I came across a new service this weekend: OutBrain and I’ve decided to give it a run out.
Outbrain does two things. Firstly it adds a rating system to each post. You can see now that at the bottom of each post there is a star rating system. I hope that this will get me some feedback as to the kind of posts people like most. This rating system should (I will see when I publish this post if it happens) also add the rating stars to the feed as well so posts can be rated without visiting the site at all.
This extra integration with Feedburner seems like a great addition that makes it that much more useful.
The second thing it does is offer some suggests for similar posts on other blogs.
It may not always be the most profitable thing to do but I like the idea of recommending good posts to anyone that is interested enough to visit the site.
Installation is pretty easy. There is a WordPress plugin and that is pretty much all you need. Importantly for me it can detect Disqus and work with it, as well as working with the default WordPress commenting system.
If you have used it yourself I would be interested to know what your experience is, otherwise I will report back in due course.
After last night’s recording of the WordPress Weekly (Audio below) I had an interesting conversation with Jeff about the way forward for themes.
I thought that there wasn’t a whole lot more for themes to do, beside different graphics, as most of the key website design patterns had already been produced as WordPress themes, but Jeff disagreed saying that he thought there was a lot of scope for themes that offered customisation beyond that which is possible with widgets right now. In particular he pointed out how flexible Joomla themes are.
I agree with this, to a point; this is what people want, but I don’t think it is something they should get.
Themes are too flexible
Themes should be flexible to an extent, after all, you might want the blog on the home page or you might want it as a news section and have a static front page. You might want to use images, you might not. But I don’t think themes should be super flexible.
It seems to me, and feel free to contradict me if you disagree, that flexibility is not really necessary. Sidebars and widgets help to setup the blog but after that they are unnecessary. The encourage you to tinker with the site unnecessarily, and I fear that a super flexible theme would have the same result.
There are a lot of established blog patterns and provided themes can be switched into one of those, or different versions provided I see no reason to be as flexible as Joomla. Hell, I think Joomla’s flexibility is one of the most limiting features it has. It makes it hard to use and we certainly don’t want WordPress to go there!
Focus on code
In my view the future of themes is intelligence.
Themes are dumb. You point WordPress at the right page and spits out the information where you tell it. I don’t think this is enough any more.
I think we need to start looking for theme authors to write a lot more code to help users.
This could be code like I used on my Fun with Minimalism theme that I produced a little while back where it keeps a track of the last post the user came from and uses that to decide what kind of next post link to provide. If the user came from a category page then the theme would provide a next post link to show the next post from that category and not the next post from the entire blog.
This is a very basic function though and I think it is possible to do a lot more.
What if, if someone has performed a search then those search results cuold stay available somewhere for them to search and maybe even filter according to additional tags and categories.
What if the visitor has come from a search engine in the first place? Perhaps making available a list of your posts that match the search as well as the specific post then clicked through to.
Finally, theme authors should think about ways of modifying the content and layout to automatically determine the optimal content for visitors from various sources. Allow content to be positioned in four or five different positions and then track how often each set of content is accessed, where the visitor came from, how long they stayed etc, and modify the layout automatically to suit, or to test alternatives.
Sum
There’s a lot that themes can offer that haven’t even been thought of yet and my list is certainly some way short of the full potential. I don’t think that blind flexibility is the way though. Themers need to start thinking of ways to truly advance the art of theming and find revolutions rather then evolutions.
WordPress Weekly
This episode features an interview with Jane Wells of Automattic talking about Usability and the excellent changes in WordPress 2.7 (now at Beta 1).
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.
), 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?