Feb 23, 2015 / 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.

Show Comments

519 Comments

Comments are closed.

Close Comments

Comments

    1. I like the way you write and your posts are pretty good. I agree that you could make your blog a bit more visual though. A more visually attractive theme and some photos to go with your posts would probably help with that 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    1. I liked your post. Very true as well, sometimes it’s easy to ‘not see the wood for the trees’ it’s important to step back once in a while at least!

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Hi everybody! I’m pretty new in blogging, and not very good with “technology”, and even if I’m trying to do my best with my posts and their content, I’m not getting any kind of feedback.. Maybe my blog has something wrong? Could you help me finding out what mistakes I’m making? I would really appreciate any suggestions !!! http://Italiangoodness.net thankssssss!!!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Your blog is attractively set up. I like the way you are showing step by step pictures of the dishes. You could try inviting feedback at the end of your posts by asking a question.

      You just need a community by reaching our to other food bloggers, following them and commenting on their blogs if you have anything to say. Nothing happens overnight – it all takes time.

      Consider showing perhaps just four recent comments as they look a little strange at the moment. Ask a few people what they think of the centralised text and the way the text is broken up into sentences. And I like your big olive picture very much but it seems slightly blurred. It’s worth checking your theme notes to see if you should be using a particular size of image.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Hi Susurrus! Thanks a lot for your opinion! When I decided to open a blog , my intention was mostly talk about italian tradition to Americans, but right Now more Italians that Americans are following my project… But I don’t Give up,and I will do what you suggested!

        Like

  9. Hi all! Does anyone have any advice on how to reach more readers? I know there’s plenty more important than having a lot of views, of course, but I really like the feeling of knowing that people are reading what I write 🙂 Thanks!

    Like

    1. Hi there! Well, you have made a good start by posting your question here. It’s also important to make comments and respond to other people too, you have to put some work in on this blog stuff! Consider as well signing up for one of the Blogging University courses, 101 is a good one for beginners, that way you’ll be able to hook up with other like minded people in the world of Blog. Good luck! Dookes.

      PS I’ve signed up to follow your blog. 🙂

      Like

  11. My blog has been up for a while but please have a visit and tell me if it’s easy to navigate? Does it load quickly or are the images bogging things down?

    The layout also changes slightly depending on whether you’re browsing from a desktop or a smartphone/tablet, etc. But I’m hoping the main “menu” remains useful.

    So I either link to the main page: http://somnivision.com
    or directly to the blog: http://somnivision.com/blog

    I want to do some spring cleaning so I’m thankful for any suggestions 🙂

    Like

    1. It didn’t load particularly quickly on my iMac but I’ve noticed that a lot of photography blogs are similar. It wasn’t slow enough for me to give up! You can check / monitor the loading speed for free on Pingdom. It’s bold and colourful and it seems very well organised to me.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. I LOVE the concept! It really allows you to offer a couple of viewpoints. I was going to suggest a few images to break up the text and even the letters, but noticed that you have this in your latest post. I would suggest to continue to do this. I Love your blog!!!

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Wow this is SO great – just read your Hermione Granger post and both the content and the style in which you have presented it is stunning – well done and keep on – what a great concept and by two well writing women. Not sure about Hollywood but the blogosphere certainly has nothing to worry about if this is the nature of what is being created.

      Keep on
      love brett fish

      Liked by 1 person

  13. Hi friends! Oh, how I love the overflow of advice and feedback. I have had my blog for about two years now, and though it is steadily growing, and I have been finding ways to promote it, I am still having a hard time getting comments and feedback on posts. What do you guys do? I have been leaving questions at the end of my posts, but I’m still not getting many commenters. Any ideas?

    My blog is: https://livelovelaughdancepray.wordpress.com/

    P.S. I also am having a hard time growing my Facebook author page. Any thoughts? My page is: http://facebook.com/ShannonMitchellAuthor

    Like

    1. Hi Shannon, it seems that you are in the right place. I have seen some other blogs re-blogging work that they love, I think this could be an option. Of course the usual option of commenting on blogs that interest you helps create your own little community. I wish you the best of luck!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thank you friend! I have been reaching out to other blogs and commenting away, which has actually increased my traffic quite a bit. It’s kind of exciting to see that, don’t ya think? (:

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Hi Shannon – just took a look at your page – fellow Jesus follower here [with a book about the church about to be published in March finally!] – took a read through your About page and it’s all really good stuff but i wonder if that would be good as a separate post that you then link to your About page for people who want to know more – the advice WP gave about the About [ha!] is that it should typically be short and punchy to draw people in so a bit of an overview of who you are and maybe the list of likes/interests/quirks at the bottom but a lot shorter than you have it with a link to the fuller story [internet audiences before they have bought into something tend to have a short attention span and the About page might be the first page someone like me clicks on to get an idea but may be put off by the amount of text – like in this comment now!]

      Just a thought – i have redone mine a number of times to try and get it shorter, punchier and to the point:https://brettfish.wordpress.com/about

      hope that helps – will go back and check your latest post now – and yes commenting, liking and sharing and also doing guest poss or inviting people to guest on yours helps bring audience…

      love brett fish

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thanks Brett! That is one thing that I am so ready to revamp too. I noticed that my original About page was slightly long (I actually just revamped my blog design), so I think that will be one of the next things I will revamp. Thank you for taking the time to check out my blog and give me some feedback!

        Like

  14. Hi bloggers, I’m looking to support new bloggers because I’m a new one myself. please follow my blog confidencejournal.wordpress.com

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Thank you for reading!
        Actually, I am already looking for an image for my header, but I am still unsure what kind of image is essentially Petite Being, haha. Thanks for the suggestion!

        Liked by 1 person

  20. Hi community pool! I just started my blog and I need some help. I do not get how Pages, Menu and categories work. I’m trying to organize my blogs but I don’t quite know yet. Please feel free to check out and browse thru my [travel/tourism] blog. It’s macymadison.wordpress.com
    Tell me what you think. Comments and suggestions are most welcome. I’m planning to write more soon about different topics. Thanks

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi! Congratulations on starting your blog. I love the travel stories and hope to get to Boracay (though more for the beauty and less for the parties!). I would suggest an ‘about’ page to give some information about who you are and what you write about. Best of luck with your blog 😉

      Like

      1. Thank you so much! and thank you for your interest in Boracay! There are also other islands that are for more untouched than Boracay.
        Can you help me how to make an about page and how to organize my pages?

        Like

  25. Any research blogger working on sustainability here? We did a series on mainstream medicine a while ago that might just turn lots of people off. It took us months of research to substantiates our claims and we don’t expect it to be an easy read, but we are especially seeking for criticisms — any potential blindspots that we may have missed?

    As a start. Here is the first part of the medicine series:

    http://sustainabilitist.org/2014/09/06/medicine-part-1/

    Like

  26. Hey howdy hey, fellow bloggers!

    I recently, and for the first time ever, submitted a piece of my work to a magazine. While I’m eagerly anticipating their response to my work, I would love to get the critical (and general) opinions of my peers on my short story!

    Much obliged!

    The Guardian of the Forest

    Like

  28. Hi Friends, I have just started putting up posts with DIY videos in them. My last one took so long to download to Youtube that I had to leave the computer running all night! So my question is, for anyone who uses video, is there a way to get it to process/download faster? I film on iPhone, I edit on iMovie and I upload to Youtube or even save as a file but it is taking too long. Any help really appreciated. Here’s the post link to have a little look. http://wp.me/p3SaiV-my

    Liked by 1 person

  30. This is scary for me, I’m new and I rather like being unknown. But starting my blog was about putting on my big girl pants, and I’m putting them back on now! I only have a couple of substantive posts and I just published an about me page today. I would appreciate feedback, I don’t think I have a preference regarding where. I think I’m probably more interested in content than aesthetics, but I guess there’s some overlap there. And I will pull my weight and give feedback as soon as I get in front of a big screen. Thanks in advance!

    Like