It took a little while longer than I had hopped, but I finally managed to get an e-mail read by a member of the Technorati support staff. Within two hours of sending the e-mail, they had their spiders crawling my site and the issue (although they didn’t say what it was) was fixed. This is my first post since the fix, so I’m crossing my fingers that everything works well and there are no more problems.

I am especially happy, as I should now get a good boost in daily hits and be able to grow and maintain a larger readership. A lofty goal, I know, but I think I can do it if I continue with interesting updates and strong, witty commentary.

At this point, I’d also like to offer some of the recent updates to the site itself. The most obvious is the introduction of general icons designating external links in posts and comments, as well as specific icons for common sites and sources (currently Wikipedia, US Government (.gov) sites, and WorldNetDaily). I hope that you find these somehow useful in navigating this site and the vast world of the internet.

I am also working on some small changes to the template and site design, hopefully getting things looking a bit more professional and maybe getting the pages to load more quickly (although most of that is due to WordPress). You may have noticed the (somewhat) recent addition of collapsible items in the left menu bar, as well as the addition of an ‘incoming links’ link to the right menu bar on the homepage. Look for more such changes in the coming weeks as I try to make News. Views. Common Sense. more intuitive and user friendly.

-Andy

This is a rant more than anything else, and certainly not a major news item, but I want to get it out there anyway.

For those of you who are not familiar with the major players in Blogosphere search, Technorati is perhaps the most popular blog-specific search engine out there. As of late, however, some sort of bug (it could be on my end, but I suspect it to be on there end) has prevented News. Views. Common Sense. from being updated on their site.

Especially for a small blog with very little readership, Technorati is a great way to increase hits and was referring about half my visitors in early mid August. Then, all of a sudden, they decided to stop crawling my site. Automatic pings do nothing, manual pings do nothing, five different support e-mails do nothing. I’m really starting to loose my faith in them. Something went wrong and I have had no luck getting it fixed.

On the other hand, this seems to be a fairly common problem that has occurred on a number of blogs and is Easily resolved, as can be seen here, here, and here.

I’ve sent them yet another e-mail and all I have to say is that I really hope something gets done soon.

Normally, I try not to blog about my life or personal events, but I feel that this one deserves it.

Yesterday was my 18th birthday. Yes, the big 18. That’s not really important, though. What is important is that I registered to vote. Come November I’ll finally be able to have a say in the world of politics that I’ve been interested in for years!

That’s right Oregon, another Republican has been added to the ranks of your electorate! Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, I?d like to apologize for the lack of updates, but I?ve been busy with school starting this week ? hard to believe that I?m a senior already, that next year I?ll be in college. As you may well know, the days leading up to school can be hectic and the first week can be exhausting. I?m doing much better now and I?ll make every effort to maintain a fairly steady posting schedule.

I have, however, been making some changes to the site. I?ve added a lot of JavaScript, such as the now collapsible menu bar on the left side of the page and the comment form which remains hidden until you?re ready to make that all important comment. My hope is that this will simplify the page layout and make the site easier to navigate. Load times should not be impacted, negatively or positively, by these changes.

With that in mind, I?ve also eliminated the blogroll links from all pages except the homepage, greatly decreasing load times across the site. Some other cleanup/optimization to my template should also decrease the loading time slightly, especially on slower connections.

I?ll be back with actual content updates soon, but I thought I?d just give the world a little update on the blog and myself to tide everyone over.

Yes, that’s right - I’ve gone ahead and redone the site once again. To be quite frank, I was getting sick of trying to make my custom backend work just how I wanted it and I finally gave in. I also decided that the front end needed a new design.

As such, this new version of the site was born. I also decided that “News, Views, and Common Sense” just would not cut it and thus renamed the site “News. Views. Common Sense.” along with a new logo. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, today’s the day - it’s the Fourth of July! And we all know what that means: BBQ, patriotism, and blowing stuff up! I can’t think of a better holiday.Before getting too excited by the fireworks, food, and fun, one must remember the true meaning of this day. Two hundred and thirty years ago, our forefathers gathered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to sign the most important document in all of history. Putting their lives and sacred honor on the line, these daring dreamers risked everything to start a revolution against the atrocities of a tyrannical king. It was this beautiful act that jumpstarted a great cascade of events - The United States of American was born. Read the rest of this entry »