Archive for the ‘Blog Improvements’ Category
A lazy J-blogger’s hack.
On September 03, 2008 in Blog Improvements, Helping Japan Bloggers
2008 is moving along. Soon we will be looking at 2009 and you will have to update the little copyright date on your blog.
Not if you’re a lazy blogger.
This little php code snippet does the hard work for you year after year.
<?php echo date (”Y”);?>
This code works on any php page (a file ending with .php). It displays the current year.
If you have a self-hosted wordpress blog go to:
wp-contents/themes/YOURTHEME/footer.php and look for the copyright year. Replace the copyright year with the code above.
your done,
now go be lazy
Navigation for the navigationally challenged wordpress themes
On August 25, 2008 in Blog Improvements, Helping Japan Bloggers
It is good that certain things irk some more than others.
Nick over at LongCountdown had been bothering me for awhile about not having good navigation.
As the editor I know where everything is so not having great navigation doesn’t bother me (which is not good). I don’t think about it as much as I should, so it is nice to have someone who reminds me of how things are from the reader’s perspective. Thanks Nick.
So how about you, Japan-blogger? Is your navigation lacking?
If you use wordpress (self-hosted) and need navigation, today is your day.
Here is the code you will need to enter to help readers navigate to next and previous posts:
Instant navigation in Wordpress. First find single.php,(that's YOURSITE.COM/YOURBLOG/wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/single.php)In single.php in your theme, find: <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> and right below it, paste: <!--navigation--> <table style="width: 100%; text-align: center; border:0px; margin-bottom: 6px;"> <tr><td class="text" style="text-align: left; font-size: 8pt;"> <?php previous_post_link(); ?> </td> <td class="text" style="text-align: right; font-size: 8pt;"> <?php next_post_link(); ?> </td></tr></table>
Next I want to make my category list expandable/collapsible and make sub-categories under “interviews” for each of the sites interviewed. That way you readers can more easily find and read specific interviews. If I find it, I plan to let you know about it so you can use it for your sites too.
Have a great day,
DailyJ
Wish your blog was a forum? I do
On August 14, 2008 in Blog Improvements, DailyJ Mission
If I could do it all over again with DailyJ I don’t think I would change a thing (except for my 4 month disappearing act).
Interviewing all kinds of interesting J-bloggers, having fun conversations, having the chance to share ideas, and spreading awareness that we are part of a Japan-related web - it has been great.
But I guess I would change one thing…
The blog.
The bad part about blogging is that at the end of the day it is you, alone.
Sure there are commenters and others around. But they can only interact with the site so much. They don’t have much control and input.
*Sigh*
I want a forum…
Reformulating your Vitamin J
On March 14, 2008 in Announcements, Blog Improvements, Community building
I’m excited about some new possibilities for DailyJ.
Likely every project reaches a point, as it grows, where it needs to be re-evaluated and a decision has to be made. The options usually are quit, stagnate, work to death, or change.
I’ve never been one to quit (yes, I’m very stubborn). I understand (somewhat) that knowing when to quit can be a good thing. Unfortunately I don’t know when to quit, if I did I would probably be quitting now. But as it is I think there will be plenty time for quitting when I’m dead.
So that leaves the other three and only one of those is acceptable. It’s time for some changes (with any luck they will be good ones).
Work load and etiquette
The delays in posting interviews and replies to comments have really been bothering me. I don’t want to neglect any of you.
So I am thinking of ways to better handle the interviews. Up to this point I have been contacting more than one website at a time for interviews (and offering interviews to bloggers I happen to meet).
That worked well for awhile (especially at the launch) but now it is just too much. The result is delays and I am tired of being disrespectful to upcoming interviewees by taking too long to send them interview questions or failing to post their interviews quickly.
More brainstorming out loud -
Privately I brainstorm different ideas about DailyJ and other projects. Going forward though I want to open up that process by posting any ideas I have and getting more feedback about them.
Focus -
At first glance a website about Japan-related websites might seem a little silly but I think focus is the key to building a great site so I want to stay focused. So interviews are still the key ingredient of the vitamin J mix. But I’d like to have some multi-participant discussions with the people behind different web projects (a sort of “team interview”).
More discussion -
There is a lot happening around the Japan-related web and it seems to me all of that action demands more discussion and maybe even a little debate. Regular discussions about happenings and topics on the J-web might be a good permanent feature on DailyJ. Anyone could suggest a topic for debate and would become a post/discussion. Or maybe I should start a forum (?), a Japan-blogger’s forum.
Also, as some bloggers have mentioned to me, often ideas are passed back and forth in email when it might be better to discuss them with a wider group of people. Three heads are better than one. I think this goes back to that Japan-blogger’s mailing list idea.
My thoughts on a Japan-related web community are that such a community could be modelled after the open-source software communities. That is what I would love to see. How that will come about I will have to leave to smarter minds (though I offer any support I can provide), but that it could come about excites me.
The communal wiki at http://jproject.wikia.com would probably fit somewhere in that mix. And it seems from feedback that “Japan Labs” should be the name for it. I really like the idea of a laboratory for all sorts of Japan-related web experiments! (That was the atmosphere I was going for all along)
Well, there you have it. I’ve given you lots of ideas to discuss, tear apart, etc.
Renewing DailyJ
On March 11, 2008 in Blog Improvements
Over the next few days I am planning to post some little ideas I have for improving DailyJ.
Chit-chat, Japan-related projects, and begging for feedback
On March 05, 2008 in Blog Improvements, Community building, Suggestions Please
Reminder: If you missed it I’ve been asking everyone for feedback about an upcoming discussion I hope to have here on DailyJ (and possibly elsewhere as well).
Chit Chat
Okay. Now that the reminder is out of the way, I just want to update you guys about some of the things I’ve been doing on the Japanopedia wiki.
But before that, Let me say to any newbie people that are reading: I’ll be mentioning names of people that you might not know (here on DailyJ we are kind of close knit) but you can always jump in and join the conversation and we’ll welcome you to the group.
There have been some good comments lately from some new people like Neil and Mike so it’s good to have them drop by and leave their 2 yen and hopefully they’ll stick around as readers.
Also, I just want to say sorry to a couple of people for slow replies. I’ve been talking to a lot of different people by email. I have some interviews that are really backed up, especially one great interview with certain podcasters. I interviewed them a while back and they got all the answers to me really quickly and I’ve been so slow. But I’m getting to it, and I am working on better organisation.
Japan-related Projects
The main thing that I want to do in this post is just talk about some of the upcoming projects on Japanopedia.
I am making a new project page for JapanSoc. It’s a page that lists video tutorials made so far for the project. There are 2 video tutorials currently: One that I’ve made which isn’t very good quality, the sound didn’t work. And another one that Nick made which is quite good.
Hopefully, with this page, somebody else might join in and make a tutorial too, to help out the project. The next project after the JapanSoc is NihonHacks. I have been talking to Thomas about a project to help brainstorm new NihonHacks and problems we want NihonHacks for.
So I’m putting both of these projects on the wiki. They are not done yet but hopefully they will be good once they are upI will let you all know when these pages are ready.
Begging for feedback
* Changing the name of the Japanopeda. Shall we change it to “Japan Labs?”
* Many emails between bloggers. Would some of this dailog be better in the open. This is the old mailing list idea.
Just some ideas I had.
Have a great day!
DailyJ
Helping Japan Bloggers - Feedburner Video (and thank you Nick and KenYN)
On February 04, 2008 in Blog Improvements, Helping Japan Bloggers
I hope you enjoyed the Tofugu interview. If you missed it here are the posts: 1, 2, 3, 4
One thing I really like to post about here on DailyJ is Helping Japan Bloggers. The last post I did on that topic was about a comment notification plugin (and I asked everyone to spread the word). Today I have a little treat for any blogging newbie (like me):
How to videos!
One of my favourite bloggers is Yaro from Entrepreneurs-journey.com so I was ecstatic to find out that he just launched a blog to help out newbies with great tutorial videos. You can find all of them at becomeablogger.com
KenYN suggested making the DailyJ RSS feed more prominent and Nick from Longcountdown.com gave this suggestion in a comment:
For feeds, I’d recommend using Feedburner. With Feedburner (owned by Google) you can access statistics about your rss subscribers such as how many there are and how have they subscribed. Also, if you move blog, you can still use the same feed. Oh, and when you change to Feedburner, you can point all your existing subscribers to the new feed! There are also some little icons they give you to put on your site to show off your reader count and encourage more people to sign up. Oh, … they also offer “subscribe by email” which is awesome!
Finally, I think it’s a great idea helping out fellow Japan bloggers. Keep it up!
SO,
I’ve set up my feedburner account and added a nice big RSS icon at the top of DailyJ. Now you can learn to do it too with this great video!
Pass it on to other J-bloggers!
Don’t forget to subscribe to comment notification
On January 06, 2008 in Announcements, Blog Improvements
Lots of little posts today.
First I just want to mention the comment notification feature that has been added to the blog.
If you comment and want to receive an email when someone replies to your comment, click on the subscribe to comment notification checkbox at the bottom of the comment field!
ALSO,
If you or someone you know has a blog and wants this nifty feature read this
and remember friends don’t let friends blog without comment notification!
When Japan-bloggers put their minds together beautiful things happen - follow up to our interview with JapanBlogList
On December 21, 2007 in Announcements, Blog Improvements, Community building, DailyJ Mission, Future of the J-web, On the J-web
Three heads are better than one.
Chris had a brilliant idea, Shane expanded on it (see below), the JapanBlogList fit the bill perfectly and now…. the ball is rolling to create a “blog search tool” that will let you search all of the Japan-related blogs online!
Nipponster and DailyJ are giving full support to the JapanBlogList project and partnering up with them to create this new search tool.
So from now on you will see an extra tab at the top of DailyJ for the JapanBlogList. And soon (once we do the tech work) our blog search widget will be on their JapanBlogList page so that users can search through all of the blogs on the list.
None of this would have happened without the great feedback from DailyJ readers like Chris and Shane so a BIG thanks to both of you!
Shane S Said, As far as the blogroll goes I think that this is a great idea - why don’t you create a page behind home and about titled Japan blogs and start the list with those that are regular contributors to Daily J and those that you have interviewed. You could then take suggestions or add based on the comments that you got on your previous top Japan Blogs…you could have two columns - one for blogs and one for resources sites like japan-guide.com etc…. (link to original comment)
Have a great day
DailyJ
Friends don’t let friends blog without comment notification ;)
On December 19, 2007 in Blog Improvements, Community building, DailyJ Mission, Helping Japan Bloggers
In my last “Helping Japan Bloggers” post I asked Nick from LongCountdown.com to “share the love,” and share it he did!
Nick gave all of us the plugin that notifies your commentors when someone replies to their comment.
Quicknote - This is a wordpress plugin. If you use Blogger you are lucky and already have this function. If you are on another blog platform leave a comment and hopefully we can find the solution for you too (or switch *cough**cough*).
Nick Ramsay Said,…To notify people of new comments on my blog, I use the Subscribe to Comments plugin for Wordpress.
He also mentioned somethings about RSS that some might not know (more on that next time).
Now this is my commission to you:
If you have a wordpress blog or if you know a Japan-blogger with a wordpress blog, why not tell them today to install this plugin for better blog communication?
And why not spread the word on your own blog too? You don’t have to mention this post, just take this information and use it on your blog help your fellow Japan-bloggers make their blogs better!
Share the love!
Daily J
