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Switching blog services. (Looking for critiques now)
Kyougu
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So a couple of months ago I decided to start keeping a blog to monitor my weight loss experience, and just started using a Livejournal one I already had.
Lately though, I decided it's time to change it up. My problems with LJ are:
1) Well..it's LJ. The community doesn't seem to be all that great, at least for what I want my journal to be.
2) I want to start making my journal more public to some of my friends, and my LJ has some pretty embarassing stuff early on.
So yeah, time to move on. I'm looking for a service that is free, and fairly popular. I really want to try to either participate in a community with my same goals, or even start one, so nice community features are a big plus. Also, if there would be any way to transfer old postings from my lj, it would be great.
So what are your guys recommendations?
Lately though, I decided it's time to change it up. My problems with LJ are:
1) Well..it's LJ. The community doesn't seem to be all that great, at least for what I want my journal to be.
2) I want to start making my journal more public to some of my friends, and my LJ has some pretty embarassing stuff early on.
So yeah, time to move on. I'm looking for a service that is free, and fairly popular. I really want to try to either participate in a community with my same goals, or even start one, so nice community features are a big plus. Also, if there would be any way to transfer old postings from my lj, it would be great.
So what are your guys recommendations?
Kyougu on
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I’ve heard good things about WordPress as well, but I’ve been pretty happy with Blogger.
There definitely exist services that will export your entries for you for free. Google can probably call one up for you.
Also, what do you guys think about my blog layout? The link to it is my sig.
Other than that, it looks fine to me (golly gee, I hope I don't need to add a disclaimer to this opinion). It was a bit of a shock to my eyes, though - moving from light-on-dark PA to dark-on-white.
Good job, though
I made some final adjustments, cutting down the header, and adding some things to the side. I think it looks pretty spiffy now. I really like Blogger much more than LJ.
I think I finally fixed it though, and even made myself a crappy banner for my sig. I think it's a big improvement over what I had, now it's just up to me to update it frequently.
The same goes for your sig. Try this:
I once ported about 200 posts from WordPress.com to Blogger by that method. Took me a month, but it all came out nice and purdy.
Suggestion wise, check out Beta Blogger for Dummies. It looks absolutely horrible, but Vin knows his stuff and you can find information on putting in related posts, extended post summaries (stuff like click here to read more instead of full post taking up the front page), changing or modifying templates (like changing width or removing the blogger toolbar at the top of the page) and so on. Again, horrible looking blog, but great content and a must read for anyoen looking to spruce up their blogger blog.
As for your blog, the header is a great start, but here's some things you can do to improve it (provided you want to):
Fonts - bold and headers
You currently don't use any kind of formatting on your posts. This leads to a 'tldr;' or 'wall of text' feel that promotes scanning of content where people eventually zone out and just start skimming the post looking for information of interest.
By simply adding some formatting, like the odd bold text (not random, but for keywords) or using headers, like increasing the font size or using different font colours for the headers or even adding lists (simply click the list button in the post editor if you don't know how to code it) can make your posts and writing jump out at the reader and stop them from scanning.
Take your Motivation post, for an example. Just plain text. Add bold to Friends, The Scale, etc. Make those into headers and use the Large font size and maybe make them a different colour (like the orange of your post titles / link).
You start quoting South Park in one section of this post. Bold the text South Park (people see South Park and immediately stop at that section and read it to find out why it's bold and why you are talking about SP. Probably miss it scanning and it's not bold). Bold the Stan and Randy markers showing who's saying what (ex. Stan: Dad, you like to drink, Randy: But, maybe I'm just)
Blog Size
Your blog is currently optimized for 640 resolutions (I think it's actually 660 px for your width). I don't speak for everyone, but my blog's resolutions lists 640x480 monitors lower than people viewing it with iPods or the Wii. Even 800x600 only accounts for about 5% of my viewers. More people are viewing it with widescreens with resolutions in the 1200+ range, but 1024x768 still makes up a nice chunk of my viewers, so I went with that.
You are wasting space, cramping up posts, which make them look longer and more intimidating to readers, and making your site look worse than it is with a smaller size. Most people won't say, "oh, if this was higher resolution, it would be good". It's more of a subconcious decision. A post that extends into oblivion and needs like 3 page downs to read will turn off more readers than the same post at a higher resolution / width that fits on half a page.
View that blogger for dummies link above and increase the size of your blog to minimum 800 width. I'd recommend jumping up to 1024, but that's just my preference. With 800 width, you can have about 600 px for the main body posts and 200 for the sidebar, which would leave the sidebar unchange, but make the post width as wide as your current blogs total width.
About Page
Add an about page. What is pushing it to the limit about? I don't know. It has a scale, I could read a few posts, but I could be wasting my time if this is about cars or some cheap gimmick self help infomercial site trying to sucker me.
A simple about page can be backdated to like 2007, keeping it off the front page, and given as a link above your banner or in a navbar or on the sidebar. This allows new readers to instantly click and see who you are, what the site is about and why they should read it. You may not use about pages or click them when you see them, but they are a very important aspect of blogs and many people click those links. Just visit a few sites and check out what their's say, mimick that or write your own.
Archives
Depending on your long term goals, you can back date an archives, similar to the About page, and list past posts by date, category (like weight loss, exercises, opinion, foods / diets, etc) and so on. It takes a little work to get it setup, but can be a huge resource for pushing people deeper into your blog. Where most will stop at the front page, read a post or two and then give up looking for older content, an archives (a good one, not the crappy default blogger widget one) can be a source of content that has people looking up specific posts, linking to past articles, and, generally, letting people read your older content, which is what you probably want.
Don't believe me? Try searching for something with the default blogger search bar or cycling through an archives with 100+ posts. Imagine a eyar's time with 300+ posts or more (I have 1000+ posts on my blog, try cycling through blogger archives or search for that).
Contact Page
Like the about page, people might want to contact you. You can stick a simple contact page or integrate it with the about page and bam, instant user interaction at their finger tips. First thing about blogs is making it personal so they want to come back, want to know you. Easy contact, even beyond commenting, is a great way to do this.
Images
You have a couple images on the sidebar (get one of you smiling, you look angry in the "after" image), but that's it. I know it's early, but this is about your weight loss results and other tips. Weight loss is a personal thing and people want a) to feel connected with you and see your progress first hand and b) proof that you are real and actually doing this.
Additionally, images on posts act as great stopping points that prevent scanning and are actually the best thing to prevent the scanning of readers and loss of focus / attention. A simple banner at the top of every post (like pictures of the food you talk about or someone jogging if its about jogging or the exercise machine, etc) can lead to more clicks / reads by people that come across your blog.
You don't need to be a master at photoshop or include fancy text effects, but a simple google search and uploading of that image to the post can do wonders.
RSS Feeds
go to feedburner. Burn your blog's feed. Post the RSS (big orange button or little count chicklet) at the top of the blog. RSS feeds are huge and a major part of the web. People are getting tired of the old bookmarking methods and feeds allow them to view allt heir sites in one window without the need to go to every site and they can see when updates happen without constant refreshing.
I currently have over 350 feed subscribers. That's 350+ people that DONT go to my blog's physical page to read the content. I even go so far as to educate my readers on what RSS is and why they might want to subscribe in hopes they use RSS feeds.
After viewing your site, I could go get the atom feed at the bottom, but I'm a bit more tech savy than the average reader and know about Blogger's default atom feeds. Most will see it, look for an rss button, not see one and leave and never come back to your blog. A simple RSS button gives them the option to click, subscribe and read your content whenever you update after that. Many people that subscribe to a blog rarely unsubscribe. The same can't be said for remembering a url or taking the time to bookmark.
Simply put, add the RSS button and you'll gain a steady stream of readers over time.
Sidebar
Wiht a RSS feed, you can quickly add your own feed to the sidebar with a widget that can be called Recent Posts (or whatever you want) that will show the last 5 or so posts from your blog. This acts as a quick "what's new" section for people that stumble upon the blog and easy access to all the recent posts without the need to scroll down, which people are sadly too lazy to do.
Another great widget you can make is a popular posts feature. I do this on my own without any metrics to spotlight certain posts. I do consult Analytics once in a while to see what is or isn't, but sometiems I'll add a post to the popular post which I want to spotlight and it will gain traffic simply by being placed there.
Easy to do and effective way to increase traffic to older posts.
Building Communities
Don't expect a million comments today, tomorrow or anytime soon. At best, you can expect roughly 5-10% of your readers to comment on posts, probably less than this. Some topics lend themselves to comments more easily, but, in general, 90+% of the internet lurks and nothing will change that.
The best way to foster a community is to start posting on other blogs on similar topics with meaningful replies (ie not spam for your blog). Email this other bloggers and get to know them. Throw out links to other blogs int he same topic in your own posts. This will lead to technorati and anaylitcs showing you linking to thema nd they may link back or at least check out your blog to see what you did to link to them.
Use social media to your advantage. Sign up for technorati, use stumble upon, digg, facebook, myspace, etc. Don't focus on all of these. Start with one or two you actually use and integrate them with the blog. I use twitter and it's a great way to intereact with creators and readers alike as well as serving as promotion for my blog. Same with Digg and Flickr. I dont use facebook or myspace, though, as Im not a big fan of those.
Conclusion
There's literally a mountain of stuff I could keep going on about - all little things that Ive learned over the past year of blogging - but I'll cut this 'short' here. While I believe all of the things I mention are important, don't let these suggestions dictate how you run your blog or make you feel like you have to do all of these things to be successful. just have fun blogging and make small changes as you go to improve the look and functionality of the blog.
Blog because you want to blog and don't let others tell you how to do it. That doesn't mean ignore advice, but don't feel like you have to go out and implement every little chagne I or others mention.
I made some of the changes you suggested to the motivation post, and it looks so much better. I'm going to take all you wrote and try to work it into my blog.