Jun 13, 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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    1. Your blog is really cool; I like all your pictures and descriptions of the places you travel. I have also spent some time in Europe, and it is definitely a special place.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Hey everyone! I just posted a long read on the importance of travelling and how significant it is to immerse yourself into new cultures and to free yourself of your standing obstacles. If you have a chance please give it a read. I think it’s definitely a topic we can all in someway relate to. This article was also featured in my local newspaper! Happy writing 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

      1. Kindly introduce me to all these.. I want to keep a presentable theme and of course let me know about header and widgets too

        Like

      2. You can find really helpful getting-started information here:
        https://learn.wordpress.com

        It walks you through the basics of choosing themes, adding things like headers and widgets, and publishing posts. There are also tons of great resources right on this site — use the “Categories” list at the bottom of the page to explore.

        Liked by 1 person

      1. I used this theme of coherent but if I don’t attach any image with my blog and share on other social media sites, the post comes with a blank image. I mean I m looking for a good theme which looks presentable on WordPress as well as on other social media sites

        Liked by 1 person

    1. To grab our attention faster, you might want to begin with “Tim was taken five days ago…” Unless there’s some reason they have to be first, you could push those first 3 sentences down further in the story. https://gracelead.co

      Like

  13. Hey all, I have recently posted my collection of notes on my recent holiday, and it’s safe to say that not everything that happened could be explained…
    Anyway, if you could give my Collection of Notes a read, I’d love to hear your feedback and return the favour.
    Matt. X

    Liked by 1 person

  15. New to this whole thing. Been wanting to start blog for some time now. But I need help trying to figure it all out. I was able to submit my first post. But am trying to figure out what to go next?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Talking with folks here is a great start, as is leaving comments on some other blogs — that’s the best way to get people to notice you! Other than that, just keep writing.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. I think your blog has a lot of potential. I like your content so far. Your storytelling is good. On your site, it would be nice to see a few words on your About page to tell us the purpose of your site. If you don’t plan to put something in the text widget area, delete it. You are off to a good start. Keep going. https://gracelead.co

      Liked by 1 person

  17. Hello my Blog Community Family. It’s mochasunhine27 again. I just posted a new series called Summertime. I just posted summertime pt 2( summer lifestyle changes. feel free to check out my latest blog post. I love comments, feedback. Follow. Share. I look forward to reading some of your blogs as well. here is my site: mochasunshine27@wordpress.com

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Hi!
    I just started using wordpress and this is my first post. It’s kind of about everything. Would like feedback on maybe where I could take this next… I feel like I put so much in one piece that I’m not sure what I would write about next/ what the style of my blog should be. I feel like going from this to an average travel blog/diary type thing wouldn’t feel right.
    Thanks!!!

    megh

    Seven Gates, Twelve Turns of a Key, Twenty-Eight Buttons, and Five Miles

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I like the layout for now. When you begin to get more posts, you may want to limit the number of posts that display at a time, otherwise your readers will have a frustratingly long scroll to find older posts. You may also want to think if your topics will fall into categories. If so, you could assign each post to a category and put the categories in your Menu. https://gracelead.co

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Beautiful artwork on your blog!
      I’m a new blogger (https://leftovercarrots.wordpress.com), too so take my advice with a grain of salt. However, I suggest to complement all of the beautiful imagery you could make your page a little bit more anecdotal to express your journey.
      Keep posting your blog over social media and wordpress and be patient 🙂

      Like

    1. I don’t believe it’s too opinionated. I loved reading your post, it is very frank. I appreciate that your opinions are all drawn from your own personal experiences relative to your pregnancy instead of a rant.
      All positive from me 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thank you! I always worry when I share opinions about opening a can of worms but also about being to blabbery so I’m pleased to see you thought my piece was frank and not just a rant. Thanks for reading and the feedback 😊

        Like

  22. Hey, everyone!
    I’m in the middle of revamping my blog and really trying to put the hard yards in to get it a lot better and more enticing. I’ve got A LOT of work and a lot of editing to go. I would really appreciate your feedback on the look/feel and one thing you think I should work on.

    Thanks a million,
    Liani

    Like

  23. Anybody Writes a Bilingual Blog Here?

    If any of you people run a bilingual blog, would you mind put your blog addresses here so I can have a look how it’s done? My blog is in English but I’ve got to do a bilingual post and I’m not sure how to do it. The post that needs to go bilingual is quite long already (a book review followed by an interview with the author) and I don’t think I can just alternate the language of the text paragraph by paragraph.

    Any advice much gratefully received!:)

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Today’s post was nice about East Sussex… I love Rye and Camber Sands (and Sussex in general). 🙂 I had a look at some other posts also to get a feeling for your blog.

        I think it’s a really nice blog and alternating the language works very well because the text is not long. But I do think the posts as a whole are too long perhaps – not too much to read but a long way to scroll down with all the pictures. But I don’t know what else you could do because putting the pictures in a mosaic or a slideshow wouldn’t show them off so well. Perhaps it might be good to make the posts into parts one, two and three or maybe there might be some other themes more suitable for photo blogs which might work well for you?

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Thank you so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it. I’ve actually been thinking of making my posts shorter by breaking them into more individual stories so will definitely give it a go. Thanks again for your sweet words and tips! Have a great week!

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Most people that I’ve seen either publish the posts as two separate posts, or in one post with the two languages separated (eg, all in English first, then all in a second language). Going paragraph by paragraph, especially in a long post, seems like it would be confusing.

      If you publish both translations in one post, you can add links inside the post to help readers jump directly to the language they want — it takes a little bit of code, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a quick addition to your post. Here’s a tutorial: http://www.echoecho.com/htmllinks08.htm

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thanks for your advice, Michelle! And also the tutorial about how to do the jumps which seem very useful… I had some other replies now also from people and had a chance to look at a few bilingual blogs and I think you’re right that in a long post – and this one is quite long – it will have to be either two separate posts or one post with one of those jumps to take readers directly to the other language.

        I was wondering… (because you clearly know what you’re talking about)… Do you know if there’s any benefit going with two posts in terms of the post being more likely to be found by Google in the second language? What I mean is most people who will read the Spanish language version will likely come to it via a search engine. Would they find it more easily if it had a post all to itself with its Spanish title? Thank you for your help!

        Like

      2. Spanish in the title would likely help a bit, but the text itself is really the most important thing. You’d need to decide if the potential for slightly improved Google rankings is worth having the duplicate posts, which can make your blog a little hard to navigate.

        Liked by 1 person

  24. Hey bloggers!!

    I have posted some middle eastern Iftar recipes (ramadhan). Here is the link for those for your quick access! There are many more other recipes too 😊
    https://nadiskitchen.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/almond-muhallabia-middle-eastern-ground-rice-almond-pudding/

    https://nadiskitchen.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/baked-falafel-with-tahini-sauce/

    Thanks in advance for your support and you guys are the biggest encouragement for me to move further😍

    Love -Nadira

    Liked by 5 people

  28. Hi guys,

    Can someone please provide some guidance on setting up “pages” to reflect my current categories (e.g. reading, prose, reflection). I feel confused by the “codings”. It would be appreciated if I could get some hints on how I should be setting individual pages to make these headings stand out.

    Thanks,
    Nashrah

    Liked by 1 person

    2. In your Menu you can create pages, here you can choose a category, all the posts with your chosen category will appear on the page

      Liked by 1 person

  29. i just started my blog, it’s kind of an open diary and whatnot, and i was hoping if you guys could give me some tips on how to make it better? (captivatingclaudia.wordpress.com)

    Liked by 1 person