Blog design tips
Thanks to Teresa , aka Blog Mom, who has acted as my chief counselor, and to Mary at RSS Pieces for her 10 features of successful blogs. Teresa cautioned me on how cluttered Transparent was looking, so I took her advice, abridged the RSS links and got rid of all those chicklets. All ten points of Mary's article are valuable, she says that (#1) the blog search tool and (#2) the RSS subscription icon should be prominent (so now both are on top of my sidebar). I like (#9) RSSPieces's site map, it's similar to, but more detailed than Kevin's equally useful category index - both sites offer better ways to display archives as categories... and I hope to adopt this later.
Mary also says (#5) slap those social bookmark chicklets at the end of articles. I couldn't figure out how bloggers were generating social bookmarking tags - so I found one (it doesn't look as nice as above, anyone else know others?). This app also automates Technorati tags. Mary, help me out with a (#6) tag cloud generator, too.
And finally, check out Jon's Carnival at Property Monger ... I start writing so late in the evening (1:00am EST), I get to read the Carnival reviews and enjoy the Carnival for bedtime stories. Kudos to all... great posts... and thank you Jon!
Technorati Tags: blog, blog design, rss, tag cloud, social bookmark link generator, carnival of real estate
Wow, Pat. The changes look great and will make your site so much more useful to both new and regular readers. Thanks for the mention.
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I recently downloaded a social bookmarking plug-in that I like. You can get it at: http://www.dountsis.com/articles/wordpress/social-bookmarks-bar-plugin-for-wordpress.php
You can see what it looks like on my page. Best of luck, and keep up the good work!
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Wish I was on the WP platform, the links look like a clean design...
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Yes, much cleaner PK. Nice work. You may want to make the header click home.
Have you tried the sellsius/blogging systems Blog surfer. We noticed a rise in page views after installing it. Link below.
Maybe you can figure how to adapt it for more specialized surfing (via categories/tags/keywords), since it currently is a random searcher, like a remote control.
http://tinyurl.com/y56cpv
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I guess i just think the world would be a better place if everyone had a blog mom and did what she said.
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Ya it's much better here now.
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Thanks all for the feedback... I'll continue to improve... unfortunately I can't use the WP plug-ins even though BlogSurfer looks like it rules... (and I hopped over to Zebra to see those fine detailed bookmarks, really nice...)
Teresa... my mom used to say stuff like that! sniff...
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