Site updates

In advance of the Tour de France prologue on Saturday, I've made a few changes to the site. Some of them have filtered into production over the last few days, and I'll probably continue to tweak things over the next couple of days.

The most obvious change is probably the "Top Stories" heading. I got frustrated last year by the limitations of the weblog format, when a major story would break, but then get scrolled way down the front page by smaller, more recent stories, and disappear. The "Top Stories" section is my first crack at addressing that; I may make some more changes to it.

A couple of recent additions are the search engine link at right, which lets you search the site or the entire web through the magic of Google, and the "Tour posts at other weblogs" section down the right sidebar, which will highlight other webloggers and (again through the magic of Google) Usenet posters commenting on the Tour.

The 'Recent Posts' section no longer duplicates front-page stories. Once a story rolls off the front page, it will move to the 'Recent Posts' section, then move into the Archives. If you're on a daily, monthly, or category archive page, you'll also get a sidebar listing the current contents of the front page.

The 2003 Tour Wayback Machine has been retired to a quiet home on the Archives page, along with most of the rider category links. In their place is a dynamic list of the most recent posts about top riders, and I'll be adding riders to the list as the Tour progresses. The Wayback Machine will return, offering a simple way to jump back to any stage of the 2004 Tour. And, as always, the calendar at right is clickable, and will take you back to posts from that date.

I hope you'll enjoy the changes. If anything looks strange, or you have any comments on the changes, please post them as comments on this post.