New and improved blog software

If you're a regular reader, you might notice a few changes around here! I just launched a modernization of my blogging software. Here are some of the improvements I've made.

• Retina friendly: My wife just got a new Macbook Pro, and text on this site looks absoutely crisp and lovely. Graphics, not as much. I added a high-resolution version of the background image (only downloaded for retina displays), and I redrew the logo using CSS instead of a static image.
• Tags: I used to have a link to every post I've ever written on the sidebar. It made sense when there weren't many posts, but the list got very long, and it was distracting. Now only the five most recent posts are shown, and the rest are accessible via tags.
• Static pages: Since I don't have any ads on this site (and never will!), I keep expenses down by using a shared hosting service, which is pretty slow and primitive. Anything other than CGI and mod_php is kind of a hassle, and CGI is noticeably slow. To minimize response times in common cases, I'm pre-generating static HTML for all blog posts.
• SSL/TLS support: I don't collect any personal information from visitors, but every bit of privacy is valuable. This site now supports encrypted connections.

Some other changes behind the curtains that you might be interested in:

• Template System: To some extent writing any blog software is an exercise in wheel reinvention, and by creating a new HTML templating system, I'm particularly guilty of this. However, it didn't take very long to come up with something simple and elegant. I'll discuss this further in another post.
• WYSIWYG Editor: I'm using a contenteditable div to edit posts. I'm not really happy with the HTML this generates yet though. For now, I'm just using it for previews and minor edits. I'll write more about this once it's improved.