Blog Future, Thanks and Changes

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is now out in theatres but that doesn't mean the blog will go on hiatus. There will be a third film, the only questions is will it be in 2011 or 2012. This blog will be here to continue the mandate to be the source of movie information. The immediate future brings box office results, award season, DVD/Blu-ray releases and more.

I want to give a huge thank you to everyone that made this last year so successful with their pictures, links, reports, and help. This blog's 1100+ posts in the last year have "thanks" credit on most due to the help of so many site fans and readers and that is greatly appreciated.

For those that have been on in early mornings for the last week you probably noticed strange things occasionally happening to the blog (including accidently breaking blog posts so couldn't see anything but the title) in an effort to try and improve the blog. This started as an attempt to do something about the Archive section which got really long especially as the stories piled up and things just went from there. List of changes after the break.

The changes:

Added Recent Posts - Part of solution to archive problem. Lists 10 most recent posts should be easier then checking the archive.

Added Tabbed Navigation Widget - Use tabs to find recent posts, archive and labels (also removed the label count as served no purposed). This removes the archive and tags so only visible when you want to view them yet still see what recent posts have been added to the blog.

Removed the blogger Navbar - Mostly to improve the look of the blog

Added "Read More..." functionality - Make it easier to add more videos, pictures, or long text without it driving other articles way down the screen and hopefully improve load times

Added Email and Social Section - Right column, four icons for different functions
     AddThis icon - bookmark functionality, everyone seemed to have it so figured why not
     RSS feed icon - I had 15 different RSS feed site links that the one link handles just as well, once added proper redirection.
     Twitter icon - Changed it to a single picture for consistent look
     Email icon - Click it so can email me questions, tips, whatever. No guarantees will be able to provide but I try to.

Moved various counters - Various site counters, creative commons license, etc moved out of the way to the very bottom of the website
     Added People Online widget - With the other counters, lets you see how many people are on the blog at the same time you are (not sure how well it works)
     Added TwittBadge - Shows number of Twitter followers I have since Twitter Counter didn't allow me to do it on one continuous line.

Added Related Posts section - Added to each blog post is related topics based on the labels (tags). Currently below the comments box, maybe move above but it seemed in the way when tried it there.

For now, with the 20 or so trailers and TV spots in the left column I don't expect much load time improvement but my plan is to replace those with a playlist in a few more weeks once excitement of the movie has decreased. I hope this works out. Feel free to post what you think in the comments.