Trout Underground making some improvementsChanges 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.

[tags]trout underground, fly fishing blog[/tags]

Posted in Blogging.