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BlogRush Widget and Other Site Updates
I’ve made a number of changes to goldengod lately. Some of them, like the BlogRush widget in the lower left, are obvious. Others are a bit more hidden.
Consider this a State of The Blog address, keeping you up to speed on what I’ve been doing. It’s half self-congratulatory BS and half VH1 Behind-the-Music coke-umentary!
BlogRush
The most obvious change is the BlogRush widget that I’ve added to the bottom of my sidebar. It purports to be this fancy new service that performs contextual interlinking of the blogosphere.
The widget displays five articles from other blogs that should be related to mine. Every time I display the widget, I earn a credit to have a link to one of my posts displayed on another relevant photography blog. I also earn credits when the widget displays on the blog of anyone I’ve referred.
There’s a sexy video on the homepage that can explain it better than I. The service has launched, literally, in the last 24 hours. Kinks are still going to be working themselves out, but I’m impressed with the ease of use so far.
I want to try this for a week and see if it becomes a viable source for new readers. If you’re one of my many readers who also writes a photography blog, you can also try it out by signing up here.
Please note that all my BlogRush links are referrals; I enjoy taking advantage of you.
Other Changes
I’ve done a lot more work on the sidebar, but it’s mostly little things. I’ve cleaned up my blogroll a bit to better reflect what I’m actually reading on a regular basis. I’ve done away with my web-1.0-esque links page and renamed a few major pages.
The About goldengod page has been completely revamped. It’s now a lot more relevant to goldengod as a photography blog and sounds less like self-indulgent copy from a Livejournal.
I’ve been asked if I’m going to be removing my cell phone number from the Contact page and the short answer is no. I don’t exactly get a lot of prank or irritating calls because of it and some people have told me they found it useful. By and large, people seem to be too shy to crank call me. No, that’s not an invitation.
The Gallery is in desperate need of an update, as is the Last Fridays page. I’m thinking of culling them completely, in favour of permanent pages collecting short series’ of photography lessons. If I do this, I’ll be doing a weekly photodump from my Flickr instead. I’m torn over this one, so if you have an opinion one way or the other; please let me know.
Post Frequency
The more observant of my readers will have noticed that yesterday was the first day out of the last 40 that I didn’t post *something*. I had issues with my contacts resulting in blinding headaches and an inability to see out of both eyes for most of the day. Fun!
Yes, I do plan on continuing the daily posting schedule. It’s stressful and time-consuming, but in a strange way it’s fun. It’s very challenging to me and keeps me learning something new every day. I’m thinking of stealing a page from Brian Auer and starting to plan out my weekly schedule a bit more.
Regular photography-style posting resumes tomorrow in force, so hold on to your hats.
Brian Auer Said,
September 15, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
It appears that we’re thinking alike — I just spent a bunch of time cleaning up my sidebars and contact page (still need to do the about page). I’m curious to see how this blogrush thing works out — maybe I’ll give it a go.
Denear Said,
September 16, 2007 @ 8:01 am
Hi Andrew,
I like the changes, so far….. I have to be honest, your blog and Brian’s are in my very short list of favorites, which I visit when ever there is an update (which is pretty much daily). But I prefer to view your content in my feed viewer, as EI tells me your site always wants to put files on my system…. I suspect this is an EI issue, and yes I prefer Firefox but I have yet to tansfer all my feeds to it. I just thought you should know, cause if it happens to me it must be happening to others as well.
Keep up the great work.
Andrew Ferguson Said,
September 16, 2007 @ 11:33 am
@Denear: I never use IE, so I didn’t actually know it was trying to download something. I looked into it and turns out it was the old Technorati embed script. It’s been misbehaving ever since they upgraded to the new one and I didn’t.
I’ve just removed it completely now, because the new one no longer offers the ability to function invisibly. You have to have a giant tacky THING in your sidebar. Lame.