The Underground’s New Features (Look Better! Cast Farther!!)
By Tom Chandler on Jul 9, 2007 in Blogging
Changes are taking place around the Underground.
It’s almost as if the place is taking its first steps towards becoming a grownup fly fishing site (in features if not approach).
Perhaps it’s time to sit down and have one of those talks about responsibility, safe blogging – and not making the mistakes that will ruin your blog reading life.
First, [insert your name], we’re going to discuss:
The “Featured Article”
Theme designer extraordinaire Michael Pollock built me a shiny new theme with “Feature Article” function. This allows me to keep the “flagship content” at the top of the blog while less-important posts (and face it, that’s most of them) slide in right underneath the featured post.
In the “old” days — when new posts automatically went on top — I sometimes didn’t post fun/dumb/odd little stories because I didn’t want to displace a more important post.
Heavy Handed, Parental-Style Moral: if you assume nothing’s changed because the same article’s at the top of the page, you could be missing newer articles underneath.
Sharing is Good
Beneath most posts you’ll find a “share this” link. Click it, and up pops a nifty menu that allows you to email the post to a friend, or submit it to one of the social ratings sites, about which I’ll say this: If you like something I’ve written, please don’t hesitate to submit it to StumbleUpon, Digg or any other social site.
It only takes a few seconds, and it can lead to a lot of new readers (or not, but did I mention it only takes a few seconds?). The extra bodies really pay off in comments — some of the best stuff on this site is written by the Undergrounders.
Heavy Handed, Parental-Style Moral: Get yourself a StumbleUpon account, and Stumble the Underground early and often. Good Karma is your reward.
“My Favorites” Page
I did away with a couple of pages, updated my “Articles” page, and created a “My Favorites” page — a short list of some of my favorite Trout Underground posts (some are included because of the quality of the reader comments).
Heavy Handed, Parental-Style Moral: Want to suggest an article for the “My Favorites” page? Email away…
RSS/email Tracking
Of course, you can make sure you’ll never miss a post by subscribing to our RSS feed or free email service. If you don’t know anything about RSS (Really Simple Syndication), then read my just-updated my prior post about RSS feeds.
If you’re following more than a couple blogs, then just sign up for a free Google Reader or Bloglines account or add those RSS Feeds to Thunderbird, Outlook, Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 (easy), and you’ll know when an article’s been added without visiting the site.
Heavy Handed, Parental-Style Moral: You dolts, stop wasting time checking sites — let technology do it for you…
And yes, I believe there’s more to come. See you around the new Trout Underground, Tom Chandler.
Technorati Tags: trout underground, fly fishing blog
Greg | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
Tom,
It’s been interesting see how what began as a small venture into blogging has grown into a virtual flyfishing magazine though I do think the right half of the front page is beginning to look pretty cluttered. As a Cal resident and angler, I miss the frequent, now infrequent and random, fishing reports. I don’t know how many others would be interested but maybe there could be place for folks to post some notes from their latest trip to some of the California / Southern Oregon streams.
Patrick | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
I would have to agree with Greg…I get my feed through Google Reader often to avoid the almost jarring clutter, but the content is still great fun. On the verge of having the kids out of the house, I’ll be able to act upon those fishing reports. As a very part-time blogger myself, I understand the evolutionary process that comes with the medium. However, I do know I can always stop by the Underground for some chuckles!
Smellslikefish | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
Continuous improvements…could online cappuccinos be next?
Dave Neal | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
Do whatever the hell you want…this blog rocks.
Rick McCharles | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
Big improvements Tom.
Congratulations.
It’s tough to make a 3 column format look “clean”. But your’s is still visually appealing.
Ever tempted to dump the ads? Do they bring in enough revenue to justify the pixel space?
C3C Rained | Jul 10, 2007 | Reply
Hey all, totally unrelated but I have a bug question:
I was down at the airfield today draggen gliders around and on the grass strip there were these bigass black bugs, or aliens in disguise possibly. They just showed up today, and I’ve been out there everyday for almost a week. However, we had a very cool, cloudy morning, which was a change. So, the description:
- about an inch long, most of the length from the thorax
- the thorax had a girth of about 1/4 to 1/2 inch
- SIX LEGS!
- completely black with moderate gloss
- and mandibles
Now, before you all go off and tell me IT was a queen ant, unless HUNDREDS of queen ants show up randomly in one grassy spot, it wasn’t a queen ant. Any light that could be shed on this for me would help sate my inquistion, and be most appreciated.
Hopefully get a picture to Tom for tomorrow - and no you don’t have to put it up just for me Tom, but I wouldn’t be offended if you used the things huge ass to advertise; site example in this posts accompanying photograph.
Tom Chandler | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for the feedback, guys.
I publish fishing reports when I fish, which might be more “random” than it used to be, but still accounts for a sizable portion of my blogging time.
I suspect there are as many fishing reports as there ever was, but more posts around them.
As for the ads, if they go, the Underground goes too. I’m already right at the bandwidth limit of my reseller hosting account (I publish more pictures than most blogs), and readership continues to grow (which means more bandwidth).
In fact, more ads are probably headed this way to finance some other improvements I’d like to make. None of this stuff is free, and — unlike my copywriting and marketing blogs — the Trout Underground doesn’t create any paying work.
I have considered a public message board/forum from time to time, but that would soak up even more of my time, forcing me to administrate instead of writing or fishing.
I have considered a hybrid blog/community site, but the software which runs that is a little beyond me, and suddenly, I’m back in the trap of paying someone to support a site that I write/manage/host for free.
I have some ideas about what fly fishing might look like on the Internet in a few years — and how a guy might make a few bucks on that vision instead of working on what amounts to a quarter-time job for free.
Hope some of you feel like coming along for the ride.
Tom Chandler | Jul 11, 2007 | Reply
C3C: We gotta have a picture. Is it an aquatic insect? And where the hell are you?