I’ve been designing this blog incrementally, you might say. I started with a pretty basic, boxy template a month ago. But when I have the time to spare, and the mood strikes me, I make little modifications to it.

My latest such modification is in the display of comments and trackbacks. Up until today, comments and trackbacks were all displayed with type only, all in a row, something like this:

Comment from John Q. Public [Visitor]
I really like your blog.
Comment from Sean [Member]
Thanks.
Comment from Chet [Member]
I like it too.
Comment from Phoebe [Member]
Isn’t he a dreamboat? I love you, sweetie.
Trackback from SomeOtherBlog.com [Visitor]
Boy do I like Sean’s blog. You’ve got to go see it…
Comment from Sean [Member]
Thanks, I love you as well.
Comment from John Q. Public [Visitor]
Who, me?
Comment from Sean [Member]
No, not you. Phoebe.
Comment from Chet [Member]
Which one’s Phoebe?

There were some inadequacies with this presentation, which I have corrected today. From now on, comments and trackbacks are displayed with graphics, something like this:

John Q. Public
I really like your blog.

Sean
Thanks.

Chet
I like it too.

Phoebe
Isn’t he a dreamboat? I love you, sweetie.

SomeOtherBlog.com
Boy do I like Sean’s blog. You’ve got to go see it…

Sean
Thanks, I love you as well.

See the improvement? Not only is it cuter, it is also easier to distinguish at a glance a trackback from a comment, and a comment by a member or visitor from a reply by me or Phoebe.

WHAT THE COLORS MEAN
A comment by me (Sean) will have this brown speech balloon in the upper left corner.

A comment by the lovely Phoebe will be adorned with this red and gold speech balloon.

But a comment from you, whoever you are, will get this gray speech balloon…

…unless of course you are a registered member of blog.gleeson.us, in which case you get this handsome hunter green model. Membership does have its privileges. (If you are a member, but not logged in when you post your comment, you will be treated like a common visitor. My server doesn’t know who’s who, it just knows who’s logged in. Yes, I’m talking to you, Eureka.)

SHOULD I BECOME A MEMBER?
Is there any reason you should register as a member of this blog, other than getting the pretty colored speech balloon by your comments? Not really. Not yet, I mean. But the day might come in the future when being a member makes a significant difference:

• If abusive comments become a problem, we could disable open comments and only let members comment. Or we could give members the ability to put images and links in comments, but only let visitors use text.
• We might someday post entries to the blog that only members can see. Or, we could even post entries that are invisible to all but certain members. For instance, I could have a list of “members who know about Sean’s plans to burglarize Fort Knox,” and I could write posts about how that project is coming that only members on that list can see.
• Right now only Phoebe and I can actually post entries to this site, but if we go on vacation or something, we could designate one or more guest-bloggers to fill in.
• There may be other things that I can’t even imagine now.

So if you want to prepare for that brave new world now, you may register by clicking the "Register…" link somewhere near the bottom of the right-hand column of the page there. No rush, though.

UPDATE! After reading this, I feel compelled to clarify that the example I gave was hypothetical, and I have no plans to burglarize Fort Knox.