I'd Rather Be Writing » writer river

Carcast: Friday Thoughts on Reading, Publish2, and Writer River

Tom Johnson — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:21:49 +0000

I recorded a carcast on the way home this evening. In the carcast, I explain how I’ve changed Writer River to incorporate Publish2.com‘s link sharing technology. Using Publish2, you add links to your blog, twitter account, and a technical communication newsgroup at the same time. Publish2 provides a robust platform for managing and publishing your links. I also talk about why I’m interested in Writer River and the purpose behind link blogging.

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“What I’m Reading”: A New Feature on My Site and a Tweak of Writer River

Tom Johnson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:43:18 +0000

I’m trying something a little new on my blog. Previously, every time I read a cool post, I submitted the link to Writer River. The problem with that, however, is that posting to another site isn’t such a smart search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Using the Writer River method, people who follow trackbacks don’t follow them back to my site (idratherbewriting.com), but rather go to another site (writerriver.com).

Additionally, it’s more beneficial for me to link to others from my idratherbewriting.com site, because it has a higher authority than writerriver.com. Links from higher authority sites are more beneficial in transferring search engine visibility than links from lower authority sites. For example, a link from NYTimes.com will push you to the top of Google results while a link from Sam’s vacation blog probably won’t have much influence.

So here’s what I did to better search engine optimize my site. I created a new section on my site called What I’m Reading. The page shows all the posts I’m reading (which I want to share), with short commentaries or summaries about the content. This way I keep the keywords and links on my site. I’m hoping that this strategy will create more pull back to my own site and will increase the rank of those I link to, more so than links from Writer River.

I didn’t want to limit my reading page to blogs only, because I read books too. So I used Shelfari, an online bookshelf site, to embed a few bookcases of books I’m reading, books I plan to read, and books I’ve read. If you buy a book through one of my Shelfari bookshelves, I will someday get Amazon affiliate revenue. It just made sense to consolidate everything I’m reading on a single page.

Technically, setting up this What I’m Reading page wasn’t that easy to do. The WordPress geeks can read on for the details, because this post is moving from conceptual to technical information. “What I’m Reading” is a category on my site hidden from the main page and RSS feed. I also excluded the posts from appearing in the Next and Previous links at the bottom of the home page (index.php).

I then used a custom category template, naming it category-1246.php, so that when users click the What I’m Reading category (the category ID is 1246), it opens category-1246.php rather than category-php or archives.php, which is the generic template for all categories. With this custom category template, I customized the sidebar, added some intro text at the top and inserted the javascript code from Shelfari to display the bookshelf widgets.

In the custom category template (category-1246.php), I also hid the post title and manipulated the styles a bit. I hid the title tag because I’m using the WordPress Press It bookmarklet to quickly and easily post links from the articles I’m reading while viewing the articles (rather than logging in to my WordPress dashboard to post them). The Press It bookmarklet automatically creates a link to the article I’m reading, so I didn’t want this link to be redundant with the title of the post—hence I removed the title from the category-1246.php template.

However, here’s where it got tricky. Trackbacks are one of my main SEO strategies, because most people are curious to know what you’re writing about them, even more so than what you add in the comments below their posts. A trackback sends a notification to the original blog authors that someone has linked to them. It’s like tapping them on the shoulder and saying hey, this is what I’m writing about you.

The problem is that a trackback’s link opens the single post template (single.php) rather than the category-1246.php template I customized. This leads to a major shortcoming of WordPress: you can customize category.php, but not single.php.

With a little research, I found a script that I could insert into my functions.php file that gives me the same functionality with single.php as category.php, so I then created a custom single-1246.php that matched category-1246.php, and I added a note at the top letting people know a bit about the page, because I didn’t want people thinking I was scraping their feed (according to Feedburner, about 100 people are scraping [stealing and reposting] my RSS feed). My short commentary and summary next to their links also helps avoid the appearance of scraping.

I also created a custom RSS feed and email delivery option for content specifically on my What I’m Reading page. However, I wanted the posts to update my regular Twitter feed (where I have most of my followers). Using Twitterfeed, I pointed the secondary RSS feed to my main Twitter account, so now I have two feeds pointing to my Twitter account. When my main feed updates Twitter, the tweet is prefaced with New Post. When the What I’m Reading feed updates Twitter, it’s prefaced by Recommended Read.

Now, there’s another complication. I’m not abandoning Writer River (a community link blog I started) by any means. I’m trying to move to a model that allows more flexibility and automated submissions. To accommodate this, I had to change Writer River a bit. First, because of all the spam that keeps seeping through, I changed the default registered user role to Contributor (which means I’ll have to approve their drafts first). For people I recognize, I’ll keep their role as Author.

Additionally, the Writer River home page now shows an aggregated RSS feed rather than links to the direct Writer River posts. The aggregated RSS feed displays results from my What I’m Reading category feed, the Writer River feed, and anyone other “good-reads” type feeds that people want to submit to me. The items in the feed are sorted by date.

To aggregate the feeds, I used Yahoo Pipes, which allows you to create and filter and apply rules to large numbers of feeds, and then spits out a single RSS feed from those multiple feeds.

I created a page on Writer River called Latest Posts, and I set this as the home page of the site rather than a reverse chronological list of only the latest posts from Writer River. (You can do this with WordPress through the Settings > Reading options.) On this new Writer River home page, I used the Simplepie plugin for WordPress to parse and display the Yahoo Pipes feed.

The benefit of displaying an aggregated Yahoo Pipes feed on Writer River rather than just content posted to Writer River is that it allows every blogger to do what I’ve done with my What I’m Reading page. Bloggers can simply designate a category that says “Recommended Reads” and select it when they post links to something worth reading.

I guess this assumes the bloggers would also be on WordPress, because WordPress has feeds for each category by default. For example, the feed for my What I’m Reading category is http://idratherbewriting.com/category/whatimreading/feed. I’m not sure if the same is true for Blogger and other platforms.

So if you’re a blogger and you have a category for good-reads, or something similar, let me know what the RSS feed is and I’ll aggregate it with the Writer River Pipes feed.

Finally, to encourage people to share links on Writer River, I created a Spring Widget, which is a little RSS reader that anyone can embed in the sidebar of their blog. To get the code for the Spring Widget, just click the Get this widget link below the Spring Widget.

I want to personally thank Alistair Christie, a tech comm. podcaster and blogger in the UK, for providing feedback and advice on how to handle the Writer River setup. If anyone else has suggestions for me, please let me know.

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My STC Intercom Article about Writer River and Community-Driven Websites

Tom Johnson — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 06:02:20 +0000

The STC Intercom published an article I wrote about Writer River called “Caught in the Current of Writer River: Building and Participating in Community-Driven Websites.” If you’re a member of the STC and you have access to the Intercom, check your latest copy (January 2009) or log in to stc.org and download the article here (PDF).

If you don’t have access, you can read the original post I wrote, which is nearly the same article but without the awesome graphic that the Intercom designers added.

My Writer River article in STC's Intercom magazine

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Wrapping up 2008 – Successes, Failures, and Goals for the Next Year

Tom Johnson — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:42:03 +0000

As 2008 ended, I neglected to write a year-end wrap-up post because it seemed so trendy and cliché at the time, but now that 2009 has started, my muse has been prodding me to write it.

A lot of good things happened in 2008. We bought a house in Eagle Mountain, moving from an apartment to a two-story home that fits our little family of five perfectly. Jane started blogging more frequently, writing witty, engaging posts about so many things. Her readership shot up at least 300%. I started advertising in my sidebar, after much encouragement from Jane. I also began providing more WordPress consulting (in my spare time) rather than training, because it’s easier and more profitable.

I launched and redesigned writerriver.com, a community site that now has about 175 members. I also started a readscripturestogether.com site, which allows me to stay motivated spiritually. My proposals to the STC Summit about quick reference guides and product blogging were accepted, and I’m pushing further into these areas at work. On the basketball court, I once again found my shot.

As for our children, Sally (7) read nearly all of the Harry Potter books and has transformed into a bookworm, a perfect model of her mother. She’s quickly maturing into a young woman. Susan (4) continues to be the assertive middle child. We found out Spot (2) has Duane’s syndrome, which means one of her eyes doesn’t turn all the way to the left (but you hardly notice it). Spot exploded with speech this year, being more precocious with language than the previous two children.

Spot and me (her eye only looks a little cross-eyed when she looks left without turning her head, such as in this picture)

As for the year’s downsides, we ordered a subscription to DirectTV, and have all been spending far too much time watching the television. Jane and I had a few senseless arguments that I still regret. The snow in Utah turned out to be a lot less fun than the sandy beaches in Florida. We had to pay two months’ rent to break our apartment lease and move into our house. In our new location, I now carpool to work an unthinkably early hour in the morning, which often leaves me tired when I come home. We still struggle to find best friends in our new neighborhood. And we both fell prey to Twitter and the “release-high” that 140 characters shot across the Internet provides.

What’s next for 2009? Like most people, I have a few goals. Although my goals are essentially the same sort of goals that others make, I try to spin them with a unique angle to encourage surprising results.

Goal #1: Clean when Jane cleans. Being a good husband means sharing in household duties. By also cleaning when Jane is cleaning, I’ll ease the tension that arises when I remain stationary. Of course this is something I should have been doing all along, but alas, I am male. In co-cleaning, I’ll also gain more empathy for her hard work, and maybe stop leaving my socks lying around.

Goal #2: Post daily. Writing daily on my blog keeps my mind invigorated. It helps me stay engaged and improves my writing. It also makes me feel like I’m moving forward. I’ve found that posting daily (or, more realistically, posting multiple times a week) is easier than posting just once a week. The muse speaks loudest when I exercise it regularly. And so much good has come from my blog.

Goal #3: Run on my treadmill 3 times a week. We borrowed my sister-in-law’s treadmill and put it right near our TV in the living room. When I’m lying down on the couch, watching football, or Life, or some other show, it’s hard not to look over and feel a natural desire to run on the treadmill a bit. I doubt I’ll give up TV, and rather than feel as if I’m wasting my life watching some overly dramatic cop, doctor, or terrorist show, I can offset the guilt with the good feelings of exercise.

Goal #4: Comment daily on my readscripturestogether.com site. This is my spiritual goal. I’ve found that commenting on chapters posted on readscripturestogether.com site keeps me spiritually awake and enthusiastic in this arena. Who would have guessed that writing itself is the key to overcoming the spiritual yawn?

Goal #5: Dual-task and take hourly breaks to read a little from Safari. This goal is in the high experimentation phase. My goal is to increase my efficiency while also increasing my knowledge and awareness. I basically pick two main tasks I want to accomplish, and switch working on them every hour. As I switch, I take a quick break to read a few pages from a book in the Online Safari Library, which I have free access to. The library has a tremendously good selection of tech-related content. Because I keep switching between the two tasks, I maintain my attention level high. And when reading tech books becomes a treat, it makes the experience sweet.

That’s it. A modest set of goals, and not outside the traditional social-intellectual-spiritual-physical categories that underlie so many others’ goals. But hopefully I’ve given them a unique enough slant that some unexpected and beneficial consequences may result.

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Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Site Now Includes Technical Writing

Tom Johnson — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 06:21:10 +0000

Last Sunday I was sitting in church when I felt my BlackBerry buzz. I quickly and discreetly checked to see if it was anything important. Indeed, it was a message from Guy Kawasaki letting me know my site was included in Alltop. At first I was floored, because Guy Kawasaki is a well-known figure in the tech world and it’s cool to receive an email from him. Second, Alltop is a prestigious content aggregator.

I later explored Alltop more thoroughly and discovered that Guy expanded the focus from 20+ blogs to 350+ blogs, including many more niche categories (such as technical writing) than the first version of his site.

Alltop is similar to an online magazine rack

Guy markets Alltop as a magazine rack in which you can read content from any category. For example, suppose you want to know more about children’s literature, but you’re not an expert in this field. You have little recourse outside of Google in finding good books for your kids. But going to Alltop, you can explore the top 35 blogs in the children’s literature category, and voila, you’re suddenly swimming in just the information you need. When you’re unfamiliar with the topic, Alltop does an excellent job at pointing you in the right direction.

Here’s a diagram from Guy comparing the use of Google versus Alltop.

Traditionally, people try to find information by earching aimlessly on Google

Alltop automatically congregates the nuggets of information for you

(See original diagrams.)

I asked Guy how he could compile the top blogs in a niche category without having expertise in the category. He said a technical writer selected the blogs to include. This makes sense to me, and while I don’t agree 100% with the selections, I’d say at least three quarters of them are on target. I recommended to Guy that he make a few adjustments, and he did. Now I’m in the acknowledgments section too — click the Acknowledgment link below the title.

Acknowledgments link

From a larger perspective, Alltop is another example of someone wrestling with the sea of information online, trying to tag and categorize it to make it useful. Alltop isn’t alone in this attempt. Popurls.com, digg.com, rssmeme.com, and reddit.com are other attempts at content aggregation. And of course my Writer River site is another effort to aggregate content.

Alltop excels when you’re unfamiliar with the topic. But if you’re an expert in the topic, you may find it a little limiting. Thirty five blogs is hardly enough blogs to watch, in my opinion. When I read blogs, I find interesting content by subscribing to as many tech writing blogs as possible, and then scanning down the titles. The more blogs I subscribe to, the higher my probability of finding relevant content. (See my “Selection Beats Damping” post for more details on ratios.)

I read feeds by quickly scanning the titles for titles relevant to my interests.

One last note. You may be checking Alltop to see if your blog is listed. If it is, and you didn’t get an email from Guy, consider making yourself more accessible. If you look at my contact page, I provide several ways for people to contact me. I put my email out there for all to see, as well as my Google Talk, Twitter, and cell phone information. Allowing people to easily contact me is one of my 20 usability suggestions for blogs. (Gmail does a good job at filtering out spam.)

Additional Resources on Alltop

Caught in the Current of Writer River: Building and Participating in Community-Driven Websites

Tom Johnson — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:28:53 +0000

A couple of years ago I went through a Digg phase. I listened to the Diggnation podcast and set my home page to the most popular posts of the day on Digg.com. Digg is a community-driven news site that allows any user to post links to interesting articles and other online content. Others can then vote on the submitted articles. Articles with the most votes appear on the front page.

Digg’s main focus is technology, and I always thought it would be cool to have a tech comm version of Digg with news more relevant to me. One weekend I sat down and created a Digg imitation using software called Pligg. Pligg was pretty much a Digg clone, so I thought it would work out perfectly. I called the site Writer River, referring to the idea of content that continuously flows down a river, all merged into one stream of information that bystanders can observe from a single view, perhaps picking out an object for a while and then sending it back on down the river.

The site was well-received, and it seemed to be taking off, gathering around 50 registered users within the first week. But if I was hoping for a Digg clone, I had a lot to achieve. For starters, whereas the typical number of votes on articles submitted to Digg was around 500+, the number of votes on Writer River was a bit depressing — 3 or 4, sometimes 9 if I voted several times.

The movement of unpublished articles to the front page (through an increasing number of votes) simply wasn’t happening. The site lacked the robust, thriving community of Digg, which made me realize a fundamental truth about Web 2.0 sites: it’s all about the community, not the technology.

I posted less frequently on Writer River and grew more frustrated with the number of spam posts appearing as pseudo articles (for example, posts on hand cream). I’d set Writer River as my home page, and one day while launching my browser I didn’t see the site but rather a message that said, “Your site was hacked by Silahsiz Kuvvetler, the Turkish Hacker.”

To be honest, it was a bit of a relief. I felt I need to regroup and come up with a better implementation of Writer River. By then Twitter was all the rage, and I’d heard good things about Prologue, a Twitter-like WordPress theme in which people could leave brief messages directly from the home page, without logging in to the admin panel. Since I was comfortable with WordPress, I sat down one Friday night and worked on version two of Writer River for about the next day.

In version two, I didn’t want voting. I’d rather just see articles float across the home page. In large communities, where perhaps 100 new articles are submitted a day, you need a voting mechanism to filter the content — but not with my community. The average submission was about two posts a day.

People were excited to see the site back, and while the sink/float voting features of the original version were gone, the second implementation proved a lot more functional. Rather than walking through several wizard-like submission screens, Writer River 2.0 included WordPress’s brand new “bookmarklet,” a script-based bookmark that you drag to your browser’s Links toolbar. When you read an article you like, you click the bookmarklet link, and a small window appears with the link of the article you’re reading. All you do is hit Publish, and it appears on Writer River. It literally takes 3 seconds.

It’s been several months since I launched Writer River 2.0, and so far it’s working well. The bookmarklet made me realize that with technology, what’s convenient gets used. Replace a posting process that takes 30 seconds with one a tenth of the time, and you suddenly find yourself posting a lot more frequently.

This is true of the phenomenon of blogging in general. Blogs make it easy to publish content; as a result, millions of people are blogging daily, publishing new content at historically unprecedented rates of about a million new posts per day.

The nearly infinite sea of information — one million new posts a day — makes sites like Writer River necessary. We need human aggregators, people like Robert Scoble, who’ll sift through hundreds of feeds each day, highlighting the most important content — but in the field of tech comm.

Other community-driven sites are taking off. The latest, Stack Overflow, combines a question-and-answer site with Digg functionality. Users submit questions, others respond with answers, and readers vote on the relevancy of the answers. When people vote positively for your answer, you accrue reputation points that appear below your name.

When hundreds of people engage in content-generation and exchange, impressive results can happen — namely, you find a lot of interesting, accurate content. Writer River doesn’t have nearly enough community to be on par with these sites, but it’s a step in the right direction.

You can visit Writer River at writerriver.com. After registering in the sidebar, add the POST IT link to your browser’s Link toolbar, navigate to an interesting article, and click your browser’s POST IT link.