There was a piece of nonsensical link bait published last week asking whether blogging was dead. Obviously not. But it is changing and that means that some aspects of blogging will inevitably die. Standing in one place it is hard to judge which, so what do you think is on the way out?

Calendars

When was the last time you decided to put a calendar in your sidebar? Once upon a time they were de rigueur but they don’t really add much to browsing a blog and they aren’t seen very often any more.

Come to think of it, when was the last time you even used one?

Blogrolls

It used to be that linking out from a blogroll was a way of creating connections. It showed your interests, provided search juice, and, by way of referrers, maintained an awareness of your blog in the minds of others. Now though linking is much more about context, and giving someone a specific reason to follow that link.

Although there are still a few about I see less and less of them and it has been a very long time since I have wanted to declare my allegence to a group of friends on my sidebar. So are they dead? or do you still see a value in them?

Personally I wish the links / bookmarks / blogroll feature would be removed from the WordPress core as I think it is a niche application now.

Linking In general

Blog rolls aside, the whole point of blogs used to be to link. The idea that you could link from one post, to one post of another blog, to one post on another blog, and so on ad nauseum, was a strong and interesting one, but more and more, blogs are being written by freelancers with the end game being for you to exit the blog in a controlled way, i.e. through adverts or affiliate links. Not so much fun for the casual reader.

I do still see a lot of linking going on so pronouncements of death are hideously premature, but the madly incestuous linking to anyone and everyone that used to define the blogiverse seems to have calmed. Even this post has no links (although I would have to do that just to prove a point really wouldn’t I?).

Reverse Chronological Layouts

OK, this one is a little specious, but once you add a sticky post, then decide to show the most recent post from a number of different categories, magazine style, even though some of those categories may not be as recent as other posts, you are heading down a dark road towards issues, and editions rather than a simple list of dated posts.

This may be nothing but a passing trend or it may be the future for serious blogs, as opposed to fun light hearted blogs (like this one ), but as people get more interested in being published, and find more and more weight can be added to their words by following a more professional style of presentation will the blog layout as we know it start to die?

Would that in itself mean that blogging is dying or is a small online media outlet nothing but a blog in disguise?

I had a tweet this morning asking what I thought of the new Adobe Air Moderator App for WordPress. Having been heavily embedded in Non-WordPress things for the last few days I hadn’t seen it, but now I have I feel compelled to blog about it. It’s Awesome.

Daniel Dura has preempted the 2.7 comment API by adding the functionality he needs via a plugin and giving that plugin an Adobe Air front end. What this means is that whenever a new comment arrives on your blog you don’t need to open up your browser and log into WordPress, it appears in the desktop app and asks what you want to do with it.

I’ve been playing with it on a local install, here’s a screenshot:

If you get a lot of comments, or just want to know the moment you get a comment so you can respond to you readers in superquick time (you can’t reply directly yet) then you need to check this out.

I’ve just written a post on my Habari blog that demonstrates some of the differences between WordPress and Habari themes.

I have converted the ever popular Dilectio WordPress theme over to Habari and produced a reference guide to show how the functions from WordPress map to those of Habari.

I have just closed my poll about what other WordPress sites you visit on a regular basis and given the number of responses that I got I have decided that a few more polls wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Results: Which WordPress sites do you visit on a regular basis?

The clear winner of this poll (not that it was a competition) was WPCandy. The were around 160 votes in all and 41 of those were for WPCandy. Those guys have clearly captured the interest of WordPress users and developers.

There were 24 other sites listed in the poll, including four that were adding under ‘Other’: WPStart, Nathan Rice, Justin Tadlock, and Wordpress Deutschland.

What are you when not a superstar blogger?

Last night I went into Leeds to meet up with a group of Northern Bloggers for a chat and a curry, and one of the interesting conversations I had was about the jobs that people do back in the real world. It is really quite interesting that when you get a group of bloggers together you all think of each as types of bloggers in the same way as you might think of someone as an accountant, or plumber. When you ask someone what they do you are more likely to get the answer, well I blog about X, rather than, I answer calls on a support desk, or I shuffle paper.

What does come across at though is that actually blogging very often is a part time gig. So I wondered what is it that most people do? Are most WordPress users and developers coders by day, or do they do something really different. That is the point of this poll.

I’ve started the ball rolling with my day job which is as a financial compliance policy specialist. So what do you do?