Jun 27, 2016 / Community Pool

Community Pool

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. Welcome to a Nervous Girl’s Guide to Life, a comical (hopefully) mental health blog, that also manages to cram in plenty of daft stuff as well. I detail my opinions on various subjects including being an undomestic goddess, spirituality and having too much Netflix to watch. If you would be so kind as to take a look, I will happily return the favour. https://clskellern.wordpress.com/

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Okay so I’m falling in love with your blog, like a lot. Fabulous posts so far, will resume stalking your blog when I’m done waking up my husband. So far though, I love everything I’ve read!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Aww, thank you so much. I have also fallen in love with yours (for the ‘I wouldn’t say you’re stupid quote’ alone)! I have to go out now, but I will be stalking your’s tomorrow also.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. been following you for a while now and the one thing I can say with authority is that your blog never let’s me down. your style of writing is easy to read yet makes a person feel more intelligent for having read it. please keep it up, I need my dose of CLSKELLERN you know!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Wow, that’s very kind of you Suze! I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying it. I *thought* I was following you, but I probably couldn’t find the button (I’m daft like that), but that has been corrected now! Looking forward to delving into Suziland 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

  3. I’ve recently done some changes around my blog page and was wondering if I could get some feedback on the aesthetics and feel of it. Would appreciate feedback. Also working on a story in the “Excerpt Of My Mind” section, if anyone would mind letting me know what they think of it, it would be absolutely wonderful.

    A Brief Introduction

    Like

    1. hiya Shay: bet ya didn’t think I’d wander over here to bother you, did ya? lol okay. I really like the tabs at the top of your page. They work well, are sectioned in a logical way that is easy to find your posts. I really like the idea of placing your videos all in the same tab. your poetry is interesting and I like seeing that subject in it’s own tab. I never thought of doing a special request so that was an unexpected pleasure to see and read. Great job IMO. ;P

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Shane: I think the Visual theme is absolutely perfect for your pictures blog. interesting articles along with some pretty darned amazing photos. Love it. and YES, you are definitely “doing it right”!

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Shane, I think you are off to a good start. One thing to consider going forward is how to organize content as it begins to grow. You might want to put each post in a category (ex. Animals, Landscapes, Sports). You could then display the Categories in your Menu. This would help readers who have an interest in a specific category. https://gracelead.co

      Liked by 1 person

  6. F.A.O Fellow bloggers

    My blog usually reflects my sentimental side which sometimes gets the better of me and it’d be nice having people relate to even a single sentence and knowing that we all have something in common.
I’d be honoured if you guys followed my blog and even commented sharing your thoughts and feedback as I’d love to know what you all think!
    Visit me at:
    https://wordpress.com/posts/mysteriouslife2016.wordpress.com
    Regards,
Mysterious LIfe

    Like

    1. I can relate to your Escape post. Your Hello World post would make a good About page. You might want to set up an About page and copy the content from Hello World into it. Then, of course, you’ll want to put your About page in your Menu. https://gracelead.co

      Like

    2. Pretty cool little blog you have there. You have a nice theme that isn’t so complicated. Looks like it will with a smart phone as well. Nice colors. I read a few of the blogs. I think your cat photo is copyrighted. Anything you post that goes viral is still your property. You could talk to an attorney if you don’t want it used.

      Liked by 1 person

  8. Hi all – have been blogging for about a month now, it’s going ok and I’m slowly growing into it and writing more. My blog is mainly about running with the odd bit of feminism in the mix… Would appreciate any feedback: duffrunning.wordpress.com

    Like

    1. the theme is absolutely wonderful for your writing. I love this blog! you put enough pictures in to keep my flighty brain focussed on what you are writing about and I love your subject matter. keep it up dear, it is wonderful!

      Liked by 1 person

    2. The layout seems good. Your About page is solid. You write clearly and the tone is friendly. I found you latest post relevant. I don’t have curly hair; however, we all have things that sometimes vie for our attention when we should be focusing on Him. You expressed that quite well. https://gracelead.co

      Liked by 1 person

  13. okay..this is going to sound nuts. But I am having some sort of comments problem with my blog. two people have now told me that they can’t comment, that the blog is asking them to log in to their WP account to see it..then it is trying to log into mY account. so can someone, anyone actually, just go and post a test comment for me to see if my mucking about has fixed the danged thing? much appreciation in advance…
    http://www.suziland.net

    Like

    2. Is your blog self-hosted? If it’s hosted by WordPress.com it should automatically detect if another WP user is commenting. If you’re NOT self-hosted, I’d email Support.

      Liked by 1 person

  14. Hello Fellow Bloggies! I just posted my newest blog today. Check it out and if you have something to say about it, don’t be shy. Enjoy!

    Like

  16. Hey everyone! Summers finally here! (Which means… more relaxation and blogging!) I haven’t been blogging cause of school but any feedback on my oldish ones would be nice! Thanks if you do!
    Ciao! ~Fashionliah ^ _ ^

    Like

    1. Dropped you a comment~ I see you’ve traveled to some incredible places. I’m curious… why did you chose “balticbliss” for your username? What’s the story behind that?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Hi Sarah, thank you for reading! BalticBliss comes from evenings spent on the beach at the end of the street where I lived when I first moved to Copenhagen four years ago. I used to spend a lot of time there, sitting, thinking, reading books, drinking a beer, having a swim or just watching the sun go down…

        Liked by 1 person

    1. I like your header of the chalk rainbow. It seems to fit the intent of your blog. Something to consider on layout is using your Home page for your posts. That way, the first thing we would see is your latest post. If you decide to do this, you could add the content from your current welcome page to the top of your About page. Your content seems friendly, helpful, and genuine. I enjoyed the post on where our creatvity goes. That’s a good question. https://gracelead.co

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Hey! First of all – love the name! Just on layout, and I say this to everyone who uses a masonry layout, I think that they’re better with just post excerpts on the front page. That’s just my opinion though!

      I think your writing is great. My only suggestion is that three posts a day is a hard schedule to keep up! Unless you have loads of ideas it might be worth pacing yourself. I will often write 2 or 3 posts at a time if I have the inspiration, and leave a couple in draft for when I have no ideas. That way there’s a steady stream of content.

      Again, that’s just a suggestion. Don’t mean to dampen your enthusiasm! I’ve given you a follow.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thank you so much for the wonderful tips! I’m still figuring out how to work with the layout. I’ll need to read up on it. 🙂 Yes, pacing myself is a good idea. Truly appreciate your help!

        Like

  25. Hello Pool!

    I added the Yoast Plugin to my blog and it now checks your readability – sentence and paragraph length, number of passive sentences and number of sentences with transition words. I created this post trying to stick to all those things that should make a post very readable:

    http://wp.me/p4jLZ5-190

    Interested in feedback about whether the writing looks “normal” or forced to you? It’s a post about the EU Referendum in Britain and how it might have emboldened attitudes to rascism, which you might like to feedback on too!

    Thanks.

    Like

    1. hey all,
      We started this blog after our study tour to Bosnia, with a charity called Remembering Srebrenica. When we were there we had a chance to learn about the Genocide that took place 21 years, ago.
      We really appreciate the feedback that we receive here – so thought we would share a post about the first survivor that we met there – a child of the war. https://justiceforbosnia.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/suvad
      Please let us know what you think.

      Thanks

      Like

  26. Hello All!

    I’m a Hungarian blogger from Budapest and I’ve just started to translate my posts to English to reach more people. I can’t wait to hear some feedback on my English and my posts in general. 🙂
    Check out this one for example:

    Stockholm & Helsinki

    Thanks!
    Iza.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I can’t begin to tell you how much admiration I have for people who can speak another language with such confidence! I really enjoyed your post and think your English is probably better than mine! Also loved the number of pictures you got in to your post.

      Can I ask how you made that animated gif?

      Liked by 1 person

    1. I really enjoyed your post!!! Thank you for sharing. Your writing is very open and honest, and I feel like I really connect with the struggles that you are so willing to share. I really appreciated your specific advice.

      I enjoyed your use of colors, and different fonts to highlight specific points. Your post was easy to digest because you organized it well into specific sub-topics.

      I think that the smaller sections work well for your writing, and perhaps the one longer one could have been broken down a bit. Also, I think that you might want to avoid sentences that are too long as it makes it harder for the reader to take in all of the information.

      I really enjoyed reading your post, and would love to read more!! I hope that you are able to continue to discover why you have reached a better place. I also hope that your journey continues.

      For me, when I got my first road bike (bicycle) was when I really tapped into my athletic side (which I never knew I had).

      🙂

      Liked by 1 person

  28. Commemoration

    Hi this is a post we did a while ago, but it didnt get much traffic.
    Would anyone mind having a look, and perhaps letting us know your thoughts on our writing style.
    We started this blog, writing about the genocide in Bosnia, but we have since delved into more contemporary issues too.
    Thanks for your help – much appreciated

    Like