Tuesday, 19 April 2005

Organising your blog?






Have you ever wondered about how best to organise your blog?

For example, would readers prefer your list of popular posts to all be visible, or in a dropdown list only? Or, if you want to blog on lots of different things like techie/bloggy stuff and life/health generally, would readers welcome the variety or be put off - would it be better to split out the non-techie posts into a separate blog (the person who prompted this question will know who they are!)? How important are categories to readers and how do they like them displayed? Do people prefer comments to appear in a popup or peekaboo style? etc etc etc...

Well I'm volunteering to draw up a Web survey which we could then get others (and us too of course) to answer. As many people as possible, for more accurate results (I've tried out a free survey tool before so I've some experience of it now). The results page can't be made public in the free version (and I'm sure not forking out for a paid one!), but what I'll do is copy out and post the summary of the results.

So - if there are any questions you've always wanted to ask about how readers would like to see blogs organised and set out etc, just feed them to me by posting a comment, and I'll incorporate them into the survey. (If you're too shy to post publicly here then feel free to email me at the address in the sidebar of my blog - I promise I'll not tell anyone who wants to know what!).

But keep it clean, people, jokey questions will entertain me (and send 'em in if you must!), but they sure ain't gonna make it into the survey... and I reserve full editorial rights anyway!

To cater for those who don't visit here much I'll give it till noon GMT on Sat 30 April 2005 for people to suggest questions, then I'll put up the survey ASAP after that. (And leave it up for say a month before posting the results). (I won't have a huge amount of time to whip up a survey much before then anyway.)

If people think this is a bad idea I won't get many replies but I expect I'll probably post a survey anyway with just the stuff I'd like to know about, and see if any kind souls will answer as they did my first survey...!

Cheers
Improbulus.


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4 comments:

ChickyBabe said...

:-)

I'm working on it. It's my homework for this weekend...I hope you get many responses, I think it's a great topic.

TaB said...

Ditto and Ditto to that chickybabe. 27th now, wait for us to send some info improb? I'll russtle up my girls see if they will participate.

jimmytwoshirts said...

Excellent idea.
My thoughts on a few of them:
*I like 3 columns as long as they are liquid and will fit whatever resolution is thrown at them.
*With Firefox, I can resize fonts as I see fit, so no, it does not matter.
*Don't comment off the front page.
*I reply to comments however I can. In my own comments of course, if the reader leaves an e-mail, or on the readers own blog.
*list on sidebar (the fewer times i have to click the better)
*organization of links depends on how many there are
*Ads will not necssarily stop me but it depends. Ads on a blogspot page that has been up for a month will make me go away. Ads on a page on it's own domain name that has been around for a while and offers good content, that I can live with.
*full posts are better (again the fewer times i have to click the better)
*of course colors/design say alot about the blogger
*photos are good, preferably floated.
*weather pixie, lunar phases, feeling grumpy are cool if you are 14, after that, no.
*Link buttons should be readable.

Hows that for a start?
Cheers.

J2S

Improbulus said...

Thanks very much for those thoughts, I shall rustle up a survey as soon as I can - probably not until the weekend though, so if you've any more ideas, please do keep 'em coming!