tech people for being so co-operative and obliging for our requests.  (This involved multiple changes back and forth and no end of patience on their part.  I would say “how about changing this?” and they did.  Then later I’d say “change it back.”  Then I said, “let’s try this.”  That went on over and over again, hour by hour.  So I really appreciate that, especially when they quite reasonably could say, “this is our template, take it or leave it.”

I think the only other major request that a lot of you asked for was to have full-text RSS feeds.  That can’t happen.  Sorry.  Patheos is a commercial site and its bread-and-butter is the number of page views it can offer advertisers.  So people actually have to come to the site to constitute a page view.  Full text feeds give away the content for free, which is not a viable business plan. Actually,the content IS free to you.  It’s just costing the sponsors, who are paying Patheos and, indeed, me.

Which brings us to the ads.  Those too you will have to live with.  You can use ad blockers and set your browser preferences to stop pop-up ads if you want to.  With the cooperation of Patheos, we were able to get rid of a New Age ad, and we’ll watch for anything else that is inappropriate.  But I’d rather have ads for hotels, cruise lines, and other legitimate “secular” products than some of the religious spots that would come up via Google Adsense on the old site.

So I’m pleased with the switch to Patheos and hope you are too.