Oct 20, 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. Hi Alice,
      I really like the tone of your blog, it’s nice to have some background about and your interests – it helps when understanding where the reviewer is coming from.
      Would you have a moment to take a look at my blog and see what you think?
      lilybookmaster.wordpress.com

      Thank you!

      Like

      1. Hello,
        Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog and for the feedback. It is greatly appreciated. I really like the look of your blog too, and have hit that follow button.
        Alice x

        Like

  2. Are my “pages” serving a purpose or do they lose effect because I have limited content there?

    Here is the young blog: mylifespacemoments.wordpress.com.

    How are others using pages “successfully”? I intended for the pages to show I’m covering a variety of topics, but maybe it weakens my blog?

    Like

    1. I’m sure others have different opinions on pages, but they really don’t have to compete with your posts; used well, they can actually complement the content you create by offering a space for material that doesn’t change very often, or for showcasing your best content as you publish more over time.

      In case it might help, here’s a post we ran here at The Daily Post last year on some of the uses of pages:
      https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2013/11/20/pages-long-term/

      Liked by 1 person

  6. I just posted this last night and then this pops up on my dash……..I love how that works… 😀 http://quirkyteenauthor.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/i-can-not/

    I actually wrote this just after leaving a friends house in the middle of the night. There’s this fallen tree near their house, and a flickering streetlamp over a gravelly road and all I could think about was how much I wanted this to be a setting in a story so I set to work the minute I got home and this was what happened.

    Like

    1. I like your stories! 🙂 Maybe you could try to improve the imagery however… since sometimes I’m not getting them feels. I’m not quite so good with it either, and we all have room for improvement. Good luck on your blog! (:

      Like

  8. Hello everyone!

    I am a new born blogger and would like feedback on any or all of my post. I can handle any sort of criticism so don’t hold back. Thank you!!

    Like

    1. Well, when I saw you were running a “diary” blog, I could not resist having a look. I would love to have commented, but I do not see any facility for leaving comments on your site as it stands… you may want to go to your dashboard and turn them on.. As it is, I love what you have so far… so sorry about Mutti… and I’ve been to Italy many, many times. Sorry about your awkward B&B experience there! Every time we have gone, it has been wonderful!!! xx Mother Hen

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thanks so much, motherhen for responding and pointing out about that
        comment button. Yes, I’ll get to the more positive
        Italy stories eventually as well.

        Like

      2. I have no doubt you will! 🙂 It is a lovely place… I surely hope your weird first night didn’t ruin it for you! I look forward to reading what you have – your voice has a lovely feel to it. Does that sound creepy? It’s not meant to…

        Like

      3. Not creepy at all…I enjoy your site
        as well. Great writing and graphics.
        I hope I can create a blog half as
        nice-looking eventually!!

        Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s definitely easy to navigate and is effective. The only suggestion I have is to use more photos to pull readers in visually. It’s just another way to get people engaged.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Hey Coach Colleen!

      First of all, there are tons of free themes. In your dashboard on the left side, you can go under Appearance and click on Themes. You can narrow it down to free themes, and then mess around with some of them. Once you pick one, it will allow you to customize it, where you can play with the header, colors, font, menus, etc.

      Categories and tags to have different purposes. I use my categories in my menu. http://www.kassafrass.com/ If you check out my blog, then at the top, “photography”, “blogging life”, etc. All of those are categories.

      Tags can help people find certain types of posts. For example if you write a post about food, you might add the tag “food” and anyone else searching for posts about food will be able to find yours.

      I hope this helps!

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Hello,

      Just to clarify — while a handful of themes (like our default theme this year, Twenty Fourteen) come with featured palettes from which you can choose to change your theme’s colors, Custom Colors is otherwise part of the Custom Design upgrade; you can read more about it here:
      https://wordpress.com/support/custom-design/

      As for categories vs. tags, here’s a useful page that summarizes their main differences:
      https://wordpress.com/support/posts/categories-vs-tags/

      Like

  17. Hi beautiful people, I want you to read my short story and give your feedback…
    I see these stories everyday around me but putting it in to words is almost like a meditating experience. Looking forward to some reviews from you all 🙂

    Matters of heart

    Like

    1. Your story is intriguing and conveys the image of the characters and the setting quite clearly. It leaves me wanting to know more about each of them in a future installment.

      Liked by 1 person

  18. Hi everyone

    I’ve just today created and started my blog (soooo excited!)

    I would be so grateful – if you have the time of course – to please give me a little feedback about my posts and my blog layout in general at http://yourprivatepa.wordpress.com/.

    Any feedback/suggestions are welcome and very appreciated.

    Thank all you very much.

    Chantell Geary – Your Private PA x

    Like

  19. Psst – have you ever wanted to read a story about someone else’s life without all the statistics most copy and paste? I mean, read something uncut and real? Well check my page out! It will leave you Spellbound… Check out my Real Life Events… I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU!!! Ooooooooooo

    Like

  22. Hello Everybody!
    I’m Callie and on my blog “Imaginationem” I post about fashion, beauty, DIYs, music, and art!

    If you could please give me some feedback on my blog, that would be great! Also, feel free to give me any suggestions on what you would want me to blog about in the future!
    –Callie

    http://imaginationem.wordpress.com

    Like

    1. This is just my impression but from the post on Oct. 6th, I get the feeling that you don’t have a lot of confidence in yourself which is sad. I’m sure you have a lot of good qualities-write about those. You may think the physical qualities are what people focus on when they really aren’t. Don’t let that dictate what you have to share.

      Like

  27. Hey guys! I recently just started up my blog and id like for more people to check it out! My posts have some sort of life lesson added in with food. For example, Cereal. people dont know how much milk you like in your cereal bowl so why let them pour the milk for you, or in other words, define you? it would meant alot to me if some people could just check out my blog and give me some opinions since im new to this whole thing and im actually kind of awkward(: heres a link to one of my blog posts! its the one about cereal but its more in depth about it.

    Cereal and Personalities

    please check it out!

    Like

  29. Hey everybody, I’m a relatively new blogger and I post about fashion, but also other things like food and hairstyles and tomorrow I’m posting my October favorites! I would definitely appreciate it if you checked out my blog. Thank you so much

    Like