May 22, 2017 / Community Pool

Community Pool

Where bloggers come together to give each other feedback and advice.

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 and guidelines 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, as well as for not starting numerous threads in a single Pool.
  • 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. Also note that including multiple links in your comment might automatically put it in the moderation queue, which will delay its publication.
  • 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. Hello fellow bloggers, it’d be really nice if you visit my blog and see my posts.
    Moreover,
    I really love the picture of the pool attached to this post.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. I enjoyed the key thought in your Stop That post. It would be easier to read if you broke up some of the longer sentences. Here’s a way to rework one sentences. “Today’s post is about saying mean and abusive things. Perhaps you regret what you said or perhaps you don’t care about the effect of your words.” https://gracelead.co

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Have a read Ladies and Gentlemen and hopefully you can tell me on how to increase my views.
    ttps://kevandreg.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/spending-christmas-with-the-teenage-turtles/?fb_action_ids=217398708767516&fb_action_types=news.publishes

    Liked by 2 people

    1. There’s lots of ways to increase readership, but they do involve work. My best strategy has been to check out others blogs, leave comments, engage with them, follow them. Other ways to drive traffic to your blog: join Facebook groups and Pinterest groups. Good luck!
      – Christine

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Always true. Engage with all the great writers and creatives on here and see how you can add to the community. I’ll also add to Christine’s Good luck.

        Liked by 3 people

  6. Huge catch up on my travel blogging has been underway today – Latest post covers the facts and figures behind the Palm Oil crisis in Borneo and links to a separate review from 10 individuals of a volunteer project working on conservation of habitats for Orangutans and Sun Bears – little bit current affairs / little bit social psychology – depends how you read it I guess!

    Palm Oil – Why DO We Care?

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Who am I to tell you how to run your blog but you don’t seem to be sharing your thoughts too much, just reposting some things in the news. Consider expanding your posts by adding your opinions and making your posts unique.
      Also I suggest adding more to your About Page so people can get to know you and your blog.

      Like

  10. We went self hosted after three posts. We decided that since we were in it for the long haul, it would be easier to make the transition before we had too large of a following. It wasn’t that expensive either, under $100 for the year. I think it was worth it

    Like

      1. yes! haha thanks so much for pointing that out 🙂 really appreciate your feedback very much. It is hard to keep up with what all of them mean these days haha

        Like

    3. Nice post, but I don’t think labels are the quite what you’re getting at. If I say I’m a news junkie, Lakers fan, “Walking Dead” watcher I’m labeling myself and that’s okay. 🙂 The problem is when those labels lead other people to assume, say, that I have no interest in music or theatre, hate the Celtics, and won’t watch “Supergirl” because of how I label myself.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Really beautifully written. A clear sense of the nostalgia of time passed but an appreciate of the current self as well. If I could give some feedback I would say watch the way some lines proceed to the next. You build a nice rhythm in your lines but sometimes lose it. Love it regardless.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thanks. I would say that in at least one spot the break in rhythm is on purpose, but I didn’t want to break the flow more than that.

        Like

    1. Really like the site aesthetic. I tend to live believing my future self will find innumerate things I’m currently doing wrong but ultimately “Everything’s okay” is something we al have to hear from time to time. Enjoyable read.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Hi Nacklo! Thank you for dropping by!
        I agree with you, sometimes, all we need is someone to say “Everything’s okay.” 🙂 Hopefully, you found other entries of my blog enjoyable. Thank you again! 🙂

        Like

  24. Hello there fellow bloggers. I recently wrote on my motivation category how to empower yourself and have personal fulfilment as part of the series discovering the treasure in you. Your opinion and feedback are most welcome.

    MINING INTO THE BEAST 

    Have a lovely day.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. I started my blog just before New Years this year. I write poetry and talk about my travels since I’m an ESL teacher and get to travel a bit.

    In 5 months I only have 160 followers and recently have been getting a massive decline in the amount of likes of my poems.

    It’s even more frustrating to have random people follow who don’t even bother liking anything and likely don’t even visit my site ever again likely hopefully trying to get followers on their own site.

    I know that writing shouldn’t be objectified, but my dedication and commitment to my blog is making me wonder why even bother having a blog? Why not just keep a private journal if no one is interested?

    Any advice or feedback better than “just keep writing” or “it’ll pick up later” would be appreciated

    Liked by 4 people

    1. The blogging struggle is real! Honestly, I feel like you have to take the pragmatically holistic approach with blogging. Find people out there who are creating content you love or want to create and connect with the community. Learn what they post, what is their most popular type of content, what does the community expect of writers of their size or talent. It’s two sided, become a better writer and become better at promoting your work. Overall though you’ve got to love blogging and writing even when it’s being yelled into the metaphorical ether. I feel your frustration though so here’s to the both of us growing as writers but also patience in growth.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Love the last line, yes, for sure! Here’s to us growing as writers and also to patience in the process. I responded to someone else’s comment, but I definitely need to be more proactive in finding more blogs to follow and support. I tend to just stay very committed to the blogs I do follow, and don’t really branch out as much as I should.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Even if only a few people are interested, what does it hurt to have a blog instead of a private journal? To me, it’s a matter of why you are blogging. I agree with you that number of followers is misleading. As you noted, some may never visit your site. One thing that can happen is that those who follow by email may read your post in their email and never actually click on the link to your site. I generally, insert a Read More tag after a sentence or two in my posts which forces people to visit my site if they want to read the full post. To attract visitors takes regular work: visiting other people’s sites to leave likes and comments. The WordPress Reader is helpful for that. https://gracelead.co

      Liked by 1 person

      1. You’re right. No reason in not sharing my thoughts and poetry. I guess being concerned with likes and follows is an admission of ego driven motives, even though all my motives aren’t. I want to connect and make friends with people, so I guess I don’t really go out of my way to find new blogs since I’m pretty happy with the few friends I’ve made so far, but whats stopping me from making more? A lot of them said I should look for new blogs as well as much as I write so will try to do more of that. Thanks for the response.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Hey good on you first off for putting yourself out there, being creative and taking risks. I think your work has a strong core of emotion, but I want to share a few little things I took from it.

      Just my 2 cents, but the poem seems quite dark in it’s theme but you’ve got the little balloons floating up…I found that a little bit disconcerting. A slightly bigger font size would be great, I struggled to read it on my Laptop- that made it a little harder to immerse myself.

      I hate to be critical about this, but your metre was a bit loose. I think it felt like you were more worried about rhyme than the pace. I couldn’t find a rhythm easily to tie everything together. Maybe a few read throughs out loud or get someone to read it out to you to.

      I think you’re showing great talent and potential, and I hope this was useful.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. I thought it was really interesting, and it flowed pretty well. The layout definitely aided the overall experience, except maybe the balloon. At first, I thought the balloon was cool because I hadn’t seen that before. But I don’t think it fit the mood of the poem. But that’s a small thing. Good read.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Hey Louise! Reviewed your blog already, but just gonna lay the main points here cause the stream was sort of delayed earlier so for your convenient, I’m gonna just write it down here. Do feel free to watch the stream but skip on over to at least 20minutes into it cause of the technical difficulties we experienced before actually starting your blog review.

      Aestethics wise, looks and feels like it IS something from Egypt, awesome since it fits your theme.

      Now, take note of your “Memoir” as one of your “Menu”. When I clicked on it, it led to a empty post. My suggestion is to remove that “Menu” (Memoir) and replace it with a cateogry (Title it memoir, and link all your memoir post to this category). That way when people click on it, it will lead us all to your “memoirs” categorized posts.

      Photos used were awesome! However, I did feel like its not used to its fullest potential. You only have pictures in the home page and a gallery page, at least from what I saw.

      Consider using them for your blog posts as well, it’ll help with immersion.

      Finally, consider using “Archives” as well as it will compile your blog posts up via year and people will have an easier access to your older post.

      Keep up your good writing! You can really help readers imagine the scenarios in their minds!

      Your pal,
      Benjamin
      http://www.projectbiy.com
      http://www.prometheustechnologies.wordpress.com

      Liked by 2 people

      2. Also just tried your address wasn’t going direct to your blog but found it. Very interesting layout and style and good use of graphics 😀 if my kids were younger I’d be following your ideas!

        Like