Tons of new blog features being rolled out

Folks have probably noticed the massive facelift that the blog has undergone over the past week.  That is actually only the tip or the iceberg as far as new functionality for www.doublebassblog.org.  Moving to WordPress is something that I should have done a long time ago, and my tinkering over the past few days has only made that clearer.

Here are a few of the new features we’ve rolled out this week:

1. Improved search functionality – The search box in the upper right quadrant now returns much more accurate results than ever before.
2. Improved audio playback – Any audio file (podcasts as well as other musical selections) will appear at the top of its parent post, with the option to play it (in a slick Flash player) or download it.
3. Automatic Related Posts – For the past six months, I’ve manually generated ‘Related Posts’ links after most posts I’ve written.  Well, with WordPress one can simply install a plugin that does this automatically.  I did this, and it works like a charm.  What a load off my shoulders!
4. Sitemap – Simply click the sitemap link to check out an organized list of all the resources on the bass blog.  Adding a special sitemap code file for Google to crawl has also proven to be successful–blog traffic has reached record levels since moving to WordPress.
5. Improved commenting – We’ve got smilies for comments, automatic comment posting, and links to newest comments and top commenters.  You can now add YouTube videos and Flick photos to comments on doublebassblog.org.  Just click the ‘comment’ button for any post and you’ll see how–it’s easy.  Comment frequently on the blog and you’ll be featured on the front page!
6. Post printing – Now you can print any post from the blog easily, just like printing up a map from Google Maps or a PDF file.  Automatic and simple, just as it should be.
7. Tags for posts – Although this may not seem terribly cool at present, as the blog progresses, all posts will be tagged with every subject matter discussed.  More specific than the category designation we’ve use here for the past year-and-a-half, these tags will allow readers to find related posts on very specific topics.  Bare bones for now, but just wait–it will prove to be very useful.
8. Lots of new collaborative options – With WordPress comes the ability to have people from around the globe contribute content to the blog in an organized fashion.  I’ve got a lot of ideas bouncing around in my brain regarding this topic, and I’ll let you know more as I get it all sorted out.

Let me emphasize that this is only the beginning in terms of new features for the site.  I’ve got a lot of ideas that I’d like to implement, and this platform makes it really easy to do so.  More on this later.