It’s been real
It’s been real
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Well, folks, today officially marks the final day of CSS Insider. I’ve had a lot of fun blogging here for the past 7 months, and hopefully my posts have been helpful and informative to you as well. Would I say CSS Insider has changed my life? Well… I tend to shy away from hyperbole; but one fact worth noting is that if it weren’t for my blogging here, I wouldn’t have met and interviewed Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jason Santa Maria.
If you are so heartbroken at the thought of this blog going dark because you just can’t get enough of Amber Rhea, worry not! You can find me at the Georgia Podcast Network, where I pontificate about a variety of topics; and my personal blog, Being Amber Rhea. And you might just catch me somewhere else ’round the Weblogs, Inc. network, as well.
I’ll leave you with links to some of my favorite CSS news and info sites:
Thanks, y’all.
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Similar Posts
- Making a post about them every once in a while
- Having a top commenters widget
- Use gravitars
- Giving the top commenters a dofollow link
- Giving top commenters profile/link on the home page
- Giving top commenters a special design when they do comment, do occasional giveaways, etc…
- Use the dofollow plugin, so high quality commenters can get some SEO value from contributing.
Postscript
Many thanks to the terrific Amber Rhea for her work on CSS Insider. You can continue to find Amber on our Download Squad blog. And this site will remain available for reference and searching. Thanks to the readers who commented on the retirement of CSS Insider, and thanks to everyone who visited this blog over the last couple of years!Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | CommentsCSS: Relative and absolute positioning — flisterz:blog
flisterz:blog is a personal blog by flisterz. Write about life, CSS, design, wordpress and reviews.. and anything he likes! Cool stuff, really.CSS: Relative and absolute positioning — flisterz:blog
flisterz:blog is a personal blog by flisterz. Write about life, CSS, design, wordpress and reviews.. and anything he likes! Cool stuff, really.Use Attribute Selectors to Fine Tune Your CSS | Web Cash
Here’s a quick tip for fine tuning your CSS declarations. … ads anchor Article backlink backlinks blog blogging css database digg dom …Latest Design News, Daily
I summarized over on 3.7CREA.TV that I find that staying educated and current is one of the more challenging and exciting parts of being a web designer or developer. One of the great aspects of this industry is the community and amount of knowledge that is being shared every day. It is this enthusiasm and quest to learn more that has allowed the web to advance at such a fast and exciting pace.
Due to the nature of the industry and vast range of contributors to it, it can often be hard to find and monitor the great content that is being published. I used to find myself hunting through countless different websites and RSS feeds, trying to ensure I didn’t miss any valuable information, articles or techniques. Even trying to sort through them in an RSS reader is more difficult than it should be.
So to try and make finding the best web design news easier, we have launched Today In Design. Today In Design aggregates the most popular design articles from sources such as delicious, digg, design bump, etc… additionally it pulls in hand selected news articles from sources such as CSS Globe and Design Newz.
Any feedback or suggestions would be more than welcome.
Engaging Readers, Design Your Way to More Blog Comments
You have probably read the studies that claim on average, 1% of online users actually contribute and create content on a given website. The rest are perfectly happy reading your posts, forming their own opinions, and moving on to the next blog with out ever actually leaving any sort of feedback. This makes sense of course, we don’t always have time to leave our thoughts on blogs, or many times it doesn’t even seem worth the effort. After all you have to formalize your thoughts, actually write them out, review, edit, post, and then monitor for responses.
It actually is a lot more involved than we probably realize.
It is also a lot more important to get this type of reader interaction than we probably realize. The amount of interaction generated through a blog is an easy indicator of it’s success. Not only for the blog owner, but also to other readers. Consider looking at two blogs with similar content, one with an average of 10 - 20 responses where the other only has 1 - 3.
I hate to say it, but most people would subscribe to the blog that is generating more interest and response, even if the content was of similar quality.
How Design Can Encourage More Blog Commenting
When people blog about “design” in regards to websites many times they are primarily referring to the asthetic quality of a site. While the aesthetic quality of a site can have a large impact on how many people put in the effort to comment on a blog, I want to approach the situation at a higher level.
Consider that the definition of design is “to assign in thought or intention; purpose.”
Design is not just making pretty visuals, but to craft your site with specific thought, intention and purpose. So the question then becomes, how can we build the site with the intention of encouraging users to leave comments.
Create an Incentive or Reward
The primary reason anyone is going to leave a comment on a blog is they believe that their will be some pay off that is worth their time to formulate their response, edit it, etc… In most cases it is because they have a feeling about the content to the point where they feel the need to get their thoughts off of their chest, or maybe the author is well known enough where the idea of talking with them would be the reward.
However not all blog posts will have content compelling enough, or an author well known enough to create the incentive and reward with those elements alone.
Highlight Your Commenters
Smart marketers have found that the higher that you can appeal on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the better success you will have reaching your audience. By highlighting those who really participate you are appealing to the need of “esteem.”
You could do this by:
Give Your Commenters a Bonus
I have seen great response to giving the top commenters some sort of bonus. Widgets that keep track of who has commented the most make this an easy endeavor to track and monitor.
Some of the more common methods could be:
Use Design and Visuals to Engage Users
While I have talked about “design” in terms of designing an experience or functionality, I haven’t addressed the actual visuals of a design and how it can improve the amount of user interaction.
If you pay enough attention to the design and visuals of your comments, you can catch the attention of users and encourage them to leave a comment.
Make Your Comment Area Eye Catching and Interesting
As a users gets closer to the bottom of an article or post, you can bet that they have either scrolled past or lost focus of most of the visual elements on the page. This presents an excellent opportunity to draw their eye to the comment area by just adding a little bit of flair, tension, or contrast to develop some visual interest.
Want to really get some attention? Consider using custom designed form fields (not too custom as to hinder user experience).
Be Suggestive
Suggest that a user leave a comment where ever you can! At the start of the comments create a link to add a comment. You could even go so far as adding a “reply” button/link at every comment in the list.
Additionally this will make it easy to comment, as users won’t have to hunt for the add comment link.
Highlight the Commenters
People leave comments because they want people to read their opinion (even if it is just the author). Make sure that the users name/link has enough visual emphasis. This will help establish that the commenter will get the recognition that they are seaking.
Again, use Gravitars. Users who have gone so far as creating a gravitar will appreciate being able to show their branding on another blog and are more likely to comment because of it.
Any Experiences or Tips?
These are some of the best methods I have come across, if you have any experiences, tips, or other ideas on how to encourage more users to participate through the design of your blog/website feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.
YouTube - Scrollbar in div with just CSS
http://blog.nattlab.info | How to force a div(box) to fit an exact size and use scrollbars. … scrollbar. 221 views. megarapidguide. Added. 11:27. CSS …CSS Menu Generator - CSS Portal
This generator will create a horizontal menu with as many as 10 tabs. … Home. CSS Menu Generator. CSS News / Info. Submit Resource. Privacy Policy. Contact Us …Interview with Chris Wilson
Vitamin has an interview with Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Platform team at Microsoft. They’re not calling it a podcast, but I’m going to. (Being a podcaster myself, I’m capable only of speaking in hip web terminology.) At just over 5 minutes, it’s a quick and easy listen.Topics discussed include: the new features of IE 7, Microsoft’s involvement with the Web Standards Project, and the process of updating to IE 7. Chris WIlson’s turn-ons include: RSS, Flickr, and working closely with the web development community.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Wordpress 2.7 Released, Initial Impressions
For those who haven’t noticed, wordpress 2.7 has officially been released. While I have played around with the release candidates I am always eager to see the full release of new software, so I have already installed the update onto this site to get some initial impressions.
Obviously this is a big interface change from previous versions, and while many have hailed wordpress for having a simple and easy to use interface I never have fully agreed. Sure it is easier than some of the other CMS and blogging platforms out there, but it always had a lot to be desired in my opinion.
The Dashboard
The reorganization of the dashboard improves it’s functionality ten fold. With a quick post bar, easily to scan stats about your blog, and the news no longer takes up 75% of the page. Where previously I would instantly skip over the information on the dashboard as it was not easy to gain value or I had to hunt for what I was looking for— I now find myself glancing at the little bits before making my next action.
The New Menu
Despite some nice aesthetic improvements, the primary change that has improved the user experience is the navigation. Some of their initial menu and design decisions make sense considering the platform was originally built to be a blogging platform, and has evolved into what it is today (more of a framework). The new version really is an evolution of the platform itself to better fit the flexibility that it has adopted.
Better Labeling
While the previous versions of wordpress had fairly good labeling, the labeling of navigational elements has improved significantly. What was “Design” is now “Appearance,” and “Manage” has been forgone for a simple “Edit.”
Much Better Organization
The organization of the navigational structure has been improved leaps and bounds. Now that wordpress is used as a CMS more often pages and posts have been separated, which should make clients lives a lot easier. Both categories have logical sub categories of edit, add new, categories, etc. Media has been separated into it’s own section, no longer do you have to hunt for it in the ambiguous “manage” tab.
The administration navigation has been vastly improved, now in an area you can actually spot it seems much easier to use. A nice touch is the addition of the “tools” section, which will serve as an excellent spot for plug in settings and controls. Previously it seemed authors stuck plug in controls in any section, where this will be a bit more convenient and logical.
The New Editing Interface
The editing interface of both posts and pages has been vastly improved. Again this looks as if the changes were made to improve the capability of Wordpress as a CMS. Previous versions of wordpress had what I called “option soup.” Where boxes of all sorts of options simply appeared… well… everywhere. Sure with plug ins you could turn off a lot of the options that didn’t seem to matter, but it was a hassle and certainly didn’t make wordpress easier on clients that were not tech savy.
The layout and labeling of the editor interface is much more intuitive. The more complicated items such as custom fields are located below the fold where most users can safely ignore them, and logical workflow boxes are placed where they should. For example excerpt is under the post, where tags and categories are to the right.
On the pages editor you have a handy “Page Attribute” section that allows you to select the page parent, template, and order.
Additionally in both editors you have easy options to turn on / off any section that seems unnecessary.
The Bad
The only area I have had significant trouble with is the image uploading interface. When I used the flash loader I seemed to be able to select files but not upload them, weird? Inserting the image into the post was a bit hidden, having to “show the image” and see the details in order to find the insert image is a bit clunky. Let’s face it, being able to put pictures into a site/blog is extremely important to most clients. This being as difficult as it was is not insignificant.
Overall…
Overall the upgrade is a huge improvement, especially looking from a clients perspective. The main areas I would love to see improvement is some ability to create custom write panels with out doing hacking, and easier linking interface (if you want to link to another page on your site you have to copy and paste it? come on now!) and better navigation control capabilities.
I am sure that in future releases these will be improved and wordpress will continue to excel as a framework.