I got bored of looking at the same terminal screen day in, day out. The standard output’s are boring, and are the same on most distributions.  The image on the right shows how they should look, boring and not very exciting. After some tweeking and some minor editing, oh, and a lot of reading, Using the following bash script, I have created something unique, and something I like.

# If id command returns zero, you’ve root access.
if [ $(id -u) -eq 0 ];
then # you are root, set red colour prompt
 PS1="\e[35;1m(\d \t\e[31;1m \u@\h:\w ) $\e[0m \n    "
else # normal
 PS1="\e[35;1m(\d \t\e[34;1m \u@\h:\w ) $\e[0m \n    "
fi

All that differs between the two outputs, is the colour of the user’s terminal. Just to help me see quickly if I am putting a command into the root terminal. After appending this script to /etc/bashrc, I had found what I liked..

As you may have noticed, a few changes have been going on around here:

1. Site Theme – I got bored of the fixed-width, extra-narrow, plain and boring theme. So I went for something a bit wider, something that handles thumbnailing better, and something that’s more aesthetically pleasing.
2. Tag-Globe – I have tweaked a few settings in the tag-cloud, which optimises its load time, and also makes some of the text easier to read.
3. Social Linking – I have installed a plugin which allows you to link an article to Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon and more. I am hoping this plugin makes my blog more known about, and extends to the deepest, darkest depths of the Internet.
4. SEO Settings – I have edited some Search Engine Optimisation settings to allow sites like Google, MSN and Yahoo to index my site better.

I am also contemplating removing the comment rating system from the blog, as its just not really doing anything. Hopefully your comments will assist me in making this decision. Your feedback will be appreciated.