Now that the one-two punch of reCAPTCHA and Akismet have practically eliminated spam from my comments list, I feel safe adding a “Recent Comments” feature to the right-hand sidebar. This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for some time, since I really like how it has changed the experience of reading Duane’s blog for me. But without the spam-busters, it would have been impossible.

What this means for you, the reader, is that if you decide you’d like to comment on an older post, the rest of the Shakespeare Teacher community will be able to see it, and possibly continue the discussion. So feel free to weigh in on today’s Shakespeare or rank my list of sources by reliability or whatever old discussions you’d like to reinvigorate. Go ahead and give it a try!

Unfortunately, this will make it slightly harder to avoid spoilers for Thursday Morning Riddles and Conundrums, but I think the trade-off is worth it.

I have also created an e-mail address where you can contact me directly. It is “webmaster” at this domain name.

Shakespeare Teacher: Serving our customers since 2007.

The spam was getting way out of control, so I installed reCAPTCHA. Now, when you want to leave a comment on this blog, you will just need to type in a couple of words to prove you’re a real human. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Feel free to play around with it by leaving a comment in this post. This will also let me know that the thing is working, so thanks in advance.

Okay, I’m playing around with a new look for the site (finally!) and I wanted to get some reader input before committing to anything. I have a few specific questions for readers of this site:

1. Do you like the way the site looks now, compared to the old look?
2. Is it easier or harder to read than the old style?
3. Is there anything you were able to do in the old style that you can no longer do?
4. Is anything about this style distracting or confusing?
5. Should I keep it how it is, or put it back how it used to be?

It’s the age-old debate of form vs. function, but I have to say that the site looks a lot more like a ShakespeareTeacher.com than the old style, which looked more like SomeGuysWebsiteIDontCareAbout.org.* Also, I like that there’s a calendar, which I haven’t had before.

Anyway, let’s try this out for a while and see how it goes.

*SomeGuysWebsiteIDontCareAbout.com was taken.

This is my first blog entry. Today is the first day of a new year, a day when we can imagine the future and all of its possibilities stretched out before us. Starting a new blog is kind of like that. Thanks for reading this, and maybe I’ll be back.