Oct 13, 2014 / Community Pool

Community Pool

The place for advice, feedback, and friendly blogging chatter.

Have you just published a new post and are dying for some feedback? Did you recently start your blog and could use some layout or design advice from your more seasoned peers?

Tap into the wisdom of The Daily Post blogging community and leave your question here in the comments. Others can then click through and offer input either on your site, or in the comments here (feel free to indicate which you’d prefer).

To help us make the Community Pool a productive space for discussion, here are some tips you might find useful:

TIP: To keep from losing your place in the comment thread while you visit others’ blogs, right-click on a link to open it in a new tab or window.

  • While you’re not required to, we encourage everyone who requests feedback to also reply to at least one or two other bloggers who need some help. Spread the love!
  • The Community Pool comments section can get quite big — and starting duplicate threads doesn’t help. Thanks for not posting the same question more than once!
  • If you’re looking for quality feedback, be as specific as you can. Questions about a particular post tend to draw more comments than ones about entire blogs. Questions about specific design elements are more likely to be answered than ones asking for general layout advice.
  • We discourage leaving links without a more substantive message or question. These are often overlooked by other bloggers, and we frequently remove them to make the comment reading experience smoother.
  • Please keep all comments civil and constructive. The idea is to have fun — it’s a pool, after all!
  • If you haven’t looked at our Commenting Guidelines in a while, now might be a good time.
  • No running on the deck.

Photo by Brian Cantoni.

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  1. not sure If this is the right spot to post this but I just really just started some of my blogs (after joining two years ago) and now I have five blogs. I would just like opinions on if I should combine the blogs into one or just keep them separate. Each of them could stand on their own, but I’ve seen one successful blogger who combines all his topics into one blog, just wondering what the pros and cons of that would be?

    Quietwoman

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I’m new to blogging, so please forgive me if this is the wrong place to ask this newbie question. If I tag a post ‘cartoons’ and someone searches in the reader using the tag ‘cartoon’ will my post show up, or do I need to tag it with both versions of the word?

    My blog is a cartoon blog http://www.bbigmus.wordpress.com and the posts have no words for search engines to index.

    Thanks for any feedback and help.

    Like

    2. > If I tag a post ‘cartoons’ and someone searches in the reader using the tag ‘cartoon’ will my post show up, or do I need to tag it with both versions of the word?

      You’ll need both, as each would be considered a different tag. Be sure not to add more than a total of 15 tags and categories to your posts, though — beyond that number, posts become invisible in the Reader.

      Like

    1. Interesting post. Somewhat unusual. I have only one small complaint. More like I’m nitpicking really.

      I don’t like this sentence:

      “Sometimes I think they do it on purpose so I won’t be able to tell them apart any longer, so they stop meaning so much to me, so I’ll leave them alone to live out their memory lives in peace.”

      It’s a long one that lacks flow. And I dislike the overuse of the word “so”.

      Feel free to nitpick back

      Home

      Like

      1. Hi! Thank you for nitpicking!! I actually did it on purpose, the repetition of so. I find myself ending a lot of posts with a jumbled run-on sentence that picks up the pace and has more of an anxious feel compared to the rest of the post. I appreciate your feedback!

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I wouldn’t think that anxious, at least this kind of anxious, is a feeling you would want your readers to be left with.

        Thank you for visiting and thank you for the comment on my pineapple story. I hope you don’t mind but I would rather not post it to my page. If I make the changes you recommended it won’t make sense to future readers. Instead, I’m going to copy it here and reply to it in this thread. So here is the comment you left:

        Hi! You asked for nitpicking so here I am.
        First of all, very interesting post. The one thing I have to nitpick about is some of your comma usage. I studied Linguistics and am a little bit of a grammar stickler when it comes to standard prose posts.

        In the third sentence, there should be a comment right after “However”, although that does make the comma count in that sentence seem a little high.
        In the second paragraph, the comma after “Caribbean” isn’t necessary. You’re essentially saying ‘he was on his voyage when he did this’, which is a single, direct thought, so there’s no need for a break anywhere in the sentence.
        In the second to last paragraph, the commas after “at their event” and “to buy a pineapple” in the second and fourth sentences are also not needed, due to the reason listed above.

        All things said and done, I still loved this post, and I don’t think the small grammatical mistakes would hinder anyone’s reading of it, so feel free to keep it just as is. I notice these things in most of the posts that I read and I refrain from mentioning them because most people just don’t want to hear it. But if you like it, I will do my best to follow up on your posts and add in my two cents.

        Also, now I’m craving a pineapple. Thanks.”

        I originally had a comma after that first “However”, but it looked ridiculous so I removed it. I removed the comma after Carribean. That sentence was originally longer and the comma made sense. It was an oversight on my part. The sentence with the “at their event” part reads better with the comma, especially because the intention is to put emphasis on everything after the comma. I have decided to leave it in place. The sentence with “to buy a pineapple” does sound better without the comma. It has been removed.

        Thank you for reading and taking the time to be so thorough. I welcome you make any suggestions you feel would make an improvement, but I would prefer that you send me a message if you’re suggesting specific changes. It makes it more enjoyable for the people who visit after you. I have also added my email address to the “About” page to make it easier for you, and others with similar feedback, to contact me directly.

        Thanks again and all the best.

        Like

      3. Yes, of course I understand not posting my comment. I was originally going to leave it there and then post here saying feel free to delete it once you read it, but then I saw that it was awaiting moderation and figured you would handle it from there.

        I agree with all of your decisions and I’m happy that you took my suggestions into account. Next time, I will most definitely contact you directly with feedback instead of posting a comment.

        Thanks again for your feedback on my post. I will go check out that sentence again.

        🙂

        Liked by 1 person

  5. Hello all my fellow bloggers. I have good news. I am now a two time A Lovely Blog award nominee. If it wasn’t for you guys taking time to check out my blog god knows where my blog would be… so check out my new post and give me your feedback. http://wp.me/p4R0u1-ch

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  6. Hi everyone,

    I recently started a blog on riddles and programming questions that students could use as practice for technical interviews.

    http://joshanatalio.wordpress.com

    I would appreciate and feedback that you could offer!

    My blog has riddles, brain teasers, and other stimulating questions that can really give your brain a good work out!

    Like

    1. Hi Josh

      I love your idea of the brain teasers. That’s a fun way to engage your readers.

      Some of your solutions were better than others. Not to say that some were wrong, just that some were not so easy to follow and I had to read them several times just to understand. Maybe if you used more visual aids like diagrams it would help.

      If you like, you can review my blog. Feedback is always welcome.

      Home

      Like

      1. Thanks for the feedback robin!

        I checked out your blog, I really like your photography and the randomness of your posts were quite entertaining.

        I think it would be cool to have some uniform structure of posts. For example: every Friday you would write about something related to the downfall of Modern Society, or every Sunday you could write about a photo you took from a long time ago and write about how it makes you feel now that you’re older.

        If you thought my blog was cool, you can subscribe and I will subscribe back to you 🙂

        Like

      2. Thank you for visiting my blog and the feedback.

        Currently I’m writing only fact based articles which I post every weekend. I have a lot of other projects on the go right now and one post per week is all I have time for. I don’t want to post subpar work just for the sake of creating posts. Quality content is very important to me. I will not sacrifice quality for quantity. I would like to add a second post mid week that would be more personal in nature but it just won’t fit into my schedule right now. Hopefully in the new year I’ll have some more free time.

        Like

  10. I laughed out loud when I read your post. I know it may not have been intended to be quite so funny, but it was.

    In general I do agree with you. However, I have found that in some cases starting a sentence with a “but” is not quite so bad. In fact, it can really work for the writer at times.

    Typos are in general easier to make on your phone (especially the touch screen ones) so I suggest rather posting from your computer.

    Liked by 1 person