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Death of The Printed Blog

dbilyeu — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:03:26 +0000

It appears as though The Printed Blog has met its inevitable end, with its founder pulling the plug earlier this week due to lack of advertising funds and investment capital. I originally wrote about The Printed Blog back in February and questioned its staying power. Though a fairly novel concept, it seemed like yet another way of trying to push new technology back into the confines of older models. The layout and design were fabulous and I did find a couple of bloggers that I now follow regularly, but an actual printed copy never quite found its way into my hands, and I quickly forgot about checking in with the online version–instead preferring to follow individual bloggers via Google Reader. Occasionally these sorts of nostalgia-laced initiatives catch on, but sadly, this one did not. And yes, it pains me to write about printed articles as “nostalgia”, but it seems that is where we are at. More on this later…

What is a Successful Blog?

dbilyeu — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:30:27 +0000

While many ideas of what makes a successful blog can be fairly subjective, there are a few key components outlined by Meredith Farkas that most can agree upon.

Purpose or Focus

First among these is the necessity of a purpose or focus for the blog. The blog writer needs to know why they are there in order to keep posts consistent and hold on to their readership. When determining if a blog is worth revisiting, readers like to know what the blog will be talking about. A statement of purpose or “About” section will help clarify this.

Frequency

Secondly, Farkas stresses the importance of frequent postings. In the world of RSS, this might not be as important as it used to be, but before becoming committed to a blog, I like to see relatively recent posts. Usually this means I will be able to read new info fairly frequently. Sharing current information is also something I look for in a blog. News stories on blogs live a hard, fast life. If you are writing about a news item that happened a month ago, chances are your readership is already going to have heard about it and will move on from your blog. One of the blogs I read regularly is Resource Shelf. While this blog may not meet my criteria for visual appeal (see below) it is a great resource that is updated multiple times daily.

Marketing

A successful blog has to get its name out in the blogosphere so that people know to read it. I usually discover new blogs through references from other bloggers. Making your blog RSS compatible is a necessity in today’s world. This allows readers to subscribe and receive updates as soon as changes happen on the blog.

Visual Appeal

Finally, while many people would not consider this a necessary component of a successful blog, I like the blogs I read to be somewhat visually stimulating. This includes having an uncluttered layout and the inclusion of occasional pictures or videos. I see a lot of blogs so packed with information, that I get distracted and often pass by important information the blog is supposed to convey. One of the example blogs pointed to by Farkas is the Ann Arbor District Library. This blog includes an interesting visual layout with thumbnail pictures on almost every post. It is not overly cluttered and is updated frequently. Most definitely a successful blog.

Blogs…on paper?

dbilyeu — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:44:53 +0000

While most print media has rapidly eliminated its paper component in favor of a total online presence (or no presence at all), a company has decided to take blogs and reapply them to paper.

The Printed Blog takes posts submitted by local bloggers and turns them into a newspaper form, allowing blog reading to be both portable and tangible. A free newspaper, The Printed Blog has started distribution in Chicago and San Francisco. Their ultimate goal is to make the paper a twice daily publication, with readers determining which blogs will make their way to the paper through popular vote. Critics point out that most people can take their blogs with their through iphones, etc. and that printing blogs on paper is not very environmentally friendly. I think it is an interesting concept, but ultimate do not see it going very far. What say you?

A beginner’s blog

dbilyeu — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:01:10 +0000

My recollection of setting up a WordPress blog from my LIBR-240 class (back at least a year and a half ago now), was that it was difficult, tedious, and not exactly intuitive. This is especially true if you really want to make it your own, to adapt and manipulate the themes, plugins, and widgets to your desires. However, setting up my blog this go-round proved easier than expected. While I would still caution those taking the plunge for the first time to proceed slowly, focusing on each detail, advances in plugins and themes have helped make personalization less necessary and a beautiful blog simple to achieve. The hard part is how to choose a theme. I settled on the simple “Typograph” theme. It was nicely laid out, had all of the features I needed for the blog, and incorporated an “arts and design” feel that I wanted for a blog that represents my interests.

When it came time to choose plugins, I also suffered from extreme indecision. In the end, I decided to add 3 plugins–Global Translator (a plugin that allows readers to change the text of the blog into a language of their choice), Sociable (allows sharing of blog content through social networking sites), and a podcast plugin (we will hopefully see more how this works when we delve in to podcasts later in the semester). I did have some trouble with both Global Translator and Sociable. Both of these plugins required a little more setup and it took me awhile to find the right settings. When changing the settings for Sociable, I did not check the box that allowed the Sociable links to appear on the main page. Going back to the settings for this plugin and enabling this function fixed this particular problem. Global Translator was a little more difficult. After adding the plug-in, I did not realize that I needed to add it as a widget as well to allow the translation flags to show on the main page. In the settings for Global Translator, it also gives you the choice of how you would like your flags to display. Apparently the “image map” function does not display properly, but choosing the “show in a div” option allowed my flags to be visible to readers and for readers to change the blog language to one that works for them.

Overall, I would say that the blog experience thus far has been an enjoyable one. I still have a bit of tweaking to do here and there (setting up my rss, changing the “about” section). Hopefully these changes will even be done by the time most readers explore this site.