iDevBlogADay Website Suggestions
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Christopher Waite
Sep 13, 2011, 12:26:17 PM9/13/11
to iDevAuthors
Hi,
I had an idea for the iDevBlogADay website and thought i'd post it
here, as a thread, so perhaps others could add their website
suggestions too (all in one neat, tidy place). Miguel can then pick
and choose, comment, ignore at will, etc.
I really like the new format of iDevBlogADay but I think it's still
lacking a community feel (most of us talk on twitter so perhaps that's
why). I think part of the reason for this is that you write your post,
publish it, and potentially have some comments on your post... but few
people really know those comments exist. Here's a good example...
I read Raimons great post titled "The Overrated Value Of Third Party
Engines And Frameworks" and really enjoyed it - as, I'm sure, did all
of you. I stumbled across the post again, due to a synching issue with
google reader, and there are a lot of comments - really great stuff
that enhances the post incredibly. Check it out ->
http://gavinagames.com/2011/09/10/the-overrated-value-of-third-party-engines-and-frameworks/.
I bet we'd all comment more if we knew there was interesting
commentary going on already.
1) The first and most obvious thing to do is to encourage people to
comment on posts more.
2) It would be great if the iDevBlogADay website had the concept of
"Hot Posts" (You'll have to think of a better name). It would display
a list of posts that currently have a lot of activity (comments). From
a technical perspective, perhaps you could hit all of the posts in the
last month and check for the number of comments. Once its older than a
month it could disappear from the list or, if you wanted to get a
little more technical, check for the date/time of the most recent
comment to see if there has been recent activity.
Anyway, just a thought.
I had an idea for the iDevBlogADay website and thought i'd post it
here, as a thread, so perhaps others could add their website
suggestions too (all in one neat, tidy place). Miguel can then pick
and choose, comment, ignore at will, etc.
I really like the new format of iDevBlogADay but I think it's still
lacking a community feel (most of us talk on twitter so perhaps that's
why). I think part of the reason for this is that you write your post,
publish it, and potentially have some comments on your post... but few
people really know those comments exist. Here's a good example...
I read Raimons great post titled "The Overrated Value Of Third Party
Engines And Frameworks" and really enjoyed it - as, I'm sure, did all
of you. I stumbled across the post again, due to a synching issue with
google reader, and there are a lot of comments - really great stuff
that enhances the post incredibly. Check it out ->
http://gavinagames.com/2011/09/10/the-overrated-value-of-third-party-engines-and-frameworks/.
I bet we'd all comment more if we knew there was interesting
commentary going on already.
1) The first and most obvious thing to do is to encourage people to
comment on posts more.
2) It would be great if the iDevBlogADay website had the concept of
"Hot Posts" (You'll have to think of a better name). It would display
a list of posts that currently have a lot of activity (comments). From
a technical perspective, perhaps you could hit all of the posts in the
last month and check for the number of comments. Once its older than a
month it could disappear from the list or, if you wanted to get a
little more technical, check for the date/time of the most recent
comment to see if there has been recent activity.
Anyway, just a thought.
Miguel Á. Friginal
Sep 13, 2011, 1:02:48 PM9/13/11
to iDevAuthors
First, I totally agree about the comments being important, and the
missing "community" feel. And yes, I would love to do anything that
helps with that. But then, I don't really know how. The simple task of
getting the comment count of a post is complicated by the multiple
types of blogs everybody uses (some of them totally custom). Then most
of the relation between the iDev site and your site is through its RSS
feed; but the posts feed usually doesn't contain any info at all about
comments. WordPress creates feeds for each post with the comments
(Raimon's article, for example:
http://gavinagames.com/2011/09/10/the-overrated-value-of-third-party-engines-and-frameworks/feed/),
but the default template for feeds in WP and other software only grabs
the latest 10 items, so I cannot even tell that article has 14 items
without grabbing multiple pages of RSS feeds. How often would I have
to refresh that anyway? Is a mess. Probably there is some other way to
grab the number of comments from that post from the XML-RPC WordPress
API, but that's not going to be stander across blog engines.
If anybody here knows of a way of doing this, I would be more than
willing to try it out though.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 9:26 am, Christopher Waite <chrismwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had an idea for the iDevBlogADay website and thought i'd post it
> here, as a thread, so perhaps others could add their website
> suggestions too (all in one neat, tidy place). Miguel can then pick
> and choose, comment, ignore at will, etc.
>
> I really like the new format of iDevBlogADay but I think it's still
> lacking a community feel (most of us talk on twitter so perhaps that's
> why). I think part of the reason for this is that you write your post,
> publish it, and potentially have some comments on your post... but few
> people really know those comments exist. Here's a good example...
>
> I read Raimons great post titled "The Overrated Value Of Third Party
> Engines And Frameworks" and really enjoyed it - as, I'm sure, did all
> of you. I stumbled across the post again, due to a synching issue with
> google reader, and there are a lot of comments - really great stuff
> that enhances the post incredibly. Check it out ->http://gavinagames.com/2011/09/10/the-overrated-value-of-third-party-....
missing "community" feel. And yes, I would love to do anything that
helps with that. But then, I don't really know how. The simple task of
getting the comment count of a post is complicated by the multiple
types of blogs everybody uses (some of them totally custom). Then most
of the relation between the iDev site and your site is through its RSS
feed; but the posts feed usually doesn't contain any info at all about
comments. WordPress creates feeds for each post with the comments
(Raimon's article, for example:
http://gavinagames.com/2011/09/10/the-overrated-value-of-third-party-engines-and-frameworks/feed/),
but the default template for feeds in WP and other software only grabs
the latest 10 items, so I cannot even tell that article has 14 items
without grabbing multiple pages of RSS feeds. How often would I have
to refresh that anyway? Is a mess. Probably there is some other way to
grab the number of comments from that post from the XML-RPC WordPress
API, but that's not going to be stander across blog engines.
If anybody here knows of a way of doing this, I would be more than
willing to try it out though.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 9:26 am, Christopher Waite <chrismwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had an idea for the iDevBlogADay website and thought i'd post it
> here, as a thread, so perhaps others could add their website
> suggestions too (all in one neat, tidy place). Miguel can then pick
> and choose, comment, ignore at will, etc.
>
> I really like the new format of iDevBlogADay but I think it's still
> lacking a community feel (most of us talk on twitter so perhaps that's
> why). I think part of the reason for this is that you write your post,
> publish it, and potentially have some comments on your post... but few
> people really know those comments exist. Here's a good example...
>
> I read Raimons great post titled "The Overrated Value Of Third Party
> Engines And Frameworks" and really enjoyed it - as, I'm sure, did all
> of you. I stumbled across the post again, due to a synching issue with
> google reader, and there are a lot of comments - really great stuff
Owen Goss
Sep 13, 2011, 1:12:47 PM9/13/11
to ideva...@googlegroups.com
A friend or mine worked for a company called PostRank which had an api that allowed you to get things like number of comments, twitter refs, fb posts, related to a given blog post. They recently got bought out by Google though, and I can't find any info in their api's anymore. So, um, this post was kind of pointless. But, it *would* have given you exactly the info you wanted accessible via JSON data! ;-) I'd wager Google will offer their API's at some point, though...
Owen
Sent from my iPad
Miguel Á. Friginal
Sep 13, 2011, 3:00:20 PM9/13/11
to iDevAuthors
Talking about enhancing the community options though… what do you guys
think of adding all the "Retweet this", "+1 that", etc. buttons to
every post? Or the "#idevblogaday" on Twitter sidebar? (Yes, I am
basically copying all the stuff from the AltDevBlogADay site, sorry
Mike). The only reason I have not done this yet is because it seems
the site itself is probably not used that much; I mean, people either
subscribe to the common RSS feed, or go directly to each author's site
through direct links. This is the basic difference with AltDev; they
can show comment counts, refer other publications (like Gamasutra,
that I would not mind pushing some of our content to), to a common
place, and get more traffic through the AltDev site itself. The iDev
site on the other hand is more in a second plane with respect to each
author site, no? So maybe what we need is to push people from each of
your sites, back to iDev so they discover other authors; maybe go back
to the old WP widgets that some of you installed with lists of
authors, etc? As I said before, any ideas to help build the iDev
community and bring more readers to you guys, are more than welcomed.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 10:12 am, Owen Goss <oweng...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A friend or mine worked for a company called PostRank which had an api that allowed you to get things like number of comments, twitter refs, fb posts, related to a given blog post. They recently got bought out by Google though, and I can't find any info in their api's anymore. So, um, this post was kind of pointless. But, it *would* have given you exactly the info you wanted accessible via JSON data! ;-) I'd wager Google will offer their API's at some point, though...
>
> Owen
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
think of adding all the "Retweet this", "+1 that", etc. buttons to
every post? Or the "#idevblogaday" on Twitter sidebar? (Yes, I am
basically copying all the stuff from the AltDevBlogADay site, sorry
Mike). The only reason I have not done this yet is because it seems
the site itself is probably not used that much; I mean, people either
subscribe to the common RSS feed, or go directly to each author's site
through direct links. This is the basic difference with AltDev; they
can show comment counts, refer other publications (like Gamasutra,
that I would not mind pushing some of our content to), to a common
place, and get more traffic through the AltDev site itself. The iDev
site on the other hand is more in a second plane with respect to each
author site, no? So maybe what we need is to push people from each of
your sites, back to iDev so they discover other authors; maybe go back
to the old WP widgets that some of you installed with lists of
authors, etc? As I said before, any ideas to help build the iDev
community and bring more readers to you guys, are more than welcomed.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 10:12 am, Owen Goss <oweng...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A friend or mine worked for a company called PostRank which had an api that allowed you to get things like number of comments, twitter refs, fb posts, related to a given blog post. They recently got bought out by Google though, and I can't find any info in their api's anymore. So, um, this post was kind of pointless. But, it *would* have given you exactly the info you wanted accessible via JSON data! ;-) I'd wager Google will offer their API's at some point, though...
>
> Owen
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 2011-09-13, at 10:02 AM, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > First, I totally agree about the comments being important, and the
> > missing "community" feel. And yes, I would love to do anything that
> > helps with that. But then, I don't really know how. The simple task of
> > getting the comment count of a post is complicated by the multiple
> > types of blogs everybody uses (some of them totally custom). Then most
> > of the relation between the iDev site and your site is through its RSS
> > feed; but the posts feed usually doesn't contain any info at all about
> > comments. WordPress creates feeds for each post with the comments
> > (Raimon's article, for example:
> >http://gavinagames.com/2011/09/10/the-overrated-value-of-third-party-...),
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > First, I totally agree about the comments being important, and the
> > missing "community" feel. And yes, I would love to do anything that
> > helps with that. But then, I don't really know how. The simple task of
> > getting the comment count of a post is complicated by the multiple
> > types of blogs everybody uses (some of them totally custom). Then most
> > of the relation between the iDev site and your site is through its RSS
> > feed; but the posts feed usually doesn't contain any info at all about
> > comments. WordPress creates feeds for each post with the comments
> > (Raimon's article, for example:
Antoni Masso Mola
Sep 13, 2011, 3:10:07 PM9/13/11
to ideva...@googlegroups.com, iDevAuthors
I think the +1, retweet, etc is a good idea. I would also recommend all authors to add some kind of info box about the idevblogaday site so the visitor can know where to find more of these tutorials.
It would also be nice to have some way to categorize turorials, like: audio, libraries, marketing, optimization, etc. so it's easy to find the topics you're interested in.
Cheers
Christopher Waite
Sep 13, 2011, 3:32:58 PM9/13/11
to ideva...@googlegroups.com
I agree with all this stuff.
On the subject of putting something on our own sites, how about a widget that pulls in the latest posts from idevblogaday - just the titles, linking back to idevblogaday for the excerpts. It could have a nice idevblogaday logo and a bit about it. We could add it to the bottom of each idevblogaday post we write.
Incidentally, I don't visit the altedevblogaday site - I consume the posts through an rss reader.
Sent from my iPhone
Miguel Á. Friginal
Sep 14, 2011, 1:09:45 AM9/14/11
to iDevAuthors
All right, I added some Twitter-related changes to the site; check
them out see what you think. I also was tired of the green birds, so I
updated most people's avatar to the official Twitter one. If you see
any other green bird tell me! Now I think I will work on some kind of
widget for your WP blogs to get the latest entries on #idevblogaday.
Probably will offer some way to do a raw HTML include for other types
of blog engines.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 12:32 pm, Christopher Waite <chrismwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with all this stuff.
>
> On the subject of putting something on our own sites, how about a widget that pulls in the latest posts from idevblogaday - just the titles, linking back to idevblogaday for the excerpts. It could have a nice idevblogaday logo and a bit about it. We could add it to the bottom of each idevblogaday post we write.
>
> Incidentally, I don't visit the altedevblogaday site - I consume the posts through an rss reader.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
them out see what you think. I also was tired of the green birds, so I
updated most people's avatar to the official Twitter one. If you see
any other green bird tell me! Now I think I will work on some kind of
widget for your WP blogs to get the latest entries on #idevblogaday.
Probably will offer some way to do a raw HTML include for other types
of blog engines.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 12:32 pm, Christopher Waite <chrismwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with all this stuff.
>
> On the subject of putting something on our own sites, how about a widget that pulls in the latest posts from idevblogaday - just the titles, linking back to idevblogaday for the excerpts. It could have a nice idevblogaday logo and a bit about it. We could add it to the bottom of each idevblogaday post we write.
>
> Incidentally, I don't visit the altedevblogaday site - I consume the posts through an rss reader.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 13 Sep 2011, at 20:10, Antoni Masso Mola <antonimassom...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I think the +1, retweet, etc is a good idea. I would also recommend all authors to add some kind of info box about the idevblogaday site so the visitor can know where to find more of these tutorials.
>
> > It would also be nice to have some way to categorize turorials, like: audio, libraries, marketing, optimization, etc. so it's easy to find the topics you're interested in.
>
> > Cheers
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I think the +1, retweet, etc is a good idea. I would also recommend all authors to add some kind of info box about the idevblogaday site so the visitor can know where to find more of these tutorials.
>
> > It would also be nice to have some way to categorize turorials, like: audio, libraries, marketing, optimization, etc. so it's easy to find the topics you're interested in.
>
> > Cheers
>
Miguel Á. Friginal
Sep 14, 2011, 1:35:17 PM9/14/11
to iDevAuthors
I lied. Instead of working on more important things, I decided to
tweak the design of the site. You will notice some of the images are a
bit pixelated. This can be because a) they are not the Twitter ones
yet or b) the biggest image you uploaded to your Twitter profile is
not at least 128x128 pixels. Do you guys think the image should be
linked to your Twitter page, or to your own website? Check it out see
what you think.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 10:09 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
tweak the design of the site. You will notice some of the images are a
bit pixelated. This can be because a) they are not the Twitter ones
yet or b) the biggest image you uploaded to your Twitter profile is
not at least 128x128 pixels. Do you guys think the image should be
linked to your Twitter page, or to your own website? Check it out see
what you think.
—Miguel
On Sep 13, 10:09 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
Luke Rogers
Sep 14, 2011, 1:43:09 PM9/14/11
to ideva...@googlegroups.com
Nice! Although, yeah, my avatar is looking a bit pixelated ;)
Luke
Sent from my iPad
Miguel Á. Friginal
Sep 14, 2011, 5:36:29 PM9/14/11
to iDevAuthors
So here is the list of stuff I have in my todo list.
- Author's apps icons showing under the current twitter buttons for
each post…
- …and maybe clicking them opens a popover with info on the app? Maybe
better to let you guys just give me LinkShare links to use that link
to the AppStore? Not sure.
- Author's image should link to something, either his/her website or
the corresponding Twitter page.
- Video posts. This was a really good idea you guys proposed before. I
am thinking of using a different category ('idevblogaday-video'?) and
extract videos embedded in the RSS to insert them in the same place
that normal posts appear.
- Links in twitter description should be… well, links.
- Related articles suggested? I can even add those links in the
#idevblogaday RSS, so there is some cross-linking between blogs.
- Facebook, G+, whatever buttons…
- Canvas background with app icons <- just a fancy idea of having the
background of the page made of randomly selected icons floating
around. This is for those times I get bored with dealing with the XML
of feeds :P
- Real excerpts when they are provided in your RSS.
- A better FAQ. I get tons of questions that are answered here
somewhere… probably I need a page in the site to put everything
together.
- WP widget for authors to use on their blogs with latest iDev
entries.
- Prettify design. It is an Apple-related blog soup after all :)
Any others? Any preferences on what to do first?
—Miguel
On Sep 14, 10:43 am, Luke Rogers <l...@rizergames.com> wrote:
> Nice! Although, yeah, my avatar is looking a bit pixelated ;)
>
> Luke
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
- Author's apps icons showing under the current twitter buttons for
each post…
- …and maybe clicking them opens a popover with info on the app? Maybe
better to let you guys just give me LinkShare links to use that link
to the AppStore? Not sure.
- Author's image should link to something, either his/her website or
the corresponding Twitter page.
- Video posts. This was a really good idea you guys proposed before. I
am thinking of using a different category ('idevblogaday-video'?) and
extract videos embedded in the RSS to insert them in the same place
that normal posts appear.
- Links in twitter description should be… well, links.
- Related articles suggested? I can even add those links in the
#idevblogaday RSS, so there is some cross-linking between blogs.
- Facebook, G+, whatever buttons…
- Canvas background with app icons <- just a fancy idea of having the
background of the page made of randomly selected icons floating
around. This is for those times I get bored with dealing with the XML
of feeds :P
- Real excerpts when they are provided in your RSS.
- A better FAQ. I get tons of questions that are answered here
somewhere… probably I need a page in the site to put everything
together.
- WP widget for authors to use on their blogs with latest iDev
entries.
- Prettify design. It is an Apple-related blog soup after all :)
Any others? Any preferences on what to do first?
—Miguel
On Sep 14, 10:43 am, Luke Rogers <l...@rizergames.com> wrote:
> Nice! Although, yeah, my avatar is looking a bit pixelated ;)
>
> Luke
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
Miguel Á. Friginal
Sep 15, 2011, 12:10:15 PM9/15/11
to iDevAuthors
OK, I am grabbing excerpts from the RSS/Atom/Whatever feed now. If
they don't exist, are the same as the content, or are longer than 100
words, the site still trims the text to those first words. If it
doesn't work for you make sure your blog puts the right thing in the
<description> on the feed.
Links in your Twitter description should get converted to actual links
too. To test it delete your "Biographical Info" in your user profile
on the iDev site, then go to Profile > iDevBlogADay and click Update
Profile.
—Miguel
On Sep 14, 2:36 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
they don't exist, are the same as the content, or are longer than 100
words, the site still trims the text to those first words. If it
doesn't work for you make sure your blog puts the right thing in the
<description> on the feed.
Links in your Twitter description should get converted to actual links
too. To test it delete your "Biographical Info" in your user profile
on the iDev site, then go to Profile > iDevBlogADay and click Update
Profile.
—Miguel
On Sep 14, 2:36 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
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