August 20th, 2006 | 
Author: Here are some things that I’ve learned and become aware of since starting to blog on a regular basis:
I am not a web designer. I have learned a lot about web design in the last year, and I’m certainly getting better, but creative web design is not something that I’m good at. For this reason, I am exploring a redesign of the site. It will happen, it’s only a matter of when.
Jakob Nielsen is a pretty smart guy. He has outlined some blog usability mistakes. Many of his points apply directly to me, so I will probably be implementing them as well.
One of Nielsen’s points, Mixing Topics, I think is something that I have to address. I blog about whatever tickles my fancy, which is fine, but I think that if I want to expand readership, I have to have more focus. Right now I have 6 categories. I think that should be more like 3, maybe with several sub-categories.
Which brings me to another point. Politics. I never intended this blog to be that political. It turns out that politics is what I write about the most. This is probably because when I can’t find anything else to write about, there’s always some politics or world news going on. So, I think politics will be the first category to go. I will still write about politics, but much less so. I hope you aren’t all dissapointed that you won’t be seeing more of my brilliant political ramblings.
Also, sports. I don’t write enough about sports. I thought that when baseball season arrived, I’d be writing about sports every day, but that’s just not the case. There are plenty of other blogs and newsfeeds that cover it. So, sports will likely also be cut. Again, I won’t stop writing about it, I just won’t have a category for it.
I want to focus more on nerdy things: gaming, programming, entertainment, and even some finance/business stuff. This may end up being more work for me, but I think it will make MD Groves a better blog with better content. Why do I think this? Here’s my top 20 viewed articles:
A simple AJAX example 6913 AJAX username availability checking 6107 My Coke Rewards 1768 The Backstroke of the West 1563 Teen Buzz 1305 Cedric and the Revolution: Walkthrough 1043 Cedric and the Revolution 928 Concentrate on the maze 923 Zelda Action / Adventure 887 Keep it going now 650 Who wants some free CD-Rs? 576 Final Fantasy 7 remake 555 Armor 536 RSS feeds at Feed43.com 522 Top 10 Controllers of All Time 510 Supaidâ-Man, Supaidâ-Man, does whatever...? 445 Custom Opera buttons 377 5 obscure consoles I wish I had in my collection 341 MST3K on Google video 330 Stupid internet tricks 279
A few of them are just dumb (Blonde joke, Coke rewards). Of the rest, only one is vaguely political (Armor), and none are sports related. I have no idea why the Armor article is even viewed so much, because it’s short, kinda boring and no longer politically relevant. Everything else is straight up nerd content.
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I dunno. I agree the blog needs more focus but it seems the political posts are the ones with the most comments…
The most comments by you perhaps, but the articles with the most comments are pretty much the same ones on that list.
I’m down for more nerd/gaming action. I’ll be the Stephen Colbert to your Jon Stewart! Hmm, maybe that’s too political. Need something more gamey…maybe I’ll be the Cedric to your Blog Revolution, kind of like that little Taco Bell chiuaua was for Taco Bell’s US Revolution.
Hmm, here’s an idea. Why don’t I give you access to write some blogs? And you too Jonny!
If I ever become not lazy at home, maybe I’ll turn my super domain into a blog. Until then, it will sit there with some random splash image.
Yeah, my own blog posts… I can see it now… “President’s RC Plane hobby and 911: How Bush remote controlled Flight 11″… “Wound Sex: warm, wet, and wild”… “How to Manipulate People by Your Apparent Friendliness”…AND… “A movie called Snakes on a Plane! That’s super!”
Thanks for linking to that page. Somehow I guess I missed that on reddit or digg (if it was submitted), so I’m definately going to be checking it out.
One of the problem I’ve seen with my site is that it is because I wrote the software from scratch in my spare time, it doesn’t have the ‘regular’ things a blog is supposed to have, like pingbacks, categories/tags, etc. I can always add those later, which I’ll eventually get to…
Anyway, I would be hesitant to focus to much on range of subjects. I think the more important thing to focus on is quality of writing. I don’t know much about your blog, as I’ve not read to many entries, but what I have seen is pretty good. I think as long as your posting interesting ideas, people will be interested in reading them.
Take it with a grain of salt, of course. Now off to read this article.
You need more hot Asian women. But then again, who doesn’t?
Josh I’m the same way. This isn’t WordPress or anything, it’s mostly homemade with PHP, MySQL, duct tape, and some string.
Hot Asian women: CAN DO