10 Feb 2008

A couple of proposed changes

Filed under: Site management by Hari
Posted at 18:15:43 IST (last updated: 10 Feb 2008 @ 18:18:12 IST)
I wanted to ask my regular readers whether you would agree with a couple of changes I propose to make on this blog regarding the blogroll and commenting system.

First, I want to put all the external links/blogs in a separate blogroll page by itself, instead of using the sidebar to list each link. Several bloggers have already done this, but I have refrained so far because I wanted your website to get the SEO benefits. I appreciate your link back (whether you have linked from the sidebar or not), so I wanted to retain the sidebar blogroll.

The other proposed change is to reward my regular commenters. I want to remove the "nofollow" attribute on comment URLs, so that people who leave behind their website URLs get their links recognized by search engines. I'm sure most of you would not have any objection to this set up ;)

On a side note, I want to know how many of you use Gravatars so that I can implement it on the comments page.

So let me have your views on these.

15 comment(s)

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  1. I've not regretted moving my blogroll to its own page. I like that I can allow the description field be displayed and still have plenty of space available. That wasn't possible with the sidebar version for me, and the annoying tooltip was not worth the effort.

    I also don't regret removing "nofollow", but I have a decent spam fighting setup, which allows me to juice those who are human. Others don't, so they wouldn't be the best candidates. I don't see a down side to this for you, as you seem to have the nasties under control as well.

    I've been using Gravatars nearly from the beginning. Actually, I wrote the first version of the Wikipedia article (I remember that Tom was surprised and tickled about it. I don't know if Matt would care as much), which has been morphed into something far more in-depth and complex that what I initiated.

    Comment by MrCorey (visitor) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 09:23:14 IST #
  2. Thanks for your views, MrCorey.

    Thing about gravatars is that it can easily be applied to any PHP driven site, so I think I'll just go ahead with that and removing the "nofollow" attribute.

    I'll wait for more feedback on the blogroll though.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 09:27:12 IST #
  3. I don't know about the Gravatars, Hari. If you get a lot of comments (I have one post with over a hundred, err.., or maybe more), it could really bog down the page loading time. As for the other two items, I have no regrets. I'm actually trying to think of something better than the blogroll since I notice it doesn't get looked at very often by anyone but me.

    Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 11:50:16 IST #
  4. Thanks RT. About Gravatars, I can understand your concern and I'll give them some thought. But regarding your query,
    (a) I don't get hundreds of comments. The maximum I've got for a single post was about 35 or 36
    and
    (b) not everybody commenting might have a gravatar, in which case it will use a default image and not load the gravatar site.

    I can understand your fear though. Any time external resources are accessed, it does lead to a slowdown.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 12:15:29 IST #
  5. 1. I don't prefer blog roll to be on separate page for simple reason that probability that reader will prefer to close the page and move on is more than he navigating to blog roll page and clicking on the link there... But then, I dont mind as such. You may use your discretion.

    2. Your prerogative.

    3. I don't know what that Gravatar is and I may never use it.

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 14:50:41 IST #
  6. +1 from me on the seperate page issue - I have done that and it really cuts down on front page clutter.

    +1 on using Gravatars - because I have one :)

    Comment by ray (visitor) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 15:28:40 IST #
  7. Shrinidhi, yes, that's why I always left the URLs in the sidebar. But right now the link list is growing bigger and bigger, so I wanted to reduce clutter on the sidebar.

    Actually if I let the latest commenters be displayed in the sidebar, that will give back your link on the front page provided you've commented recently. Is that an acceptable compromise?

    Ray, thanks for the feedback.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 18:13:46 IST #
  8. good ideas.

    Maybe to avoid clutter and still have links is to have a random 5 blogs (more in separate page) that changes every day/week/month etc.

    Comment by titanium (visitor) on 11 Feb 2008 @ 20:00:03 IST #
  9. Fine with me...

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on 12 Feb 2008 @ 10:29:57 IST #
  10. Titanium, thanks. I'm thinking more along the lines of displaying the latest commenters on the main page.

    I think it's also a good way to reward commenters who post frequently here.

    Thanks, Shrinidhi.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 12 Feb 2008 @ 12:39:12 IST #
  11. My decisions:

    1. I've decided to keep the blogroll in the sidebar.
    2. I'm going to remove the nofollow attribute from comment URLs.
    3. I am going to experiment with gravatars. It's easy enough to remove when it gets irritating.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 12 Feb 2008 @ 18:11:55 IST #
  12. :yes: hail papa Hari

    Comment by Shrinidhi (visitor) on 14 Feb 2008 @ 15:53:42 IST #
  13. Well, I thought about it and decided that it would be unfair on other bloggers who've chosen to link back to me from their home page. I believe in reciprocity.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 14 Feb 2008 @ 17:32:52 IST #
  14. "reciprocity" |-|
    You do have a penchant for difficult words, you know ;)

    Comment by Pandu E Poluan (visitor) on 15 Feb 2008 @ 04:19:48 IST #
  15. Hi, Pandu, what's difficult about reciprocity? :))

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 15 Feb 2008 @ 07:30:40 IST #

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