The Reader Appreciation Project

Comment Response Choice: A Step Backward?

Bes — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:09:57 +0000

Recently, at RA Project a new brand idea was born to allow, through WordPress and in general, each and every website commentor the choice to specifically tell a website owner whether or not that specific commentor would like a comment response. I call it the RA Project Comment Response Choice Idea. I wonder about the effect of this idea on other things in the blog-reader and business-customer relationship arena and wanted to discuss that with you today.

Should all comments be answered, or only the ones asking for a reply?

So far, in the blogging world and in the online world in general, when you leave a comment on any website, you usually expect or want a response when you ask the website owner, or the article owner, a question or for some info. Unless an author of an article explicitly says that they will reply to all comments to their article, expecting a comment response is considered kind of voluntary and dependent on the tone of a comment. The actual reply depends on the philosophy and the mentality of an important question: is it an obligation to respond to all comments?

While the concept of allowing people to specifically ask for a comment response to their comment, or let a website owner know that they do not want a response to their comments, is very interesting to me, it also raises a very important question for me: can such a concept, of making people specifically ask for a comment response to their input, be manipulated or abused a bit to give more leniency to website owners and others when it comes to the idea of replying to people who comment on their websites?

How can businesses use this new response requirement model?

Let us take this concept one step further. How can companies use this concept when dealing with their customers? A company can require all customers to actually specify if they would require a response when dealing with that company. The Comment Response Choice can greatly help in allowing companies to focus more on responses that are directly asked for. This should also help customers be more satisfied as they will realize that a company may not be replying to them because the company has not been directly asked to respond.

At the same time, however, I wonder if it is a good idea to make a customer, or anyone else, go through an additional layer of customer reader action in order to actually respond to them? I see a very interesting implementation for this: by default, such comment response choices can be modified very easily to have the “I do not need a response” option chosen by default. In such cases, if a customer forgets to look at the Comment Response Choice or something similar, the default “No” will be chosen automatically. That can make it easier for people or businesses to say later on that the reason they did not reply was because the reader or the customer specified that they did not want a reply.

What do you think?

I love good ideas, and I love new ideas that are good. RA Project has many brand new ideas on their way and many good ideas already. Though as with probably anything, ideas need to be handled with common sense, including this Comment Response Choice idea. What is your view on this? Would you, as a website or a business owner, follow such a trend of making people specifically choose an extra option if they want a response from you? Would you, as a customer or a reader, want to specifically take an extra step to ask for a response?

Please let me and others know what you think in the comments below, thanks!

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RA Project in 2009 - Bes, improvements, & changes

Bes — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:12:33 +0000

Hi there.

Bes Zain here. I am very happy to announce what you may have already found out in a recent RA Project post: I am back and have taken over RA Project.

To get a good idea of what RA Project is all about, you can read my first post from May 18th, 2007, where I announced The Reader Appreciation Project for the first time. As for finding out who I am, if you do not know about me yet, you can read more on my The Reasoner About Me page.

Continuum, Changes & Improvements

The Reader Appreciation Project will now continue in the direction with the ideas that I have had in my mind since the beginning. You will see a lot of new content appearing regularly from now on. Please offer any input or thoughts you may have about anything that you read or notice on the site.

There will also be several key improvements, in the form of changes mainly, coming soon to the entire Project. The main improvements will be in the areas of actual content. In my view, the actual content is the actual reason and power of, for and behind this entire RA Project. Following are some of the main key points that I have in my mind at this moment:

Very important: expansion of the idea of “Reader Appreciation“
Your opinion. What do you think of the concept of appreciation?
Your participation. How would you like to participate in or through this Project?
Reader Appreciation concept papers, explanation, issues, examples and more.
More spotlights
Simplification of the content and some areas on the site

Other minor changes like a new theme and different visual elements will be rolled out gradually as time passes. As time passes, I’ll announce further updates in a separate post or update this very announcement.

What do you think?

I would like to hear your feedback or thoughts on everything. What do you think of this new announcement? What do you think of RA Project so far? Would you like to ask anything in order to find out more about the project or to find out more about me? If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or any thoughts about anything here, please let me know through the comments below [it rhymes!] or by contacting me directly.

Thank you for visiting and reading RA Project. I am very happy to be back, and at the same time, I am very excited and hopeful at what is happening here right now.

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Would You Like a Reply to Your Comment?

Ronald Huereca — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 07:08:57 +0000

One of the things I’ve constantly struggled with is replying to comments.

Sometimes a post is old, and someone decides to leave an off-hand comment. Do I reply, or just leave it be?

Or, someone has made a well-versed comment, but all I can think of is, “Nice comment.”

I’ve created some code (if you’re using WordPress) that takes the guess work out of this. If a reader would like a reply, they can explicitly say so.

The Concept

Right below the comment form is a drop-down box that lets the reader choose if they desire a reply or not.

Once they leave the comment, you are sent a normal comment e-mail with the reader’s preference included.

Here are some screenshots to demonstrate:

On a Blog

In Your E-mail

You can also view live implementations here:

The Code

The code is rather simple, so I’m not going to release it as a plugin.

All you’re required to do is insert the code into your WordPress theme’s functions.php file.

Here is a download link.

When viewing the source, you can customize the IDs (for CSS), as well as text.

If customizing, be sure that the “SELECT” tag ID/Name matches the ID in line 13 of the code.

Conclusion

Giving the reader the option to weigh in on his/her preference is a concept I have yet to see elsewhere.

Please feel free to try it out and/or weigh in here on your thoughts.

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Change in Ownership

Ronald Huereca — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:08:27 +0000

As most of you are aware, the posts on RAP have died down over the last several months. The reason? I decided to take a long break from blogging, reassess my priorities and interests, and rejuvenate myself mentally and physically.

I’ve made some decisions, and one of those is to rid myself of prior obligations so that I can work on other projects. That’s the reason I’m no longer developing/supporting my WordPress plugins; they are too time consuming with very little ROI.

New Owner

Bes Zain, one of the original RAP founders, recently got back in touch with me. We were talking, and he asked, “What are you planning to do with raproject?” I couldn’t give him a good answer.

I then asked him, “Would you like to take it over?” He enthusiastically agreed.

So here’s my announcement: Bes is back and he’s now in charge of the future of raproject.

What’s in store? I have no idea, but I’m sure Bes will fill you all in. If you are subscribed, please hang in there and see what Bes can do.

I’ll still be around, but my priorities are elsewhere right now.

Thank you all for supporting me at this project. Take care.

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Ajax Edit Comments - New Author

Ronald Huereca — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:57:51 +0000

I’ve been looking for a new author for Ajax Edit Comments for some time now.

With the help of Jeff from WP Tavern, I was able to find a new author.

Ajay Dsouza, who I assume needs no introduction, has decided to take over the plugin.

I’ve swarmed Ajay with diagrams and e-mails explaining the plugin, so hopefully updates will come soon.

Thank you to everyone here at raproject who has supported this plugin and made it one of WordPress’s most popular. A big thank you to the translators, and everyone who has given feedback in the forms of posts, bugs, support, and more.

If you have a moment, please give Ajay some love and write about the new home for Ajax Edit Comments (http://ajaydsouza.com/wordpress/plugins/wp-ajax-edit-comments/).

In order to minimize confusion, the existing Ajax Edit Comments pages will now redirect to Ajay’s website.

Thanks again for your support.

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WP Categories and Posts - New Author

Ronald Huereca — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:05:28 +0000

WP Categories and Posts was one of my first plugins I wrote for raproject.

It was quickly overshadowed by Ajax Edit Comments, and I didn’t really touch it after that.

Phil McDonnell approached me last week about taking it over, and I was pleasantly surprised at his eagerness.

We spent a few days exchanging details, and I helped him get it listed on WP Extend.

Features Planned

Here are some of the features Phil plans to add:

Add the number of posts to each category, like Rants (5), Poetry (3), etc.
Parameter to limit the number of post displayed
Parameter to show/hide date display
Parameter to show/hide parent category name

And here are the features you suggested that may make the cut:

Create an admin menu with user-definable settings. Ideally a user shouldn’t have to program in a function, but include something like in a page or post.
Maybe an AJAX implementation which could collapse/expand the index for posts older than a certain date?

Much thanks to Phil for taking this plugin over. Hopefully this neglected plugin will get some nice updates.

If you have any more feature requests, please comment here and I’ll refer Phil to this page.

Visit the Categories and Posts page hosted by Phil.

One Side Note

The plugin page for Categories and Posts hosted here will automatically redirect to Phil’s new plugin page. My apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.2 Released

Ronald Huereca — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:02:29 +0000

Today marks the first major release in some time for Ajax Edit Comments.

Here are some of the changes in 2.2.

Feature: De-link comment option for admins.
Feature: Ability to move comment-editing interface above or below the comment.
Feature/Bug Fix: Edited comments are checked against comment blacklist.
Feature/Bug Fix: Anonymous users can no longer edit comments that are marked as moderated.
Misc: JavaScript should leave less of a footprint.
Misc: Comment Editor is completely stand-alone. Hopefully this will resolve some conflicts.
Misc: Updated jQuery script to 1.2.6. *crossing fingers*

Please head over to WordPress Extend and download your own copy.

If you have any issues with the new version, please leave a comment below.

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What Does a Blogger Who Survived Hurricane Katrina?

Simonne — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:05:46 +0000

Hurricane Katrina brought a real disaster to New Orleans and surrounding areas. People who survived it found themselves in the situation of not having anymore house to sleep in, no more clothes to wear, and so many times, no more family, or even no more life.

But as the human brain is set to forget, after a while people came back to New Orleans and tried to re-build their lives on the ruins of their old ones. Some of those people are bloggers. Maybe you’ve read their blogs many times without knowing that they were running away from the hurricane as they were writing those posts.

I was thinking the other day at a friend of mine, who’s working with me on an internet project, and who excused himself to be late with some things because he had to prepare for the hurricane. I’m fortunate to live in a blessed area, with moderate climate. The biggest wind I’ve ever seen was barely able to put down a dead tree. I think that if I had to face such a disaster, survival would have taken the first spot in my priorities (and the next ten spots on my priorities list would have been empty).

Today I discovered that there are people like PB, who after surviving Katrina, is now running away from Gustav, and meanwhile he still finds time to make a video post. Unbelievable, while being away, he’ll have to pay some $300 a night (or $100 a night) for the hotel room, as far as I’ve understood from his video. Again, I don’t get this democracy which cannot find a solution for lodging these people who were terribly hit by Katrina and who are in danger to be devastated again, this time by Gustav. Why do they give names to those storms? Only to have somebody to blame it on for so many deaths?

I’ve never read PB’s former blog (which he recently sold), but I cannot stop myself from thinking that maybe other bloggers I read are in the same situation. What I know, is that there are bloggers who pray for PB and for all other people in distress.

I surely hope Gustav dies young. Do you?

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10 Successful Tips to Write Top 20 Successful Lists to Boost Your Presence in Social Media

Simonne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:41:24 +0000

You all know by now how important is to give your readers good tips, so they stay motivated to subscribe and read your blog regularly.

But do you know what’s even more important than giving your readers useful tips?

Giving them in form of lists.

If you believe what I’ve written so far, that’s OK, your readers probably love you already. But doesn’t this blogging world start to look like a cookbook? Take two eggs, scramble them on a plate, add some salt and pepper, some small cut bell peppers, throw everything in a hot pan, wait one minute, turn on the other side, wait another minute, put everything on a plate, decorate with parsley, eat, enjoy.

Although there are great recipe books available for almost everybody, some of us are lousy cooks. Or maybe we are good, but the ingredients we use aren’t always that fresh. Or our timing is not exactly the right one: 30 seconds more on the fire can change the taste of the food we make.

Do you see my point? Why writing in lists, when the outcome would be unique anyway? Why respecting the cooking recipe, if I think my food could have a better taste if I cook by inspiration? Do you think the guests you invite for dinner care more about your cookbook rather than about the result, the food itself? If I were a cooking expert, supposed to produce the same outcome each time I combine the same ingredients, that would make a sense. If you go to a restaurant and order a Caesar salad, each time you expect to get the same combination of foods which we use to call Caesar salad.

But cooking by the book when nobody expects that can be a little frustrating, don’t you think so? Having an infinity of blank pages waiting for me to fill them in could be a challenge for creativity and not for making more and more lists. Why limit myself to a given frame, when I feel like crossing the boundaries? Only because I assume that readers cannot focus enough to read a whole page which is not broken into bullet points?

I’m smarter than that and I’m sure my readers are smarter, too.

What do you think about lists?

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What Do You Do When You Are Out of Ideas for Your Next Post?

Simonne — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:54:23 +0000

Running low on ideas seems to be an issue most of the bloggers face every now and then. At least, this is how I explain myself the numerous posts on this topic I come across every day. Is this a concern that readers would be disappointed if they don’t find you posting with your usual frequency? Or is it maybe a concern that they’d go away and never ever come back to read your blog again? Or maybe that’s just their ego, not allowing them to just break the routine and skip posting until they have something to say to their readers…

Whatever the reasons, we want to be creative and to live up to the expectations of others. That’s why we need backup plans and strategies. Let’s see some of them:

Pat B. Doyle provids her readers with an impressive list of 23 great ideas for blog posts.

Lisa, from Hit Those Keys tells about counterweighs to beat Inertia and produce “New Work”.

Spinebreakers publish an audio interview with an author who has never experienced writer’s block. It seems that having multiple jobs ongoing at the same time is key for him to never have this problem.

Finally, this is how Rudyard Kipling explains the six words which prevent writer’s block.

What’s your way? Do you want to get rid of your writer’s block when it comes, or you are just living it to the full and stop posting for a while?

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Two Plugin Updates - Ajax Edit Comments and WP Grins Lite

Ronald Huereca — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:17:50 +0000

This weekend I released an update to two of my plugins hosted here.

Ajax Edit Comments

The first update was for Ajax Edit Comments. Oliver from the cforms-ii plugin approached me and asked if I was interested in making our plugins compatible.

Being a huge fan of cforms, I was thrilled with the opportunity and the willingness of the cforms author to assist in compatibility. After hashing some e-mails back and forth, we finally got our plugins to work with each other.

Another feature added to Ajax Edit Comments was the automatic deletion of security keys for every 100 comments. RT Cunningham expressed his frustration with an ever-growing database filled with security keys. After discussing ideas, we agreed that every 100 comments was a good place to delete the comments. In the future I may make this an option that a user can configure, but I haven’t had much demand for it, so we’ll see.

As a side note, Ajax Edit Comments is approaching the 50,000 download mark. It’s an incredible milestone, and one I’d like to thank you all for. So, thanks for your support of this plugin in the form of translations, links, word-of-mouth, donations, and just plain using it. I’m still impressed when I comment on a random blog and it has the plugin installed.

WP-Grins Lite

WP-Grins, written by Alex King, was ported over by me to the jQuery library. For those not familiar with jQuery, it’s a far less bandwidth-intensive library compared to Prototype. The end result was WP-Grins Lite.

Several commenters chimed in with feedback, and so far the results have been very positive. Alex King informed me that he planned to port all his plugins over to jQuery, and I would be grateful if he released WP-Grins Lite as his official version.

The update I released for this plugin resolved some WP 2.6 (curse you!) issues, and fixed a rather peculiar bug on a blog where it was loading the JavaScript four times (weird).

So What’s Next?

As far as programming goes, I’m starting to take more client work, which is nice, but means I have less time to work on side projects such as the two listed above.

I am looking forward to WordPress 2.7 and the comment API. For the first time, users could have comment management at the desktop or mobile level. I will be following this closely, and who knows, you might see something from me here.

Conclusion

For all who have downloaded, or used either of the above plugins directly or indirectly, thank you. Thank you for putting up with me, and for helping me make better plugins.

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How Much Do You Give Away?

Ronald Huereca — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:54:24 +0000

When I started blogging, it was all about giving. Giving, giving, and more giving.

Writing for free, programming for free, talking, e-mailing, more blogging, more writing, and soon I got over my head.

Everybody is busy in their own way. Priorities shift constantly, and interests change.

One thing I’ve struggled with lately is how to keep on going. My personal situation has changed since I bailed out a friend who was kicked out of his apartment (long story). I’ve met a nice lady friend. I used to use blogging and programming to pass the time, now I have to make the time.

It’s a struggle, and one that I’m sure we all face. Some of us have kids. Most of us have day jobs. Some of us have school. And some have all three and then some. Yet we still find the time to make it online and share with the world our thoughts and knowledge.

Just this week I had to tell a guy who requested CSS customization on Ajax Edit Comments that I wasn’t able to help him unless I billed him my hourly rate. I felt bad about it, but there wasn’t much I could do. I had a paying client I had to finish a job for, and the custom work would have competed with that.

Andrew Rickmann also raised a thought-provoking issue. If someone had a site you didn’t particularly agree with, would you still help? So not only is our time being competed for, our ideals are as well.

My question to you is, how much are you willing to give away before it’s too much for you to handle? If you do client work, how do you determine what work should be paid for, versus not?

Thank you for reading.

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Are You Concerned About Fake Friends?

Simonne — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:53:33 +0000

If you run a blog or two, you may already know that some of the means to promote your blogs to the world are social media and commenting on other blogs in your niche. Both methods imply communication. Your avatar meets my avatar on the same page and we exchange words and thoughts.

What if my avatar has been “borrowed” from Flickr and designed to represent that other “me” I want to be in relationship with you? If you knew that your web 2.0 friends who helped you when you needed were just “somebody elses” hiding behind fake social media profiles, would this discovery lower your appreciation for them?

Is this situation similar to the one of the little boy who wanted to get his grandmother married, so he pretended to be her in some dating websites, and befriended some potential grandfathers in her name?

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Invisible Readers, Where Are You?

Simonne — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:32:09 +0000

Do you remember the last time when you did something for your readers to make them feel better on your blog? How did you come to the conclusion that you had to do exactly that particular change and not others?

One of the niches I’m writing in is internet marketing. As I want to stay informed on what other people in the niche are writing, I’m subscribed to a gazillion blogs, and every now and then I even remember to read them. Many bloggers in this niche feel like monetizing their blogs is a must, taking into consideration that they write about making money with blogs. However, every once in a while, there’s a blogger who decides to get rid of all blog advertising as tribute to his readers. The results? The readers’ appreciation? I quote from the blog of Garry Conn, who’s the person in question:

Since this time, I have written some really good articles â€” at least what I thought to be â€” and have received virtually ZERO reactions to these posts. I even wrote a post about my daughterâ€™s 16th birthday and out of 1200 subscribers on only 4 people wished her a happy birthday. So for me, I am truly offended by that. I understand nor do I expect that all 1200 people would have wished her happy birthday, but I would have expected around 20 people to do so…

So, ads are back on the blog, and so are the comments from readers. This is the last comment on the post I’ve quoted from:

Iâ€™ve never seen a marketer chew is viewers out â€¦ ?? I get great feedback, and most others do to. Only 25% of people come back to your site, meaning youâ€™re failing on building the emotional connection. Donâ€™t blame your viewers when you fail at generating buzz or comments. You are the one making the â€œfirst moveâ€ with your website. If you fall on your face, then work on your style, or add more value.

What do you think? Was this reader unfair? Or is it just that our readers are in such a hurry themselves that they really don’t find the time to stop and wish Happy Birthday to the daughter of somebody they learn from?

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Removing Dates From Posts for Timeless Content

Ronald Huereca — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:50:42 +0000

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger wrote a post today that covered the topic of removing dates from blog posts for the appearance of timeless content.

As mentioned in my design decisions series, I believe it should be the reader, and not the blogger, who decides which content is timeless.

After I consolidated my design decisions series for another site, I quoted a reader’s comment on another blog:

When I find a blog with no time stamp, I feel conned. (From Erica)

I don’t personally feel conned, but a timestamp is a helpful tool in gathering context. For example, if I’m looking up something time sensitive, such as useful apps for my new iPhone, I wouldn’t want to read something dated March of 2008 because the new iPhone wasn’t out then.

On the other hand, as Darren pointed out, there are older posts which are indeed timeless (not date sensitive) that readers ignore simply because they are old:

The problem is that when you have a post that is ‘timeless’ (ie it doesn’t really date because the tips you give or the principles that you talk about will always apply) a date can act as a distraction to your reader. They arrive at the post and see that it was written in 2006 and a little warning bell goes off in their mind that what they are reading is not ‘current’.

While Darren presents some good arguments for having (and not having) dates on posts, the majority of his comments are in favor of keeping dates.

So Should Blog Posts Have Dates?

My official stance is yes. You’d be hard pressed to find a magazine, journal, or newspaper without some kind of time reference. Even reference material and novels have publishing dates and revisions. Why would the web be any different?

Yes, I can hear Liz Strauss saying, “But we’re on the web, not in print.”

While true, a time reference is one aspect of print that should be carried over.

The argument for removing dates is so that the content appears timeless. I would love to declare all of my content timeless. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to my readers.

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The Lifespan of a Reader

Simonne — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:47:43 +0000

There was this research some years ago which was showing that the staff of a company fully renews itself over a period of three years. People come and go, and if you have the curiosity to pay a visit to your former colleagues after a few years, you may end up with the surprise of not knowing anybody in that company anymore.

Thinking at myself as a blog reader, one of the things I notice immediately is that the list of blogs I read has almost completely changed over the past two years. Although I watch on average 100 blogs (or more), the ones which are still on my favorites list can be counted on one hand’s fingers only.

I don’t remember when I’ve lost interest in some blogs and how long it did take until I wasn’t interested in them anymore. However, I believe that for most of the blogs, my lifespan as a reader last some 4-6 months. I have no idea if those bloggers were starting to repeat themselves, or was it only that I didn’t care for those topics anymore?

How are you as a reader? Are you aware of your lifespan as reader of a certain blog? When you stop reading one, do you know your reasons, or it’s just that one day you discover that you completely forgot it existed?

After how much time the readership of a blog is completely renewed? I wonder if we could measure that. What do you think?

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Happy Birthday BlogLancer! Everybody’s Welcome.

Simonne — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:50:12 +0000

Most of the biggest things in life started by being small.

This is not a saying of who-knows-what-smart-personality from the past. This comes straight from my personal wisdom well, and it was issued with the occasion of getting tired to submit stories to Digg to see if I can make it to the front page. After Digg, there was Sphinn: another enigma, another trial. Here I noticed from the start that I cannot find an appropriate category for my submissions. There’s no wonder that very few members actually cared to vote for those stories, although some of them were not bad at all.

After two years of being a submitter, I decided to become the one who receives submissions. No, I haven’t got hired by Digg, nor by Sphinn. I’ve just launched my own social networking website, BlogLancer.net, a place where there is no specialization: there are lots of categories, so all readers would find a suitable place to submit their work. If they can’t find it, I’ll create it for them.

On BlogLancer.net, all members are equal and all stories are accepted. Who cares if you choose to publish them on a Squidoo lens, or on a HubPages hub, or on a free Blogger blog? If you thought it to be good for publishing, then I think it is good for reading. All you need to get promoted on the front page are 5 votes from the other members. There is also a Wordpress plugin, for those of you who may want to include the “vote” button in their articles.

As the site is only four days old (or maybe I should say four days young), it is small and ignored by search engines. But Digg and all others must have looked the same in their first week of existence: small and ignored.

So, if you have stories craving for attention, I invite you to submit them to BlogLancer, so we can all read and comment them together.

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When to Turn Off Comments

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:39:52 +0000

Comments on a blog are crucial to building community, meeting others, and (most importantly) interacting with your readers.

We’ve written many articles here on the importance of having comments enabled. Even Liz Strauss has weighed in on the issue:

My personal opinion is, that if I read a really great article and I come to the end and I can’t leave a comment… These days, my response is sort of like, “They don’t want to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to them.”

However, there are some times when it might be better to disable comments, regardless of the consequences.

You’re On Vacation

When going on an extended vacation, perhaps it’s better to disable comments temporarily rather than let a potential spammer take over your blog.

An alternative to this is enlisting the help of a trusted friend to help moderate your comments while you’re away. If you are in charge of a multi-author blog, perhaps temporarily promoting one of your authors is a good fit.

You’re Done With Blogging

You’ve had it! You’ve experienced everything the blogosphere has to offer and you’re ready to move on.

If you decide not to sell your website and just leave it up for archival purposes, then it would be wise to completely disable comments on your blog.

You’d Rather Concentrate on Writing

In the case of Shawn Blanc, he didn’t want readers to think they had an obligation to comment on every post. Shawn concentrates on his material, and allows readers to weigh in to him via e-mail.

Prominent blogger Seth Godin also follows this approach.

You Don’t Ever Respond

If you find yourself never responding to comments, then perhaps it’s time to turn those comments off.

I’m definitely not perfect, but I do try to respond to all comments. However, if one never makes that attempt, then perhaps comments aren’t a good fit.

You Don’t Have Time

A while back, a blogger named Avinash decided to disable comments on his site. It was temporary, but I understood his reasons.

Some bloggers simply don’t have time to manage comments.

Bloggers have to deal with:

Spam
Moderating
Trolls
Responses
Requests

Managing comments is a lot of work, and if you simply don’t have the time, then perhaps leaving them off is a better solution.

There Are Legal Issues

There has been some debate in the blogosphere recently about who owns comments.

There are also countries out there where the blogger is liable for a reader’s comment.

If a blogger is fearing arrest (or worse) over a comment someone else made, then perhaps it’s better to leave them off.

Conclusion

I’m absolutely 100% for having comments enabled. It’s one of the first steps in reader appreciation.

However, comments aren’t for everyone.

In your opinion, is there ever a time when a blogger should disable comments completely?

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Improve Your Confidence With Karaoke

Ronald Huereca — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:20:01 +0000

In a crowded, smoke-filled room, a person asks me, “What are you singing?”

I stare at the blank sheet of paper in front of me, where I am to fill out my name and song request.

“I’m not sure yet. What about you?”

“Oh.” the person replies, “I’m not going up there.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“I get horrible stage fright.”

“It’s just karaoke. Nobody expects you to be an expert singer.” I say trying to reassure my friend.

“I’ve tried it before. I just froze up.”

I smiled, “Sometimes you just have to forget there are other people in the room and sing for yourself.”

Karaoke and Blogging

Singing karaoke in front of a bunch of strangers is an intimidating experience.

If you’ve ever written a blog post for a rather large audience, it is an equally intimidating experience. You’re placing yourself out there for all to criticize.

It is my belief, however, that the more comfortable you become with yourself, the more your audience will be comfortable with you.

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In The Longest Day Of The Year…

Simonne — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:44:23 +0000

In the longest day of the year, hidden away in your personal oasis, you can get Google send 16350 visitors to your blog only by blogging about the first day of summer, or you can close your eyes and imagine how ICANN is going to open up the internet to those who will show full wallets and solid business plans.

No matter how much you’d be thinking, you’d never guess what’s in the Mojave Desert, nor for how long is Microsoft going to support Windows XP in the future. Some people may not care, but I do, because I tried Vista once, and on Mac I’m lost forever. How to get used to a one-button mouse when you have so many fingers willing to click?

My brain got a bit fried today because of the incredible summer heat, so this was the best possible shape I was able to give to all the interesting things I’ve read and wanted to share with you.

There’s one more before I go: if you need to install Wordpress on many domains, forget the never-ending ftp and get Easy WP Installer to help you.

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WP Grins - Lite

Ronald Huereca — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:31:36 +0000

A while back, when I released the new commenting section for this blog, one of the requests was the inclusion of smilies.

I installed WP Grins, but the overhead of the Prototype library was immediately noticable on the site.

Since I was already using jQuery here, it was apparent I wanted to port the plugin over.

I worked on a “lite” version on Friday, and talked to Alex King to see if it was okay to give you guys a download. He mentioned that he would be happy to do an update to the existing plugin, but had to do his own internal testing to make sure the lite version wouldn’t break blogs.

Until Alex is able to make an official release, I’m going to post a download link here for you all to check out.

Download Link

Here is the download link for WP Grins Lite.

The only difference between this plugin and the original is the use of the jQuery library.

Installation Instructions

Unzip the “wp-grins-lite.zip” file and copy the “wp-grins-lite” folder into your WordPress plugins directory.

From there, just activate the plugin in your admin plugin options.

WordPress Versions

This plugin has only been tested on WP 2.5, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for 2.2+ installations.

Conclusion

WP Grins Lite is simply a port from the Prototype library to jQuery. The functionality should still be the same, but the footprint lighter.

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What Readers Appreciation Can Lead To

Simonne — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:19:42 +0000

Do you still remember the moment when you published your first post? What were your feelings? Were you anxious and eager to see readers commenting on your thoughts? Were you checking on your blog 100 times a day, from fear of not answering a comment fast enough? How did you feel?

All these questions popped in my head when I discovered that a new blog was born, authored by Doreen, Jim Kukral’s wife, and named Mom Goes Green. I liked the way Jim described what he saw in his wife’s eyes when she hit Publish for the first time. I liked this new, fresh blog, full of the energy given by the beginning. But what I liked most was the impressive number of comments.

Do you know why? Because this says something about Jim Kukral’s readers. And if I’m going to tweak an old saying, like “tell me who your readers are, and I’ll tell you who you are”, then you’ll see how much Jim Kukral respects his readers and makes them feel at home in his Daily Flip.

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Plugin Review - Fun With In-Context Comments

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:31:35 +0000

Andrew Rickmann, friend and fellow RA Project contributor, has released a new plugin called Fun With In-Context Comments for WordPress 2.5.

The plugin allows you to add questions to your comment section, which readers can optionally answer.

Applications

The applications for such a plugin are enormous. If you’re running a political blog, you can ask questions on current issues.

If you’re running a celebrity blog, you can ask questions based on a certain celebrity.

And, most importantly, if you are writing a support-type post, you can ask users for their browser, operating system, and whatever else you can possibly think of.

Brief Overview of Features

When you head into the WordPress 2.5 Comments panel, you’ll see an option for “Global Contexts”. From there, you can specify a number of options. You can also add questions, which you can then optionally add on any post or page with comments enabled.

Global Contexts - Adding a Question

The neat thing about this plugin is you can also add questions from a post, which will only apply for the post in question. This makes the plugin both flexible, and completely post independent.

Post Contexts - Choosing or Adding a Question

From a commenter’s point of view, you are presented an optional question when leaving a comment, which will then show up in the comment.

Leaving a Comment

And the final feature I’ll mention: It’s fully compatible with the latest version of Ajax Edit Comments.

Compatible with AEC 2.1

Future Versions

Andrew mentioned to me that he’s planning on adding a feature to tally how many people have answered a question in a particular manner, which is very similar to a poll.

Conclusion

Fun With In-Context Comments is a nice way to unobtrusively ask readers a question, which will hopefully put a reader’s comment in the context of a post.

The plugin will help with support issues, and will also assist readers when filtering comments based on a particular answer.

As a sidenote, Andrew’s plugin is also part of the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition. If you have a moment, please check out his plugin over there and give him some feedback.

I also have the plugin installed here if you’d like to try it out on this post.

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 Released

Ronald Huereca — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:47:21 +0000

Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 is ready for release. For the download, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page.

Feature Additions

Option to disable icons.
Option to disable Gravatars.
Added auto-scroll to comment.
Option to customize title text and URL
Option to remove “clearfix
Option to specify stylesheets.
Option to remove “More Options” from editor.
Added additional languages.
Added numerous plugin hooks so that AEC can be extended for other plugins and/or modules.

Bug Fixes

Save/Cancel buttons re-styled for other browsers.
Fixed issue where Admin couldn’t enter blank e-mail address.
Fixed NextGen Gallery incompatibility.
Fixed issue where AEC JavaScript was loading in unrelated admin panels.

Feedback?

If you have any issues, or have additional feature requests, please feel free to leave a comment.

Please note that test comments will periodically be removed.

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 Pre-Release

Ronald Huereca — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:51:49 +0000

I’ve been busy with some fairly sizable updates to the plugin.

Thanks to feedback from various sources including Viper007 and Sean from Pixelwit, I’ve added in a number of updates/changes.

Since there are a fair amount of changes, I’m holding off on an official release and also giving the translators a chance to catch up with some of the changes.

So in the meantime, here’s the download link to the ~~Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 Pre-Release~~.

Here’s a list of some of the changes.

Added Updated Languages

There were many word additions, so I updated the “po” files for the translators. I also added in the Norwegian language.

Icons Can Be Disabled

Several didn’t like the new icons, so I added an option to remove them. The links will look like AEC 1.x. with this option.

Ability to Disable Gravatars

Gravatars were causing the plugin to not work on some blogs. Also, several users were confused when a silhouette would show up when editing a comment.

Bug fix: Admin Couldn’t Enter a Blank E-mail Address

Admin can now enter an empty e-mail address. If any part of the e-mail field is filled out though, it will be passed through validation.

Save/Cancel Buttons in Editor Interface Re-Styled

Buttons are re-styled for maximum browser compatibility. The icons were also removed.

Can Remove ‘More Options’ From Editor

You can now remove the ‘More Options’ option in the editor interface. Doing this will also give you more textarea room in browsers that support the ‘rows’ attribute.

Added Option to Remove “clearfix”

This style can make or break themes. For those that it breaks, it can now be easily disabled.

Added Auto-Scroll to Comment

If an admin clicked on a comment anchor (yourblog.com/#comment-39302), the page would load, and then the edit links would show up. This produces an offset. The plugin now tries to correct this offset.

You can also disable this in the admin panels, since I imagine a few might find it annoying.

Added Option to Change the Title Text and URL

The Title Text and URL in the editor interface can now be customized. If you’re nice though, you’ll leave it as is

Feedback?

Feel free to try out the pre-release. I’ve tested it out as best as I could. I imagine you’ll find bugs in some of the work I did as there were lots of changes.

Any feedback is appreciated.

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To Follow, or Not to Follow - on Twitter

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:44:07 +0000

To follow, or not to follow. That is the question.

This past week I gained about sixty or so followers thanks to Jeff’s Twitter post over at WeblogToolsCollection.

After scanning through each of my new followers, I was faced with a decision. Do I follow just because they’ve followed me? Or, do I follow because there is a genuine, and hopefully, mutual interest?

It’s really the same dilemma I find myself facing when it comes to feeds. I would love to subscribe to each one of my readers’ blogs, but I typically only subscribe if I can relate to the subject matter in the areas of interests, language, and material.

If you are on Twitter, what is your criteria for finding people to follow? Also, what would cause you to unfollow (is that a word?) someone?

For those interested, here’s some of the RAP contributors’ Twitter profiles.

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Plugin Review - WP Comment Remix

Ronald Huereca — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:53:21 +0000

The newest WordPress plugin to help with commenting and reader appreciation is that of WP Comment Remix.

Comment Remix enhances your admin comment section, and introduces several post features.

Post Features

Reply, Quote, and Tags

Comment Remix takes your existing comment section and adds the following options:

A ‘Reply’ link
A ‘Quote’ link
Tags

Here’s a quick screen of those in action:

If you click on the reply link, you’ll see something like this in the comment box:

The benefits of the ‘Reply’ option is that the original comment is linked to if others want to read the original comment.

The only issue I’ve found with the ‘Reply’ and ‘Quote’ options is that they are still available if comments are disabled on a post.

On the tags feature, if you click a tag on a comment, only comments with that associated tag are displayed. I’ve been debating with myself how useful this is, since it appears that tags only show up for the particular post I’m on. Also, there is no easy way to edit tags. You’ll have to edit the comment in order to edit the tags for that comment.

Trackback Options

One nice option that Comment Remix has (in the admin panels) is removal of Trackbacks. You’ll find similar functionality in the Comment Sorter plugin I wrote.

In addition to the removal of Trackbacks, the admin has the ability to automatically move Trackbacks to the end of the comment section.

Sort Options

Admin can also specify how the comments are displayed. Comments can be sorted (ascending or descending) by the comment date, or by the commenter’s name.

Admin Options

The meat of the Comment Remix features come in the admin panel.

Comments Panel Actions

With an interface very similar to Absolute Comments, the plugin gives you the ability to edit, ignore (explained in a minute), reply, quote, and view all comments for a post.

One thing I’d like to see here is better styling of the links.

Reply/Quote Pop-Ups

When clicking on the Reply/Quote actions, you see a pop-up window, which allows you to add your comment and submit.

I’m not quite sure why the author didn’t go with the ‘Thickbox.js’ file, but the pop-up he uses works pretty well.

Once you hit ‘Save Reply’, the new comment will show up at the top of the Comments panel.

In Need of Reply

One absolutely fantastic feature is called the ‘In Need of Reply’ panel.

What this panel shows you is all of the comments that haven’t been replied to.

Once you reply to a comment in this panel, the comment disappears since it is no longer in need of reply.

One feature that is desperately missing here is a ‘Mark All as Replied’, although you can “ignore” comments on an individual basis.

Conclusion

Comment Remix is a very nice plugin that combines a lot of features I’ve seen in other plugins. It’s always nice to have it all in one place, and the admin options (not shown in this review) are quite extensive.

The star feature is the ‘In Need of Reply’ panel, which will help busy blog authors figure out which comments haven’t been replied to.

Comment Remix is still in its early stages, but it’s off to a great start.

As a side note, Comment Remix is also part of the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition. If you have a moment, head over to the Comment Remix post, cast a vote, and give your say.

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Our Readers Trust In Us. What Are We Doing To Them?

Simonne — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:08:14 +0000

One of the most controversial topics in the blogging world is making money online. Actually not exactly making the money, but talking about how to make it. All kind of “experts” are raising their heads from the dark, claiming they have the absolute secret to the treasure chest, and giving it away for a measly amount of $47, or $97, or $147. What’s one second, compared to the Eternity? What’s one hundred bucks, compared to the millions you’d make if you read that book, or if you joined that membership program?

The Simple Theory Of Making Money Online

When I used to work in advertising, before developing a campaign, we always used to depict our target audience: we attached a persona to it, we gave that persona a name, a face, needs, desires… weaknesses… it was almost like we became friends. The dialog got much easier after we knew who we were talking to. Our campaigns were selling like crazy, the clients were happy, so that seemed to be a good formula for success. Was it really?

Since the summer of 2006 I’m playing with blogs. I like it. Whenever I manage to reach the top position in Google for some competitive keyword, I’m happy like a child who’s just got a new toy. However, in the beginning of this year, I’ve started a make money online project which was supposed to go on like this: write some beautiful posts to resonate with people willing to make money online, then create products (namely ebooks) which those people would either buy from me, or get them for free but stuffed with affiliate links all over the place.

How To Apply The Theory When Readers Are Looking Into Your Eyes?

My first ebook is almost ready. I’ve written it a couple of months ago. It is a decent read, but I’ll never release it to my readers. To make you understand what made me feel this way, I’m going to give you a quote from Grizzly, not the bear, but a guy who teaches people how to make money online, and who put this feeling into words I wouldn’t be able to express better myself:

Somewhere along the line I got sidetracked. I quite unexpectedly started getting readers - real people asking me questions. This threw me off a bit. It’s one thing for the conscience to slap up a page of links and collect commissions off of a nameless click. It’s another thing to make money off of “Bob” who has sent me an email asking for my opinion on the product I am flogging. At least to me it is. It turns out that Bob is down to his last dime, out of work, heard you can make money online and is willing to buy the product on my page if I say it’s a good deal. He trusts me. Oh man…

Please follow the above link and read the whole post: you’ll discover what reader appreciation really means. Reader appreciation means to be able to look your readers in the eyes. Readers are more than figures on a daily chart. Readers are those Bobs, and Johns and Janes whom you’ve just impersonated for your next marketing campaign.

Always impersonate your target. Then re-evaluate your ways. You might find a better one.

P.S.: my money making project has turned into a resources consuming one, but I’m feeling much better and so does Diana, my partner in this enterprise.

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Reflections From Dallas, TX

Ronald Huereca — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:07:24 +0000

This is just a bit of a personal off-topic rant about my travels today.

It was just a little over a month ago that I was in Dallas for WordCamp Dallas. It was my first real trip to Dallas (besides going to the Ft. Worth zoo), and I had a blast.

The trip today, however, was more for business.

Knowing that Dallas is a maze, I went to BestBuy late yesterday and bought myself a Garmin 200W. I had hopes it would come in handy in Dallas, and boy did it ever!

The first order of business was visiting a home establishment in Grand Prairie, Texas. After we were done with that, the work for the day was done.

I mentioned to my co-worker that there’s a great Tex-Mex place called La Hacienda Ranch that you can only find in Dallas.

After traveling through torturous rush-hour traffic, we finally located it (using the trusty GPS) on Preston Rd. The name sounded really familiar, but I let it slip by me.

After La Hacienda (which was great, by the way), my co-worker wanted to find a sports store. The trusty GPS took us to a place called Dick’s Sporting Goods, which was still on Preston Rd.

Déjà vu swept over me. The sporting goods store was located in a giant mall, which looked very familiar. It finally dawned on me that I was in the very location where the WordCamp Dallas attendees had their first meet-up (at Dave and Busters).

I looked over at my co-worker and said, “Wow, I never thought in a million years I’d be back in Frisco, Texas.”

It was WordCamp Dallas all over again for me.

As a sidenote (I think everything in this post is a sidenote), the La Hacienda had a nice feature that I think should be done more often.

In their restroom is a switch above the sink. The note more-or-less states, “La Hacienda Ranch is committed to a clean restroom. If this restroom needs attention, please flick the switch to the right.”

When I read this, I thought, “Wow, what a great and non-embarassing way to bring attention to a problem.” If only every restroom had such a feature! I was looking for one in my hotel room, but I sadly couldn’t find one.

Anyways, I head back from Dallas tomorrow and back home to humid Alabama. I just wanted to share a quick note with the readers. I hope all is well out there in the blogosphere.

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WP Title Case Review

Ronald Huereca — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:18:50 +0000

Via Shawn, I came across a neat plugin called Title Case for WordPress.

Basically the plugin converts all headings and titles into appropriate title case.

Before: This is a cool plugin.
After: This is a Cool Plugin.

This plugin is a necessity for multi-author blogs, where various authors have different capitalization schemes.

I applied the plugin here and immediately noticed the difference.

Title Case - Before

I highlighted the areas in red that weren’t in title case.

Title Case - After

After applying the plugin, you can see the difference.

Custom Function

Currently the plugin uses a WordPress filter called ‘the_title’. However, it is my experience that not everybody uses this for all areas of their site.

Here is a function you could put into your theme’s functions.php, which you can call if you need to put something into title case that doesn’t involve invoking the template tag the_title.


function title_case($string = '') {
	if (function_exists('nv_title_case')) {
		return nv_title_case($string);
	}
	return $string;
}

The function assumes you have the WP Title Case plugin installed.

Conclusion

WP Title Case is a fantastic and simple plugin that converts normal text into title case. It is ideal for multi-author blogs where authors have various capitalization schemes.

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Placing Readers First - Daniel Ha from Disqus

Ronald Huereca — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:34:09 +0000

Niclas Darville writes in:

I recall you handing out awards for bloggers who made a heroic effort out of helping their readers and being good sports overall.

In that regard, I’d like to recommend the Disqus team and Daniel Ha in particular, who makes an insane effort out of answering and helping everyone on the site.

They/he may not be a blogger as such, as their real blog is a development blog for a comments system; they do, however have a support forum of sorts where Daniel Ha constantly rushes to answer and solve questions posed by the readers. They do, of course, also get comments on their development blog, but merely watching the responses there doesn’t reflect the lightning fast responses from Daniel and the amount he invests of himself in helping out his peers.

Niclas continues and provides an example of the Disqus team hard at work.

Thanks Niclas for pointing this out to me and for taking the time to nominate a site.

Readers First Summary

This, folks, is what the Readers First award is all about: readers like yourself spotlighting individuals or sites that you feel place readers first.

If you visit a site (blog, forum, whatever) that you feel places readers first, please nominate the site and have it featured here.

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When Bloggers Talk About Readers

Simonne — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:11:29 +0000

Two cannibal bloggers are chatting about their readers:

- How do you appreciate your readers?

- With pommes frites and a glass of good wine!

Two firemen bloggers are chatting about their readers:

- What kind of readers do you like most?

- The ones who set my soul on fire!

Two policemen bloggers are chatting about their readers:

- How was your traffic today?

- I’ve got a couple of readers who exceeded the reading speed limit.

Two fishermen bloggers chat about their readers:

- How do you catch so many readers with your articles?

- I always use fresh (link)bait!

Two kamikaze bloggers are talking about their blogs:

- What’s your biggest fear in blogging?

- Each day I fear I ain’t gonna live enough to answer all comments!

Two toddler bloggers are talking about their readers:

- Do you think they smelled my lie about my previous month earnings?
- No, but if you want to be honest to your readers you should disclose also how much money you’ve spent on diapers!

I hope you just had some fun. No real blogger was harmed while writing this post. Any resemblance to real bloggers is purely not coincidental.

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Multi-Page Posts Are…

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 26 May 2008 23:32:50 +0000

…Annoying!

I visit Slashdot every other day, and one of the things that irks Slashdotters the most is a linked article with multiple pages. Inevitably, someone will find the link to a printer-friendly version and be praised and worshipped by all.

You’ll mostly see multi-page posts on “newsy” sites like Slate, or tech-heavy sites such as Wired. But every now and then, you’ll find a blog that does it too.

Now when I’m talking about multi-page posts, I’m not talking about its related, but twice-removed, cousin called a series. I am actually a big fan of a decent blog series and have written quite a few myself.

Here’s why I find multi-page posts annoying:

I’m a big fan of instant gratification. Forcing me to click through pages for content is just working against me.
I don’t like swarms of ads and pop-ups (I’m looking at you Sitepoint).
Page loading still takes a lot of time. Even in high-speed bliss, some pages still take a looong time to load.
It’s an inconvenience to readers. Multi-page posts are not a convenience. They’re a nuisance. I can hear it now, “Look mom, clicking through all these pages is so much fun!”
It’s disrespectful to readers. Do page views and advertisers really matter that much? I suppose so.

Lorelle VanFossen has also expressed her feelings towards multi-page posts.

Blogs are about communicating and interaction. They are about creating and maintaining relationships with your audience. If you are doing anything that interferes with their ability to read your blog posts and access your blog, you are just putting barriers up between your content and your readers.

Amen, Lorelle!

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Released

Ronald Huereca — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:48:27 +0000

After several betas and release candidates, Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 (for WP 2.5) has officially been released.

For plugin information and features, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page.

For videos and screenshots, please visit the links below:

If you run into any issues, please read the FAQ or visit the support page.

You may also leave some test comments below, but please be aware that test comments will periodically be removed.

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What’s Your Comment Policy?

Ronald Huereca — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:30:55 +0000

I can safely say I’ve had my fair share of bad comments. In fact, just this week I received probably the harshest one yet (spelling errors and all):

hello my name is Alix i live in the uk and i have one thing to say to you. you call yourself a writer ok not got a problem with that but i think a writters main obective in life is to wite about subjects in a open minded way your comments on many subjects are ofensive, outragous and very critical. i find myself not seeing you as a wirtter but a very one minded and one opinioned person who in “My Opinon” should take a brake from writting on subjects which you clearly have no understaning of or concept of. and focus on what the world is really about and im sure you will cearly realise that the probem with this world todays is people like you! who set out there day to cause upset and complete disruption for every one around you. and this i find only happens in people who inside themselves are very comfused and unhappy, so to stop these things from happeing you find it in yourself to unnesserly put these insulting and agin very outragouse commments out there. to be honest i wish people like you didin’t have internet acces becasue your comments do nothing but cause great harm and is a waste of time.
that is all i have to say i hope you read this and understand what iam saying to you and to hoestly find it in yourself to take this as a heping hand.

So what to do when you receive comments like the one above? Granted, it wasn’t a death threat or anything, but it kinda makes you wonder if others might feel the same way. And if so, do you care?

My comment policy on my personal site is fairly loose. I will allow comments as long as they don’t personally attack me, defame others, and don’t have unnecessary swearing. My policy warns that to break the policy is to risk deletion. And, I will admit, the above comment was pushed rather quickly into my moderation queue until I could decide what to do with it.

On raproject, we have a similar comment policy. Personal attacks aren’t allowed, and neither is advertising. We also try to promote comments that add to the discussion.

Another example of a comment policy is over at One Man’s Blog. He doesn’t allow commercial links and would like commenters to leave real names (no nicknames).

My question to the reader, what is your comment policy? And if you have one, what kind of comments do you like to have?

I’ll conclude with a quote from Liz Strauss’s WordCamp transcript:

We have one rule on my blog: be nice.
[...]
I’m a firm believer in the more rules you put on a blog, the more loopholes people will find to break them.

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC2

Ronald Huereca — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:25:32 +0000

After some feedback and a feature request, I’ve decided to release a second release candidate for those who have the time to play with it. You can read more about Ajax Edit Comments on the brand new (and constantly updating) Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page. Please keep in mind this is a Release Candidate. In other words, it’s stable, but may not be stable enough for a live blog.

Here are some things I changed in this RC:

I added inline event calls as opposed to unobtrusively adding them in. This may seem like a step backwards, but the plugin crashes browsers if there are several hundred comments on a post. Removing the unobtrusive approach allows for less client-side processing.
I added an advanced feature that allows admin to disable the plugin’s stylesheets. If that is done, the admin will have to style the plugin himself.

I’m still having slight issues with Internet Explorer 6. Sometimes the comment will load, sometimes not. Anybody else having the same problem?

Please leave any feedback in the comments section, or fill out our support form. I will allow test comments here, but please be aware that they will periodically be removed.

Download Link

Please see the official Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 for the latest plugin information. I will update that page as I have time and the official release nears.

For now, here’s a direct link to ~~Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC2~~.

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What Else Do You Do With Your Readers?

Simonne — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:06:19 +0000

If you started blogging more than 5 minutes ago, chances are that you already have a few readers, and you probably know some of them (if not all) by their names.

Now you know who your customer is, you start writing with him in mind, you start polishing your articles more, because you know that Bill, or Jane or Cheap Blue Contact Lenses will have their say on that next article of yours.

But what else do you do with your readers, when you don’t write for them and you don’t answer their comments?

1. Do you share links on social networking sites?

2. Do you read their blogs?

3. Do you chat with them on Skype, or other instant messenger services?

4. Do you meet them at blogging conferences?

5. Do you exchange emails with them?

6. What else?

If you shut down your computer and close your eyes, how many of your readers you can list by their names? If you have less than 10 readers-commenters, you’d probably remember all of them. If you have 100 readers who comment, you’d be lucky if you remembered 50% of them. What if you had 11874 readers? How can you have so many readers and still write with them in mind? Or are you still writing only for the core readers who were the first to discover your blog and enjoyed it ever since? Or for those people you are doing also other things with?

Or are you just writing for the Google bots, hoping that people would follow?

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC1 Released

Ronald Huereca — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:39:45 +0000

I’m happy to announce the first public release of Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 (for WordPress 2.5 only). Please keep in mind this is a Release Candidate. In other words, it’s stable, but may not be stable enough for a live blog.

If this RC goes well, you’ll see an official release in about a week.

Please leave any feedback in the comments section, or fill out our support form. I will allow test comments here, but please be aware that they will periodically be removed.

Download Link

Please see the official Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 for the latest plugin information. I will update that page as I have time and the official release nears.

For now, here’s a direct link to ~~Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC1~~.

Features?

Rather than repeat myself, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page for a full break-out of features.

I Need Feedback

Specific areas I could use some feedback on are:

Theme issues.
Character issues.
Defensio: I still have not confirmed 100% that this feature works.
Style issues. If so, what browser and OS?
Behavior issues. Does something not work as expected?
Usability issues. Can a rock use it?

Any bug reports should be as detailed as possible with steps to reproduce the error. Screenshots help a lot as well.

If you’re not having issues and want to lay down praise, I’ll accept that too. All feedback is appreciated.

Conclusion

Once again, this is an RC, so please use caution if testing it on a live blog. If there are any issues, please de-activate the plugin immediately.

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Do You Make Money Online?

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:04:56 +0000

The “making money online” topic is something I have personally shied away from here simply because this isn’t the type of blog that talks about making money.

However, I know some of you out there who do make money online, whether it’s from blogging or some other online venture.

A question I’ve been pondering, but am unable to answer, is how does one make money online and keep the readers in mind?

The linked article does an excellent job of detailing how not to alienate readers, but I’d like to hear it from you if you have a moment.

By the way, the new (and about to be released) Ajax Edit Comments is live here, so feel free to comment and test it out. Please note that any test comments will be later removed.

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Ajax Edit Comments Developer Diary

Ronald Huereca — Sun, 18 May 2008 01:32:51 +0000

I don’t like to call myself a developer, but perhaps it’s because I’m in denial. I know for sure I’m not a designer, but the developer title I’d have to try a little harder to lose.

Part of development is growing. And for the past year, I think I’ve grown quite a bit, at least in the area of WordPress development. This is one of the reasons I felt like I needed to give Ajax Edit Comments another go.

Ajax Edit Comments - Initial Development

Ajax Edit Comments was the third WordPress plugin I had developed. I didn’t really know proper WordPress coding, and vaguely knew how to write a WordPress plugin. I definitely didn’t know how to properly use WordPress and Ajax together.

So I hacked, hacked, and hacked a bit more. And the end result was a decent plugin that allowed a halfway-elegant solution to editing comments.

Soon people wanted more and more features, and this time last year I released a fairly substantial upgrade. For the first time ever, WordPress admin could edit, delete, and spam comments from a post.

Ajax Edit Comments - Growing Pains

Ajax Edit Comments was not without its problems, however. I’ve received hundreds of e-mails, which I’ve tried to address them all. Some were bugs, some were support requests, and some requested new features.

Many of the problems were with theme issues, but with the current plugin setup, there really wasn’t much I could do. I’ve also been battling with various character sets.

Also, several people wrote me about the clunky admin panels, and adding support for logged-in users.

I was reluctant to add in features, simply because the plugin worked and was quite easy to use.

However, it pained me to stare at my old code and know that Ajax Edit Comments could be something so much more.

WordPress 2.5 is Released

With WordPress 2.5, a whole slew of ideas came to me. I envisioned the next Ajax Edit Comments interface, entirely independent of themes. I envisioned some nice eyecandy in the form of icons. And I envisioned adding in the features that users have requested over the past year.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Codebase

The result is what I would like to call almost an entirely new plugin. Everything, and I mean everything, was written from the ground-up.

The new plugin takes advantage of WordPress built-in Ajax scripts, and also takes advantage of its brand new modal window, which you can see when you open up the Media Manager when you write a post.

The code isn’t perfect, but it’s something I’m proud of. Code is indeed poetry.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Interface

AEC 2.0 Editing Options

I think the hardest part of Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 was the editing interface. It needed to be something as easy to use, but so much more powerful.

In order to keep things theme-independent, I use a modal pop-up window, which uses an iFrame. The combination results in an interface that is completely theme-independent.

AEC 2.0 Interface

I also didn’t want to clutter up the interface, so I have included an option to hide certain options. Will more be added later? Perhaps.

Why Only for 2.5?

One question I think I’ll be asked a lot is why only for WordPress 2.5?

And my response would be, “It’s time to move on.”

WordPress 2.5 is a big jump over previous versions, and it’s something the community needs to move to. It also has many features that I use extensively in the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 codebase.

In other words, even if I wanted to develop for versions less than 2.5, I couldn’t.

So When’s the Release?

Soon

Feedback has been awesome from testers. I plan a release candidate this week, with the official release within one or two weeks depending on feedback.

I look forward to seeing what you all think of the new version.

Thanks for reading.

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Another Reader Appreciation Plugin: Wordpress Keyword Luv

Simonne — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:18:54 +0000

What better sign that bloggers do care about their readers can be more eloquent than the increasing number of plugins which reward readers for being part of blog communities?

Some reader appreciation plugins offering direct benefits: Top Commentors or Last comments, or WP Ajax Edit Comments fall into this directly rewarding category.

Some other plugins offer indirect benefits, which are rather meant to help readers as bloggers, by offering them a small SEO help. This category includes the Do Follow and Comment Luv plugins, which are some of the “most hunted” and “most searched for” and which (especially the Do Follow) sometimes make people sign their comments with “purple lamp post” or “white beans soup with noodles”, or other thoroughly researched keywords.

Thanks to Stephen Cronin, the conversation between lamp posts, noodle soups and camping flashlights is coming to an end: The Keyword Luv plugin allows commenters to input both their name and their desired keywords, the backlink to their blog being anchored on the keywords, and not on the name, as it was before.

If you want to read a more detailed review of the Keyword Luv Wordpress plugin, you can visit InspiritBlog, or you can download KeywordLuv Plugin and offer your readers a nice treat.

Due to the fact that this plugin is valuable only if it is used on Do Follow blogs, you will need to install a Do Follow plugin in order to be sure it works smoothly.

If you have a Do Follow blog, I’m sure you won’t miss all the “items” which used to leave comments on your blog. You can now offer them a name.

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The Power of Introduction

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:37:46 +0000

I’d like to think I could approach just about anybody on the streets and make a good first impression. But since I’m not super-human, I can’t.

I’m not that guy who can sell ice to Eskimos, or sell sand to people on the beach.

And since I’m not super-human or a power-salesman, I have to rely on the power of introductions.

It’s Who You Know

You’ve probably heard the saying, “It’s all about who you know.”

With introductions, it’s the same thing. And it really doesn’t matter who you know. It does matter, however, that the people you know, know someone else.

I would love to spout off bullet after bullet of why being introduced is a lot better than a “cold call”, but I think it’s just too obvious. If you have a good reputation, and you introduce me to someone, it’s likely that that someone will take your word for it until I prove otherwise.

If there’s a girl (or guy) you’ve been yearning to talk to, one of the best ways is to find a friend who knows that person and ask for an introduction. It won’t guarantee you anything further, but it’ll at least get you that foot in the door.

Introductions and Blogging

Blogging and introductions are no different.

What would happen if you suddenly received a few invites a day for xyz product that claims to be the best thing since sliced bread? You’d probably scream “spam” and go for the delete button.

What if, however, your favorite blogger gave a rather nice review of this xyz product and explained its usage. Then, perhaps, you might be just a little more receptive of an e-mail. You may not even need an e-mail and pursue the product on your own. And it was all due to a friendly introduction.

Introductions don’t have to stop with products. I’ve discovered many blogs and bloggers due to recommendations from friends.

Introductions and Commenting

Another introductory approach, which can’t really be duplicated in offline life unless you leave notes for people in the bathroom stalls, is that of comments.

Commenting is a fantastic way to put yourself out there and allows others to get to know you without really knowing you.

After commenting on a site for a while, you start becoming a regular. The other commenters may not “know you”, but you aren’t a stranger either. If you then need to contact one of the other commenters, you can simply say, “Hey, I saw a comment you made at xyz site and I had a question…”

If you would’ve just e-mailed that person out of the blue, you might have a difficult time getting a piece of that person’s mindshare.

Conclusion

If you talk to anybody in the dating or job hunting game, they’ll tell you that introductions can be priceless. All it really takes is that foot in the door.

Once you get that foot in the door, however, the rest is up to you.

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 Editor Screenshot

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 12 May 2008 07:58:52 +0000

Progress on Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 has gone forward quite a bit.

This weekend I finalized the interface and worked out several of the kinks.

It is my hope that I will have a beta sometime this week. If you are interested in testing out the beta, please leave a comment below.

Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 will be for WP 2.5 only.

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A Team Blogging Environment - Part 2

Ronald Huereca — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:12:04 +0000

Several weeks ago I wrote about my thoughts on a team environment for multi-author blogs.

I argued that individuality (in the context of service) harms the customer, and the better approach is a team-based environment where customers (or readers in the case of blogging) are everyone’s responsibility.

I discussed this concept with a friend who is not familiar with blogging. He is, however, very familiar with customer service as he is a waiter at a local Mexican restaurant.

My friend is very popular among his customers, and his customers often ask for him by name. The other waiters do not like this, since waiters at his restaurant are assigned to tables on a turn-based basis. And since my friend’s customers tip rather well, the other waiters are green with envy.

This past week was a very popular holiday in America called Cinco de Mayo. It’s a nice excuse to grab some Mexican food and drink a few margaritas. My friend asked me to stop in, but warned me, “It’s going to be very busy.”

Indeed it was very busy. I was lucky to have found a parking spot, and I had to sit at the bar instead of my favorite table.

The waiters, whom often fought for customers, were scurrying around from table to table making sure everything was alright. That night, there was no set waiter per table.

I asked my friend about it a few nights later. He said, “That morning I came up with the idea. I told my manager that if we don’t work like a team, our customers are going to get slaughtered.”

When asked about the tip situation, he responded, “Even though I get the most tips, I felt it was better to share the tip revenue evenly that day. Everyone was pulling their own weight, and it worked out pretty good.”

In the end, Cinco de Mayo for my friend and his restaurant was a huge success. Many first-time customers came in to celebrate, and many returning customers came in to say hello. And, according to my friend, the day would’ve been a disaster had it not been for a team working environment.

Conclusion - How does this compare to blogging?

My friend’s Cinco de Mayo story is just a neat example of a person placing his customers’ interests first.

How do you think this example of a busy day at a restaurant compares to that of blogging?

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How To Ruin Hundreds of Online Reputations At Once

Simonne — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:31:02 +0000

We’ve just seen three ways to ruin an online reputation. It is just that easy: take a wrong step and you’re lost. Sometimes, one doesn’t even need to lie, cheat or hack your readers. Sometimes, a small “detail” like telling something really important for the readers in a small phrase hidden inside a very long sales letter can bring one down in a matter of days, if not hours. This was the case of Joel Comm, who was selling an ebook for $9 and had all buyers automatically subscribed to a $29.9 monthly membership.

Seeing his reputation endangered by greed, Mr. Joel Comm saw himself in the position of running from blog to blog and saying how sorry he is, and how he is going to fix that issue by changing the sales page, so people can clearly see and opt for one of the variants: buy only the book, or buy the book plus the subscription.

Surely, Joel’s reputation had to suffer. But what about the reputation of all bloggers, like Darren Rowse of Problogger who promoted his ebook via affiliate links? Maybe they didn’t notice the scam, like many buyers of the book. Or maybe they’ve seen that, but they kept their mouth shout, in order to get the commissions. There was a lot of money at stake, as the previous version of AdSense Secrets (the ebook in question) sold for $97, and now there was an updated version available at only $9. Quite a bargain for the naive buyers!

Quite a surprise for all bloggers who promoted the book, to find their online reputation endangered by the simple fact that they promoted a product they thought to be good.

What do you think? Did the affiliate bloggers’ reputation also suffer from Joel’s scam or not?

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Three Ways to Ruin a Reputation Online

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:02:34 +0000

A few days ago I read an article from Daily Blog Tips about managing reputations online.

A good reputation is a hard thing to earn. It can take years to build a good reputation, and only seconds to destroy it.

A while back I wrote an article here talking about how to irritate your readers. The same irritants of readers can also be very effective ways to ruin your reputation online.

Within this article I will highlight three ways one can easily ruin a reputation online.

1. Hack your readers into submission

I am a WordPress plugin author. I’ve also developed a few themes as well.

Having done both, I realize there are many ways I could hack into a person’s blog. All I would have to do is provide myself a back-door.

Earlier this week one of my friends discovered her blog was hacked. In the source were many links pointing to spammy sites. This is a constant problem with WordPress themes, especially if the theme has been hijacked by a third-party theme site.

Plugins can provide the same issues as themes. Plugin authors can create user accounts, track the plugin’s usage using stealthy code, and even harvest commenter e-mails.

However, what happens when this plugin and theme “hacker” is discovered? Well, let’s just say their reputation will take a nose dive and the person will never be trusted in a community such as WordPress.

2. Promise, Promise, Promise, and Never Deliver

We all have been in a situation where we have promised something, but never delivered.

I personally have promised plugins or designs, but then life just gets in the way. In those situations, it’s helpful to be transparent and honest.

However, there are some that are content to always promise something. The next big contest, or giveaway. A free e-book or membership site. A brand new theme or program.

It gets to the point where I just want to tell the person, “When are you going to stop talking and actually do something?”

I realize people are extremely busy and things are forgotten rather easily. I have this problem, and I’m sure I’m not alone. After a while though, people get sick of the empty promises.

3. Lie and Get Caught

When one announces a contest and a fake winner, readers get pissed off.

In the blogosphere, news spreads like wildfire. When Ashwin Khanna scammed a bunch of bloggers into a fake contest, they became angry.

How’s he doing? See for yourself.

There’s nothing to gain from lying, whether it is to get traffic, advertisers, or subscribers. Long-term, lying simply will not pay off.

Reputations are fragile…

Reputations are eerily fragile. It’s almost discomforting. But most of the cases I’ve seen where a reputation suffered, the person basically did it to himself.

Whether it’s a politician and a talkative ex-pastor, or a bride who ran away, reputations are there to haunt us or help us.

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Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 - Brief Preview

Ronald Huereca — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:13 +0000

For those who have been following me on Twitter, you know I’ve been working on the next version of Ajax Edit Comments.

My goal with Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 is to provide a comment-editing interface independent of themes, and allow blog administrators extreme flexibility when editing comments on a post or in the admin panel.

I have yet to complete the main editing interface, but I have created the foundational code and editing options. The icons are courtesy of Pro Theme Design.

Here’s a brief preview of what I’ve accomplished so far:

Administrators will be able to delete, mark as spam, edit, and unapprove (moderate) comments from a post.

Administrators can edit, mark for moderation, or recover from spam in the Akismet panel.

There is only one admin panel in the new version, which has been a heavily requested feature. This will give you an idea of what new features are coming.

As the plugin nears completion, I’ll start releasing private betas and release candidates. If you’re interested in helping test this out, please leave a comment below. More than likely the new version will be WordPress 2.5x only.

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RSS Day! Yay!

Ronald Huereca — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:47:17 +0000

This is just a quick note to pay homage to RSS day.

As a reader, I love RSS. It enables me to view a site’s content without having to visit the site.

As a result, I can quickly keep up with my favorite bloggers and save the information I’m really interested in for later.

What can one do on RSS day besides spread the word? Something involving full feeds comes to mind.

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No related posts

When Readers Turn Into Lists

Simonne — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:18:21 +0000

There’s no secret that many bloggers measure online success beyond dollars and cents. I suppose that even those ones who are measuring success in money are happy to see that their blog attracts loyal readers.

What does a blogger do after he gets his loyal readers?

Well, a piece of advice which is frequently encountered is to “make a list”. So people follow the trend and make a list out of their readers, either by bribing them into subscribing, or simply by the interesting things they write.

What does a blogger do with his list?

Once the readers are not readers anymore, but “the list”, the blogger starts sending them emails. He has their permission, so he feels free to communicate with his list as frequently as he feels like.

What does a blogger communicate to his list?

This is the sad part of the story: once you turned from reader into “part of a list”, you start getting advice about what is the next thing you need to buy in order to … (to whatever the blog you subscribed to was about), or about how lots of people are so cool and you are not, because you don’t have Y product, or because you haven’t read Z book.

The funniest thing is that most of the times, those bloggers get their offers from affiliate networks, and you find yourself every morning flooded with offers to buy the same product, but from a dozen of guys who all want your attention.

Do you want to be “a list”?

I don’t want to be “a list”, and despise the fact that I receive maybe hundreds of offers every day. I have never bought anything as a consequence of getting those messages. Am I a bad reader because I don’t make those bloggers happy and buy their stuff? Actually it happened only once that I bought something only because I wanted to reward a blogger for his efforts. I already had a cracked version of that stuff, but I felt good when thinking that the guy would smile when he sees that he’s got a commission, consequent to my purchase.

But you know what? That blogger never put me on “a list” and never sent me one email to sell me something.

Do you share my feelings against such lists? Let’s all have our say as readers, maybe internet marketers would end up listening.

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What an awesome headline…

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:23:22 +0000

While shopping at my local grocery store, I noticed that my store now offers financial services. Within the advertisement is a quotation: “What a great idea!”

When I first saw the advertisement, I just mumbled to myself some expletives and continued my shopping. The quotation reminded me of Sony when they made up a quote from a fake critic. The key word here is fabricated quotes.

Another example of this is at a chain restaurant. The restaurant is hiring, and on the advertisement is the quote, “A great place to work.” I was half expecting an asterisk with some small print adding, “…for some people.”

I suppose the addition of these quotations is just a decent attempt at self-marketing. Adding in these quotes perhaps is trying to reproduce the word-of-mouth effect that works so well. The problem is, I don’t know the people behind the quotes, so I could care less who said what.

The beauty about a blog is that there is usually a decent person behind it. And from this blog, we can get a feel for who you are, what you like, and whether we can trust you.

It’s one thing to have a nameless recommendation, it’s another to have a recommendation from a trusted friend.

I’ll conclude with a quote from Liz Strauss’s transcript from WordCamp:

So if you go to a website, or you’ve got a product, bring your experience to it.

I want to know how you felt using it. I may not feel the same way, but if I’ve been reading you, I can extrapolate from your experience whether I like it or not.

If you’re a friend of mine, I can extrapolate from your taste in music whether I like it or not.

So blog your experience. It makes you more real.

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The Reader Appreciation Project

Comment Response Choice: A Step Backward?

Should all comments be answered, or only the ones asking for a reply?

How can businesses use this new response requirement model?

What do you think?

RA Project in 2009 - Bes, improvements, & changes

Continuum, Changes & Improvements

What do you think?

Would You Like a Reply to Your Comment?

The Concept

The Code

Conclusion

Change in Ownership

New Owner

Ajax Edit Comments - New Author

WP Categories and Posts - New Author

Features Planned

One Side Note

Ajax Edit Comments 2.2 Released

What Does a Blogger Who Survived Hurricane Katrina?

10 Successful Tips to Write Top 20 Successful Lists to Boost Your Presence in Social Media

What Do You Do When You Are Out of Ideas for Your Next Post?

Two Plugin Updates - Ajax Edit Comments and WP Grins Lite

Ajax Edit Comments

WP-Grins Lite

So What’s Next?

Conclusion

How Much Do You Give Away?

Are You Concerned About Fake Friends?

Invisible Readers, Where Are You?

Removing Dates From Posts for Timeless Content

So Should Blog Posts Have Dates?

The Lifespan of a Reader

Happy Birthday BlogLancer! Everybody’s Welcome.

When to Turn Off Comments

You’re On Vacation

You’re Done With Blogging

You’d Rather Concentrate on Writing

You Don’t Ever Respond

You Don’t Have Time

There Are Legal Issues

Conclusion

Improve Your Confidence With Karaoke

Karaoke and Blogging

In The Longest Day Of The Year…

WP Grins - Lite

Download Link

Installation Instructions

WordPress Versions

Conclusion

What Readers Appreciation Can Lead To

Plugin Review - Fun With In-Context Comments

Applications

Brief Overview of Features

Future Versions

Conclusion

Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 Released

Feature Additions

Bug Fixes

Feedback?

Ajax Edit Comments 2.1 Pre-Release

Added Updated Languages

Icons Can Be Disabled

Ability to Disable Gravatars

Bug fix: Admin Couldn’t Enter a Blank E-mail Address

Save/Cancel Buttons in Editor Interface Re-Styled

Can Remove ‘More Options’ From Editor

Added Option to Remove “clearfix”

Added Auto-Scroll to Comment

Added Option to Change the Title Text and URL

Feedback?

To Follow, or Not to Follow - on Twitter

Plugin Review - WP Comment Remix

Post Features

Reply, Quote, and Tags

Trackback Options

Sort Options

Other Post Options

Admin Options

Comments Panel Actions