Nov 3, 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!
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Photo by Brian Cantoni.

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    1. I love your layout! And I think, if you have a presence online. For example checking other people’s blog out and commenting and making your presence known will get more people to your blog!

      Liked by 1 person

    1. not to be too teacher-y, but lifes should have an apostrophe–life’s a bbq, since it is short for life is. I also felt lost about what what the main point of your blog versus ads. I like the idea, but there seemed to be less content and more noise/ads than on many.

      Liked by 2 people

    1. does your blog have a main theme or organizational idea? or is it personal writing on lots of topics? One comment is that you may want to take time to proofread, as someone like me may get distracted by little errors. another thing I thought is that the title is hard to parse without spaces in between the words, so I ended up focusing on isn’t ass weet at first. I found the breadth of topics really interesting, and was quite touched by the personal note about the death of a friend and the cross on the side of the road.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi. I was interested in your pages as I work as an employed educational consultant. I wondered if you could add something about the impact on children the new learning would typically support as a result of adults attending the sessions? Hope that makes sense!

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Yes – that could help someone tune into why they need your service more easily! It might also help support bids for budgets to buy you in, if there needs to be justification e.g. to a headteacher or governing body.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Hi – I thought your blog looked helpful and knowledgeable.

      There’s language that we wouldn’t use on this side of the Atlantic – words such as ‘lazy’ which are considered a bit pejorative when you’re talking about a child. But if they’re in use in California, then that’s your world and your language.

      One sentence that I’d probably smooth out and simplify, if it were mine, is the one on your home page that ends: ‘and ever wondered with whom you should use each and why, this is for you.’

      I was very struck by the expression of pure kindness, encouragement and interest on the face of the woman on the Learning Ally video. She should be cloned and distributed throughout the classrooms of the world!

      Good luck with your blog.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Lazy is definitely cindidered pejorative, but you would be shocked how msny times people–even parents! Use it about their kids before they understand the learning disability. I’ll try to iron out that sentence. And thank you–the woman on the cover of the learning ally webinar is me! I’m glad i look all those things! Hopefully it will make people want to hire me to train their teachers or talk to their parents!

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      2. Gosh – you really do look wonderfully warm, friendly, hopeful and engaged in that image on the video. Yes, if I had a child who needed help, I’d hire you on the basis of the expression on your face in that video alone. I don’t know if other visitors to your home page will realise that the video shows you. I had assumed it was just a video that you use in your work, rather than you. Maybe I’m just one of your less observant readers!

        Ultimately, we read humanity and kindness in peoples’ faces, don’t we? Faces trump words any day. Please do go out and reach as many children as possible. Good luck with your blog and with your business.

        Liked by 1 person

    4. Nice idea. I too am a presenter (travel themes) hoping to tap into the schools/pta markets and think a presentations section is a brilliant idea. Thanks for sharing!

      Like

      2. I give presentations (mainly to libraries thus far) about either travel destinations or travel themes. If that still doesn’t make sense you can see my dedicated web site at http://www.travisuals.com

        And if you have any industry advice you feel might be helpful I am always eager to learn. Thanks for checking in

        Liked by 1 person

    1. maybe because I am older and my eyes are getting old, but I found the white letters on black hard to read. I also thought it might be good to have your title across the top, as it took me a while to realize Think About It was the title of your blog. Maybe a title and a tag line.brief intro to the theme of your blog. You may want to include a reference to being Mormon, as many people won’t recognize the references to Moroni and Nepthi, etc.
      🙂

      Like

  11. Could anyone have a look at my blog? I know that there is lots that I can improve on!!!!!!!! anotherformulaoneblog.wordpress.com

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It would appear that you’re embarking on a project similar to the Garden Gnome that people took all over the world, or the couch that was photographed in all sorts of strange places. Since the pure novelty of that is over, it’s important to have something special about your frog, the character or quality of your photography, the locations you choose, or to have some other element- a story line, amphibian philosophy, commentary on the locations of the photos, or something, to give the blog some interest.

      Like

  12. hello everyone ☺️ I’m a baby blogger, and I was wondering of anyone had tips on how I could improve my site. I want to make it more user friendly but am a little lost. any advice would be amazing! my site is missvictorianichole.com
    thank you!

    Liked by 2 people

      2. No problem! Looks like you’ve been blogging for almost a year, that makes you more successful than 90% of other blogs already.

        Like

  15. Hi, I’m relatively new to blogging and I was wondering if there was an optimal length for a post. I try to stick to a word count of between 500 and a 1000 but maybe I shouldn’t be worried about it. Any advice? Thanks, Sarah

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    1. I think 500 to 1000 is a good goal. Some of your posts look like they are a bit longer than that but I think its fine to have a long post every now and then. I would even encourage a long post occasionally.

      Like

    2. As long as it’s catchy, it doesn’t matter if a post exceeds 1,000 or even 2,000 words. My best friend recently wrote a 2,500 word piece which I read to the last letter. 🙂

      Like

    3. First of all, nice blog. I think link should be determined by the subject. For my own travel posts I generally write between 700 and 1200 words with a generous portion of pictures as well. All depends on how much have to say at the moment

      Like

  17. How does this look? I try to make my post cover the topic completely in about 500 words. Some posts end up being longer but I try to keep it short and to the point.

    http://www.classichistory.net/archives/romantic

    I want to add about 1 post per month for the rest of my life. Its a blog about history. I would love to have some feedback on my last article. It will help me shape future ones. Thanks in advance!

    Like

  23. I’m a newbie blogger at WP. Want to find out if I can have several blogs under different pseudo names and just one account?

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      1. Thank you. I will explore this avenue as I continue to learn blogging and using this site.

        Like

  26. Helppppppppp!!!!! Someone, anyone.. is there anyone out there who can help me???? I wrote a blog of my interpretation on Daily post the painting “Nighthawk”. . As a first time blogger, I’m sending out SOS to anyone who can tell me if I’m doing it “write”.

    Like

    1. It seems like you’re having trouble creating a pingback to the challenge page. What you’ll need to do is copy the challenge URL:
      https://wordpress.com/dailypost/dp_writing_challenge/oh-the-irony/
      Then, you’ll need to go back to your post, and create a link to that URL. You do that by highlighting whatever text you wish in your post, clicking on the “Link” button in the toolbar, and pasting the URL. That’s it — once you update your post, the link will be activated and will create a pingback on the challenge page (which means you’ll see a link to your own post under the challenge, along with other challenge entries).

      Let me know if any of this doesn’t work for some reason!

      Like

  27. Hi! I’m from Mexico, i’d been blogging for 8 years on other platform and recently moved with my blog and webpage made with WordPress so I’m excited to be here ‘cos Wp is very good and versatile! My site is in Spanish, if someone wants to visit it, is http://www.romaldonado.com thanks!

    Like

    1. I really liked it, especially all the emotion you conveyed with your words. I would suggest using “and” instead of “&” and also trying to split it up in some sort of stanza because at times it could feel a little overwhelming when it’s line after line with no breaks. There’s also a few punctuation/capitalization errors, but those are easy fixes (:
      Overall it was extremely well written I definitely liked it!

      Liked by 1 person

  30. I recently changed my layout, and wrote a new article 🙂 I would love some feedback on what I can improve on or what’s good..etc 🙂 sobeidacuriel.wordpress.com

    Like