I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the comments section of this blog suck less, but I’m at a complete loss. The options seem to be limited with a free account — but I could be missing something. I think that will require and upgrade, or our own domain, which will require $, which might then require advertising of some sort.
Before I do anything like that, I’m wondering if you all think that the comment threading sucks as much as I do. Does it suck enough to do something about it? Those skinny tiered comments, the lack of formatting… It’s hard to follow a debate. Do you think it needs to be fixed, or am I just being to fussy? Do you have any suggestions?
One thing I had in mind was to attach a message board to the blog. Any thoughts on that? My thoughts on that are that having to navigate to another page to discuss posts might just be too unwieldy, but then again, members could start their own threads…
What do you think? Upgrade? Message Board? Leave it alone? Any other ideas?
April 1, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Hi FTG
It does seem a little hard to pick up the thread of conversations. I agree it does warrant a look at.
Maybe if you took out the reply to individual commments and people could just address indivivuals chronologically like you get on alot of comments sections?
April 1, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Yeah, I was thinking of going back to that… turning off the nesting all together. We tried that for a few days, but it was disappointing, because you just don’t get the option of responding to another commenter — like other blogs have (why can’t we have anything nice?).
The standard comments section on other blogs seem to operate like this: each comment has a “reply” option and when you click that, your reply would appear at the bottom of the thread, with a little link back to the comment in question. It just makes so much common sense, but it doesn’t seem to be available.
As it is, people can use the html tags in their comments, like for italics,
for quoted, etc. — but it seems a little unreasonable to expect people to do that.
What I would love is a little wysiwyg editor…
At the moment, I’m just looking into getting a host and building the blog on wordpress.org. Then, maybe I can get a little advertising from some indy type outfits or add a little affiliate Powells books section with some recommended reading.
April 1, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I just messed up that post trying to show the tags. What I meant was:
is for italics.
is for block quotes.
is for bold…
(without the spaces)
April 1, 2010 at 2:08 pm
crap!
April 1, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Message board is an excellent idea!
You could tuck this blog into a free website that includes message boards.
This would allow folks to post movies and stuff also.
It would also require a bunch of work.
Adding a forum is a great idea, but it’s got to be free and that will limit what you can do whit it.
There are many free forums available on the web.
I’d suggest you try out a few and see what you can do with them before you officially link it to the site.
Some of these free forums just suck.
Some are pretty versitile.
The Sinclair community has been going for a while with this forum…
http://www.thesinclairmethod.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=25
The company that hosts it is…
http://www.phpbbserver.com/
April 1, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Oh good. One vote for message board. I’ll look into the free sites. I looked at a few, but they were so junky looking, so I haven’t found anything I like enough yet. I’ll check out the links you posted right now.
I know that if I just registered the domain name this would all be a piece of cake. I set up another website using my webhost and wordpress.org, and it is just so so much more versatile than this. And I’ll be able to add a subdomain with message board.
April 1, 2010 at 3:12 pm
Doods, I just registered stinkin-thinkin. So, Idunno when, but things will be different. I’m going to add a subdomain for the messageboard, too.
I’ll keep you posted.
Any suggestions for features?
April 1, 2010 at 4:03 pm
dailystrength.org
has a really nice forum setup.
It was the forum I was most comfortable with, ‘cept it’s loaded with AA freaks.
Maybe you can get some ideas there.
You have what it takes to do something really powerful. Thanks again.
April 1, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Thanks Donald, I’ve been to dailystrength before, but it’s been a quite a while. I’ll go check it out with an eye for functionality.
I think what I’ll do is just work on a basic blog and messageboard setup, and as we use the new stuff, we can all figure out what works and what doesn’t.
It can be really jarring and confusing when people overhaul their familiar websites, so I really hope I can do this in a way that feels like an improvement.
April 1, 2010 at 4:20 pm
i think the message board is a super idea. i do not think the comment are that hard to follow… though it is too bad you have to click to see them…
April 1, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Great! Let’s give the message board a try. I’ll get this all up, and let you all see before I migrate the blog over.
April 1, 2010 at 4:27 pm
A message board would be fine. I suppose that it would be separate from the blog. That would be fine as well.
April 1, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Yeah, what I’m thinking is that the main page will be the blog (and I hope I can find a more flexible and intuitive commenting option), and then there will be a link to the message board, which will be more of a free-for-all, where anyone can post a topic for discussion — or expand on a blog discussion.
April 1, 2010 at 5:33 pm
OK, so would there be a general revolt if we started accepting some ads on the blog?
I’m thinking of offering cheap space only to indy advertisers — people with their own small businesses or blogs that they’d like to promote (like, say, someone who has an etsy page, as opposed to adwords or other corporate ads).
Input, please?
April 1, 2010 at 5:42 pm
I have always been partial to the Yahoogroups set-up, because it is so easy to follow, and manage. It gets a bit tedious when the volume of posts gets high, but that is true of any format. Each page lists about thirty posts, and it is very easy to go back to previous pages. The threads can be continued indefinitely, and don’t shrink like they do here.
April 1, 2010 at 5:51 pm
This all makes my brain hurt. I just lurk around, though. ha. Me ‘n team McDawg–official lurkers.
I don’t blog about it, though–in case you were wondering.
April 1, 2010 at 6:00 pm
There’s a bird on your head.
April 1, 2010 at 8:21 pm
This blog is great!
April 2, 2010 at 10:52 am
There are pros and cons to all the options. Message boards can be hard to control, and have to be really active to feel alive. Yahoo groups just irritates me, I find it hard to follow. Personally I think it would be best to keep the blog format with comments, maybe with paying to get more options or with ads. That would keep the feel and not require significantly more work.
April 2, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Is there anyone here who can help me with a little css? I can usually figure it out by myself, but it will take me all day…