This week we're going to look at what you thought were your Least Preferred Aspects of Blotanical and here a graph may be helpful;

Taking line honours is the unsurprising Navigation - your least preferred aspect of Blotanical. It's no surprise really as this site has just kept growing and been added onto like a rabbit-warren. Most social media sites dismay in this area because the more people that are involved the more options that us developers love to implement for y'all. Yet, it doesn't make navigating a site a friendly task and often becomes quite tedious.

Navigation is the main reason for the upgrade of Blotanical, dubbed Blotanical 2.0, and through it I hope to achieve a more friendly user-initiated framework to meander through rather than bumps and jumps.

The key idea behind the updated navigation is that from any page you are able to quickly see where you are, what options are available and if you like the page you can add it to your own specific set of links. These links can then be sorted visually so that you can easily keep your most preferred version of navigating Blotanical at your fingertips.

If you want to add anything to this conversation, or aspects of the navigation system that may be helpful (even citing sites that have navigation that you prefer) then feel free to comment below.

Regardless, I'm really happy you all shared so openly and honestly. This is the best feedback I've received because it's not based purely on one or two member's opinions. And while there have been some surprises, and a few that have left me scratching my head, most of the responses have solidified what we've all been thinking.

The number one aspect that most people enjoyed about Blotanical was the Navigation - ha, just joking ;-) Not surprising, it has come out as one of the least preferred aspects of Blotanical and is my number one priority for Blotanical 2.0.

Speaking of an upgrade, it was surprising to note that most of you were happy to see some changes occur.

While 47% took the easy step and sat on the fence, 44% said they were looking forward to an update while only 2% fear it like the plague. This is helpful to know as we push ahead with the improvements hoping to rectify some of the issues that you raised through the survey.

As promised in the email newsflashes, one respondent will pick up either a 2yr subscription to Organic Gardening (if they live in the US) or a copy of Nancy Ondra's The Perennial Care Manual: A Plant-by-Plant Guide: What to Do and When to Do It if they live outside the US. As noted below, each respondent has been allocated a number in the order that they completed the survey.

Random.org was then employed to generate a number between 1 and 165 and the winner was #90 - Linda_Patchwork. Congratulations Linda, I just need some address details (email me at scrobins@westnet.com.au) to send out your prize.

Thanks again and I shall divulge some more of your responses as I get some time to read through them all.

Shirley has started a new site called the GardenWorldReport offering streaming and on-demand videos for gardeners to view around the world. In this week's episode she, and Billy Goodnick (Garden Wise Guy), honour some of our Blotanical Award winners including Carol from May Dreams Gardens, and Anna - Flowergardengirl amongst others.

If you want to see the video then head to the GardenWorldReport and click the "On-Demand" button. You will see the "Garden Book and Blog Awards Show 10/18/09" at the top of the list. You can also leave a message in the chat box or hold a discussion with whoever is online at the time.

A big kudos to Shirley for putting this together and I look forward to watching future episodes.

While there were minimal slip ups this year in terms of coding there was one major faux pas. I forgot to double-check the Major Blotanist Awards and inadvertently missed some irksome code which limited the number of finalists. This has now been rectified but alas relegates Gail to runner-up in the Best Commenter Award and Bangchik to runner-up in the Blotanist of the Year Award. Congrats are certainly in order for Frances for taking both of those awards out. To Gail and Bangchik - my humble apologies.

For those offering feedback, thank you very much. It all goes to making next year's better and with all the positive Tweets and Posts that have been circulating the online world Blotanical has been attracting a heap of new members - gardeners and bloggers alike.

As mentioned in the last newsflash a survey will be out soon requesting your opinions, feedback and suggestions for how Blotanical will keep developing. I'm hoping that you will all share your thoughts so this community-driven site can become a better community.

I'm somewhat happier with the outcome this year as I think the initial process, albeit some bloggers missed out on nominating their preferences, has levelled the playing field a little. Whereas some blogs dominated last year's awards it appears that the competition for this year is a little stiffer - and one would expect so with almost double the blogs available to choose from.

It has also highlighted many blogs that, to be honest, I can't remember seeing since I first processed their submission. This is great because it means that the social aspect of Blotanical is taking notice of blogs that would often get missed.

I trust that the time frame isn't too onerous on you and look forward to seeing the outcome in less than a week. All the best to the finalists.

To get to the voting page, you can access it through this link or via the home page

My apologies for the confusion re: missing names on lists but I realised this as I was running out of time yet aware that the 1st September had already ticked by. I have now since made the appropriate changes so if you think you should be on a list - and you're not - then please let me know. If you're on the list, your blog or Blotanist name should be disabled so that you are unable to vote for yourself. (Nancy had correctly identified the issue previously, but this year I was keen to allow you to at least see that you were on a particular list).

Nominations will stay open for three (3) weeks so I would suggest that you start talking it up in your blogs and encourage your readers to come on over and vote for you. I haven't created a badge this year: (a) I ran out of time, and (b) most of your blogs are Wordpress.com or Blogger platforms and don't accept scripts anyhow. If you would just like an image (160px square) with a clickable link then let me know and I shall make it available within the next few days.

Some of you have noticed the new US state-by-state options. In future years I would like to break this up for most regions (ie. Europe might be per country while the UK may be per county). Obviously, we don't want to spend the full three weeks here nominating so it may become a feature that can only be voted on by those that live within that region - keen to know your thoughts on that!!!

Once this nomination phase has been completed, voting will commence. This final stage will last for a week, (7) days, and will be limited to the blogs and Blotanists who secured the top 5 positions during this nomination phase.

I wish everyone the best and look forward to seeing whether last year's winners shall be toppled or whether they will have proved their worth. Have fun....

While we must acknowledge that the commenters so far have mostly agreed, I'm keen to know whether they represent the majority view or are just a few minor voices. If, as I'm currently assuming, that these features require some major changes then I need to know whether this is the views and opinions of MOST Blotanists.

So, if you disagree with their views, please do not remain silent. Otherwise, these features may be altered in a way that you're no longer happy with.

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On to something a little more exciting....

The countdown has already begun until the start of the 2009 Blotanical Awards and I've been hurriedly trying to get the code ready for usage. I've changed one aspect of the nomination process after some feedback from last year and are now allowing you to nominate yourself for some of the blog characteric awards. (This is only available to blogging Blotanists).

Those who were here last year would remember that the drop-down lists for each category were stacked with every blog on Blotanical. With 1500+ blogs this year it's becoming a little harder to manage.

Therefore, if you go to your Plot and click on the myBlogs tab you will now see an Award Preferences button.

Click this to open a modal window with a list of Award Categories for this year.

You are permitted to choose up to three (3) Blog Award Categories per blog. You can choose different options for each blog that you have, if you have more than one listed with Blotanical. When nominations start within the next few days, your blog will be listed amongst others who have also selected the same category.

If you wish to suggest another category that isn't listed there then I would advise that you make that suggestion to me within the next 48 hours, otherwise we may not have enough time for members to opt into that category. Any category that doesn't get a minimum of five (5) blogs opting for nomination in it, will be discarded and members will be given another chance to choose.

This list of Blog Award Categories is not comprehensive and all the regular Regional Awards, Best Blog, Best Newcomer Blog, Best Blotanist, Blotanist of the Year and others will still be available once nominations get under way.

UPDATE: The Nomination Process

My apologies for not explaining this as well as I'd hoped. Here is the process;

1. Each Blogger has the next 5 days to pick which award categories they would like to be nominated for. You can choose a maximum of three (3). This does not include Regional Awards and others as mentioned above
2. The next stage allows all Blotanists three (3) weeks to nominate blogs for each of the award categories. At the end of this stage, each category is then limited to the (5) five blogs with the most nominations in each.
3. The final stage is voting and this goes for (1) week, rounding out the month of September. Each Blotanist can then vote from the top five (5) in each category for the actual award.

Basically, the only change from last year is the first step as I am trying to limit the amount of blogs that we need to wade through in the nomination stage. The other benefit is that the awards should be more specific to the blog if the blogger has opted for their categories of choice. For example, it seems a little absurd for a balcony gardener to be picking up the Best Homestead Blog!!!

If I still haven't made the process clear enough, please feel free to ask questions below.

Some of these platforms have been very effective on my other blogs and sites and provide a reasonable part-time wage. However, because Blotanical produces the least amount of money yet requires the most amount of time to maintain it is becoming a hindrance on my spare time ( I still work a 60 hour per week management job plus care for my wife and 4 children).

So, I need to make this site effective so that I can spend more time doing it and that means replacing my current income.

Now, I don't expect anything for free and I'm not trying to make this site purely commercial. It is a community, and an awesome one at that, which is why I feel perfectly safe to share this stuff with you. While it can be maintained at its present level and continue some growth things are going to take a long time to happen. I've stopped looking at the TO-DO list for while it has some incredible ideas - most suggested by members - it's overwhelming to try and engage them all because time does not permit.

So I'm keen to get some ideas on how this site might generate some revenue and allow me to get stuck into some of these brilliant possibilities.

Here's what I'm thinking at present but please offer your thoughts, feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

• We start offering members a paid annual subscription service. This gives them special bonuses (or rights) and allows them to access parts of the site that others won't. Anyone will still be able to sign up for free and submit their blogs but they may have some limited options. What do you think about this and if it's a goer, what should the annual price be and what options should paid members be allowed to have?
• We offer the current advertising spots to members for them to display their blogs for a price.
• We start an advertising scheme of our own where members can partake in some of the revenue generated and even offer them on their own blogs. (This will take some time to implement).
• The Reviews section will accept paid sites into Blotanical where they can advertise their garden shows, gardening services and the like.
• We offer a classifieds section for members wanting to sell their plants, seeds, tools etc.

I'm really interested in creative ways for this to work and benefit the whole community. If you have an idea on how to solve these dilemmas then please share below.

Firstly, let me assure you it's not your fault.

Blotanical is undergoing some major changes in this area to better cope with the pressures of an increasing blog listing. With more than 1520 blogs on offer, space is getting cramped and resources are struggling to keep up. So, a better system is being developed to handle the growth.

On face value, it may seem that Blotanical Picks are getting worse, not better, and that errors are all too frequent. Let me assure you though that the errors are actually getting less and less each day, it's just that you're now becoming aware of them.

The reason for this awareness is to try and educate blog owners that there is only so much *magic* that can be wielded on badly formed feeds. In the past, Blotanical has bent over backwards to try and accommodate the vast amount of nuances that blog owners have cast upon it. Unfortunately, the time has come to put the onus of these feed problems back onto the owners that produce them.

Having said all that, there are some ways that blog owners can begin to check their feeds and ensure that they are up to scratch. I will continue to add to this post over time as better opportunities to correct bad feeds and I will add this to the FAQ's page too.

Is my feed valid?

The Feed Validator will then spit out the validation results of your feed and give you some feedback as to how to improve your feed code if its needed. In most cases, burning a Feedburner feed will fix many of those lesser improvements.

Linking Your Feed Correctly

You can check to see if your blog is producing a legitimate feed via the auto-discovery tabs on the right-side of most browser Address bars (as shown below from Firefox);

If you click on the orange RSS icon it will automatically take you to the blog's feed where you can choose to subscribe, if you wish. In this case you're just checking to see what url comes up in the feed bar so that you can analyse whether it's the same as the one you listed for Blotanical. If not, then change the Blog Feed url in Blotanical to reflect what is actually being produced.

Sometimes, as in the image above, clicking on the orange RSS icon will produce a list of feeds that you can subscribe to. These will be listed in order of which feed is accessed first by Blotanical. In the case above, the feed is actually producing an error because it's picking up the Comment feed not the blog feed.

You can check this again by clicking the View > Page Source (or equivalent in your browser) of your blog and check the <link rel='alternate'> links just under the <head> tags in the HTML.

In the following example this code;
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Comments feed" href="http://example.com/2009/08/post_title/feed/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title=" feed" href="http://example.com/feed/" />
will produce an error within Picks.

Instead, swap them over so that the blog's feed link is listed first with the Comment feed listed second.

What if I'm still seeing errors for my blog posts?

As a disclaimer, I also make mistakes and just because your post may appear to show errors in Picks doesn't mean that the problem lies with your blog. It may be some coding error - like the Stuart Clone problem that some members experienced lately. Oops!

The code that was used to originally handle these individual lists has been slowly clunking to a halt, producing a myriad of errors. These happen when people stop blogging and remove their blogs, blogs change their feeds or their feeds stop working.

I've been working on trying to update these but have been frustrated with lost time due to injuries and doctor's commitements and a recent bout of the flu. Neverless, the update continues, albeit slowly, and I am slowly working through the individual issues.

So, I apologise for the extended time that this is taking and hope to have this all rectified as soon as possible. The benefits, once this update has been completed, will further enahce the Picks area and makes it much easier to keep all your Faves in one place.

Stay tuned.

For those with Wordpress.com blogs who may be keen to avert this current situation and have their posts picked up again, all I can suggest is that you burn a Feedburner.com feed and add the link to your Plot.

Thanks for your patience and I hope to have this problem rectified ASAP.

This page highlights some of the new movers on the block who have been Faved the most in the past 24 hours. It puts the new "dogs on the plot" into the spotlight and gives us some new, fresh faces to admire. So, if this list shows some unknown blogs, take the time to check them out and meet the people behind them.

The Most Faved and Most Visited blog lists have also had a "once-over" and don fresher, user-friendly looking interfaces.

NB: If you have some of the Popular pages saved in your browser's Favourites/Bookmarks list then you will need to update them so that they work again.

Thumbnails, at the moment, are produced by a third-party site and is a service that we pay for. As part of the service, thumbnails are generated when the blog is first accepted on Blotanical and then updated every fortnight. Every two weeks a spider trolls Blotanical looking for links to gardening blogs and then heading over to your site to take a snapshot of how your blog currently appears.

The first reason why your thumbnail may not have worked could be related to the server where your blog is hosted "hiccuping" as the snapshot is produced. Second, the server where the spider is hosted could have hiccuped in the process but most likely is the third reason that your blog's homepage is too large in size and doesn't load in time for the spider to cache the thumbnail.

In most cases where members have asked for an explanation of their lack of thumbnail it has always resulted in the size of their homepage - the location where the spider takes the snapshot. These sizes are usually greater than 1Mb - you can determine your page size by using this tool - http://websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/.

Your Page Size Is VERY Important

Apart from the obvious thumbnail issues, why should you care how large your site is?

Let me draw you an analogy. In this analogy we're going to assume that you are a shopkeeper and your blog is a shop.

Now, imagine someone is coming to visit your shop but when they do they notice the door is shut. You immediately notice them standing there and rush over to unlock it for them. The problem is that this door has multiple locks and takes you a minute or two to finally let your customer in. Now most customers will forgive that - once.

However, what if they returned the next day to find themselves in the very same predicament? They see you rushing over to unlock the door but they already know that the process is going to take some time before they can enter.

Now put yourself in their shoes. Would you be choosing to go back to that store on the third day, or even at all?

This is the very same thing that happens with most blogs - especially garden blogs. We like to show the world our photos so adorn our posts with as many as we can squeeze in. Then we try to add some music so that our visitors will enjoy the atmosphere while they peruse our articles. Plus, we like to keep it all happening on the one page so that our visitors don't have to navigate to other pages.

All these activities take time and slow down the process for our visitors and readers.

How can I reduce the size of my blog?

1. In most blogging platforms you are given a choice as to how many posts show on your homepage. The default, if available, is usually set at 20 posts. I would suggest this is reduced to between 3 to 5. By this one action you've already reduced your blog size by more than 75%.
2. Use compression on your images. Using photo imaging software such as Photoshop or Paintshop Pro will reduce the size of your images and compress them for the web meaning they will load much quicker. If you don't have access to them then this online site - http://www.resizeyourimage.com/ - will prove to be just as helpful.
3. If you still want people to view the original sized image then opt for putting a thumbnail in your post and link it to another page where the original can be viewed. This allows those who have the time to wait to see your original photo without annoying all your other visitors.
4. Better still, house them on Flickr so your visitors can go and view your gallery there.
5. Unless you want to convert ALL your visitors to RSS readers then I would suggest that you leave the autoplaying music off your blog. If you must have music then give your visitor the option to turn it on rather than wait until it's loaded so they can turn it off.

Size does matter - especially in relation to the web. The standard for most websites is that people judge them as worthwhile within the first 8 seconds. If yours hasn't even loaded within that time then you may be losing potential friends and visitors.

After Blotanical got going, it became very apparent that it wasn't handling the titles of some posts. Those that used punctuation such as (" ': ;& and ?) would often have the title of their posts cut short which caused all sorts of problems.

I then altered the way Picks worked making it reliant on the actual page that you were visiting and trying to hold the data until you actually Picked. The problem with this method was that many bloggers were using multiple tabs to pick posts (ie. they would often have more than one list displayed at a time throwing the held variables into utter chaos).

So, now the process has become even more robust and after watching it closely for the past week seems to be working perfectly.

Why do you need to know this?

Well, due to all the problems, many blotanists have reported erroneous posts showing up on their My Posts list. These have ranged from;

• Posts missing titles


• Posts with wrong titles


• Other blogger's posts with your titles


• Other blogger's posts, etc, etc, etc

Unfortunately, there is no way to fix this through code due to the many variables that are in play. So, I've thrown the ball back into your court a little. You will notice some check-boxes next to each post which you can click if they have a problem with them. Here's an example from my list;

Once you've selected them, click the Submit Erroneous Posts button before viewing another page. This will report any posts that need attention. It won't remove them from your My Posts and you will remain seeing them ticked until I've dealt with them - please be patient, this is a big process (I'm talking months not hours).

When they've been dealt with you will notice that either the post has been removed or it has been fixed up and the checkbox will no longer be ticked.

BTW - a big thanks to Sylvia for helping me through some of this.

What's with the chart at the bottom of My Posts?

This is for all you bloggers who love statistics. This chart tracks how your posts have been going for the past 30 days. It doesn't track individual posts but it will give you some idea as to how your blog is progressing.

You can easily see where the highs and lows are and what your average Pick rate is for the past month. Days that show zero are either related to you not posting on those days or quieter Blotanical days.

My hope is that this will become a helpful tool for you as your craft your posts and understand your audience.

BTW - for bloggers on the wrong side of the Chicago dateline (namely us Aussies), the chart will always appear a day behind. Be assured that this is real time as our server is hosted in the US and works of US dates.

So, for those who have traversed Blotanical for a while you will now notice the "Pick Settings" button in the far-left corner on the Picks page.

This is your license to SPEED!

The button takes you to a very simple form with two options on it. Here's an image of what the form looks like;

The first option is to "Show Posts as Originally Formatted". If left checked this will allow you to see the posts as you currently do already and is the default setting. Uncheck the field and it will only present you with the post's content but will continue to show you any images that are included within the post.

If you don't want the images to show either, thereby making the post load even quicker, you can leave the "Show Images in Altered Format" unchecked (by DEFAULT). Checking this field, in combination with unchecking the first field allows the post to be stripped down but the images to remain.

How will this affect blog owners?
Firstly, it won't result in as many pageviews for the owner. The stripped down version works directly off the feed content without delivering the page. However, because readers will be able to access these posts much quicker it should mean that more people will actually get to read your posts - even those on...dare I say it...dial-up!

Second, if your feed settings are set to Partial Feeds instead of Full Feeds (this is usually altered within your blogging platform - ie. Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad etc) readers may only get a summary of your post via this avenue. How this affects you and/ or your readers is something that only time will tell.

For those who like to comment on blogs as part of the Picks view you are still able to access the blog's post by clicking the "Read in New Tab" link directly under the Pick button.