Give With the One Hand, Take With the Other
By Desty on Dec 3, 2007 in Meta Blogging
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I’ve been a busy person over the weekend. I solicited some feedback about Desty Online’s theme and design over last week and got the results. I also made some changes in my incentive for comments, removing the DoFollow being the major change.
The Results Are In
I had been concerned with the look and appeal of the site; face it, the blue on off-yellow colors were just nasty! I made it known that I was in the mood for a theme change and wanted to know what was thought about making too many theme changes.
It turns out that nobody, beyond me, likes change too much. Sue C, who uses that exact same theme, suggested that the theme itself is great, just need to make some changes in color to make it atlittle easier on the eyes. She gave her blog on lighthouse news as an example.
Life is Change
I’ve taken the suggestions to heart and have changed the background to plain white. Also, to break up the blocky text vibe I was getting, I added a picture to the header as well as a video explaining RSS with the subscribe buttons. The video, in my view, does a better job in explaining what RSS is and how to use it, than any written article I’ve read.
Good Bye DoFollow, Welcome Back Top Commentators
I’ve been thinking about this change for weeks. Those of you who use DoFollow know the amounts of spam that we go through. I can see creative spam that is somewhat related to the article, but then again there’s the page scrolling comments about adult porn or RX drugs.
I still wanted to reward comments and encourage comments. I had used the Top Commentator plugin earlier in the year, but I removed it to save PR leakage and went with DoFollow instead. Now I figure that the leakage from the main index for 5 sites would be less than the 200+ comments on have through the entire site.
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Wow, this looks great now. It’s amazing what a color change can do. I really like this theme, but you do have to agree, those colors were the pits. Nice job…looks extremely professional.
Thanks for the praise on the site design! A combination of changes took place over the weekend to make it look the way it does
P.S.
That video is a great idea! I think I’m going to add that to my site. Thanks for finding that.
I found it on John Chow and thought it was awesome. I can’t believe I haven’t seen it elsewhere; it was a no-brainer to put it with the subscription options. Everyone talks about writing an article about RSS and what it is and does; why not use a video?
After the most recent spanking from Google regarding the NoFollow links, I’ve also considered killing DoFollow on comments but putting up a top commentator’s section. This seems to be the way most bloggers are going, too.
I like your site design. It’s clean and easy to read
Thanks for the comment on the site Jason. I worry about every little change I make to it, rethink and rethink again.
There have been times at night before I hit the hay I recheck everything, and I end up deleting over 50 spam comments by the end of the day. I’m tired of it.
Thanks for the nice words. About Do Follow, I am using a plugin called No Follow Case By Case. You can reset it to nofollow on whichever ones you want. It’s a good way to reward your commenters and yet not help those you don’t want getting the link juice.