Comments on: How Big Is Your…And An Overview of RSS

By: Ben Yoskovitz

Ben Yoskovitz — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:14:57 +0000

Andy is right- coComment doesn’t work here. I tried posting something earlier and it didn’t work…

Anyway, the permalink structure is a result of an older setup – when it looked like you couldn’t just go with “postname” (which you can). So I appended the date after, but put the postname first.

If was to do it over I would scrap the date altogether.

Glad you like the RSS placement Andrew.

By: Ben Yoskovitz

Ben Yoskovitz — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:32:47 +0000

Thanks Andrew.

In terms of permalink structure – if I was to redo it I would remove the date altogether, but I had read in a few places that you couldn’t just go with /%postname%/

You certainly can, which I realized later on in the process, but I’m not going to go ahead and change them all at this stage, mess with redirects, etc. So the date sits at the end, trailing…it makes the URLs a bit long, which I’m not fond of.

By: Andrew Wee

Andrew Wee — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 05:03:06 +0000

I was going at it from an aesthetics standpoint.
Usability is another issue.

The major issue I was raising was the size of the icon.
Even at a modest size (like Todd “Stuntdubl” Malicoat) the icon’s small and stands out.

Comment-related plugins I use include: threaded comments, comment karma, get recent comments, subscribe to comments.

By: Andrew Wee

Andrew Wee — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 04:59:32 +0000

Your RSS placement is pleasant and the overall blog look is very clean and Web2.0-ish looking.
Nice.

The permalink structure is interesting with the post-name coming before the date info.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 04:33:36 +0000

I would suggest test and track before making changes. There is a reason why websites place adverts in a certain position to make readers notice them, and the same can apply to feed subscriptions and other items you want your readers aware of.

As an example by placing some fairly “in your face” join buttons for MyBlogLog on my site, I have seen some significant increases in people joining my community, even people I initially introduced to MyBlogLog, and that have been reading my blog for some time… they had just forgotten to join.

p.s. whichever comment plugin you are using, it seems to be incompatible to coComment

By: Ben Yoskovitz

Ben Yoskovitz — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:11:45 +0000

Interesting analysis of RSS buttons/styles. Sure some people have overdone it, and the reality is that most people use some kind of RSS reader that auto-discovers the RSS feed anyway. So pop in the URL of the blog into your RSS reader and voila – doesn’t matter how big the subscribe button is at that point.

With my blog’s redesign I tried something a bit different, putting the subscribe information right above the first post – it’s there, but hopefully not to offensive.

I’m also partial to the “learn how to subscribe” and/or “subscribe via email” links for non-RSS experts.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:17:04 +0000

I am still not a big fan of RSS. In fact I don’t even subcribe to RSS feeds. Not that anything is wrong with it though.

By: Vlad

Vlad — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:37:19 +0000

Andy, you have giving me extra work with this post. Now I have to resize my RSS button

By: Andrew Wee

Andrew Wee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:49:11 +0000

Hi Jane,
I used Blog Explosion when I first started up this blog.
I went from 82 unique visitors in Jul 06, to 1127 the following month.
By Dec 06 my uniques were 6000. BE along with some of the other traffic methods have been effective for me.

I don’t use BE as extensively now, because I have developed a critical mass of readers (which stabilizes my Alexa ranking at about 20,000, or about 300 uniques a day). and I’m focusing on contact building and joint ventures.

Newer blogs would benefit from BE, especially if you accumilate sufficient blog credits to participate in the ‘battle of the blogs’ competitions in BE.

By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:32:36 +0000

Thanks for the blogexplosion link. Do you use it?