Yesterday afternoon I made a couple little changes to the site and things got funny for a few minutes. Here’s what I changed.

I updated the Hot Topics box in the sidebar (just below the second ad) to be automated. Instead of being manually updated it is now running off a script that determines which topics are Hot based on a number of factors including: page views, feed views, comments, and trackbacks. All from the last 30 days so it stays current.

The result of this is that you can now see which topics are being read and commented on the most by other readers. I hope this proves useful and interesting for you.