Why I Still Like Radiant For My Blog

I never did figure out why my website freaked out when I tried to install any sort of Radiant plugin. But even without plugins I was able to make the following improvements to this blog:

• Added an intelligent set of navigation links to the upper right corner of each page.
• Added comments (by Disqus!).
• Added a home page indicator for how many comments are on each post (yay, Disqus javascript!).
• Added the published/posted date for each essay or blog post.
• Completely rearranged the home page, putting all my latest talkings and thinkings up above the fold (yay SEO!).
• Turned three of the home page headings (“Recently”, “Essays” and “About Me”) into links.
• Spruced up the Recently and Essays archive pages.
• Tightened up the twitter gadget to better blend with this site.

I like how this site is going. When I need to add features it’s easy to do that. When I need something major, like Twitter integration or comments, I go find something to plug in. Like Venkat Subramaniam said at Simple Design and Testing Conference, unless absolutely necessary, “don’t write code!”