Proposed changes (to be live by August)

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

This is my current plan for iDevBlogADay. Nothing is set in stone,
let's just start talking about these changes and what you think about
them. The main problems I am trying to solve are:

- Too much people waiting. By extension, I want less management of
waiting lists and calendars.
- Authors need to be better represented. I especially like how front
and foremost authors are in the sister site AltDevBlogADay (http://
altdevblogaday.com).
- More relevant, and interesting content. I still don't want to be an
"editor" or judge the quality of what anybody writes. But I for sure
can give feedback and ideas, and so can the rest of you.

So the ways I envision this happening:

- No waiting list. Everybody gets assigned a day, and posts from then
on every 2 weeks. That means we will currently have 5 or 6 people a
day, if we end up with the same number of people we had before after
the transition.

- No limit on for how long you can do it.

- No consequence to missing your day. If a person misses a lot without
reason, I will get that person off the list, but I am thinking there
is no problem to even post a day or two later if you need the time.

- More information about each author in the new site design.

- This group as a place to share ideas, articles in-progress, etc.

Mostly that's basically how the AltDevBlogADay list works nowadays.
The parts that I am not so sure about:

- Posting on the iDev site vs. posting in each author site: I am
thinking we keep it as an aggregator, so you post on your site and we
grab the required post through your RSS feed. I would ask for full-
content RSS though, and you will need to add some tag to the feed so
we can parse what posts need to show on the iDev site.

- 15 days vs. weekday: Mike Acton from AltDev was telling me they do
rotations every 15 days so people don't get stuck on publishing on
Sundays every time. On the other side, publishing on a specific
weekday is easier to remember… So not sure about this one.

- Promotion: some of you joined more for a wish to attract more visits
to your site than because you had problems writing. Until now I have
stated that, since it was not the purpose of the site, it didn't
require my attention. But in reality everybody benefits from more
exposure. I am open to suggestions on how to improve this (hopefully
through more relevant content, and not through SEO scams :P).

Anything else you want? Speak your mind :)

—Miguel

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Ooops. I forgot about having archives of past articles. That should be
in the "new features" part :)

[Mike Berg, We Heart Games]

Miguel,

I think the changes you're recommending are great, although the "post
on your day or you're out" thing really motivated me to keep going
(that and all the great feedback I was getting on the screencasts). I
was in there right from the beginning, and *really* didn't want to
lose my spot. I definitely wouldn't have produced as many screencasts
as I did if it didn't matter if I posted or not. It seems like a harsh
rule, but I think it really motivates, and also makes the group sort
of unique. But maybe it's not a great model, long-term...?

I definitely don't want to say I think this is the only way to go.
What I definitely want to say is I'm glad you took this thing on,
Miguel. It really is something you can be proud of. We all appreciate
the amount of work you put into making this thing come alive and be a
valuable part of the iOS dev community.

-Mike

[Al Nyveldt]

Miguel,

I've very excited to see you taking an active interest in injecting
life into iDevBlogADay instead of just pulling the plug. I had a few
thoughts from your blog post, but I never did get them in the comments
so I'll share here.

I really like your ideas for moving forward. I think they will help
will the quality issues caused by high turnover and save my spot
posts.

I really like the every 2 week model. More often is too much for me
personally to focus on a quality post. I'd prefer a set day to help
get a habit set. If Sunday is really a dead day, push everyone in to
12 days of the 2 weeks and Sundays could list best of the past week
posts?

I really like the idea of keeping our content on our personal sites.
I like how iDevBlogADay sends the user to the developer sites. I
haven't noticed much additional traffic to be honest, but I'd guess
everyone would appreciate getting more traffic to their blogs.

I've had a number of ideas around a voting mechanic where readers
could vote up or like a post to move it up the list. It would help
with the quality issues of "no time this week" posts being front and
center and help the casual reader see the posts that generated the
most interest. It is likely not worth the effort, but since you are
still in brainstorming mode I think, I thought I'd throw it out there
in case it helps spur a better idea.

Thanks for all the work you've put into this Miguel. Hopefully,
you'll be able to find a way to get more people involved on evolving
it so it doesn't take too much of your spare time.

[Christopher Waite]

I think its great that you've decided to go all out with iDevBlogADay
(I definitely respect that decision since web communities are a lot of
work).

I like the idea of adopting the AltDevBlogADay approach since it means
less waiting for all of us. I'm more than happy to be swamped with
blog posts about iOS specific game dev :)

I agree with others that having the pressure of needing to meet the
deadline (else your out) was a good motivator. Perhaps in its place
you could consider rewarding those who post regularly. Perhaps some
kind of point system (dare I say gamification ;). It could be really
simple, just award a point everytime someone posts and maybe create an
algo for featured posts (requiring x number of points to be included).

One thing I really like about AltDevBlogADay site is the
introductions. Perhaps you could consider starting a thread here for
people to introduce themselves (as a start to putting authors first
and foremost).

Anyway, looking forward to the re-birth of iDevABlogADay and growing
an even stronger iOS blogging community.

-Chris

[Patrick Hogan]

I like the way iDevBlogADay is an aggregation system -- I'm not a big
fan of redundancies and editing posts in multiple places, etc.

I like no limit on how long you can do it. My first run on
iDevBlogADay forced me to post, and I tried to make every post
worthwhile, but since then I kind of stopped posting again.

There should be some sort of pressure to post, but perhaps the way to
do it is not so much a specific day, but an average post count or you
must post once every two weeks at least, but the day doesn't matter.
That sort of thing will ensure people still feel inclined to post, but
if something comes up on a specific day, well, there's always tomorrow
and they don't have to drop out immediately.

[Fábio Rodella]

My brief 2 cents:

- As most, I believe that keeping iDevBlogADay as an aggregation is
the best approach
- Some way to include more personal information about the author (like
AltDevBlogADay) would be amazing
- Slightly intrigued by Chris and Al's suggestion of some kind of
point or vote system

Still, I believe whatever the future iDevBlogADay shapes up to be, it
will keep serving both as incentive for us to write regularly and get
to know each other as well as a pool of great content (I sure have
learned my fair share of useful tricks from the group).
Cheers!

[Matt Rix]

Love all the ideas so far. I think some sort of point/voting system
would be cool, as long as there are no downvotes, only upvotes.

I'm not sure how altdev's 15 day thing works, but I think something
like "post on the 1st and 15th of the month" is even easier to
remember than "post on every other Tuesday", although either one is
fine.

I like the idea of iDev doing more than just aggregating and becoming
a bit more of a community, with user/company profiles and all that.

I was recently thinking it'd be really cool to have weekly (or bi-
weekly) short little *video* blog updates on what people are working
on, I wasn't thinking of it in the context of iDev, and I'm not sure
it'd make sense for iDev, but I think it'd be really cool to have that
somewhere. I guess it'd almost be iDevVlogADay, hah. Unlike writing a
post, which takes a ton of time+effort, just hopping on a webcam and
rambling for 2 minutes about what you did that week should be pretty
easy.


On Jul 25, 9:02 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

The video idea would be great. We could actually code something that
allowed videos as a replacement for your post, or instead have it as
an optional feature for authors to use anytime, and add it as another
section of the site.

[Aaron]

I would like to see some sort of rating system, as well, but only if
it has a positive format and discourages negativity. It might be as
simple as a thumbs up type of thing or selecting a best article of the
week or something like that. There should be a way to showcase
exceptional content.

Aaron

[Mike Berg, We Heart Games]

As long as videos can still be part of regular posts without things getting confused with "Vlog" posts. I know I'd be posting videos again, at least some of the time, but they would definitely fall into the category of iDev articles/learning resources, and not "2 minutes of rambling." ;)

- Mike Berg
http://weheartgames.com
http://twitter.com/weheartgames

[Lord Bron]

I really like this video idea. I know Smiley and I started to due
video posts for our iDevBlogADay posts so that the readers could get
to know us a bit better.

I do really like the idea of doing intros as well, especially for
those of us still working on our games and thus have nothing to judge
us by except our posts.

Also, Miguel clearly I want back in. Our blog pretty much dies without
iDevBlogADay as a reason to write. :)

On Jul 26, 2:05 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>

[Mike Berg, We Heart Games]

I like this "thumbs up" rating system idea too, but I often don't visit the iDevBlogADay site itself. It would be RAD if we could get a wordpress plugin or PHP snippet we could stick into our post itself and people could up-vote right from our own sites. Eh? Eh, Miguel? Whaddaya say? :)

(PS it should be noted that Miguel already hates me because I ask him to do crazy web dev type things)

- Mike Berg
http://weheartgames.com
http://twitter.com/weheartgames

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Mmmm… what would exactly be the point of rating systems of any kind?
To feature articles? Not sure I want to do that; voting systems are a
pain to maintain and easily taken advantage of. Using how long an
author has been without missing his day could be used as a measure of
some kind… but again, what for?

On Jul 26, 2:12 pm, "Mike Berg, We Heart Games"

<m...@weheartgames.com> wrote:
> I like this "thumbs up" rating system idea too, but I often don't visit the iDevBlogADay site itself. It would be RAD if we could get a wordpress plugin or PHP snippet we could stick into our post itself and people could up-vote right from our own sites. Eh? Eh, Miguel? Whaddaya say? :)
>
> (PS it should be noted that Miguel already hates me because I ask him to do crazy web dev type things)
>

> - Mike Berghttp://weheartgames.comhttp://twitter.com/weheartgames

[Christopher Waite]

Well from my point of view, I think the idea behind a points system is
to help drive interaction. It also acts as a bit of a motivator since
you could list those with the highest points.

Something like 1 point every time you post (only once in a two week
period)

It's possible that it would go unused I guess.

If the aim is to encourage community then I think some sort of
spotlight is a good idea. Perhaps just pick an interesting post every
two weeks and open discussion about it on the altdevblogaday site or
even here.

Id like to be involved in some meatier discussions that are more than
140 characters. When you blog, people tend to post a comment and then
leave it so responses end up being one way.

Alternatively you could have a special topic once a month and invite
all authors to write about it (in addition to their regular posts).
That might encourage some greater conversation and various differing
viewpoints.

Just throwing around ideas.

[Mike Acton]

Something like 1 point every time you post (only once in a two week period)

We implicitly do that on #AltDevBlogADay - if you look on the right panel, the authors list has the number of posts next to the name. It's also sorted by the number of posts. Which makes it a leaderboard of sorts. No one has ever mentioned noticing it though. However, I do use it: If I see someone creeping up to me on post count, I know I've got to get cracking!

Perhaps just pick an interesting post every two weeks and open discussion about it on the altdevblogaday site or even here.

I'm open to the idea, but how do you imagine it would actually work? How would a discussion be set up?

Alternatively you could have a special topic once a month and invite all authors to write about it (in addition to their regular posts).

Last month I invited the AltDevAuthors to talk on a point of "ignorance" - we definitely got a few interesting posts out of that. Having a theme helped out a couple of people I think. Might be something I go back to as well.

Mike.

PS: Miguel, I don't know about you - but with us both being on both of these lists, I get the threads confused very quickly! :)

[Mike Acton]

I'm not sure how altdev's 15 day thing works

Basically everyone gets assigned a day. Their next day is 15 days later. Repeat.

I keep a round-robin schedule posted for people to check. You can see that here:

http://altdevblogaday.com/post-schedule/

Mike.

[Christopher Waite]

@Mike

"We implicitly do that on #AltDevBlogADay - if you look on the right
panel,
the authors list has the number of posts next to the name. It's also
sorted
by the number of posts. Which makes it a leaderboard of sorts. No one
has
ever mentioned noticing it though. However, I do use it: If I see
someone
creeping up to me on post count, I know I've got to get cracking! "

Never spotted that before. That's exactly what I mean and I think
number of posts is a nice way of doing it. Points abstracts it out a
little and makes it a bit more game-based though :)

"I'm open to the idea, but how do you imagine it would actually work?
How
would a discussion be set up?"

Sorry, I meant iDevBlogADay not altdevbloaday (oops!). I was typing
from my iPhone whilst half asleep (its quite early here) :) Having
said that, perhaps some cross promotion with altdevblogaday would be
nice. Not sure how it would work.

"Last month I invited the AltDevAuthors to talk on a point of
"ignorance" -
we definitely got a few interesting posts out of that. Having a theme
helped
out a couple of people I think. Might be something I go back to as
well."

Yeh I spotted that, it worked really well. I was thinking more
specifically about some time ago when some indies got together and
posted around a single theme ("Game Length" -
http://gamesfromwithin.com/forget-length-give-me-awesome). I thought
that was really nice and it encouraged me to visit the other blogs to
read other opinions.

p.s. I tried to watch "The Librarian" again last night and I still
found it to be unwatchable, sorry ;)

Chris

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

So should that post count be a running total? Or should it start over
if you miss your day? Because maybe that helps with the apparent need
for 'pressure to post'?

Also, what do you guys think of Al's suggestion of using 6 days for
the author cycle and use Sundays for featured posts. Personally I
don't like the job of selecting what to feature, we would need to
figure out how that works… and losing 1 day means even more people
each day (that may not be a problem)… but would like to hear what you
guys think about it.

> posted around a single theme ("Game Length" -http://gamesfromwithin.com/forget-length-give-me-awesome). I thought

[Mike Berg, We Heart Games]

If I remember correctly from before, no one really liked posting on Sunday at all, so skipping Sunday seems like a good idea to me.

And deciding what to feature.. well, maybe that's where the "thumbs up" (or whatever) rating system could come into play. Whichever article got the most ratings in the last week gets featured? I guess that gives an advantage to the articles posted earlier in the week. Maybe from the week before? <shrug>

- Mike Berg
http://weheartgames.com
http://twitter.com/weheartgames

[Lord Bron]

Not to throw a wrench in the "let's use Sunday for featured posts",
but if you want to keep Sunday as just regular posts, we'll take
Sunday. For Area 161, we're need a day just to get our butts in gear,
which day it is matters not to us.

Thanks,
Tom

On Jul 27, 7:41 am, "Mike Berg, We Heart Games"

<m...@weheartgames.com> wrote:
> If I remember correctly from before, no one really liked posting on Sunday at all, so skipping Sunday seems like a good idea to me.
>
> And deciding what to feature.. well, maybe that's where the "thumbs up" (or whatever) rating system could come into play. Whichever article got the most ratings in the last week gets featured? I guess that gives an advantage to the articles posted earlier in the week. Maybe from the week before? <shrug>
>

> - Mike Berghttp://weheartgames.comhttp://twitter.com/weheartgames

[Sjoquist Douglas]

For Sunday posts, here are some options:

** Same ol' same ol'

We obviously could treat it the same as always. I'm with Tom, I don't mind Sunday posts -- I have no idea what impact it has on readership though.

** Use six day rotation per week

We could combine Saturday & Sunday into a "weekend" post slot, and just have a six day per week rotation. I guess if people post or read less on weekends, this would be a good choice.

** Featured posts

We could do featured posts, but I agree with Miguel that it might be hard to pick.

** Author status via twitter feed

Or, we can do a twiiter status of all authors. Perhaps each author's most recent tweet with the "#idevblogadaystatus" tag shows up in an alphabetical list.

It is up to the author to decide when to tweet their status using that tag, the website simply shows the most recent one for each author (or something like that.)

Doug

** The width of this post uses a Patent Pending method, unauthorized use will result in a public name-calling and various other idle threats. Repeated infractions will require me to bring out the comfy chair!

[Christopher Waite]

Right, I hereby patent the crappy 200px wide default posting method.
You'll all be receiving C&D letters shortly. I also patent the term
patents.

I think featured posts are probably a bad idea. I do however think
that we should automate a points system for posting. Essentially a
running total that awards you per post.

I like Miguel's idea of resetting your points if you miss a post. This
essentially becomes a featured authors list rather than featured posts
(and its based on participation rather than one persons view of which
content is good).

Not sure about Sunday. Although it is cursed based on my previous
experiences (lots of people bombed out on that day). That said, I held
the original Sunday post and never suffered from a visits points of
view :)

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Is also probably easier to just use AltDev's method of a 15 day
rotation, so nobody ends with Sundays every time. Any thoughts on
doing that?

[Christopher Waite]

works for me :)

On Jul 27, 4:39 pm, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Patrick Hogan]

The only problem with that is, for example, there are certain days of the week I can't post, plus it's a lot harder to remember. Preferably don't assign days and let everyone just post whenever as long as they maintain an average of one post every two weeks. With several authors you'll get a decent spread, and even if not, does it really matter? I go through hundreds of things a day through RSS… a few more or less is nothing.

Patrick Hogan

[Luke Rogers]

Liking the idea of points – good bit of gamification! Maybe rather than have all your points reset if you miss one, you should just lose points? Otherwise I think it might be a bit hard to be motivated to get back to posting as you'll be so far behind.

Luke

Rizer Games

e:  lu...@rizergames.com

w:  www.rizergames.com

t: @rizergames

s: rizergames

[Patrick Hogan]

Next thing you know we'll have Game Center integration… ;)

Patrick Hogan

[Raimon Zamora]

Don't forget microtransactions! ;)

Sent from my iPhone

[JLP]

A few random thoughts:

1) I LOVE my Sunday spot. Since I herd cats, i mean kids, most of the
week, Sunday is the day I have the biggest block of time to work on a
post (since I rarely do things ahead of time). I've had no problem
with getting traffic, tho I haven't compared traffic with others'
posts. Of course, I have no normal work week, so Sunday is just
another work day, so not sure how that affects the readership.

2) I would lean towards a same day post schedule. Easier to
remember. I just think "hmm, it's Sunday, is this the week I post?"
But people could do this manually if you just said "post sometime this
week" and pick a day to stick to (if they want).

3) Video? Please keep this optional. I know a lot of people like
watching video, listening to podcasts, but have you ever tried
recording a video with 3 youngsters asking for food, entertainment, or
generally fighting with their siblings? ;) My workstation is in the
midst of all this chaos, since I work at home full time without any
childcare (except me). Anyhow, I *could* do it, but the pressure
would be much greater and I haven't gotten around to learning a good
editing program (hence no video promotions yet.) But that's just me,
so that's why I vote optional. :)

Justine

[Matt Rix]

I think doing the 1st and 15th of a month is way easier to remember than constantly calculating 15 days later. So some people would be 1st and 15th, some people 2nd and 16th, some people 3rd and 17th, etc. 

[Matt Rix]

Or I guess if you were actually going to move ahead 15 days, it'd be 1st and 16th, 2nd and 17th, etc. 

[Raimon Zamora]

I tend to agree with the three points, although with the help of a calendar #2 is not much of an issue.

Sent from my iPhone

[Luke Rogers]

What do people think to having a pool of ideas that others would like to see posts on? I know there's a ton of things I'd love to see people post on, and sometimes I find it hard to know what to write about. If there was some kind of list where people could request topics and bloggers could pick from if they wanted to, maybe it would help?

Luke

Rizer Games

e:  lu...@rizergames.com

w:  www.rizergames.com

t: @rizergames

s: rizergames

[Mike Berg, We Heart Games]

That's a cool idea, Luke. And maybe people could "+1" the ideas, so authors get a feel for how popular that request might be...? Again, making more work for Miguel... :S

- Mike Berg

http://weheartgames.com

http://twitter.com/weheartgames

[Fabio Rodella]

I really like that idea too. It could be something similar to the tutorial poll Ray Wenderlich has on his website.

[Christopher Waite]

Yeh that's a great idea Luke. I'm definitely for that

Also, loving replying by email :)

Sent from my iPhone

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

@Patrick: sorry, but that's way too much chaos. But you can write your
posts whenever and publish them in the allotted day. Plus you can
write extra content whenever… it will just not show up in the iDev
site. I for sure am going with a more relaxed schedule though. So it
will be OK to publish a few days early/late.

@Luke: LOL! I like that. You gain 1 point if you post on time, you
lose 1 point if you don't. And we order authors in a sidebar, AltDev
style, by points.

@Justine: IF we do video, it will be optional. And talking about this,
let's start with the basics before the scope creep kicks in
everybody :)

@Matt: problem with that is the 31st :) And February.

As per Luke's idea, do you think this needs to be public, like the
poll in Ray's site Fabio is talking about? Or can we just do it inside
this list? Also, Mike is sharping his PHP skill to implement all this,
isn't he? :D

On Jul 27, 11:18 am, Christopher Waite <chrismwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeh that's a great idea Luke. I'm definitely for that
>
> Also, loving replying by email :)
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>

> On 27 Jul 2011, at 19:11, "Mike Berg, We Heart Games" <m...@weheartgames.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > That's a cool idea, Luke. And maybe people could "+1" the ideas, so authors get a feel for how popular that request might be...? Again, making more work for Miguel... :S
>
> > - Mike Berg
> >http://weheartgames.com
> >http://twitter.com/weheartgames
>
> > On Jul 27, 2011, at 1:06 PM, Luke Rogers wrote:
>
> >> What do people think to having a pool of ideas that others would like to see posts on? I know there's a ton of things I'd love to see people post on, and sometimes I find it hard to know what to write about. If there was some kind of list where people could request topics and bloggers could pick from if they wanted to, maybe it would help?
>
> >> Luke
>
> >> Rizer Games

> >> e:     l...@rizergames.com

> >> w:    www.rizergames.com
> >> t:     @rizergames
> >> s:     rizergames
>
> >> On 27 Jul 2011, at 18:51, Raimon Zamora wrote:
>
> >>> I tend to agree with the three points, although with the help of a calendar #2 is not much of an issue.
>
> >>> Sent from my iPhone
>

[Patrick Hogan]

@Miguel: perfectly understandable. :) I suppose that means I'd better implement that scheduling feature in my little blogging engine. ;)

Patrick Hogan

[Wiley Wimberly]

I like this idea. I think it would be a great way to get readers involved and would also be a useful resource when trying to come up with an idea for a post.

[Mike Berg, We Heart Games]

I think the "request a topic" thing would benefit from being public, so readers can request topics too. Then everyone can vote on them and we as authors can get an idea about demand. It might be nice to have a way for an author to say, "I'm gonna take this one", so that authors don't double up?

Yeah, I'm... sharpening my php skills... yes. That's what I'm doing. :P

- Mike Berg
http://weheartgames.com
http://twitter.com/weheartgames

[Matt Rix]

Hah, yeah I think you'd just have no posts on the 31st... and the people who have 29th+30th could just post on the 28th in Feb, I don't think it'd be a big deal. 

2011/7/27 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel....@gmail.com>

[Mike Berg, We Heart Games]

A am in agreement with this statement.

- Mike

[Al Nyveldt]

Hi all,

Since I brought up voting and points and then took my family away on a last minute camping trip, I missed most of the discussion on it.  I thought I'd share a bit of what I was thinking.

With voting, it should be Likes or +1s only.  I wasn't thinking about any kind of down votes.   

I had thought maybe votes could be counted by post and made public.  At the end of the week, the posts with the most likes could be featured posts or promoted in some way.  Maybe a sidebar top posts of the week type thing.

The votes could also be counted by author and kept hidden, but used for sorting.  Authors who posted really liked content and frequently would be sorted higher in the list for their day.  iDevBlogADay has always had 2 authors a day.  I had been thinking with more authors they would need to be listed in some order.  Instead of by post time, why not by highest author vote count. 

My main thought to the voting thing was to try to keep the quality level of the content high by rewarding those who posted frequently and did posts other than "just checking in to stay current" type posts.

It does sound like we moved on from a like type of thing, but I thought I'd share anyway.  I guess I should have written up more initially but I needed to get packed and kind of thought it might be a bit too much.  

I think rewarding writing streaks with a leader board could be cool as well and hopefully provide some of the motivation of the post or lose your spot we have currently.

Also, I love the Vlog idea.  Short video blurbs of what other devs are working on could be really cool.  I'm not sure how well it fits in with iDevBlogAday, but it should be done.  Really cool idea.  I should start doing this weekly.

-- 
Al Nyveldt

[Miguel Ángel Friginal]

All right… let's see if image attachments work here. I have been working on the new design for the site and this is what I have for now (don't mind the authors are from AltDev and other dummy content). I am not sure how to add the icons of applications developed by each author without it looking really garbled though… any ideas? Other things missing…

- Search (should probably be on the top bar)

- Maybe 'Archives' should live in the sidebar instead of being a main section?

Any other things you would like to see? It still looks kind of too serious (if you don't look at Matt), no? 

—Miguel

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Mmmm… not sure if you guys saw the image, so here is a link:

http://idevblogaday.com/b3.png

—Miguel

On Aug 4, 9:09 am, Miguel Ángel Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> All right… let's see if image attachments work here. I have been working on the new design for the site and this is what I have for now (don't mind the authors are from AltDev and other dummy content). I am not sure how to add the icons of applications developed by each author without it looking really garbled though… any ideas? Other things missing…
>
> - Search (should probably be on the top bar)
> - Maybe 'Archives' should live in the sidebar instead of being a main section?
>
> Any other things you would like to see? It still looks kind of too serious (if you don't look at Matt), no?
>
> —Miguel
>

> On Jul 27, 2011, at 5:02 PM, Al Nyveldt wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi all,
>
> > Since I brought up voting and points and then took my family away on a last minute camping trip, I missed most of the discussion on it.  I thought I'd share a bit of what I was thinking.
>
> > With voting, it should be Likes or +1s only.  I wasn't thinking about any kind of down votes.  
>
> > I had thought maybe votes could be counted by post and made public.  At the end of the week, the posts with the most likes could be featured posts or promoted in some way.  Maybe a sidebar top posts of the week type thing.
>
> > The votes could also be counted by author and kept hidden, but used for sorting.  Authors who posted really liked content and frequently would be sorted higher in the list for their day.  iDevBlogADay has always had 2 authors a day.  I had been thinking with more authors they would need to be listed in some order.  Instead of by post time, why not by highest author vote count.
>
> > My main thought to the voting thing was to try to keep the quality level of the content high by rewarding those who posted frequently and did posts other than "just checking in to stay current" type posts.
>
> > It does sound like we moved on from a like type of thing, but I thought I'd share anyway.  I guess I should have written up more initially but I needed to get packed and kind of thought it might be a bit too much.  
>
> > I think rewarding writing streaks with a leader board could be cool as well and hopefully provide some of the motivation of the post or lose your spot we have currently.
>
> > Also, I love the Vlog idea.  Short video blurbs of what other devs are working on could be really cool.  I'm not sure how well it fits in with iDevBlogAday, but it should be done.  Really cool idea.  I should start doing this weekly.
>
> > --
> > Al Nyveldt
>
> > On Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Mike Berg, We Heart Games wrote:
>
> >> A am in agreement with this statement.
>
> >> - Mike
>
> >> On Jul 27, 2011, at 2:09 PM, Matt Rix wrote:
>
> >>> Hah, yeah I think you'd just have no posts on the 31st... and the people who have 29th+30th could just post on the 28th in Feb, I don't think it'd be a big deal.
>

> >>> 2011/7/27 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>

[Fabio Rodella]

I like it. It is slightly serious, but in my opinion not overtly so. As for the apps, it really looks like there's not much space for them in the post view... Maybe keep them only in an "About this author" page?

2011/8/4 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel....@gmail.com>

[Patrick Hogan]

Image attachment came through fine.

Looks good! I don't think it looks too serious -- just nice and clean.

What about if everyone had a place they could edit their profile to add apps, their bio, etc. That way if you clicked on their name you could see the list of their apps, but don't show it on the front page. That would just clutter things.

Patrick Hogan

[Alexander Okafor]

I like it, it looks good!  I guess I'm not too picky about the layout because I'm old fashion and use an RSS reader (Reeder) to catch up on dev posts on iDevBlogADay.

Regards,

Alex Okafor

One Man Left Studios

[Matt Rix]

I really, really like how the posts are displayed, especially how much info about author is there. I think it's super important to know *who* is writing these posts. It'd be really cool if authors could choose one "favourite app" that they'd created which could be shown alongside their photo. 

I think it'd be handy if the video blog updates could be interspersed with the normal posts, so that they're basically just treated as regular posts. *maybe* also with filters so you can see "only video updates" or "only blog updates".... but that's probably overkill. 

I like the layout, although I know what you mean about it being a bit serious... it's almost too clean+minimal. To be honest I'd really love to see what it would look like with a dark background, I think it could work really well as a dark site, but that's just me, hah. 

[Tom Ortega]

My guess is we can tone down the "seriousness" by having random, fun header images for "iDevBlogADay". What would be neat is have them themed after the latest app by writer, i.e. like Velocispider Free themed header could be up right now and link to that app.

Each app creator would be responsible for their own image, etc. Just something fun like that to make it more playful. :) 

Thanks,
Tom Ortega
cell: 951.212.9686 | twitter/skype: lordbron
lordbron.wordpress.com area-161.com OneMinuteBite.com

[Patrick Hogan]

Tom, that is a ridiculously good idea. ^_^

Patrick Hogan

[Gareth Jenkins]

Yea -- agreed. Nice one Tom.

It'd take tweaking (and possibly further simplification), but Miguel's mockup from earlier would suit that kind of skinning / backdrop idea very well.

Of course not everything looks as good as Velocispider, but creating header art is another way to encourage devs to produce more -- great practice for dedicated app sites, feature art etc.

G.

--
____________________________

Gareth Jenkins
Productivity Balloon Ltd

[Matt Rix]

I think that's the sort of thing that if everyone did a good job, it'd be great... but I think the odds are high it'd end up looking pretty bad and mishmashy. 

[Alexander Okafor]

I agree with Matt. While it could be great if people stay on it, but realistically finding time to keep up with my writing between developing and other shenanigans is already difficult. I think the less work needed to maintain the site on all parties (webmasters, authors, etc) is better for the long term.

Regards,

Alex Okafor

One Man Left Studios

[Gareth Jenkins]

Yea, good point -- and we'd all just end up wanting the good ones to be the ones that get used (whilst struggling with the fact that we don't all have  dinosaur robots to support our posts, apps, selves).

G.

[Raimon Zamora]

We can always do Velocispider Seasons, Velocispider Rio, Velocispider Experiments... That seems to be the trend nowadays... ;)

Sent from my iPhone

G.

<iDevBlogADay.png>

[JLP]

What if ppl were limited to 5 icons for their apps, and they were
displayed in 29x29px size in a nice little row under their blurb. It
would balance with the headline.

Here's what I mean: http://creativealgorithms.com/b3wicons.png

I also like the idea of the header promotion for the contributors of
the blog, but I can see how it could get messy, more work, and
stressful. But, perhaps, as things settled on the new design, we could
revisit and come up with a rotation of "juried" headers that we could
each have a turn at being in the rotation for a set period of time?
Sort of a spotlight, of course. Maybe the rules would be after you'd
done 5(?) posts you were allowed to get into the mix, that way ppl
wouldn't join, write a lame post, etc. just for the free advert?
Incentives are great, plus helping each other out thru promotions is
also great.

OR, thinking aloud, the promotion header could be static and take the
user to a landing page of smaller promotions for apps. Maybe these
could be in order by the authors who are up that week? That way the
images could rotate so no one got prime space any longer than
another. Sorry, just adding more work, but always looking for a
marketing slant. :)

Justine

[AzamSharp]

Hi,

I am confused! How can I post to iDevBlogADay now! Am I assigned a
certain day or something?

Thanks,
Azam

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

For now it works as it has always worked, with waiting list and 2
people per day. Go to http://idevblogaday.com to check where you are.
I have to do some clean up though, many people missed their spot a few
times and I forgot to get them off the main list :/

—Miguel

[Raimon Zamora]

It seems I haven't been added to the list

Sent from my iPhone

[Gabor Furedi]

I think the proposed layout is clean enough, there's nothing wrong
with 'seriousness', althought it's not what crosses my mind when I
take a look at it. Presenting the author is a great idea, having a
fixed space for a given amount of app icons would be good. Top 3
perhaps. As written posts and video posts are fundamentally different,
they could be put under 2 different tabs / columns perhaps? Upvoting
articles is an interesting concept, I think it is a good idea to
display accumulated points next to the author's info.

However, developing extra banner graphics would produce very
inconsistent results I believe it would be too chaotic.

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

Sorry about dropping off the list for the last week(s). I have been
working on the new iDevBlogADay backend, and although there is still
stuff to do, I have uploaded what I have for everybody to play with.
It is live at: http://idevblogaday.com/v2/ (now that I think about it,
that should be v3… oh well).

So how does this work?
- Is a WordPress site: WP has its problems, but is easier to add
functionality to it this way, have multiple authors, etc.
- I will be sending each one of you a username and (temporary)
password in a moment. http://idevblogaday.com/v2/wp-login.php for
accessing the administration.
- Once there, select Users -> iDevBlogADay, set the URL for your feed
and your Twitter name. I am using SimplePie for reading feeds now, so
it has auto discovery, reads Atom and all the different flavors of
RSS, etc.
- If you select Users -> Your Profile, you will see that I grabbed
the description and URL from your Twitter profile. Set your first and
last name, and change whatever you want. Right now I am showing names,
descriptions, twitter username, twitter pic, and website URL in the
front-end, but we can change/add stuff later.

The feed that is set in your profile will be the one that I check from
time to time to grab posts. Only posts with the 'idevblogaday' (or any
other combination of uppercase/lowercase of the name) category in the
RSS feed will be grabbed. The appropriate posts will be then inserted
into the iDev blog automatically, with the original posting date, you
as an author, and other meta data about the originating post so I can
link back to it. The copy of the post is only used for in-site search
purposes, and for showing the excerpt. If you don't like the automatic
excerpt showing in the site, you can just edit it in the iDev admin by
editing the copy of the post. If you update your original post, the
copy will not be updated automatically. You will have to go to the
admin, delete the copy of your post here, and the next time the site
update it will grab a new copy from your original.

Many of you have been doing iDevBlogADay articles for a while now. I
would encourage you to add them to the site's archive by using the
Posts -> Old iDev Posts option. Just point that field to any feed
containing your idevblogaday-tagged old articles, and it should add
them to the site.

The periodic reading of feeds is not working yet, and you may
encounter other issues. Please report them here. I hope that this is
easy enough for you guys. It only requires a one-time setup, but
allows for more control if we need it. If you have any more ideas/
commentary, please post here. I intend to make this live as soon as
possible, so some features may not happen until later, but I really
appreciate everybody's opinion and inspired ideas :)

—Miguel

[Fabio Rodella]

Truly amazing Miguel! Thank you for all your hard work! Can't wait to test this :)

2011/8/19 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel....@gmail.com>

[Josh Jones]

On 8/19/2011 8:17 AM, Miguel �. Friginal wrote:
> Only posts with the 'idevblogaday' (or any
> other combination of uppercase/lowercase of the name) category in the
> RSS feed will be grabbed.

Could you explain how this works in more detail?

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

First, can you try again Patrick?

Finally I could not find how to create temp passwords, but you can
change them in the User -> Your Profile section. If you have not
received an email with yours, get in contact with me off the list and
I will try to set it up again.

Josh, the way it works is pretty easy. If you look at the RSS feed of
almost any blog you will see there is one or multiple <category>
sections in each <item>. In a WP blog, when you add either categories
or tags to a post, it adds these in the RSS; hopefully there is a way
to do that in other blogging software. When iDev reads your RSS feed,
it ignores anything that doesn't have a category "idevblogaday". With
the rest, it makes a copy of each entry based on the content of the
feed (ergo, I really hope you guys have full-content feeds).

—Miguel

[Patrick Hogan]

Still doing it… same output.

Patrick Hogan

[Matt Rix]

I’m getting an error “The twitter name "MattRix" doesn't seem to exist.” When I try to create my profile.

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

All right, it seems I need to do some tweaking for it to work. The PHP
in the live server must not be similar enough to my test server. I
will get back to you guys when is safe to use :)

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

OK, I think is good now. Can you guys check again?

On Aug 19, 10:16 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

That foreach loop should go through categories in a post. If there are
no categories it should return an empty array, so not sure what's
going on. Can you tell me what feed URL are you trying?

On Aug 19, 10:48 am, Patrick Hogan <pbho...@gmail.com> wrote:
>  OK, lost the first error, but still getting these:  
>
> Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/mafriginal/idevblogaday.com/v2/wp-content/plugins/idevblogaday/idevbl ogaday.php on line 198  

>
> Patrick Hogan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, August 19, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Miguel Á. Friginal wrote:
> > OK, I think is good now. Can you guys check again?
>

> > On Aug 19, 10:16 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com (http://gmail.com)>

> > wrote:
> > > All right, it seems I need to do some tweaking for it to work. The PHP
> > > in the live server must not be similar enough to my test server. I
> > > will get back to you guys when is safe to use :)
>

[Patrick Hogan]

http://feeds.feedburner.com/GallantGames

Patrick Hogan

[Sjoquist Douglas]

I can add my feed, but when I add it to "old posts", it just tells me there are no new items.

Am I doing something wrong? I'm using the same feed as I put in my profile:

feed://www.sunetos.com/items/category/idevblogaday/feed/

Doug

[Fabio Rodella]

The Old iDev Posts options is not finding any posts. I'm using this feed URL: http://www.crocodella.com.br/tag/idevblogaday/feed/

2011/8/19 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel....@gmail.com>

OK, I think is good now. Can you guys check again?

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

@Fabio & @Doug: it should be working now. Try again. (BTW, I am not
sure feed:// is a valid protocol for SimplePie, try using http://
instead).

@Patrick: I cannot repeat the error. I just deactivated the cache see
if there was a problem there. Can you try once more? BTW, are you
doing this from the User -> iDevBlogADay section, or from Posts -> Old
iDev Posts?

—Miguel

On Aug 19, 11:23 am, Fabio Rodella <fabiorode...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The Old iDev Posts options is not finding any posts. I'm using this feed
> URL:http://www.crocodella.com.br/tag/idevblogaday/feed/
>

> 2011/8/19 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>

[Patrick Hogan]

Still doing it. I'm on the Profile -> iDevBlogADay page. Screenshot below:

Patrick Hogan

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

@Patrick: Got it. Seems your feed doesn't have categories, and damn
SimplePie returns NULL instead of an empty array in that case. Got it
fixed, but you are going to need those categories in the feed if you
want it to work.

On Aug 19, 11:35 am, Patrick Hogan <pbho...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Still doing it. I'm on the Profile -> iDevBlogADay page. Screenshot below:  
>

> Patrick Hogan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, August 19, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Miguel Á. Friginal wrote:
> > @Fabio & @Doug: it should be working now. Try again. (BTW, I am not
> > sure feed:// is a valid protocol for SimplePie, try using http://
> > instead).
>
> > @Patrick: I cannot repeat the error. I just deactivated the cache see
> > if there was a problem there. Can you try once more? BTW, are you
> > doing this from the User -> iDevBlogADay section, or from Posts -> Old
> > iDev Posts?
>
> > —Miguel
>

> > On Aug 19, 11:23 am, Fabio Rodella <fabiorode...@gmail.com (http://gmail.com)> wrote:
> > > The Old iDev Posts options is not finding any posts. I'm using this feed
> > > URL:http://www.crocodella.com.br/tag/idevblogaday/feed/
>

> > > 2011/8/19 Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com (http://gmail.com)>

>
> > > > OK, I think is good now. Can you guys check again?
>

> > > > On Aug 19, 10:16 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com (http://gmail.com)>

> > > > wrote:
> > > > > All right, it seems I need to do some tweaking for it to work. The PHP
> > > > > in the live server must not be similar enough to my test server. I
> > > > > will get back to you guys when is safe to use :)
>

> > > > > On Aug 19, 10:06 am, "Matt Rix" <m...@matt-rix.com (http://matt-rix.com)> wrote:
>
> > > > > > I’m getting an error “The twitter name "MattRix" doesn't seem to
> > > > exist.” When I try to create my profile.
>

[Patrick Hogan]

I actually just added that but it is taking a while to filter through to feed burner. I'll probably just stick the original feed in there for efficiency sake anyway. :)

Patrick Hogan

[Gabor Furedi]

I've managed to setup my profile, ready to go! I don't have pre-v3
iDevBlogADay posts so I had an easy time.

Great stuff Miguel!

[Christopher Waite]

It all worked fine for me too - I added my feed, updated my profile, and imported my old idevblogaday posts.

Great job!

It strikes me that it may be worth importing tags too - to help with findability.

Sent from my iPhone

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

I was wondering about importing the tags. Since it will be a mashup of
all the blogs involved it may result in a bunch of similar tags, but
maybe we can build a list of a few categories/tags for everybody to
use that are recognized if present when importing.
For example, these are the ones that AltDevBlogADay uses: #AltDev
Updates, #gamedev, Audio, Bizdev, Education, Game design, General
Interest, Programming, Tools, UI and UX, Uncategorized, and Visual
Arts. If anybody wants to compile a list of categories they feel are
appropriate, I will modify the the import script. Maybe create a new
topic in the list if you guys want to discuss it.

—Miguel

On Aug 19, 10:00 pm, Christopher Waite <chrismwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It all worked fine for me too - I added my feed, updated my profile, and imported my old idevblogaday posts.
>
> Great job!
>
> It strikes me that it may be worth importing tags too - to help with findability.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>

[Kyle Newsome]

Awesome discussion so far and thanks for all your hard work Miguel;
sorry I didn't get here earlier. I lol'd and turned tomato red when I
saw my face posted all over the redesign mockups :p

I just successfully imported my old posts and the one tiny thing I
noticed is that it ignores the wordpress excerpt andwhen filling out
the entry listings. It would be great to restore the excerpt
functionality; I like writing short summaries completely separate from
the content.

Again, thanks so much!

Cheers,
K

On Aug 20, 11:42 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

So the new system is live as of today. It only has the basics, but
hopefully is a good foundation to start adding some of the ideas we
discussed later on. Some things that I would like to do:

- Better importing of excerpts and tags. Both have their issues, and
that's why they are not there yet. As I was saying before, if anybody
wants to compile a list of categories, I will be glad to add the code
to import them.
- App icons. I really like Justine's design, although I must say they
are really small and my intention was more to help identify people
("ah, the guy that did that!), than to use it as a promotion tool. I
think that any efforts in promoting sales here are kind of wasted,
unless you are into development tools.
- Ranking. Right now is just how many posts each author has published
because it was easy. I will look into the other options.
- Adding the posts of authors that are not currently in the group;
i.e. Owen Goss, Gavin Bowman, Noel Llopis and others wrote plenty of
interesting articles at the very beginning, but nowadays are too busy
to join :)
- Video posts. It was a cool idea, and maybe we can do it with a
slightly different tag (idevblogadayvid or similar). I agree with Matt
that is probably better to have it as part of the daily posts, and not
as an aside, but I have to work on some code for making that happen.
- Anything else?

Also, if there is people in the group with WordPress experience that
would like to help with administering the site, it would really help.
That way I can go on vacation ;) Send me an email and I will set you
up.

Thanks everybody!
—Miguel

[Alexander Okafor]

Thanks so much for the hard work you've put into this Miguel! It's awesome! I've got my profile setup, but it seems to only show up 9 of my previous idevblogaday posts when I have 20+ categorized on my site. Adding the category link (http://www.paradeofrain.com/category/idevblogaday/) doesn't seem import anymore than the original 9. Am I missing something?

Regards,

Alex Okafor

One Man Left Studios

[Miguel Á. Friginal]

You need a feed that contains those posts. The feed auto-discovery for
the http://www.paradeofrain.com/category/idevblogaday URL is probably
getting the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/paradeofrain, that
only contains 9 idevblogaday-tagged posts(?), Once you find a correct
feed URL take into account that most blogging software (WP in
particular) page the feeds, showing only the last 10 posts. In
WordPress you can add ?paged=2 to get the second page of posts in the
feed, so using that with the Old iDev Posts option should do the
trick.

—Miguel

On Aug 22, 11:21 am, Alexander Okafor <a...@onemanleft.com> wrote:
>  Thanks so much for the hard work you've put into this Miguel! It's awesome! I've got my profile setup, but it seems to only show up 9 of my previous idevblogaday posts when I have 20+ categorized on my site. Adding the category link (http://www.paradeofrain.com/category/idevblogaday/) doesn't seem import anymore than the original 9. Am I missing something?
>
> Regards,
> Alex Okafor

> One Man Left Studios (http://www.onemanleft.com)

> > > On Aug 20, 11:42 am, Miguel Á. Friginal <miguel.frigi...@gmail.com (http://gmail.com)>

> > > wrote:
>
> > > > I was wondering about importing the tags. Since it will be a mashup of
> > > > all the blogs involved it may result in a bunch of similar tags, but
> > > > maybe we can build a list of a few categories/tags for everybody to
> > > > use that are recognized if present when importing.
> > > > For example, these are the ones that AltDevBlogADay uses: #AltDev
> > > > Updates, #gamedev, Audio, Bizdev, Education, Game design, General
> > > > Interest, Programming, Tools, UI and UX, Uncategorized, and Visual
> > > > Arts. If anybody wants to compile a list of categories they feel are
> > > > appropriate, I will modify the the import script. Maybe create a new
> > > > topic in the list if you guys want to discuss it.
>
> > > > —Miguel
>

> > > > On Aug 19, 10:00 pm, Christopher Waite <chrismwa...@gmail.com (http://gmail.com)> wrote:
>
> > > > > It all worked fine for me too - I added my feed, updated my profile, and imported my old idevblogaday posts.
>
> > > > > Great job!
>
> > > > > It strikes me that it may be worth importing tags too - to help with findability.
>
> > > > > Sent from my iPhone
>