…I always feel lazy when I don't post anything for a few days. I know, I know… when it comes to blogging I don't owe anybody anything. I blog for me, I post what I please when I please, yada yada yada. I know.

And it's not like I've been neglecting the place. I'm constantly checking in on things, recoding this, tweaking that. My own personal definition of blogging isn't so much "writing posts" as it is "doing things with my blog." In that sense, I'm almost constantly blogging. Just this week I tweaked a few things on my template and put in some work on a few plugins.

But you can't see the things I do behind the scenes, and I feel bad about people who check in for new content only to find I've not updated in several days. I do however take heart in knowing that some of these behind the scenes things are for you.

Just today I removed the list of incoming links from the sidebar. That feature's always been a little flaky and lately has been really slow. Removing it reduced my page generation time by whopping 85%, which means faster page loads for everyone. A quirk of the Docking Boxes script that powers the sidebar prevents me from removing the whole container without invalidating everyone's cookies, so the box will remain in place but empty until I figure out what to do with it.

Faster page loads are kind of for me, but there's one new shiny that's all for you. For some time now I've used Mark Jaquith's excellent Subscribe To Comments plugin to give every commenter the option to receive follow-ups by e-mail. It has a nicely rounded set of options, but lacks one key feature. The subscribe checkbox on the comments form doesn't remember your preference. People who want updates have to constantly remember to check the box when they comment on a new post.

Well, no more. I fixed that. Now when you leave a comment a cookie will be placed that stores your preference. Getting the plugin to do that was a lot easier than I thought, too. It turns out that it only required thirteen lines of new code. If I'd known it was going to be that easy I would have done it ages ago. The fix is even simple enough that I might submit it to the developer for possible inclusion in the next release.

Well, you know… when I get around to it. I can't do it right now. I'm busy blogging.