Some Site Updates

I just want to take the time to point out some changes with this site, some under the hood, some not.

Ghost 6.0

This site runs on a platform called Ghost and it just hit version 6. There’s two tentpole features that came with this: federation and analytics. I’ll explain these in the same way I understand them.

Federation

This refers to the social media presence this site now has. This means you can follow my site on Mastodon and in a way Threads. Both of these are Twitter-esque services, but with their own differences. I’m not going to get into the weeds with that part. There’s plenty of explainers on the web.

Anyway, you can follow this site by following the handle @index@iam.skoo.bz. By doing so, you can see my posts show up as I post them. You can also leave comments if you’re following on Mastodon and I can respond that. Remember how I was talking about the differences between services? Yeah, use Mastodon over Threads, trust me. But, I look at this as a way to follow me without some of the other noise I make online.

Analytics

Usually, analytics are creepy, as they’re usually associated with some sort of data hoarder. This isn’t the case with the analytics Ghost is using, as there’s apparently no data collection, which is nice. What I get is an indication of what people are reading, as I can see the number of unique readers who’ve clicked in on my site and any individual post.

Further, I can see what country you’re checking in from and from what source readers at coming to me to, whether that be a direct link or another site. I can see if blogrolls are working for example, which they are, a little. But, in no way can I pinpoint an individual person checking my site. It does matter if you’re checking in from Seattle or Chicago, all I know is you live in the United States. But, it is cool to see people from all over the world are checking in.

About & Now Pages

I’ve also recently added a couple pages to this site: About and Now. The About page is pretty straightforward. It’s a little about me and this site.

The Now page is simply a way to show folks what I’m getting into and what’s going on at the moment. This may be anything from ideas I’m cooking up to what books I’m reading and what TV shows I’m watching. I may or may not be the best at keeping this updated, but I will try.