Sugus » blogging

Almost time to return

Pedro Assuncao — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:23:07 +0000

With less than 20 days until my return to the country where the sun does shine (Portugal), i can’t help but thinking more and more about these 3 years in Holland. With that in mind, i decided to write a really long post on my experiences here in the Netherlands during this time. For the time that i have left i will be gathering thoughts and ideas on what to write but you can bet it will potentially offend a lot of people.

In the meantime i want to express my sympathy towards Fanta lovers. I feel your pain when it comes to Fanta Lemon

Stay tuned.

I really hate intensedebate right now

Pedro Assuncao — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:26:57 +0000

For those who happen to have a blog (and who doesn’t these days?) you are probably aware of intensedebate. It’s basically a system of threaded comments that you can plug into your site and take advantage of… well, now that I look back after uninstalling it I really don’t see an advantage, but I’m sure there are some.

In any case, one of the things I was hopping for – when I installed it as a plugin for wordpress here on Sugus – was that it would allow me to have open comments (i.e. no captcha) but still protect me from spam. I mean, they do deal with a lot of comments, so they are probably good against spam also, right?. Not really. This morning I checked my comments area and found 120+ spam comments, most in Russian. I am an international kind of guy but I’m pretty sure I don’t know that many Russian speaking people.

Also, for the past month, I have been getting a lot of these spam comments to moderate. It seems that no matter how many I mark as spam there will always be new ones (again, Russian mostly).

But I digress, so my point is: If you are going to make a system to manage comments, make damn sure you figure out clever ways of dealing with spam or no one will ever use them. At least, to be a little constructive here, give the proper tools to the site owners who will moderate the comments, like allowing certain domains from posting comments (for instance, I noticed a lot of these comments came from different accounts at the same Russian email domain).

And this is just my small blog, I can only imagine what bigger blog owners go through. Maybe they don’t use intense debate and rely on captcha like I will once again…

Blog usability tips

Blog usability tips

Pedro Assuncao — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:00:03 +0000

I recently came across a really useful article about blog usability tips. I still think the best tip for any blogger is to write about things he/she is passionate about, but these can give you a bit of a boost presenting your content.

Here’s my take on some of their tips:

Pick a topic for your blog. Yes, if you write about one topic only. If, like me, you write about a wide variety of subjects then I don’t think it’s so relevant. What I would add is to categorize/tag your posts very well; That will make them easier to find and subscribe to only certain aspects of your writing.
Encourage comments. Absolutely. Discussion will keep your readers engaged, so that’s something you definitely should allow and push for.
Make it easy to subscribe. An RSS link in a visible location is definitely a plus to help people follow you. The subscribe by email thing, I’m not so sure. I don’t think that many people read blogs by email, but feel free to disagree
Keep posts short and to the point. This is important. No one likes to read long chunks of text. If you really have a lot to say then…
- …Use subheadings for long posts.
Link abundantly. Now, this is one I am tempted to disagree with. Depending on the appearance of your blog (CSS styles) this can make it unreadable (a lot of different text colors and styles, changing every other word). Also, too many links will just make for people to get tired of it and only following the first two or three, when the last one could be much more interesting. I would say: Link wisely.
Make headlines descriptive. Important but – again – don’t exaggerate. If you do, your readers will be disappointed that you are not “advertising what you are selling”.
Include a list of related posts beneath each post. It will suggest other things your users might find interesting. For the same reason, you should also…
- …Include a Top Posts section and…
- …Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.
Present your real viewpoint. Share your opinions on the things you write about. That will make your blog more personal, hence more interesting than plain raw facts/theories.
Reward commentators for commenting. Everyone has an ego. And every ego likes to be fed. Enough said
Post often. But make sure you don’t trade quality for quantity. It’s better to write less stuff that is really good, than crappy things more often. Think about how many people read Paul Graham’s essays? And how often does he come out with a new one?

You can read the full article here. It includes links to popular wordpress plugins (if your blog, like mine, happens to use wordpress), more tips, and a lot more comments on each of them.

I have also found this post by Tim Ferriss to be very interesting. He talks not only about design aspects, but also blogging tools, post frequency, best practices, and a lot more.