If you look at the source code of this page you'll see a comment in the head section:

As you can see it's been over two years since I made any significant change to the make-up of this site. Being one who likes to think he keeps up with — if not ahead of — the ever-changing times in the web world it's obvious I've let things slip. While I still try and keep up with things it's just not reflected in the design of this site. It's high time for change!

One area in which the site has been woefully lacking is its RSS feeds, as was highlighted in the discussions last week. What existed was the minimum. Nothing more than was enough to alert you guys of new blogs/articles. It was down to you to decide it was worth the visit to read an item, based on the title. Possibly it was my own arrogance that assumed you'd always want to.

In response to user "demand" last week I ate a slice of humble pie and added full content to the main feed. In doing so a whole can of worms was opened and I've since added a couple of other feeds as well as making a couple of enhancements to the existing one. The RSS feeds on this site are now a hell of a lot more useful than they were this time last week. Codestore's back on the cutting edge of things!

Often what you guys post on here is as of much use (sometimes more so) than what I have to say. If not then it certainly compliments what I am saying and is definitely worth your attention. The trouble with comments on here (on all blogs for that matter) is that it's rarely a discussion and more often a passing remark from a user who's unlikely to return and reply to a reply.

To address this I've added a feed of all comments posted. This should make it easier to track who is saying what and to see whether things have changed since you last posted and hence whether it's worth your returning to the table.

Here's what the comments feed looks like in FeedDemon:

Notice the "view" has columns for what the reply is to as well as columns for who and when.

While I was at it I made some tweaks to the main feed to help with following comments. I added a wfw:commentRss element to each item as well as a slash:comments element, which tells readers where the feed for comments to the current item is and how many comments there currently are, respectively.

How this works for you depends on what feed reader you use. For most of you it won't make a difference. If you use FeedDemon then the main feed now has two new icons in each entry, like so:

Clicking the icon with the (2) next to in the first example would take you straight down to the comments section of the blog entry on this site so you could read the two comments (although if it says (0) next to it you now know not to bother!). Clicking the RSS icon next to it would have FeedDemon subscribe to a feed which contains just comments to the current entry.

In adding feeds for comments I had to choose whether to have individual feeds for each entry or one for all comments on all entries. Although I was in no doubt that one central feed was the way to go I also felt there would be occasions when an individual feed would suit better..

So, you can either subscribe to all comments or, for example, all comments posted to this entry.

To help you and new users subscribe I've added auto-discovery to the site for all the feeds, as well as an extra link in the footer for the comments feed. If you open a blog entry there's also auto-discovery for its own feed as well as a subscribe link in the "sidebar".

If you're another blogger or site owner and wondering how the new RSS functions either ask or take a peek at the RSS itself. None of it's rocket science. For the rest of you I hope you agree it makes it all a lot easier to follow what's going on?