Techman's World Gets a Redesign

Hello readers,

As you have now noticed, Techman's World has finally gotten an update to the site that is supposed to be beneficial to everyone, and Techman's World itself.

If you guys remember, I wrote a post a few weeks ago asking if I needed to do a redesign, and based on community response I decided to go though with it. I did try to redesign the template before, and it failed because I couldn't find a way to get the comments to work.

I did the redesign this morning, via Blogger's template editor. I heavily modied it, so you should not notice any customization differences in terms of custom CSS styles, if you pay attention to that.

The template should perform well in every browser, including (hopefully) Internet Explorer 9. If you can, please load up a page in IE9 and see if everything functions correctly. Everything should work or at least look decent, and comments should load correctly.

So, let me know in the comments below on what you think.

Disqus 2012 adds self deletion of comments? (Update: Disqus responds!)

I'm not sure about all of you, but I just experienced this new feature in Disqus 2012. When on a site that uses Disqus 2012, I now get this option to delete comments that I make. And the most interesting part about this is that I am not a moderator at said site.

Now of course this leaves a lot of questions to be answered. I'm sure that Disqus will probably publish an update to their change log, but once again I have a good eye for catching changes.

Here is all of the picture proof that you need:

 Now, take a look at the drop down.

 I'll go ahead and reach out to Disqus for comment. If I get a response, I'll post here.

Update: Ok, after a late response, Daniel Ha from Disqus has sent me a message back explaining that yes, this small change has been added. His exact text can be seen below. I'll ask if this functionality will also be added to the classic Disqus, maybe for compatibility reasons.

"We did make this small change and you are able to remove your own comments."

Disqus now #1 in the top 3 for referrals

After visiting my traffic stats today, I have some good news to share with you. Usually sites like Reddit and Google are high up in my stats, but long behold, Disqus comes out on top. I have seen this coming for a while.

If you use Disqus at your site, do Daniel Ha a favor

You guys know Disqus, the comment system we have here, right? Well recently they are wanting to collect traffic stats that your website is getting from Disqus 2012 and Disqus discovery. All Daniel wants you do do is fill out this simple form. You can choose to take a picture of your referrals, or you can enter the info manually.

Guest Post - Rediscovering Disqus

Well what do ya know, Techman's World has its first guest post. Mr. Paramendra sent this in, his original post is below.

Some formatting tips for the Disqus comments

Hello everyone, if you did not now, you can format your text in the comments section. While you can not have it automatically done for you, you can do it with some very simple HTML knowledge.

Disqus 2012 adds image upload support

Hello everyone, just wanted to point out a new feature that came to Disqus 2012 (my comment system installed here) right about now. Image upload support was promised, and despite being a few days late, its here!

Disqus 2012 Released to the Public!

It is finally here! Disqus 2012 is released to the public. It was in public beta for a month now, but now it is officially out. Disqus did a big post about it on their blog, so here is their blog post below.


I am using Disqus 2012 on my site right now, actually for about 3 weeks now. I have been gathering feedback on it, so far so good. I'm still waiting for media embed support and CSS support.

Here is the post below.

Disqus 2012 on this site

Dear readers,
If you have not noticed yet, you might notice that the comments are not looking as the way they should be. That is because I have enabled Disqus 2012, for a short period of time. The reason -- to see how it is like here. My personal opinion is one thing, but this site is not about me. I'd make my own personal blog for that...which would also be powered by Disqus.

I have had this enabled for only one day, and I have submitted just under 10 bugs with Disqus 2012. Sure, it still has bugs, but is stable enough to have on here for a while. Click here to see my initial post about Disqus 2012.

So, do you want Disqus 2012 on this site? Be sure to post a comment below -- using Disqus 2012 and let me know of your thoughts, and also vote in the poll below. I will use both to decide whether or not to keep Disqus 2012 on here.


Below is some pictures I just took:

Here you can see the embed, currently with no comments. This is the same embed for this article. When you star a discussion, you can share it on twitter and facebook, subscribe to it via RSS, and subscribe to it via email. If you are logged in, you'll also see the My Disqus tab, similar to the current Disqus Dashboard. When you click the gear drop down menu, you have more options, such as logging out, accessing help, and more.

Here, you can see community info. This is the equivalent of the community box from the "classic" Disqus.

If you have questions, drop a line below. And don't forget to vote in the poll, and comment below.

How To: Add Disqus comments to your mobile template via HTML editing

If you are like me, you have a blog that is powered by Blogger. Sure, you can use WordPress.com, but it is harder to use, and you can't add JavaScript and plugins like Disqus.

By default, Blogger has its own native comment system. It has gotten better, but still lacking in core features.

So like me, I installed Disqus here. That is why you see Disqus here instead of Blogger Comments.

But you have one issue - getting Disqus to work in your mobile template.

Well in this Techman's World How-To, I'm going to guide you through it through images and text.

The first thing to know is if you installed Disqus. In this case I'm assuming you used the Blogger widget.

1. Go to the Blogger Dashboard
2. Select your blog(s)
3. Select Template from the options menu along the left.
4. Click on edit HTML under the "Live on Blog" thumbnail image.
5. Confirm the warning about HTML
6. Click the tick at the top to expand widgets
7. Press CTRL + F
8. Type in "Disqus" NOTE: If you have another Disqus widget, you might get to that first. Make sure you please you placed your Disqus widget at the very bottom right corner in the layout tab first. If you have another widget, the Disqus embed widget should be the very last one anyways.
9. Add a mobile='yes' after locked='false'
10. Save Template (thanks to Jim Hirshfield in the comments for the heads up)

Here is some images below.

Disqus 2012

You know about Disqus, right? They happen to be the people who power our comments here. Just wanted to share one of their projects that are underway...Disqus 2012.


Disqus 2012 is a complete rebuilt of the Disqus system. It has a new embed, with features such as the community box and Dashboard integrated into it.


Below is a picture:

Here is the post below.



If you want to see the beta embed here, post a comment below asking.

Slight Site Change

Hey readers.
Today I am announcing a slight change with the comments. You won't really notice it very much, but you will if you have the DBXLNightFever font installed on your system.


First, the h3 that says "Add a New Comment' is not in DBXLNightFever font, and it is 15pt, so it is a little larger.


For users who do not have DBXLNightFever font installed, you will just see the norm with just bigger text.


Post a comment below with feedback, or want to propose another comment system mod that you think will make the site better.


UPDATE: Every h3 element in Disqus is now DBXLNightFever. If you do not have that font, you'll just see the same old-same old.

Slight Comment Changes

Hello all. Just wanted to announce some slight changes that are going on with the comments. I have been experimenting with something called CSS (Click to read about it on Wikipedia). Disqus is insanely flexible, and I have said that many of times. You are allowed to use custom CSS rules to adjust your system however you like.


So I have altered the comments slightly over the past few days, and today, and want to announce it.

• Comment Headers-This is where most of the changes are. You now see that the Disqus commenter names are a slight gray color, and are no longer clickable if you are using a standards supporting browser (yes IE, I am calling you out). This is due to the amount of comments slipping by because the spammers or bots are posting the spam links in the name field, where you used to click to go to the users listed website. There is one easy fix to this without having to add some code, just to turn guest commenting off. This would affect community interaction in my opinion, but would not help much, as the spammers/bots are using registered accounts. So now the header is a new grayish color, the hyperlink is no longer active, and the font size is 10pt.

• Disqus Comment Body-There was a few changes here, mostly about the interface. The a:hover links (such as the like/edit, reply, time posted/replied from comment if the comment was a reply, and the moderate link (mods only) now changes to a black color when your cursor hovers over the link. The pointer:default still says the same. This black changing color does not transfer to other a:hover links, such as the logout link. The custom CSS has the dsq-comment-body class in it, so it does not apply to everything if any techies out there wanted to a little deeper and wanted an explainiation.

And that is just about it. I'll post any more comment changes here if I do any more changes for now. If you would like to provide feedback here about the comments, go ahead and post a  comment below any article or contact me with the content info provided at the bottom of the page.

Disqus down for scheduled maintenance, comments will go dark for that period of time

Dear readers,
This is just a fair warning about the comments for this site. If you do not know already, the comments here are powered by Disqus, a insanely flexible discussion system. It is set to go into maintenance for a time span of 3 hours or so, but what they are doing is only going to be around 30 minutes.


Below is a screenshot of the message they posted on their Disqus Status site.

Be sure to not pay attention to what the time says in this picture, because this is just a screenshot

I'll update back there when comments are back to normal.


Update: 10:10pm EST-Everything is back to normal now.

Like a post? Make sure you do this...

Hello readers. Just wanted to remind all of you what you should do when you like a post here. The first thing you should see below each blog post is the share buttons. An an image is below.

If you like an article, you can email it, Blog it, share on twitter, and share on facebook. The last thing is the Google +1 button. I recommend that when you like an article, as well as clicking on the Disqus like buttons. The +1 button also makes my posts show up even better on search engine results. Both give me feedback on what to post.

This was taken when I was signed in as a moderator, so the gear icon won't show up unless you are a moderator here.

So here is what the buttons mean on the Disqus toolbar. The like/dislike buttons let you choose if you like the comment thread/article. The little icon over with the number in it is the notifications button. The hold important messages such as when someone replies to your comment when you have received a new rank. The icon that has the two heads on it is the community box. Click on it to show community info for the commentors on this site. A screenshot can be found below.

On the left is the total comments and the most active members. The middle shows total likes and most liked members. On the right shows the total amount of people and the new faces of fellow new commentors. You can hover over their avatar for more info. 


Finally is the Disqus button. Over there you can access your Disqus dashboard, Edit your profile, logout of Disqus, and finally see About Disqus. Also, if you want to check out the status of Disqus, click here. Subscribe to their email updates to stay in the know on their status.

Again, you won't see the gear icon unless you are signed in as a moderator. Everything else will be visible to you.

If you want to contact us, email techmansworld@hotmail.com. Were happy to answer questions. If emailing isn't you, just post a comment under any posts.

400 Posts of Techman's World

Well what do 'ya know. Techman's World has now reached 400 posts. During the 300-400 posts mark, the site has gone through some changes. The blog archives widget and recent posts widget have been altered, and the site has undergone a logo change. The new logo post can be seen here, and the slight color change here.


Does anyone else want to propose a change?

Slight Logo Change

If you have not noticed, I have altered the sites logo just a little bit. I changed the color in the word "Techman's" from a darker and uglier green to a better and more better looking lighter green. Thanks to Gary Rumain for pointing it out.


Anyone want to know what I used to make the logo in the first place? Well I used a combination of Microsoft Paint and Promethean ActivInspire. I used Paint to get the back ground, and I typed the font in ActivInspire. I then just copied and pasted the text into a desktop annotate flipchart, and colored it. Then I moved the text on top of the background made in paint. Then I grabbed ActivInspire's camera tool and took a picture of it.


I know that it might sound a little hard and that I took too many steps to do it, I liked making the logo. I'm no Photoshop artist, and never will be one. In fact, I don't have Photoshop. I do have GIMP for Ubuntu, but I'm still learning that. Right now Microsoft Paint and Promethean ActivInspire do the trick just fine. I'm not a teacher, just a person that makes use of a very capable program. I have the professional edition of ActivInspire.


Anything else that might need to be adjusted in the logo? Thanks to all who helped. I do notice when people don't comment but like the pages through the like/dislike buttons on the comment threads, so don't think that I don't notice that.

Happy New Year, Welcome 2012

Happy New year everyone! Time to welcome a new year and a new set of beginnings, endings, and everything else. Did you watch the ball drop? What do you plan to do this year? Drop a comment below.

After 30 or so posts, what do you think about the blog?

After a little more than 30 posts, what do you think of the blog? Is there any suggestions? Do you like the background? I was thinking about changing it. So what are your thoughts?

UPDATE: I change the background to what you see now. Do you like it?

Now is a time to comment....they are always welcomed.

So what did you get for Christmas?

So, what did you get for Christmas? A new toy? A electronic gadget? Drop a comment.