You may have noticed in my menu bar a new page called ‘Featured Articles‘… With the many articles found on this blog, it may be hard to find something you are looking for so this section helps you out by featuring my most popular articles sorted by category and also by date. Check it out…
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Do you have any suggestions or comments on the new page? How could I improve it? Thanks.
Thanks for that, of course, I love critique, its how you improve! I agree with you on everything and will fix it all up. Thanks heaps. Let me know when you have the best bits up on yours.
All good tips from Vivien, and good to see you taking them on board.
My advice is to make it a little more like my featured articles page. 😉
I tried going with smaller images however it just wasn’t right, and it was true the bigger images didn’t suit the style of the blog and did distract. I took out all the images and it was way better, big headings that attract you to the content. David, your featured articles page is where I got the idea of doing it in the first place so I guess that is how they are similar! Did you see it with the big images David?
I did catch the large images, and agree that it looks better without.
Nice updates.
It’s definitely a good idea to have featured articles page. I’m thinking of putting together Best Bits page for my blog 😉
Can you handle my critique? 😉 If yes, then here you go… (if not, then delete the comment ;-))
– remove the Coming Soon sections, add them when you have links to add, otherwise it reminded me of good ol’ under construction/coming soon web sites.
– that page looks too busy, the images distract from the links. Your linked articles are the main feature there, not the images. My advice: design smaller images and perhaps right-align them for each section to add some interest, or design thinner versions of those images.
– I wouldn’t keep By Months categorization on the same page, you could create another page – i.e. Archives, and order your articles by Month there instead.
Hope I wasn’t too harsh… that’s just my opinion, perhaps others would disagree.
Jacob, good work on the updated Featured page and I liked the way you linked it to the Archived by date page. You know what they say – sometimes less is more. Sometimes I think that “sometimes” should be replaced by “often” 😉
inspirationbit’s last blog post..A Bit Of Literature – The Bet
Hey, looks like there are some familiar faces around here!
I want to add a Featured Articles page to my blog too (I remember you suggested it to me a while ago, I haven’t forgotten!). It’s a great way to introduce people to your blog. I see you’ve made changes to it even before I got to see the first draft!
Wow, and you’ve install the CommentLuv plugin. You are sure fast on your updates! You must be on break from school or something 😉
LaurenMarie – Creative Curio’s last blog post..Why Being Odd is Good: The Principle of Balance
Hi, Yeah I know, well I suppose we are all in the same niche so it pays to take notice in others thoughts and opinions. I just recently read an article on Archiving which made me realise that I had been doing it the wrong way. I have now added a new sidebar called ‘Dig Deeper’ with links to archives of my site – you can choose to view it by popularity, date or the full archive or even random 🙂
I also read this article on top 10 best plugins to get more comments so I installed the Ajax Edit Comment plugin and the Commentluv plugin.
Yup and loving the break, but also can’t wait to get back to uni.
@Vivien – I also added a full archive now as well which I used by using SMD Smart Archives – pretty cool!
It was actually my first time at Michaels site and it was the first article I read there – I am not sure how I got there but I did. I would also be interested to see what blogs you actually do subscribe too.
Oh I am enjoying the breaks! I remember how much work there is at Uni, but even so it is an easy life and I really don’t want it to end. Where did you study?
I have tried out 3 archiving plugins and I found that SMD Clean Archives was the best so if that helps 🙂 I really would like to see a most popular articles page on your site.
Yes, I read that article from Michael, too. The title caught my eye because of the CommentLuv plugin that David had, so I’m very glad he installed it! I’d seen Michael around David’s site before and visited his blog a few times, but I think CommentLuv is a great idea to remind me to visit more (glad to see you have it too!)
Enjoy those breaks while you can… you don’t realize how much free time you really have until you don’t have it anymore *grumble* You can tell I don’t have it anymore; I graduated a little over a year ago and am really missing that freedom!
I will take a look at that archiving article. Thank you! I have not given archiving a single thought yet. That’s probably not the wisest thing!
LaurenMarie – Creative Curio’s last blog post..Why Being Odd is Good: The Principle of Balance
You want to know what’s on my blogging list? Too many blogs! Not as many as some, though (according to Google Reader I have 38 subscriptions). In no particular order and I’ll only link to ones I think you don’t know, hopefully they work:
Design-related Blogs
You
Me (I guess that doesn’t count, so make it 37 subscriptions)
Inspiration Bit
David Airey
GraphicDesignBlog.co.uk
Design Adaptations
Brian Gardner and his personal blog Shadowfeet.com (he hasn’t started updating it yet)
Graphic Define Magazine good articles about the business of design, not updated much though
i love typography
Redsil (John’s first blog, but I think he won’t update it anymore)
Randa Clay
Reflections He doesn’t post a whole lot anymore
This and That (Kristarella’s blog)
Spoon Graphics
Design Melt Down
Laughing Lion Design
PSDtuts really high quality tutorials
Veerle Subscribe to her blog. She posts about once/week and usually has some great Illustrator tutorials.
Ideas on Ideas I should get rid of this… he never updates, but check out the articles anyway. They are pretty good!)
Smashing Magazine
A List Apart Pretty much the definitive Web design authority
Writing Blogs
Copyblogger
Chris Garrett Chris could go under blogging blogs too
Daily Writing Tips
Blogging Blogs
Performancing I never comment here because you have to register
Problogger
Daily Blog Tips
Remarkablogger
NxE
Business Blogs
Successful Blog Liz is AWESOME! She could go under blogging blogs too
Dawud Miracle
eMoms at Home
Freelance Switch
Misc Blogs
Chris Brogan social media interests me
Caroline Middlebrook social media marketing
Dave Olson personal development, but he doesn’t write much anymore
Gen Pink She has fun posts sometimes and she’s a designer, though she rarely blogs about that part
Many of these I don’t keep up with on a daily basis. I frequent about 8-10 of those blogs and leave comments pretty regularly, though sometimes it’s a few days or a week in between visits. I’ve developed a relationship with those bloggers, which is why I keep coming back. There are also many that I skip large chunks of posts (like ProBlogger… he just posts too often! Usually about 3x/day) but I’m subscribed because I’ll scroll through and see if anything really catches my interest. It’s faster than looking through the site and having to load all the pages. BTW, a big tip: use full feeds. Many people, the instant they see partial feeds, will unsubscribe.
LaurenMarie – Creative Curio’s last blog post..Full Steam Ahead
huh you’ve got your plate full there, Lauren. Jacob thanks for asking that questions about the blogs Lauren is subscribed to, I was curious about that myself. I’m also curious how she keeps up commenting on her favourite blogs, even 8-10 is pretty big number to keep up with. Most of the blogs on Lauren’s list are familiar, some I’m subscribed to as well, others just visit once in awhile. I’m exactly like Lauren with Problogger feeds – just skim through them quickly unless smth catches my eye, same goes for dailyblogtips and copyblogger.
Jacob, I meant to ask you how did you format your RSS feed? – I’m using Thunderbird for my RSS reader and your posts show up as full HTML&CSS pages, looks exactly like your blog. A List Apart also shows up like that in my feed, all others show as a bare-bone HTML with no CSS styling.
P.S. Lauren, you’re subscribed to eMoms?! Are you preparing yourself or what? 😉
inspirationbit’s last blog post..DOS and DON’TS – Blog Branding
Jacob, forgot to answer your question about where I went to school. It’s a small college in Monrovia (near Los Angeles), CA, USA called Mount Sierra College. Many of the instructors there also teach at other design colleges/universitys like Otis and UCLA (University of California Los Angeles is very prestigious). We are very close to Art Center School of Design (world renown art/design school in Pasadena, CA. You graduate from there and you’re practically guarenteed a job anywhere). Don’t bother looking at the Mt. Sierra website, though. It’s awful! They don’t let the students do their design work. They should though, to show confidence in their training and to give great real world experience to the students. It’s also attractive as a prospective student to realize the advertising is done by students. It makes them think, “Wow! I’ll be doing that in 3 years!”
Vivien, well yes, of course I’m going to expand my family some day, but it’s probably 2-3 years off! I subscribe to Wendy’s blog because I would like to freelance and I think she’s got great advice on growing an online business.
As to commenting, I generally read a portion of the post, write a 1-2 sentence comment, read more, comment, read, comment. Then submit it at the end. It’s not too hard because I just write down my reactions. And sometimes I’ll comment on several posts I’ve missed at the same time and while the chance to converse with other readers is probably gone, I can still chat with the author a bit. And of course I have priority blogs I visit and the others I don’t. I don’t comment on every post, either; only if I have something valuable to add.
LaurenMarie – Creative Curio’s last blog post..Full Steam Ahead
@Lauren
Thanks again for that great list Lauren, I read pretty much the same as you… I will go through all of that list throughout the next week. I have a heap of subscriptions but only a few regular ones I read. I will let you know once I sort them out, they are all a mess at the moment.
Yeah, I am with you both about Probloggers posts being so frequent… just so much reading!
Wow you sure do have a lot of schools around where you went to school. My next closest one is about 2 hours away. But in Sydney they have plenty of Unis within 10mins drive from one another. We just had a redesign of our unis website and a new logo (which I like alot) however the website not so much… especially for a student body. Anywho, off to the beach again! (www.newcastle.edu.au/)
@Vivien
Tell me about, and check out the size of each comment she leaves. Regarding my RSS feeds I really have no idea, it is pretty stuffed because I have everything ticked as full feeds however in my google reader I only get excerpts which annoys me yet now you say you get full html n css. It could be to do something with relative links that other blogs aren’t using. So do you like Thunderbird as your RSS Reader? I have only really used FF and Google.
Hey! I know this is kinda off topic nevertheless I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in trading links or maybe guest authoring a blog post or vice-versa? My blog addresses a lot of the same subjects as yours and I feel we could greatly benefit from each other. If you’re interested feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you! Fantastic blog by the way!