Month: August 2006

Do you see a section called “Next Planned postings” on right panel?

I think that is a good Idea. As usual let me try to convince you that my idea is good. It has three advantages: –

• Advantage 1: It helps you plan your postings. You get various topics for blogging and a list helps you clear your memory for better things. Everyday you can think of a new topic and append the list. You take the topmost topic as “topic of the day” and blog about it. Also you get one complete day to think for the next “topic of the day”. This will help you cover useful topics.
• Advantage 2: It will motivate your visitors to subscribe to your blog. Read my posting on “how to make a subscription form for your blog”.
• Advantage 3: It helps your visitors come back to your blog. Choose the topics carefully to impress more visitors. It also tells the visitor that you are serious about blogging.

It is just like advertising with “Friends – Next season’s” clips after every “friends” episode this season.

If you like this idea, do add a comment and if your really liked my postings try subscribing to it.

If you have your domain with an active blog, and if you are serious about branding your blog then you must have a subscription form to build a better visitor base.

What is the use of such a subscription form?
Some people visit you blog through search engines (or other reference) but due to customer forgetfulness syndrome they forget the visit soon. Subscriptions will allow them to keep a track of your blog posting. This is the first step in building an active blog visitor.

How to enable a subscription form?
Since I have my own server supporting php I decided to use a better subscription application (rather the best of all), phplist.

10 great features of phplists are :-

1. phplist keeps sending messages from your web server, even after you shut down your computer.
2. No duplicate messages. No ‘forgotten’ messages. phplist manages message delivery with a message queue, ensuring that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies, even if they’re subscribed to more than one list!
3. Click Tracking tracks links and URLs. Statistics can be viewed by message, URL or subscriber.
4. Templates are completely customizable, and make site integration a breeze.
5. RSS feeds can be automatically sent to a mailing list weekly, daily, or monthly.
6. Batch Processing is useful in shared hosting environments. Set the maximum number of sent messages in a given time period.
7. Throttling can limit the load on your server so it doesn’t overload.
8. Domain Throttling limits the number of emails to specific domains to keep on the friendly side of their system administrators.
9. Attachments can be uploaded and included in messages for download.
10. Open/View Tracking tells you how many users opened your email message. This provides a minimum statistic, as many email clients with privacy or security policies block images (gmail, thunderbird, and others).

No other application will be able to provide such a great integration with your blog. It is very simple to use. You can create a template and modify the pages as per your need.

I do not have php what do I do?
You can use http://www.feedblitz.com/ , there are many such application providers. They surely have some limitations.

Should I make it automated or manual?
In my opinion, keep it manual for the following reasons,

• People do not like automated mails as such; they prefer some personal touch to it.
• Not all blog post may be of common interest.
• With manual mailing you can even send some other information.

If you need some help in installing such a subscription list please let me know I can help. Try subscribing to my blog to get a feel of it (top of the right panel of the page). I am planning to write some real good stuff in the coming days.

When I started working at the community innovation center of AmpmInsure (only with my requirements and few technical advices), I started learning some hard facts about these syndication widgets. Let me try to put 5 points that I have learned about these syndication widgets:

1. Fast – The tools should deliver fast on your server. The tools embed on your pages should not make your existing pages slow. I saw the community people at AmpmInsure really techy to address these queries. As per evan, “We are delivering the plain JS and nothing can be faster than that. A simple small JS file, no database operations, no server side scripting, just plain and simple JS”.
2. Graceful failure – When the syndication tool fails it should appear as if it never had syndicated such a tool. More details at http://evan.ampminsure.org/2006/08/13/graceful-failure/
3. Widget analytics – http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/08/widget_analytic.html , which will allow the webmaster to see what is going on with the tools.
4. Overall feedbacks – Let the people put the real feedback for others to read, right with the tools. How many sites are using it? What do they feel about it?
5. Customization – There should be an option to customize the overall tool as per the site.

These days I am working at ampmInsure innovation center for some cool widgets for my blogs. I am true believer of reusability. I never liked to invest my energy for something, which is already done in style. Some cool tools which I liked are

1. A mini widget enabling Yahoo style answers:
   
   This tool will help my blog visitors ask and discuss related topics right on my blog. Wow I can’t wait to make it happen. A true discussion platform on my blog. This will increase the participation level on my blog. This is very much like Yahoo Answers but somewhere better as it is much simpler to place and use.
2. Joke manager:
   
   They call it “Funny 24 carrot viral tool”. I think it can really be used as an effective viral tool. This will allow my visitors to share and discuss jokes right on my blog. If you allow your users to share jokes it really works, one such example is http://www.idealwebtools.com/nimc/forum/index.php?showtopic=737 , where I have seen people participating with much interest.
3. Quote Manager: When I introduced a quote section at http://www.idealwebtools.com/nimc/forum/index.php?showtopic=529 I got an unexpected participation. Many who never participated in any other thread started participating in it. Why so? May be it is to get recognition. Some of the quotes like “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital” got very popular among the members. The submitted also got appreciated for his collections. I saw this to be an effective tool to attract more participation.
4. Digg type News manager:
   
   This is just like digg.com but with some additional features like views and “take it anywhere” facility. This can be placed anywhere on the website. Even it can be repeated across the sites. This helps you share the news and findings with your blog visitors. Also this is a little better than del.icio.us as it not only allows you tag but also participate with votes and comments. Overall a good tool to use.

There are many other tools available in the innovation center. I will be trying each one of them before recommending it to others. I have test few widgets and have suggested some changes. They are working on it and making it happen for me. I can clearly see a community feel and that’s where the center of innovation lies. Diversify thoughts and experience can make the product even better. Keep watching the home of Idealwebtools for recommended tools. I will try to keep it updated.