Archive for the ‘Blog Improvements’ Category
Giving away a few Japan-related domain names
On March 18, 2009 in #The Japan-related Web Debate, Announcements, Blog Improvements, Suggestions Please
I have a few domain names that I’d like to give (yes, free) to anyone who will do good with them.
Going forward it will be important for me to focus my time and resources on the areas where I am already providing value (and can provide future value). And I plan to cut everything that doesn’t.
So, here are the domains available (all registered at godaddy):
Japanopedia.org - A Japan encyclopedia project was the original vision. Maybe you can make it work or come up with a better idea for it. Ganbare!
Japanopedia.com - was registered to protect the japanopedia name (which was probably pointless)
gaijinbook.com - I had so many ideas for this site. The first website I ever made was thegaijinbook.com in 2003 with the help of a friend. It was supposed to be a site where foreigners (mostly foreign exchange students) in Japan could post articles talking about their experiences. We even played with the idea of turning some of the experiences into a book (which could be done easily now with lulu) and giving all the published submitters a percentage of sales. But the idea didn’t take off (my vanity would like to think it was ahead of its time) and I moved on to other website projects. We forgot to renew the name and lost it. I always liked the name though and ended up buying gaijinbook.com (which was better anyway). I didn’t have a clear idea for it at first but finally planned to turn into a social networking site for foreigners. Probably not a great idea. I don’t know.
Anyway, maybe you can take it and do something awesome with it.
I’ve never sold or given away a domain before so I am not sure exactly how it works on godaddy although I know you can do it and supposedly it isn’t hard.
SO, if you are interested, just email me about the domain you want and we can figure out how to make the transfer from there.
eaglelandgrace Att gmail
upgrades and improvements
On January 08, 2009 in Announcements, Blog Improvements, Japanese Toolbar
Upgrading the blog to wordpress 2.7. Holding breathe that it all works…
Improving the Nipponster Toolbar (based on suggestions. Thanks Nick!). More on that later.
Supporting JapanSoc
On September 29, 2008 in Announcements, Blog Improvements, Community building, DailyJ Mission, Future of the J-web, Helping Japan Bloggers
Just a quick but important post today.
I (finally) put up a JapanSoc widget on DailyJ to help spread the idea of JapanSoc and a J-blogger community.
on the bottom of it you can click “get widget” and get one for your site. Go for it!
and check out the Jsoc toolbox
Let’s support our community-driven Japan-related news source.
fixing the homepage. working on chat
On September 28, 2008 in Announcements, Blog Improvements
I am 89% sure I fixed the nipponster homepage this time. Thanks Nick for telling me about the problem.
I am also working on an “interview chat” section for DailyJ using prologue theme for wordpress (the theme was another Nick suggestion).
It will be a place to talk about interviews (yay! that explains it). ok, I will explain it better later.
Relationships: the glue of the j-web. And a widget
On September 25, 2008 in Announcements, Blog Improvements, Community building, fun
Some months ago I posted about an RSS feed of posts by past DailyJ interviewees.
And I posted script for widget so that others could put it on their blogs, etc., if they wanted to.
Chris from Waikiki2Yanai mentioned that the widget’s colour didn’t match his site, so I’ve made a new one (finally!) that is clear.
I wanted to make it into a widgetbox widget but widgetbox is not as easy as they claim.
Anyway, here it is:
And here is the code for it:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.google.com/reader/ui/publisher-en.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript/user/01310610213837056251/label/Daily J?n=5&callback=GRC_p(%7Bc%3A%22-%22%2Ct%3A%22%22%2Cs%3A%22true%22%2Cb%3A%22false%22%7D)%3Bnew%20GRC”></script>
Also I added it to the left-hand sidebar.
Some tidying
On September 21, 2008 in Blog Improvements
I’ve been tidying up DailyJ a little.
I’ve added a link “the interviews” to the top of the blog. It is for listing all the interviews to date.
And I added Trans-Pacific Radio, JapanItUp, and Jim Breen to the interviewee roll on the right sidebar.
Hopefully this makes things a little easier to find.
In the near future I hope to overhaul DailyJ but until then baby steps.
Words of wisdom for any J-blogger
On September 11, 2008 in Blog Improvements, Community building, DailyJ Mission, Helping Japan Bloggers
A few days ago I was feeling tired, and I posted about it.
Nick, my J-web champion, from Longcountdown replied and gave me some much needed encouragement and advice. It is advice that every Japan-blogger should probably take to heart.
Nick said: …you can “meet the needs” of Japan bloggers (or anybody for that matter) by making them feel important, and being sincere about it in the process. Here are a few things that bloggers like:
- receiving positive comments on their blog posts
- being linked to or mentioned in a positive context on another blog.
- having a post dugg, stumbled, soc’ed or otherwise shared without needing to ask for it.
- getting new subscribers
- getting added to someone’s blogroll
- being followed on TwitterEtc. All these things make bloggers feel good about themselves. Now, this is just a suggestion, but it’s really very similar to what the Daily J has always been about - community building:
Everyday, make an effort to do one of the things listed above, and on the Daily J, write a quick paragraph about why you did it. So, if you stumbled someone’s article, tell your Daily J readers about it. The person who got the Daily J “Stumble, Backlink, and Recommendation” package will be buzzing all day… because you made them feel important.
Do that with five different J-bloggers per week and you’ll have indirectly affected each of those bloggers in a positive way. As you do this week after week, your actions will have given the whole community a boost, and if you’re lucky, your generosity will rub off on others who may feel energized to be more active in the community themselves.
And you can do all this in just five minutes a day!
I have said similar things in the past but I am guilt as charged of not practising what I preach.
It is time to change that. Thanks Nick.
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…
