Again (after an earlier test phase with only few participants), I installed the plugin WP-PostRatings by Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan, which allows you to rate my posts quickly with one to five stars.
You can see it left of each post in the index views, and below the post in single views. I’d appreciate it if you use this function. 
I upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 today (from 2.2.3; worked quite well; I had only forgotten to modify the size of wp_terms.name and had to repair some category names 
) – and I added tags to all previous 150 posts. (The dull weather was ideal for that… and on Sundays, the traffic here is the lowest.)
Currently, there are 84 tags that now serve nicely as “mini categories” – finally including “Wuselbrusel” (a fantasy word for “nonsense, meaningless, boring, other…”
In the footer, there’s now the “mandatory” big tag cloud, and almost all buttons from the sidebar fell down there, too. I don’t like it 100% yet, but we’ll see… And below the single-post view, I’ll add I added links to “related posts” by tags some time soon.
Everyone releases something like that somehow (often if there’s nothing better available at the time) – usually musicians and usually before christmas, but why not bloggers, too? I know I’m not the only one. So I’ve put together a list of my (subjectively) best posts on a separate page, also linked to at the top of the sidebar:
Blog link exchange syndicates are somehow “in” – to me, too, somehow – so a little intermediate result to these three services:
BlogRush.com is just intended for English-language blogs; I had their widget, for which you cannot configure anything but picking one of about a dozen border colors, here first at the bottom, then more to the top, when English was chosen. The operators are about to check all registered blogs according to their quality guidelines, which I think is a good idea.
Unfortunately, they deactivated mine, without telling what exactly they dislike (just sent the guideline list), so I can only speculate that maybe there was one German screen shot too many (the translation of which they missed), or whatever else. Maybe they reply to that question… and my wish to delete my account, which they forgot to offer on the Web.
Anyway, I couldn’t notice significant numbers of visitors coming via BlogRush.com.
BLOGspeed.de* (for German blogs) is somehow just dawdling around – I see only 2-3 links here, 2 of which always the same (or at least from the same blogs), plus their own, and due to the inflexible IFRAME format (which causes a lot of free space with so few links) I couldn’t move it up higher, away from the bottom of the sidebar. On the other hand, it doesn’t bother down there, so it remains active for now…
Blogfever.de* (also German only), however, does things mostly right: Extensive crediting (for views and clicks), nearly complete configurability to adapt to your own blog design (which is often recommended for Google Ads placement, too, thanks to “banner blindness” of many surfers) – and they are actively communicating with their users (e.g. on their own blog) and often listen to their wishes.
Even if their statistics are not extensive yet – what they do offer is more than found elsewhere, and they offered it faster. They also worked on the unpleasant double listing (did they?) – and they actually gave me some visitors.
For these reasons, Blogfever.de – you can see it here with German language setting between RSS/galleries and poll, by the way – my clear favorite among these syndicates, and I wish them ongoing success.
* These links contain my referrer code so that I get credits if you register through them.
Inspired by the Prinzzess (German), I “halloweenized” my blog a little – enjoy…
Update: That’s how it looked:
