It could be very beneficial for people who want to make printouts for highlighting specific tips, or making notes in the margin, etc., and save them time from constantly referring back to this or that post to re-read a concept they need solidified.

Anyway, just a suggestion! I’m sure either way this will be a resource people refer to time and again. :)

My tip for building a better blog is to improve your readers experience when they click on your RSS page by putting a personalised message on it. on mine, I thank them for subscribing and assist the ones who are confused about RSS by directing them to my RSS Made Easy article. It’s a great opportunity to make a connection with your readers. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

Please look in to the same.

Why is that? Why is there not a standard button; “First post” or “Read from beginning” or similar, and a simple system of going to the next post in chronologica order, such as ?

For me that would make a good blog better.

Your days are posted in blog order, rather than what I would think of as a project order. Day 1 should be the first day of the project instead of the most current day of the project.

Another alternative might be to label them by the date instead of Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc.

It was just a little confusing when I first looked at it.

Though I’m sure this project benefits you to some degree, I really appreciate your efforts with all that you do to be inclusive and help others. You set a really great example for the rest of us. Thanks!

Starting a Blog

Thankyou, Nathan

If you can, that would be terrific! If not, I understand.

Thanks, Mark

I started my blog about my personal ultra cycling and expanded it to some general cycling news so I don’t expect huge traffic. This other blog has a lot fewer inbound links than I do and is clearly done by a couple people that don’t totally understand blogging. Even if they put in a URL reference it’s in plain text instead of a hyperlink, etc.

The interesting thing I noticed from their stats was that they were getting about 80% of their traffic from Google Images. I was getting only a few percent. Most of the images they were using were grabbed off the web and had file names that described what they were of. They weren’t using the image alt tag though. I realized my picture files were just the auto generated names from the camera and I wasn’t using the image alt tag. I started renaming all my files and using the image alt a few weeks ago. Since then I’ve gotten lazy and just using the image alt tag. It seems the results have been that same with renaming the file and using the image alt tag or just using the alt tag. I definately have seen an increase in traffic from Google Images and I plan on going back to my old posts and putting something descriptive in the image alt tag.

The other benefits of using the image alt tag is it increases the accessiblity for low vision people since screen reader use it. I also rarely caption my pictures so my readers can now get more info about the picture in most browsers if they hover over it with the mouse.

Also this will inspire me to continue my writing daily on my blog!

I just submitted my first post to this project. I have my fingers crossed.

I haven’t yet written my blog post yet, but I want to mention that it is important that your blog and the rest of your site has a similar if not a matching color scheme and that the advertisements blend well.

If an advertisement doesn’t blend at all then it should be put in some corner, or in the footer so that it won’t bother the reader very much. The blended ads should be above or in the content or to the left of the content above the fold.
They’ll have the best visibility without being displeasing.