Tag: meta

Are Blogrolls Still Relevant?

I’ve been seriously thinking about ditching my blogroll link. It’s partially a technical issue, partially a personal one, and partially because I’m no longer sure that a blogroll is adding any value to the page.

Technical, because at one time I was using Bloglines as my primary feed reader, so my blogroll was also an up-to-date reflection of the feeds I was reading. I’ve since switched to Google Reader, but the way they implement feed sharing is different and makes sharing my current feed list a lot more annoying. Bloglines let me drop one snippet in and boom, my whole feed list was displayed, folders and all. Google does feed sharing differently — each folder is its own feed and needs its own snippet. That gives you more flexibility in how you share your feeds but it’s also extra work. Frankly it’s not all that much work (and I’d only have to set it up once), but I just can’t be bothered to do it.

In short, what you see in my blogroll is not fully in sync with what I’m currently reading. And silly as it may sound, that bugs me. I know every blogger has different ideas about what their blogroll should be, but for me it was always about sharing my own personal info stream. There’s any number of lists of the “top” blogs in any given category out there. My blogroll was meant to be more personal. Now that it’s not, I don’t like having it there as much.

Finally, I’m also not sure that anyone is actually finding value in a blogroll. When I look at web analytics reports (both for this blog and others), more and more of the referral traffic I see is coming in from Twitter and Facebook. Very little comes from other blogrolls. So there’s a part of me that’s thinking, “if nobody is using this, why not ditch it for stuff that people will find more useful or interesting?”

What do you think?
Kill it or keep it?
Is a blogroll still relevant anymore?
Am I overthinking the issue and need to go do something fun with my weekend?

Another Turn of the Wheel

Four years ago today, Fiat Lux came online.

I’ve averaged a post every 1.21 days since then. Not bad, for a solo effort (plus one guess post from Scott).

I’ve had days where fewer than a dozen people came to my site, and a few days where more than 6,000 people stopped by.

I’ve had days where I couldn’t wait to get something up onto the blog, and days where I’ve though about shutting it down entirely.

I’ve learned a lot about the mechanics of web marketing — SEO, how to build traffic, how to get links — that I use in my professional work.

I like to think that the discipline of writing this blog has made me a better writer (although this post is probably not one of me better efforts in that regard). At the very least, I’m more aware of my weaknesses as a writer now, and hopefully I do a better job of working through them.

Lately, though, it feels like most of what I want to write about is me, me, me. And this blog is at it’s best when it’s not all about me. Not sure how to resolve that contradiction right now; perhaps I need a few more days away from the blog to get my groove back.

I closed my first post like this:

What next? Who knows. But I think that I’d like to blog the journey.

And now, 4 years later, I still do. So let’s see what happens.

Against The Grain

I’m of the camp that feels a blog is not a blog without comments. I also feel that there should be as few barriers to entry as possible when it comes to allowing comments. Easy interaction is a huge part of what has made the Internet great, and I’m a huge fan of it.

However, the damned comment spammers have made it impossible for me to run my blog the way I’d prefer. The vast majority of my older blog entries have had their comments closed to keep the spammers at bay, I’ve added all sorts of anti-spam plug-ins, and I’ve turned trackbacks off entirely.

And despite it all, especially in the last 48 hours, the comment spam has been overwhelming.

So today, and unwillingly, Captcha verification has been added to the blog comment form (Thanks Scott!). I really wish I didn’t have to, but it’s either that or go to some form of user registration / comment moderation, and on balance, I think Captcha is a little less of a burden all around.

To all you comment spammers out there who’ve forced me into this: You suck.

To the rest of you: I’m sorry. I hope it’s not too much of a hassle.

The Grey Lady and Blogs

As Yogi Berra might say, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Remember the spate of articles published in the mid-late 1990s about people who used the then-new medium called the Internet? What did many of them focus on? Obsessive Internet use. So today, The New York Times writes about blogs. And what do they focus on? Obsessive bloggers.

Blogging is a pastime for many, even a livelihood for a few. For some, it becomes an obsession.

Can’t the mainstream media come up with something else to write about? There are probably a couple of million blogs out here in the blogosphere. There’s got to be something more newsworthy in all that wealth of punditry, rants, raves, personal details, pet and child photos, and general snarkiness. There’s got to be at least a few good stories in there somewhere.

The cynic in me suggests that if mainstream media were to take a more realistic look at blogs and blogging, they would have to ask themselves some hard questions about whether they don’t have some things to learn about reporting from the blogosphere. (Jeff Jarvis has touched on this subject over at Buzz Machine). So instead, they look at the freakshow aspects.

I certainly don’t consider myself to be obsessed with my blog. There are days I post multiple times, there are days I don’t post at all. If I don’t post for a couple of days, I do start feeling like I ought to get something up here, but it’s hardly a compulsion. And I suspect many – dare I say most? – casual bloggers feel the same way.

But of course, that’s not newsworthy.