Written on May 16th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 04:05 pm by David Shawver

TechCrunch Redesign Update

Blog Design 32 comments

A few days back I linked to the design saga around the TechCrunch Redesign where the redesign of this popular blog came under significant critique. The design was done by Rachel Cunliffe from Cre8d but it was pretty obvious that there was some level of different perspectives between designer and blog owner if you look at the post announcing the redesign by Mike and the comment thread of Rachel’s announcement.

Reading between the lines it seems that Mike’s opinion as the blog owner won out and the new design was something that Rachel was not completely happy about. Ultimately the decision has to come down to a blog owner on how their blog will look and Rachel took the gracious approach of saying things like:

“Design is incredibly personal and I’m not taking the negative comments to heart because I know I’ve created what my client had in mind and wanted - layout, ads, exact colors and format.”

To me this indicates some level of respect for Mike as a client.

Today I headed over to Rachel’s blog to find that things have taken a new twist. She’s resigned as a result of Mike’s latest post which features a design submitted by another blog designer saying that he’s impressed by it and intends to steal some of it.

I’m a little disappointed by Mike’s post and by the whole way the saga has been handled. As much as I think Rachel’s stood by Mike as a client and worked to his desires his post to me is a little undermining of her work. Perhaps some will say Rachel overreacted by resigning but obviously she’s had enough and is moving on. What the full story that’s led to it doesn’t look like coming out but something’s caused her to react this way.

I have seen some fairly full on critiques of Rachel and her work this week with some saying some pretty terrible things about her despite her working to her clients wishes. I’m amazed that she’s put up with the rubbish that some have thrown her way.

Having said this there has been some acknowledgment by some of her talent and I only hope that out of it will come cliental who not only appreciate her work but who are also willing to take her advice and expertise on board in the design of their blogs.

As I said in my last post on the topic I do hope this brings about some worthwhile discussion on the topic of blog design and doesn’t degenerate into a personal attack-fest. Hopefully the matter can all be put to bed now and everyone can get on with their business of blogging and designing.

Update: Mike’s responded to the situation here and the comments arguing both sides are flowing.
Update II:

Hmmm - in the light of day I’ve got a few more reflections.

Before I start I’ll say that I’m a friend of Rachel. She was the first blogger I ever met that took an interest in me and she’s been incredibly generous and helpful to me over the past 3 years. We’ve worked on projects together and V and I have had visits from her and her husband and have spent time in their home in NZ also. Keep this in mind as I write as I obviously have some bias and write out of that - I’m happy to admit that.

Ok - here’s some thoughts.

As some of the commenters in this post have mentioned - there is probably some right and wrong on both sides of it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I’m sure that everyone involved would like a second go at the situation.

This is all further complicated by differences in time zones - Mike is in the US, Rachel NZ - as well as that it seems a lot of the communication was done via email and in the later stages via blogs themselves (not ideal to resolve problems).

Perhaps both Rachel and Mike should have worked more on the design before going live and come to a better way of resolving the difference of opinion. Perhaps Mike could have better managed the launch of the design and the ensuing criticism that was directed at all concerned. Perhaps Rachel shouldn’t have resigned (I’m told she did it via email) and then directly posted about it.

Perhaps there are other perhapses…

I guess what I see is that there are contributions to this ‘problem’ that have been made from all sides (and by the rest of us commentating on the saga - I’m happy to be critiqued also).

Whether Mike intended it or not (and I doubt he did), he offended and hurt Rachel by posting about the design someone else came up with. Rachel’s reaction was extreme (although I’d maintain she acted with professionalism and has said nothing against Mike along the way) but it came out of hurt and ongoing frustration with the process and under the pressure of the moment.

Mike now obviously is hurt and angered by Rachel’s actions and I this needs to be acknowledged also. I don’t think that Rachel intended for that reaction either.

Perhaps both need to acknowledge some wrong doing? Or perhaps its best for everyone to back away and leave the smouldering mess alone for a while.

If I’ve played a part in adding to the mess I apologize. As I say above, I wrote about it partly out of a relationship with Rachel but also (as I wrote in my first post on the issue) largely because I think it’s an issue worth exploring (ie the relationship between designer and blog owner). More and more bloggers are engaging the services of designers and it’s worth exploring the issue as a result.

I’m not sure I’ve got much else to say on the issue now.

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Written on May 16th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 10:05 am by David Shawver

3 Factors to Consider Before Starting a Blog - Maintaining Blogging Momentum

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 23 comments

As I’ve pondered how to write about maintaining momentum (this is part 2 of a series) on a blog many of the suggestions that I have have boiled down to one thing - thinking ahead.

While I know many bloggers like to blog spontaneously and to go with the flow, I’ve found that planning a blog (both before you start it and in an ongoing way) can save a lot of heart ache later on.

Following are three of the issues you might like to consider ahead of time and before you start blogging that will help you later when it comes to maintaining momentum on your blog:

1. Topic breadth

Will the topic you’re considering starting a blog about be lend itself to being an ongoing project?

As I mentioned in my series introduction, there are two extremes when it comes to topic breadth that often lead to the death of a blog. The first is choosing a topic that is so broad that it becomes overwhelming and the second is choosing one that is so narrow that after just a few posts the blogger runs out of things to say.

One simple way to test whether a topic is wide enough is to search for news on it using tools like Google News or Topix.net. Look particularly for the frequency of news on the topic. This will give you an indication of whether there are stories breaking on the topic that you can bounce off on your blog.

Another test is to simply brainstorm what posts you could write on the topic. Simply put down on paper as long a list of post titles as you can as quickly as possible. If after 10 minutes you only have a handful of potential post ideas you might want to either widen your topic or find another one.

2. Energy Levels

Does the topic excite you? Are you motivated enough to write about it for the long term?

I made the mistake 12 or so months ago of starting a series of blogs on topics that I knew very little about and that I didn’t have sufficient interest in to sustain over the long haul.

While I did have some interest in the topics I was really kidding myself that I could write on the topics for long without slipping into a zombie like blogging state. In the last few months I finally ended these sub standard blogging efforts - they simply fizzled out due to a lack of interest.

Ask yourself what your passion and energy levels are for the topic you’re considering blogging about. Be brutally honest about this because as I found, we can sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we are interested in a topic when we are not.

Here are a few questions you might like to ask:

• Can you honestly see yourself writing on the topic in 2 or more years time?
• Is the topic one that you’re proud to be covering?
• Do you want to be known as an expert on this topic?

I’m not saying that you can’t start blogs on topics that you don’t want to be known for or that you’re not interested in - but these questions will help you to work out what your motivations are which is an important step in the process of building a sustainable blog.

If you’re not interested in your topic your potential readers will sense this and the chances of success will fall.

Successful blogs are almost always long term efforts and most do not really begin to see significant ’success’ for 12 or more months. They take a significant investment of time and energy and I guess all I’m saying is that it’s worth considering if the topic is something that you want to invest your life into for such a significant amount of time.

3. Time Audit

How much time do you have? Do you have time for this blog?

Different blogs will demand different levels of time from their blogger depending upon a combination of numerous factors:

• Topic - some topics are more dynamic than others in terms of how often they lend themselves to being updated, what type of posts they might stimulate and what potential traffic levels they might bring in (all factors that contribute to how much attention you’ll need to give the blog).

• Age of blog - I’ve noticed that my older blogs take more time to maintain. This happens for a number of reasons including the number of posts that people can leave comments on, the blog’s increasing Search Engine ranking, and an increasing profile etc. When you start a blog it might seem quick and easy to maintain but it will only become more involved and time consuming over time.

• Blogger’s Style - the style of blogging that you do obviously has an impact upon the time it takes to maintain. For example if you write a lot of longer original posts it takes significant time to write them. If you write in an engaging way that invites feedback the time needed to maintain comments sections increases.

Before you start a new blog do a time audit on your life. What spare time do you have currently? Is there any way you can free up more time for blogging? What upcoming life events do you have and how will these impact your spare time?

Doing a time audit is especially important if you’re considering starting multiple blogs at once. Many bloggers set themselves up for problems by simply starting to many blogs too quickly.

My recommendation is to start one blog at a time. Once you’ve set up a blog and have maintained it for a month or so do another time audit to assess whether you can realistically sustain another one. In this way you’ll only ever start as many blogs as you can maintain and you’ll give each new blog a real chance to survive rather than over stretching yourself and ending up doing multiple blogs poorly.

Tomorrow I’ll turn my attention to a number of ways a blogger can think ahead AFTER they’ve started a blog.

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Written on May 16th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 08:05 am by David Shawver

YPN Publishers Experiencing Down Time

Yahoo Publishing Network 4 comments

I’ve had emails from 4 different YPN publishers who tell me that the ads on their blogs are not showing and have not been for most of the day just gone by. Forums like Digital Point’s YPN down? thread seem to confirm that the problem is more widely spread than just a few isolated cases.

I just logged into b5media’s YPN account and the back end is not working but the blogs we’re running the ads on are definitely not showing them either.

I guess publishers need to remember that YPN is in beta and from time to time will have problems. It’s not really any comfort but part of the process.

update: not long after posting this I started seeing ads on our blogs that run YPN so perhaps things are back up and running again.

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Written on May 16th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 03:05 am by David Shawver

Maintaining Momentum in Blogging

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 27 comments

The Blogosphere is suffering from an epidemic of inactivity.

One of the most quoted statistics about the growth of blogging is that last year Technorati says that one blog is started every second (that’s 86,400 per day or 31,536,000 per year).

This is an amazing figure and one worth slipping into conversation when attempting to convince someone of the worth of blogging - however another finding from Technorati that is quoted much less is that around half of new blogs become inActive after just three months (this is how I interpret the figures in this post from Dave Sifry).

Scientists talk about the amount of ’space junk’ accumulating in orbit around the earth - my mind boggles at the number of blog junk that must be sitting idle - orbiting aimlessly through the blogosphere.

There are many reasons for this blog junk. A lot of it is the results of splogging (many splogs have a short lifespan), some of it is the result of blogs coming to the natural end of their life cycle (even good blogs die eventually) and some of it is the results of bloggers ‘testing’ new designs or playing around with different blog platforms.

I would guess however that many of the abandoned and inActive blogs orbiting around are the results of bloggers who’ve started blogs with good intentions who have not been able to maintain the momentum that they started out with in terms of posting quality and frequency.

Most of us have struggled at one time or another with maintaining momentum on their blog/s. The reasons for it are many:

• Bloggers biting off more than they can chew - one common scenario that I see in ‘Pro Blogging’ circles is bloggers starting multiple blogs at once and then failing to maintain any of them due to the load. Another problem is picking a topic that is just too wide and therefore overwhelms the blogger.
• Running out of things to say - on the flip side of starting a blog with too wide a focus is choosing one that is too narrow and where it’d difficult to find much to write about.
• Hitting ‘bloggers block’ - many bloggers hit periods where creativity and new ideas just dry up.
• Busyness - many bloggers find that the busyness of their lives is not compatible with the maintenance of a blog
• Holidays - taking time off from blogging is an essential part of keeping fresh and not burning out - however it’s also a danger time for bloggers as many fail to reengage with their blogging rhythm after a period away.
• Crisis - similarly some bloggers fail to reengage with blogging after a crisis hits their personal life. A death in the family, the loss of a job, a relationship break up or any other significant event can mean putting blogging on pause and make it hard to start up again.
• Blogging Crisis - I’ve seen a number of bloggers in recent times become overwhelmed by the negativity of the blogosphere, particularly when they’ve been critiqued or even attacked for their blogging. While this drives some on to blog harder and stronger it can also be a trigger for giving up in some.
• Boredom - as I look at some of the blogs I’ve let go over the last few years one of the reasons was a lack of excitement about the topic. It’d difficult to keep writing on a topic that fails to engage you.

This week I will be writing a series of posts on the topic of Maintaining Momentum in blogging (at the request of a number of readers of late). Hopefully through it will give us all a little inspiration and a few tips on how to re-start (or end gracefully) those blogs we’ve struggled to keep moving forward.

There is likely to be a bit of cross over between this series and the Battling Bloggers Block one that I did a few months back as ‘bloggers block’ is obviously one barrier to momentum - however maintaining momentum is wider than just a lack of ideas and creativity and hopefully you’ll find this series will address the wider issues in a way that the previous one could not.

Read the rest of the Maintaining Momentum in Blogging Series at:

• 3 Factors to Consider before Starting a Blog
• On the Go Planning
• Using Posting Schedules to Maintain Momentum
• Build on Reader Comments
• Schedule Writing Times
• What to do when you’ve said everything there is to say

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Written on May 16th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 12:05 am by David Shawver

Lessons from an Umbrella Salesman

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 25 comments

Warning - Tangent Ahead

Yesterday I was in the centre of Melbourne and got stuck in the rain (no comments from my interstate friends please). I had left home without an Umbrella and quickly made the decision that I needed to buy one as I was going to be spending a fair bit of time walking around and I wasn’t in the mood for getting drenched.

Being the researcher that I am when it comes to making purchases I decided to check out a number of options for umbrellas before buying one. I started with a larger department store (it was where I was when I first saw it was raining).

I couldn’t find anyone to ask where they were so set out on my journey to discover the ‘umbrella department’.

After about 15 minutes of searching up and down floors and in different sections I eventually found it hidden away in an obscure corner on an upstairs floor. I was quie hot and flustered by the time I found them and wasn’t really too impressed with the range or prices (they started at $30). I guess they were nice enough umbrellas to look at but I wasn’t in the mood after my hike around the shop to fork out that much for an umbrella. It seems no one else was impressed by the location or the range because in the 5 or so minutes that I was there testing what they did have I saw no one else shopping for umbrellas despite the heavy rain outside.

I left the department store (without making a purchase) and proceeded down the street that the department store was on. Within 20 or so meters, just a few doors up, I saw a guy with a bit of a crow around him. He was standing outside of a discount shop next to a massive stand of umbrellas with a massive sign that said ‘UMBRELLAS $5′.

As I approached him I was fascinated to see people digging around in their pockets for loose change and handing him money in exchange for an umbrella as they walked by (barely stopping). The umbrellas he was selling were all the same color and quality (not the best as you’d expect for $5) and virtually no one was stopping to check out whether they were any good or not.

As I stopped to watch him sell the umbrellas I was amazed to see how many he sold in just a few minutes. He was selling so many that other sales people came out to help, bringing with them more boxes of umbrellas to sell. The scene couldn’t have been more different to the umbrella department I’d just been in.

Obviously this discount store had thought through their umbrella sales strategy and knew that most people buy umbrellas when it’s raining (the umbrella stand wasn’t there the week before when it was sunny) and that if you have them at a low enough price point they’ll buy them on impulse. They’d learned the art of positioning and were exploiting it for all it was worth. They also had learned the art of making it as easy as possible for people to engage with them by bringing the stand onto the street and by making the price accessible for a quick sale.

Lessons from an Umbrella Salesman

As I watched the umbrella sales guy doing his job I asked myself what I could learn as a blogger from his strategy. A number of ‘lessons’ came to mind:

1. Anticipate Needs: The umbrella guy had obviously planned for rain. Maybe not that day, but he had a plan in place for the day that rain did happen (not an uncommon thing at this time on year in Melbourne). He knew what he’d do and how he’d do it when the opportunity came.

Bloggers need to learn to anticipate the needs of their readers also.

A prime example of an opportunity for this happened yesterday where many parts of the world celebrated Mothers Day. Technorati’s front page shows that ‘mothers day’ is one of the most searched for terms in their engine today and that it’s also one of the ‘hottest tags’ in the blogosphere also.

I talked with one entrepreneurial blogger who is in a ‘mother’ related niche yesterday and she told me that she’d had big traffic this week from people searching for gift ideas for their mums.

Of course to capitalize on this interest in people searching the web for ‘mothers day’ related keywords you would have needed to write about it some time ago. The blogger I spoke with had been writing keyword specific posts for over a month in anticipation of the opportunity.

The same thing happens all year long.

Another example - Bloggers writing today about the Da Vinci Code Movie (released later in the week) have left it too late to get highly ranked in Google.

Smart bloggers watch their niche for future trends and opportunities and respond as quickly as possible to be positioned to reap the rewards.

2. Identify Goals and Position Self for them: The umbrella sales guy had the goal of selling as many umbrellas as possible and so when the window of opportunity presented itself he positioned himself perfectly for it.

One of the first questions I ask bloggers that I consult with is:

‘what are the goals you have for your blog?’

The reason for this is that whatever the answer is will help us to determine what should be in the prime positions on a blog.

Blogs have ‘hot spots’ on them - physical places on a blog which tend to attract the eye of a reader. These are positions that tend to convert better than others when it comes to the goals that we might have.

Obviously we talk about this in terms of Advertising here at enternetusers a fair bit. If your goal is to make money directly from a blog then you’ll want to put your ads in the hot spots - but the same principle applies if you have other goals. For instance:

• If you want to grow an email newsletter - put a way to subscribe in your hotspots
• If you want to build your RSS subscriber list - put your RSS subscription buttons in the hotspots
• If you want to build your profile and become famous - sell yourself in the hotspots
• If you want people to discuss your posts - make sure your comments section is in a hotspot
• If you want to pick up consulting work - tell potential clients what you do and how to contact you in the hotspots
• If you want to sell a product - put an ad for it in the hotspots
• If you want to find a girl friend - put a sexy picture and your phone number…. in the hotspots

You get the idea.

What are the hotspots?
These vary a lot from blog to blog and you should experiment to see what positions convert best however there are a few starting points. If you want to learn about them you might be interested in reading a post I wrote about positioning ads - much of which is applicable for many of the other goals that you might want to achieve using the hotspot strategy.

3. Make it Easy: The last thing that umbrella sales guy did was make it incredibly easy for his customers to buy an umbrella. This was partially about positioning himself smartly - but it was also about his pricing. For starters the umbrellas were cheap and secondly they were an easy amount to pay for. Here in Australia a $5 is a pretty common note to have in a wallet or purse and if you don’t have it you’ll normally have a couple of $2 and a $1 coin. Almost all of his customers had the right change and he rarely had to hold them up to give them change.

He also had open umbrellas ready to be sold. This meant customers could see the umbrella both in it’s folded and open state to determine it’s coverage and made the time between buying and using the umbrella incredibly quick. Lastly because all the umbrellas were the same there was no need to stop and choose - you either bought one or you didn’t. Sales were seamless and incredibly easy.

When you consider your blogging goals it’s worth thinking a little beyond positioning and to consider how easy it is for your readers to do what you want them to do.

I was on one blog recently that obviously wanted me to subscribe to their newsletter. When I tried to do it I was taken through five pages asking for different details before I was subscribed. The only reason I did it was to see how hard it was - but I suspect most people would have given up after a couple of pages. If you want someone’s email address for a newsletter just get their email address and make sure they don’t have to go through any more stages than they have to to get it.

If you want people to contact you about consulting - give them a one click way of sending you an emailing expressing interest.

The easier you make it for people to do what you want them to do the higher the chances are that they’ll do it.

The umbrella sales guy must have sold hundreds of umbrellas yesterday simply by anticipating needs, positioning himself for success and making it easy for his customers to buy his product. How will you work on these principles in your blogging this week?

update: In a nice post ‘Picture my World’ has a post bouncing off this one called Lessons from a Ice Cream Truck.

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Written on May 15th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 10:05 pm by David Shawver

How Many Ads Should a Blog Have? - A Visual Breakdown

Advertising 19 comments

Photoshopblog has an interesting post that highlights (in visual form) the breakdown of different components of Engadget - specifically looking at the amount of the blog dedicated to the article itself, comments, site navigation, advertising and Weblog Inc navigation.

See the full visualization here.

The post under analysis is quite obviously much smaller in terms of post content than any other aspect but it is worth keeping in mind that they’ve done the test on just one of thousands of posts that Engadget has in their archives. Some posts will come up better under such analysis and some worse.

I can also think of a variety of blogs that have more or less content than Egadget does in comparison to other elements.

The comment thread in the post is pretty interesting and shows the diversity of opinions that people have on the topic of ads on blogs.

What do you think about the content/advertising balance on Engadget? How does it compare to your own blogging projects?

Found via Blog Herald

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Written on May 15th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 02:05 pm by David Shawver

Hitting Comment Spammers and Plagiarists where it Hurts

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 45 comments

I’ve decided in the last week or so to take my own fight against Comment Spammers and Content Thieves to the next level.

Every day I find people wasting my time and trying to make a quick buck from my blogs in ways that are either illegal, malicious, morally corrupt or deceptive. Most of them do so using some sort of mainstream Ad network (usually AdSense) and I’ve decided to report each one of them to AdSense using the built in mechanism on each AdSense ad.

Every Adsense Ad has a ‘Ads by Gooooogle’ link on it and if you click that link and look for the ‘Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw’ link on the page it takes you to you’ll be able to tell AdSense what you think about the ads.

• If the site is one that is using comment spam to promote themselves - tell them about it and demand they take action.
• If the site is one that is stealing your content without giving any attribution - tell them about it and show them where your content is and where the thievery is taking place.

Before Reporting them - before people accuse me of hurting innocent publishers who might not have intended to spam me or take my content I’ll explain what I do before I report people to AdSense. I never immediately do it and like to give people a chance to mend their ways. Here’s my approach:

Comment Spammers - My tolerance for comment spam is very low however I do understand that some people do it innocently enough without realizing either because they just don’t know it’s frowned upon because they are new to blogging or because I’ve misinterpreted their comment as spam. If I see people doing this I delete their comments and shoot them an email politely requesting that they take a look at my comment policy. But if they continue to do it, especially if they do it in an obviously automated and mass way I report them using the above method.

Content Theft - Once again, I know that some people don’t seem to realize what they are doing here, especially when it comes to reproducing RSS feeds. In every case, before I report them to AdSense I attempt to contact these people either through their blog or through their hosting via the Whois information that their blog has. In most cases people are happy to comply and will modify how they use the content or will remove it. If they ignore my approach (I always do it in a way that invites them to journey with me on it) or refuse to comply generally try other measures before reporting them to AdSense (or other advertisers).

My theory is that when you take away the ability for people to make money in this way that you begin to take away their motivation to do so. Most AdSense publishers have multiple sites connected to one account so to lose one can have a pretty significant impact. While I know my efforts are just a drop in the ocean I wonder what would happen if more bloggers fought in this way.

In most cases people comply and reporting to AdSense is a last resort. The threat of such a report seems to work wonders also!

What does AdSense do?

When you report a site in this way the first thing you’ll get back from AdSense (if you do so with your email address) is an automated email saying that they’ve got your email. Generally I then get a followup email a day or two later saying they are looking into the case.

At this point you either get silence, a further email asking for more details and on some occasions a response saying they’re doing something about it. I’ve not had results on every occasion but I do know that some of the sites I’ve complained about are either not around any more (often blogspot blogs) or are without AdSense ads on them. Not all end up like this but some have. Whether it’s my complaint or something else that has caused the result I don’t know - but I’m willing to stand up and have my say.

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Written on May 15th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 10:05 am by David Shawver

Monday - enternetusers Intergalactic Blog Writing Day

Pro Blogging News 11 comments

After my post New Blogging Rhythms where I talked about finding myself moving to a new rhythm of blogging due to the busyness of life I’ve decided to make Monday ‘enternetusers Intergalactic Writing Day’ (perhaps slight too grand a name).

I’ve set myself some goals in terms of numbers of posts for different blogs and have even set a few topics that I want to cover. I’m packing my laptop and taking off to my favorite cafe for a good few hours of solid writing. No email, no IM, no internet access - I’m just going to write.

The theory is that Monday here in Australia is quiet in terms of incoming email, stories breaking etc (because it’s still the weekend elsewhere) and if I can write some good solid pieces today which can be rolled out during the week on different blogs it takes the pressure off later in the week while it’s busy.

That’s the theory - I’ll update you on the reality later today.

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Written on May 13th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 11:05 pm by David Shawver

Speedlinking - 14 May 2006

Pro Blogging News 5 comments

• I wondered how long it’d be before someone offered a Blog Backup service - now they have. It’s still in beta and has a 10MB limit on it (when I backed up enternetusers this week it was 134MB) but it could be useful for some. Found via Weblog Tools.
• Jon reflects upon the first week of his new Linux Blog Network
• The ever vigilant Jen from Jensense notes that AdSense have again changed their Program Policies and seem to have backdated the changes by two whole months. The change limits publishers to a total of 4 referral buttons per page (one per referral program) which indicates that they are planning to release more referral programs. The idea that they change the policies had never sat well with me but that they would backdate changes just seems odd.

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Written on May 13th, surf Active Apparel website Men's Online Clothes Shopping 1 zone.at 03:05 pm by David Shawver

TechCrunch Redesign Creates Discussion on Blog Design

Blog Design 28 comments

I was chatting to an artist friend of mine about an exhibition he’s currently involved with that is causing quite a stir in some circles here in Melbourne. I asked him whether the extreme reactions that the exhibition caused bothered him or not and his reaction was that he was really happy about it because the dialogue (as emotional as it was) had caused people to think deeply about art and the messages that the art he’d produced was conveying. While many disagreed with elements of the exhibition it had caused even them to think through the reasons why they reacted in that way. His arguement was that ‘good art causes a polarization of opinions.’

I’m interested to follow some of the discussion caused by the redesign of uber-blog TechCrunch in the last 24 hours. It was done by designer Rachel Cunliffe (who did enternetusers’s design also) and has been critiqued by quite a few bloggers (expressing a wide range of ideas on it).

Quite a lot of what has been said about the design is critical and there is some debate about how much impact TechCunch owners and editors played in changing Rachel’s original ideas.

I’m not really sure where I sit with the redesign as compared to the old one (I rarely read it in anything other than Bloglines so barely remember the old one) but I’m more interested in the discussion that it’s generated which has brought up some really worthwhile discussion points including:

• the possible points of tension between a blog owner and designer
• the placement of advertising on a blog
• whether blogs should have ads on them
• whether a blog’s design should reflect it’s topic - and how
• what is ‘web 2.0′ design?

Read about some of the opinions and explanations of the new Tech Crunch design:

• Crunch Notes - official explanations
• Nik Cubrilovic - more official announcements
• Ouriel’s Poll - a poll on what people think about the new design
• Rachel’s Announcement (the comments are interesting)
• TechCrunch Uglified - I think the title speaks for itself on this one
• Business Log’s Critique
• Aaron’s view on the redesign
• Tyme’s reflections - mainly on the ad factor
• Scrivs Shares some thoughts - similar to Tyme’s

I’m sure there’s lots more out there - but as you’ll see there’s some useful discussion going on. I just hope it doesn’t turn into a bitch-fest and that people see this as an opportunity to discuss the principles of good blog design rather than see it as an opportunity to get personal and get into one-upmanship

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