Re #1: I switched the RSS feed back to providing the full post instead of just a summary. After you mentioned this, I thought of a couple reasons why I should be doing the full-post feed instead.

Re #2: Believe it or not, I didn’t even notice that I’d removed this link. I’ve put it back in, in the gray links bar at the top of the comments.

Re #3: Jeez Louise… not sure what happened there. All I did was switch the theme, and activate/deactivate a few non-feed-related plug-ins. I think my ISP has been having some downtime issues lately, I wonder if it’s related to that.

Re #4: Alas, the IIS server is a shared plan with CrystalTech, and they don’t allow ISAPI extensions. I am definitely thinking of switching to an Apache account, but I haven’t felt like dealing with the headaches that would probably entail. (Not because it’s Apache — I really don’t have a problem with Apache, despite my little joke above — but because switching platforms is always messy.)

Re #5: I’d suspect that my templates were at fault, except I can see exactly where they’re failing. The WordPress next_posts_link and previous_posts_link functions aren’t returning the data they’re supposed to. It appears that they both fail to see all of the stuff in the URL after “index.php,” which leads me to suspect a permalinks-on-IIS issue. I’ve figured out a very sloppy kludge for now that’s allowing the categories paging to work, at least.

Oh, and I’m sure you’re right, the sorting order is something I can fix. Just can’t figure out where. The functions that call archive posts aren’t on the theme templates, they’re buried somewhere deeper in the machinery.

The new design is nice, and a bit more stylized and elegant.

But there are a few issues:

1. Providing a summary instead of a first paragraph is nice, but why not publish a full post feed?
I actually remembered it as if it was full-post, but in this case I think I can trust what you see in the definitions more than what my poor memory claims. Normally I’d check the historical posts, but due to my point #3 that’s something I can no longer do.

2. You removed the link to the per-post comment feed. So yes, it’s possible to just copy the post’s URI and append a “feed/” to it, but not everyone will know that. And it’s not quite as easy as having a link in the page.

3. Nothing to do about it now, but sometime during the changes your feeds started to return 410 status codes. Which basically tell anything trying to read them that they’re gone for good, and won’t come back.
They did come back, but the more “intelligent” feed readers should (and some certainly did) all refuse to pay attention to the fact.
I had to unsubscribe and resubscribe to all the feeds from your site. It’s possible you had other readers who just lost your feeds without noticing…

4. Is your IIS server your own, or do you have shared hosting with limited control? I haven’t worked with IIS much, but I do know there are a few free (and working and decent) ISAPI extensions that provide URL rewriting functionality, and that should allow you to do very similar things to what you’d do if you did have Apache.
Especially if the main change you want is just to remove the “index.php” part of the URI.
Oh, and just to lose some karma points I think I should mention that there are Apache versions for Windows, so you can keep windows and still switch to Apache.

5. The problems you’re having with the category/archive pages are probably something more related to your template than WP itself. In most WP installations I know you don’t get an offer to see more pages than are actually available. And AFAIK the sorting order is optional and can be changed by a parameters, though I’m not entirely sure on that score.

Peter: No big deal where you heard about the book, really. Just curious. And yes, They do say that marketing works much better when people hear of you from multiple locations.

Finally picked up Infoquake yesterday. Funny thing was I was passing the store where I ordered it and went in to ask about a Jack Sarfatti book and while there pulled out my pre-payment slip and Infoquake was there. When I got home I switched my phone back on (I’d left it switched off because I was at this Christmas lecture and forgot to switch it back on again) The bookshop had left a message while I was on my way to the bookshop to say the book was there. slightly sychronistic given I was trying to order a Sarfatti book.

Anyway I now have a queue of books waiting to be read so Infoquake will have to wait a week or two.

(Don’t ask – I’ve been around inner city grade schoolers all afternoon. It rubs off. Hey, at least it’s not a leaky diaper.)