Rand Wacker

Besides doing a (minor) re-design of this site’s visuals (I can put together a nice-looking website, but I’m not the most creative when it comes to graphic design), I have some technical features I want to add, so I thought I’d mention some here to see if anyone has any helpful ideas.

Better statistics - I use Analog right now for basic statistics, and it’s not very blog-aware. I would like a system which does a better job of breaking down popular entries, referrers, and giving me a little more detail (perhaps) on who is reading my site. I’m not adverse to using either locally installed software or an external service, but I don’t really want to pay anything (yet…see below).

“Popular Entries” Links - joy once had a great “Popular Entries (per Google searches)” sidebar that would show the most commonly read entries from Google searches (and maybe the search terms themselves?). I’d be interested in seeing how people are coming into the site both by external referrers and through specific Google searches.

Automated Blogroll - I’d like an easy way to dump my NetNewsWire subscriptions into a side-bar linking to what I’m reading on a regular basis. I think this could be done with a pretty simple XSL template and a server-side include.

Brain’s Future-Proofing - Brain has some great ideas on future-proofing Movable Type, and I want to see if I should integrate some of them into my site.

Gallery Re-skinning - Not strictly a blog function but I’d like to re-skin my gallery to look like a more integrated site with my blog. I’ve no idea how difficult this is going to be. On a related note, since I’m managing all my photo source it iPhoto now, I wouldn’t be adverse to a Gallery replacement, but it would need to be just as easy to use, look nice, provide the sub-foldering and print to Shutterfly (Ofoto even better), etc. Anything out there that integrates well with iPhoto (although iPhoto doesn’t support sub-folders)?

Picture of the Day - aaron had the cool idea to link to the National Geographic Photo of the Day. I’d like to designate a set of candidate folders in my Gallery that could provide a daily-changing piece of eye-candy for the site.

Summary Feed to Work Blog - I maintain a separate blog at work, with completely different content, but I would like to be able to display a list of “Recent Civilian Entries” over there. I figure this could be a simple matter of pulling down the RSS and running it through an XSL transform (all hail XML).

Of course, the other solution to many of these issues might just be to Use TypePad, but I’m not ready to pay for services which I can run locally for free right now.