I am really excited to finally pull off the curtains of the brand new version of Webmacster87.info, which I have touted for last month as version 5. So excited, in fact, I’m worried that deep-fried pickle hearts might be coming out of my ears by the time I finish this post! I have been spreading around a great deal of hype over this new site, and a lot of people have really been jealous annoyed envious excited in anticipation of the new site. I think that between your first impression when you saw the new site and what you’ll experience as you read this post and check out the new features, you’ll see that it was well worth the wait.

The most important new feature in Webmacster87.info 5 is the new design. Just like the last few iterations of my blog have featured the W cast in the tiger theme (seen here since February 2006), it became obvious with the WWDC announcements that a new Leopard themed W would be necessary moving forward. A lot of the rumors (which I kept silent on) seemed to support this idea, and predictable little me delivered.

Actually, I’m not the one that delivered at all. Hans (macattacks10), who not only did the Tiger W logo, but also did the phpBB Weekly logo/artwork, the PreviewCast logo/artwork, and my Fountain of Apples phpBB MODs logo, was willing to put up with me once again as he photoshopped a magnificant masterpiece W 90% reminiscent of the new X in Leopard. However, it is not a carbon copy. One reason, of course, is that Apple Legal has been known to strike hard before. But the better reason is that Apple apparently photoshopped its own galaxy, because you can’t find the background image that they use anywhere on the web! We know, we tried. However, Hans was able to locate a very closely similar background (which I actually think looks cooler than Apple’s) which is proudly featured here. He did a wonderful job, and my mouth dropped open for 30 seconds the first time I saw it.

The rest of the design comes from the Life is a Byte Theme by Tran Manh Hung. The theme is actually an edited version of n.Design Studio’s iTheme. The main differences between this and iTheme are a new darker color scheme (which is a bit closer to Leopard’s) and a 3-column view. I took the theme and made a number of minor edits of my own (this included removing the blood drips from the pages bar).

There are now two sidebars which should hopefully help to reduce the clutter that came from the original (you’ll notice that the AuctionAds banner is now in the footer!). The left sidebar tries to focus on information central to this website, etc. The right sidebar, on the other hand, focuses on me. The search field, Sponsored Links, and my Twitter Status are still there. However, the first thing that’s new on the right side is a greatly extended My Web widget. I always do my New Years Resolutions at the end of every school year, 5 months late, and this year’s resolution has been to start getting into more of this Web 2.0 stuff, so I’ve been checking out a bunch of new websites, some of which you may not even have heard of. The extended My Web widget features a 95% complete list, and my new claimID page features at 99.99% complete list of everywhere you can find me online. In the coming weeks I’ll be reviewing many of these new services on my blog and/or on PreviewCast.

In addition, three new badges get their own spot on my sidebar. There’s a widget from Last.fm which allows you to see the music/media I’m listening to or have recently listened to in iTunes; some music even includes 30 second previews that you can listen to right in the player. Wakoopa shows a list of the apps I’m using the most (I’ll be reviewing some of these apps on there soon!), and Upcoming lists some of the upcoming events that I’ll be attending or am watching (including Friday’s PreviewCast live recording). In addition, on the upper-right is the local weather in my area, so you can quickly see what the conditions are, courtesy of The Weather Channel.

The sidebars have been set up just the way I like them, but one of the great things of the theme is that they are customizable. You can rearrange and collapse each of the sidebar widgets any way you want (however you can’t move widgets from one sidebar to the other), so you can really customize your experience on this site.

Occasionally (okay, very rarely), I post good content on this site. I’ve now included a few ways for you to share it. Each post now comes pre-loaded with a Digg button, which will allow you to submit it to Digg if you want. Once it’s submitted, it will start counting the number of diggs and allow you to quickly digg the story. (You can see an example with this post, which I’ve submitted to Digg.) In addition, each post has a Share This button which lets you bookmark it to your social web or e-mail it to a friend, and a TwitThis button which lets you tweet about the post you’re reading on Twitter. A few additions have been made to comments as well. The comments form now includes already built-in support for coComment and Gravatars, including a form which lets you instantly sign up for a free Gravatar account when you submit your comment. Finally, the comments now support quotes, so you can quickly quote other comments or you can even select any text on the page and click Quote Selected Text to place that in a quote (useful for quoting text from my posts).

The top of the home page brings back an old feature which has been missing from this site for a year now: the day of the year. I like to celebrate each day as a new day, and to simply celebrate the fact that we actually have had a new day, and so the day of the year has always been fascinating to me. So, when you come to this website, the first thing you’ll see is the day of the year, and also my local time, so you no longer have to do a timezone lookup.

Lastly, you’ll notice two new pages on the site. The Archives page lets you surf through the past posts on this site quickly by date or by category, and the Links page displays my complete Blogroll, plus Other Websites and Podcasts. And yes, I promise I’ll be getting them on del.icio.us really soon.

So that’s all of the new stuff, but the old stuff is still here. All of the pages, posts, comments, etc. since last October are still here, so you can still ignore enjoy them. I might mention as well that many of these new features will be showing up soon on the PreviewCast and phpBB Weekly websites as I update them to WordPress 2.2.x in the coming week. Stay tuned to those websites for announcements of some of these new features (although no new themes).

The last new thing I’ll draw your attention to on this site is a new Donation form on the left sidebar. I do a lot of stuff as a hobby for free, and I don’t have a job that pays much (my cafeteria work at school is lucky to get more than $50-$60 a month when school is in session), and during the school year, it’s hard to do all of the things I do, such as this blog, podcasts, MODding, and more. Between supporting my hobby and my computers and paying my parents back (in a long-term payback program) for my new MacBook, I really appreciate any assistance you can offer by quickly donating through PayPal.

So that’s a fairly complete rundown of everything new on the site. I’m really excited to have the site out, I’ve really customized it exactly the way that I want it to be, and I’m really excited to do a lot more blogging in the days, weeks, and months to come. So now it’s time to celebrate! Anyone want some deep-fried pickle hearts?
–Douglas “webmacster87″ Bell