May 16, 2016 / Community Pool

Community Pool

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

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

The Community Pool is for peer feedback and advice. Looking for more specific information? Check out some of these resources:

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).

Looking for free, self-guided courses to help you get started with your blog (or revive a dormant one)? Check out our current offerings at Blogging U.

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

  • 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!
  • 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.
  • If you haven’t looked at our Commenting Guidelines in a while, now might be a good time.
  • No running on the deck.

Are you a new blogger looking to share your very first post? We have a special forum for bloggers just like you in our weekly First Friday posts.

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  2. Hi! I love your layout and I’m sure reading your blog will help others feel connected. It looks like you need to edit your snippet for your first post. Also, categories and tags help with SEO, or so I’m told. You will probably want only a few categories, but you can have more tags. Again, that depends on who you ask, so others may have a different thought on that. Good luck!

    Liked by 2 people

      1. I use a SEO plugin that gives me the option to edit it. There are a lot out there to choose from. I use Yoast SEO. It seems to be recommended and I like it, but you might want to do your own research for what works best for you.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi! I’m loving the cute theme and quality photos on your blog 🙂 Here are some of my suggestions for improvement:
      Your menu appears to be empty? It’d be great to see some sort of ‘About’ page to understand what your blog is about, i.e., why it exists.
      Good luck and happy blogging!

      Liked by 2 people

  5. Hey guys
    I started my blog in 2012 and I am trying to revive it now. However, I feel that I don’t have much viewership and hence I am lacking on constructive feedback. Can you help me out and let me know my areas where I need improvement. Here’s the link to my blog:
    https://bhoomikagpt.wordpress.com/

    You help is extremely appreciated.

    Thanks a ton!

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I love your theme design, it’s so beautiful 🙂 It looks like you’re on a great track already! A suggestion for possible improvement:
      Have you considered using subheadings? I read somewhere that most readers skim through blog posts or articles and breaking it up with subheadings can help them skip to the content that interests them, especially when you have lengthy posts.
      Good luck and keep it up!

      Liked by 1 person

  11. https://craftandothercrazyplansdotcom.wordpress.com/

    Hi everyone, I’d like to know a couple of things please about my blog. How easy is it to see older posts? Now there are more I’m concerned older content may be totally forgotten. Also, is there anything you can suggest to get followers outside of WordPress? I’d like to build my audience a bit more, I do pin my posts and tweet some of them. Finally, are there any other tweaks you can suggest? Thank you. X

    Liked by 4 people

    1. Hi!
      you already have a Categories widget, I would propose you to get rid of the “recent posts” and make one just with tags. on each post you have a place for “related content” I think that’s fine. I wouldn’t concern about the older posts.
      greetings
      ***

      Liked by 3 people

    2. Hi – I agree with the previous reply, although I do like a recent posts widget! 😉 Everything looks fine to me. Users will find old posts if they want to (you have a search box) so don’t worry about those.

      Followers outside of WordPress – social media! Pins, tweets, Facebook, Instagram to an extent. Anything. Also get involved with other blogs if you can, just liking, commenting and that kind of thing. Search engine optimisation gets a bit technical, but maybe read through some stuff online about tweaks you could make to your writing to help find your blog from Google etc. Don’t expect immediate massive results though.

      Can I suggest one tweak? The landing page is your “About” page. Personally I prefer to land on a blog, but that is just preference. However, the menu is “Home” and “About” – maybe change “Home” to “Blog”? This is just me being fussy, but home for me is the first page you land on so it took me a while to think where I had to go to find your blog.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Thank you. I put the about page as a landing page so I could add a button for craftyblogsuk as I couldn’t add it to the blog landing page using html. I’m going to look into how to change it. Thank you for looking!

        Liked by 1 person

  12. Hi All, I am very new to this. I have only written a few posts and am struggling to get any traffic in order to gauge what people think. It is nerve racking posting for me! Please may you check out my blog, I would appreciate any honest feedback. If anyone has some tips for me too that would be very helpful! Thank you!

    https://hunterandiblog.wordpress.com

    Liked by 3 people

  13. Hey Everyone. I just posted a new blog titled parenting 101: Talk to your child(ren) about real life. The blog is about a situation why not going into details because of privacy about a recent experience as a parent(mother). check it out at http://www.mochasunshine27@wordpress.com. Please leave your comments. like. share and follow. Thank you for your support on a new blogger for 2 months now. Thanks to allow that are currently following me. i appreciate the support from the bottom of my heart.

    Liked by 3 people

  15. Hello Bloggers,
    I am new to blogging and have started writing few days back.
    My idea is to relate everyday life situations into something useful and motivational adding a bit of humor.
    Would like to learn more about blogging and get connected to individual with similar interests.

    You can find my soul here : https://urbanmocktale.wordpress.com/

    Looking forward to your reviews
    Love,
    Deepa

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Hi Han, I like your site and also I like that your post are keeping short, sometimes to much words are not so god. And also I like your titles.
      Kisses and good luck 😛

      Liked by 2 people

  19. Hey all, This is kashaf! I am almost 18, with a blog full of unconventional stuff. It is a place for the soul, i must say. It can lighten up your mood and can empathize when you feel down. I have posts ranging from personal stories, poems, motivation, dark and intense posts, and the season special currently running on Summer! Do check out the home page where posts are distributed into categories, for better surfing through. I hope to make a difference by putting my voice out there!
    Much Love,
    https://kashafalways.wordpress.com/
    KashafS ❤

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Hi Vinita,
      Your posts are amazingly inspirational. Good work!
      On blog post ideas, would giving you a specific topic to write on be helpful or you basically need a long-term sort of thing?

      Liked by 2 people

    1. Thanks for your honesty. It is a while ago that I set up my blog, painstakingly following instructions (because I am technologically disadvantaged) so I can’t remember hos to do it but I didn’t see anywhere on your blog to leave comments. That would give you feedback for a start. good luck with your blog and your parenting.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Hi Pink, I just went through it and for a first post, I find it pretty much good.

      I am working on a post on being a DARLING MOM, I hope it will be useful to you and many others out there.
      Haven’t blogged anything yet but I got several posts on my journal.
      Will be posting them soon.

      Liked by 2 people

  26. Hi there – I’ve been away from blogging for a while and would like to get back into it but I’m lacking a bit of motivation. I think I find it quite difficult to get the look and feel of my blog right (every time I go back I feel like it doesn’t look right) and I often wonder whether my writing style is even very good.

    I would appreciate any feedback anyone has for anything to do with my blog. Much love to you all!

    https://alondondaddy.wordpress.com/

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Hi Sean, when I read that you were a United fan I wasn’t sure whether I would reply or not!

      Look and feel… Looks good to me. If you don’t like it, I might make one suggestion just to see what you think – change the grey in the main part to white or a lighter shade at least. See how you feel with that. I’m no expert and think that everyone has their own taste, but I once read something that said that dark designs can be “controversial”!

      As far as writing style goes (again, I’m no expert!), I like the split between your thoughts and Lila’s; I think that’s a clever idea. I read a few of your posts and think they read fine and flow and everything like that. As I think you kind of get, it would obviously be better with more content.

      If I was a parent, I would want to do something like this too, but for my child’s benefit too. Maybe if you lack motivation try doing just 1 post a week or something about something that happened that week and maybe what you learnt from it? Think about making it stuff you can share with Lila as she gets older.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Thanks for the feedback 83sungheroes – you should pity me at this moment in time for being a United fan haha!

        I think I will certainly try as you suggest and attempt to post once a week about something – I often think that things that happen during the week aren’t anything special and may be deemed quite irrelevant (although maybe it’s my job as a writer to make these things seem more significant.

        Thanks again!

        Liked by 2 people

      2. I, for one, like insignificant! I’m not saying post what you had for breakfast or anything like that (leave that for Lila like you are doing!) but maybe taking something mundane and thinking about what it teaches you as a parent might be quite fun.

        Liked by 2 people