Blotanical News

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Intermission Break: For those who have been following and commenting on the previous post Your thoughts on Blotanical adverts please understand that I'm reading everything you're sharing and am still keen for more feedback. It has given me some food for thought - much appreciated - and the bulk of the comments are not supportive of the current points, Picks and Popular sections, it would seem.

While we must acknowledge that the commenters so far have mostly agreed, I'm keen to know whether they represent the majority view or are just a few minor voices. If, as I'm currently assuming, that these features require some major changes then I need to know whether this is the views and opinions of MOST Blotanists.

So, if you disagree with their views, please do not remain silent. Otherwise, these features may be altered in a way that you're no longer happy with.

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On to something a little more exciting....

The countdown has already begun until the start of the 2009 Blotanical Awards and I've been hurriedly trying to get the code ready for usage. I've changed one aspect of the nomination process after some feedback from last year and are now allowing you to nominate yourself for some of the blog characteric awards. (This is only available to blogging Blotanists).

Those who were here last year would remember that the drop-down lists for each category were stacked with every blog on Blotanical. With 1500+ blogs this year it's becoming a little harder to manage.

Therefore, if you go to your Plot and click on the myBlogs tab you will now see an Award Preferences button.

Click this to open a modal window with a list of Award Categories for this year.

You are permitted to choose up to three (3) Blog Award Categories per blog. You can choose different options for each blog that you have, if you have more than one listed with Blotanical. When nominations start within the next few days, your blog will be listed amongst others who have also selected the same category.

If you wish to suggest another category that isn't listed there then I would advise that you make that suggestion to me within the next 48 hours, otherwise we may not have enough time for members to opt into that category. Any category that doesn't get a minimum of five (5) blogs opting for nomination in it, will be discarded and members will be given another chance to choose.

This list of Blog Award Categories is not comprehensive and all the regular Regional Awards, Best Blog, Best Newcomer Blog, Best Blotanist, Blotanist of the Year and others will still be available once nominations get under way.

UPDATE: The Nomination Process

My apologies for not explaining this as well as I'd hoped. Here is the process;

1. Each Blogger has the next 5 days to pick which award categories they would like to be nominated for. You can choose a maximum of three (3). This does not include Regional Awards and others as mentioned above
2. The next stage allows all Blotanists three (3) weeks to nominate blogs for each of the award categories. At the end of this stage, each category is then limited to the (5) five blogs with the most nominations in each.
3. The final stage is voting and this goes for (1) week, rounding out the month of September. Each Blotanist can then vote from the top five (5) in each category for the actual award.

Basically, the only change from last year is the first step as I am trying to limit the amount of blogs that we need to wade through in the nomination stage. The other benefit is that the awards should be more specific to the blog if the blogger has opted for their categories of choice. For example, it seems a little absurd for a balcony gardener to be picking up the Best Homestead Blog!!!

If I still haven't made the process clear enough, please feel free to ask questions below.

Posted by Stuart at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)

This post is to try and gauge your thoughts on Blotanical adverts. As you are obviously aware, the site offers places for advertising throughout. I have tried Google Adsense, Chitika, Amazon, ValueClick Media (the primary current ads), Adbrite and a few other PPC and PPA programs. To date, none of these have been effective with this community and in short have become more of a nuisance (they slow down some pages) than a bonus.

Some of these platforms have been very effective on my other blogs and sites and provide a reasonable part-time wage. However, because Blotanical produces the least amount of money yet requires the most amount of time to maintain it is becoming a hindrance on my spare time ( I still work a 60 hour per week management job plus care for my wife and 4 children).

So, I need to make this site effective so that I can spend more time doing it and that means replacing my current income.

Now, I don't expect anything for free and I'm not trying to make this site purely commercial. It is a community, and an awesome one at that, which is why I feel perfectly safe to share this stuff with you. While it can be maintained at its present level and continue some growth things are going to take a long time to happen. I've stopped looking at the TO-DO list for while it has some incredible ideas - most suggested by members - it's overwhelming to try and engage them all because time does not permit.

So I'm keen to get some ideas on how this site might generate some revenue and allow me to get stuck into some of these brilliant possibilities.

Here's what I'm thinking at present but please offer your thoughts, feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

• We start offering members a paid annual subscription service. This gives them special bonuses (or rights) and allows them to access parts of the site that others won't. Anyone will still be able to sign up for free and submit their blogs but they may have some limited options. What do you think about this and if it's a goer, what should the annual price be and what options should paid members be allowed to have?
• We offer the current advertising spots to members for them to display their blogs for a price.
• We start an advertising scheme of our own where members can partake in some of the revenue generated and even offer them on their own blogs. (This will take some time to implement).
• The Reviews section will accept paid sites into Blotanical where they can advertise their garden shows, gardening services and the like.
• We offer a classifieds section for members wanting to sell their plants, seeds, tools etc.

I'm really interested in creative ways for this to work and benefit the whole community. If you have an idea on how to solve these dilemmas then please share below.

Posted by Stuart at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (47)

You're probably wondering why you're getting this error now when trying to access Picks! Is it your fault, Blotanical's issue or a problem with the blog?

Firstly, let me assure you it's not your fault.

Blotanical is undergoing some major changes in this area to better cope with the pressures of an increasing blog listing. With more than 1520 blogs on offer, space is getting cramped and resources are struggling to keep up. So, a better system is being developed to handle the growth.

On face value, it may seem that Blotanical Picks are getting worse, not better, and that errors are all too frequent. Let me assure you though that the errors are actually getting less and less each day, it's just that you're now becoming aware of them.

The reason for this awareness is to try and educate blog owners that there is only so much *magic* that can be wielded on badly formed feeds. In the past, Blotanical has bent over backwards to try and accommodate the vast amount of nuances that blog owners have cast upon it. Unfortunately, the time has come to put the onus of these feed problems back onto the owners that produce them.

Having said all that, there are some ways that blog owners can begin to check their feeds and ensure that they are up to scratch. I will continue to add to this post over time as better opportunities to correct bad feeds and I will add this to the FAQ's page too.

Is my feed valid?

First step in this process is checking that your feed is actually valid. To do this, copy your feed from within the myBlogs tab of your Plot. Click the Edit button and then copy the Blog Feed url. Then paste it into this Feed Validator and click Check.

The Feed Validator will then spit out the validation results of your feed and give you some feedback as to how to improve your feed code if its needed. In most cases, burning a Feedburner feed will fix many of those lesser improvements.

Linking Your Feed Correctly

For your blog to produce a reliable feed, you should have a correctly formed link within your blog template. For many blog platforms (Wordpress, Blogger etc) it's merely a case of selecting the correct preference within your options.

You can check to see if your blog is producing a legitimate feed via the auto-discovery tabs on the right-side of most browser Address bars (as shown below from Firefox);

If you click on the orange RSS icon it will automatically take you to the blog's feed where you can choose to subscribe, if you wish. In this case you're just checking to see what url comes up in the feed bar so that you can analyse whether it's the same as the one you listed for Blotanical. If not, then change the Blog Feed url in Blotanical to reflect what is actually being produced.

Sometimes, as in the image above, clicking on the orange RSS icon will produce a list of feeds that you can subscribe to. These will be listed in order of which feed is accessed first by Blotanical. In the case above, the feed is actually producing an error because it's picking up the Comment feed not the blog feed.

You can check this again by clicking the View > Page Source (or equivalent in your browser) of your blog and check the <link rel='alternate'> links just under the <head> tags in the HTML.

In the following example this code;
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Comments feed" href="http://example.com/2009/08/post_title/feed/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title=" feed" href="http://example.com/feed/" />
will produce an error within Picks.

Instead, swap them over so that the blog's feed link is listed first with the Comment feed listed second.

What if I'm still seeing errors for my blog posts?

Feel free to comment below and I shall investigate ways to rectify the problem. I would like to use some examples as case studies for other bloggers so if you're willing to be a model then I, and possibly the rest of the Blotanical community, would appreciate your openness.

As a disclaimer, I also make mistakes and just because your post may appear to show errors in Picks doesn't mean that the problem lies with your blog. It may be some coding error - like the Stuart Clone problem that some members experienced lately. Oops!

Posted by Stuart at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)