Brighton Bloggers

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Deletions and Unavailable blogs

One of the comments received by a couple of people on my recent request for comments was the pruning of dead blogs. So, I've been through today and checked out all of them... Any blogs that were previously flagged as unavailable, and which are still unavailable have been deleted. Any that aren't currently working or going where it looks like they should be, have been marked as unavailable.

Labels: admin

// posted by Jane @ 9:01 PM Add a comment

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Site re-think?

The time has come where I need to think about writing an administration system for this site. When BrightonBloggers first started, there were about 25 blogs, and new ones trickled through at one or two every few months. At the moment, the list of blogs is handwritten HTML, and updates are taking too long - the only automated aspect is the comment system which is a reuse of the PHP/mySQL system I crafted for my blog. I currently have another 13 blogs waiting to be added. Just to help you get the picture of the current process, currently, every time I add a blog I do the following:

Update the blogs page
Create a "New blogs" blog entry
Add the blog to the rss aggregator
Add the link to google coop to power the search
Add the blog owner to the mailing list
Email the blog owner to let them know that they are added
Refresh the OPML file

Jonathan emailed me with some suggestions a while ago, which was much appreciated. His suggestions were:

categorisation of blogs - personal, technical, commercial etc
pruning of dead blogs

So, feedback I'd like (in the comments will do fine) is:

What do you look for when you view the blogs link page?
Would categorisation be useful?
Do you ever use the search?
Would you be interested in being able to get hold of the rss feed for a blog as well as a normal url?
Does anyone use the opml file to subscribe to all (rss-enabled) brighton blogs?
Does anyone (other than me) subscribe to the aggregated rss feed?

Of course, any other feedback would be fantastic too :-)

Labels: admin

// posted by Jane @ 7:25 AM Add a comment

feedback
I look for blogs that might interest me, especially new blogs.
I think categorisation would be good although there might just be a butt ton of 'general' blogs?
I've never used the search
I would go and read the blog to see if I liked it before getting the rss, so i'd get that from the blog itself.
I fon't use or need any of the eeds offered
// posted by Relly @ 2007-03-29 10:03:30

categorisation?
I enjoy the Brighton Bloggers feed, and it's worth seeing everything as it's finding the unusual ones that is interesting.

categorisation?....user-added tagging surely, we _are _ Web 2.0 don't you know!

I'm surprised that this system doesn't already exist. I take it that you've had a good search around...or maybe the Brighton Bloggers can do some searching?

- Jez
// posted by Jez Nicholson @ 2007-03-29 10:23:50

Rosie's feedback
Didn't realise RSS feeds existed :)

Never used the search, but always a good thing to have. Perhaps making it more visible - always visible rather than a link to a page with search.

Tagging is a must per blog entry :)

The list is quite long at the moment, and I personally can't see myself (as a new or frequent visitor) going through all the blogs just to see what they are about.

If you want to be fancy, you could create a rating system.
// posted by Rosie Sherry @ 2007-03-29 15:24:21

feedback
The site ould do with a little bit of an introduction to interesting or entertaining blogs. Maybe ask a few Brighton bloggers to guest post or just talk about ones that catch your attention.
// posted by Laura @ 2007-03-29 19:34:17

- RSS feeds for each blog would be good
- a general RSS feed of blogs (where I get notified of new additions to the list)
- a search filed in the header of every page
- alternative views of the list based on posting frequency, popularity etc would be nice

Have you given any thought to aggregating other stuff like local Flickrers etc?
// posted by Danny Hope @ 2007-03-29 19:56:55

It might be a good idea to present your ideas at the next meetup and then people could give you direct feedback.
// posted by Danny Hope @ 2007-03-29 20:01:58

I didn't know about the aggregated feed but I shall subscribe to it now.
It'd be nice to have the RSS address but, yeah, as someone says above, I could probably find it for myself.

I am one of the 'dead' blogs in that my blog has gone entirely friends only, so do feel free to remove me if you'd like to.

It sounds like you could use a little help with the admin. Is this a job you could ask for volunteers that you could delegate to?

// posted by Mockduck @ 2007-03-30 08:44:11

Twitters
You start creating a list of twitters :)
// posted by Rosie Sherry @ 2007-03-30 10:24:28

Feedback
I can't say I use the blogs link page very much
Categorisation: yes, probably necessary now it's big...
Have never used search
Feeds: not really necessary, as most things I use (ie NetNewsWire) can auto-discover the feed from the main URL
I used the OPML file once
I do use the aggregated feed.
A thought: if you want to reduce the size you could kick Seafordians, Shorehamites, etc out and reserve it for those within the administrative boundaries of B & H
// posted by Tom @ 2007-03-30 13:00:00

Not that I'm in favour of that last option, since I live in Seaford myself, but sometimes write about Brighton-ish things, for reasons that will be clear to anyone who has visited Seaford, that is that there is nothing to write about apart from the fights outside the pubs
// posted by Tom @ 2007-03-30 14:14:07

Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback - some more food for thought. Like Rosie's twitter idea. Maybe a broad categorisation at the top level - blog, podcast, twitter, with 2nd level done as tags. Who gets to tag a blog - the owner? anyone? does some filtering need to be done to stop abusive tagging?

Anyone have any thoughts about geotagging blogs so we can have a big Brighton Bloggers map as well - or is that too intrusive? Obviously the blog owner would have to supply their post code/latitude longitude in the first place so they can opt out...
// posted by Jane @ 2007-03-31 10:37:13

enhancements
Could we have a list of blogs sorted by date added so we can see the latest.
// posted by chilli cheese @ 2007-03-31 13:39:20

Feedback
I don't use the feeds or the search functions either.

I do like to browse through the blogs - I think some kind of categorisation would be useful, whether this done by Tags, or by the user providing a short description.

I also think pruning the 'dead' blogs is a good idea.
// posted by soulmining @ 2007-04-02 11:22:10

It might be nice to show a second column on the homepage containing the latest posts to all of these blogs.

Another thing that occours to me: the way I /really/ use the site is as a promotional tool, ie.

I came to the site once because I wanted to get my site listed.

With this in mind perhaps it would be a good idea to offer people advice on other ways to do this.
// posted by Danny Hope @ 2007-04-02 16:32:04

feedback
I don't use much functionality.
I like the idea of categorisation - even if its by user tagging.
I also like the idea of showing the blogs by the date that they last updated pages, not sure if that is possible. I like the idea of a rating system.
Pruning dead blogs - definately. Maybe prune all the ones that haven't had a post in the last 6 months?
// posted by Brightonpubs @ 2007-04-03 12:17:17

usage
I do use the aggregated rss feed, though there's a lot on it and i think i'll have to stop cos it's way too much, but helpful as an intro to get the lay of the land.

It's my hammer and so I see everything as a nail, but if you're thinking of adding some power to the site, ExpressionEngine Core (free) would work just fine.
// posted by Adam Khan @ 2007-04-04 04:15:58