One of the benefits of having so many blogs is we can experiment across a statistically relevant number of blogs and visitors to test out how different changes to aspects of the blog works.
For example the way we display titles on permalink pages, with the post name first and the blog name second, is the result of testing and we found that having the post name first has an impact on blog traffic, mostly from places like search engines that show the page title as part of the results.
Anyway, one of the places we think is pretty under-used on our themes is the spot under the post and above the comments. It makes sense, when someone is done with your post they’re probably looking for someplace else to go. We were brainstorming some ideas of what to put there, here’s what we have so far:
- Related posts
- Ads (your ads)
- Blogroll or avatars
- Popular posts
- Random same-blog posts
- Author profile
Of those, “related posts” is the most exciting but also the most difficult, but probably the one we’ll try to tackle first.
However I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff we haven’t even imagined yet. So… what would you be interested in having under your post on the permalink (single post) page?
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I really dig the “related posts” idea, especially if it could be applied across WP blogs and not just within the same blog, say by tag or something. I can see how it might be a bit hairy, but also extremely useful. Also, what would be the feasibility of adding “email,” “print,” or “PDF” features for users on a per-post or per-category basis?
The related posts looks just great 🙂
Please! Don’t place adds there! That would be so annoying!
the related post thing is my favorite too, but random same-blog posts are good too. Or perhaps the author/blog owner can be given a choice. Like, random post from a specific category, or even a specific post.
Author profile is good too, but something that is different each time would be best.
I’m not interested in seeing anything under my post. I like it the way it is. I don’t want more clutter on my page.
Maybe I’m missing something but how about “Home” “Previous Post” and “Next post”?
I would be most interested in related posts, blogroll, popular posts, or ads (provided they are small and discreet – something like google ads that are easily tailored to match your theme).
Out of those, ads, related posts, and random posts look good.
For me, customizable fields or random words/phrases would be cool.
Related posts with a preview is a good way to go.
Random same-blog posts also seems a neat idea.
How about the following:
1. Key Words that we can enter to bring relevant traffic in.
2. Links that allow users to share our blog posts on social bookmarking sites (that we are allowed to specify)
These two suggestions should be comparatively easy to incorporate.
I want ads!
Related posts of own blog and optionally of other blogs (“blogobuzz”).
Adds beneath a post – if you ever consider that – I hope it’s optional ! And I do not want adds unless I can position them myself on my blog. (I want to avoid that my blog turns into a ‘circus’ 🙂 )
Nice would also be if we could optionally choose to add buttons beneath a post to Digg, add to Del.ciou.us, Tecnorati, etc. It’s possible right now but I quit doing this, because I have to type all of the code every time I post. And if this would be possible, than not only on the single post page.
Matt, This is a really good observation. The ideas you have so far are all useful places to start. I think that while the aim is to increase the readers’ experience, a side benefit would be to enhance the blogs themselves, which should bring in and keep more readers for everybody. Keep up the great work!
Related posts please.Don’t care for ads (but that’s just me).
# Ads
# Blogroll or avatars
# Popular posts
# Random same-blog posts
# Author profile
(1) I do not wish to have anyone other than myself make the decisions as to which posts to put in that spot or in any other location withing my blogging space, thanks very much. Whatever decision is made I want it to be optional so that each blogger can make their own decision about what should appear in “their” blogging space.
(2) I do not wish to any see space for advertising set aside anywhere within my blogging space. This includes the blank space under the title of my articles, which I would like to see eliminated, and it also the blank space at the end of my blog posts which I would also like to see eliminated.
(3) Where applicable I already select and include urls to “related same blog posts” at the end of my posts. And, I also include the urls’ to the reference material that I refer to in the post. Thank you, in advance, for ensuring that no one else will be making these decisions for me.
(4) Blogroll or avatars – appearing in the blogging space – no thanks. I prefer to have my blogroll displayed either in my sidebar or on a static page dedicated for links. And I do not feel a need to see my avatar in every post I make. YUCK!
(5) Random same-blog posts – no thanks. I think the space you are indicating is completely inappropriate for the display of “random same blog posts”. A sidebar widget seems more appropriate to me but, given my druthers, I probably wouldn’t choose to use such a “feature” on my blog at all.
(6) Author profile – I do not wish to see a url for my author profile appear where you are indicating. I use the MistyLook theme simply because, unlike other themes, it has a full compliment of page templates. By clicking on my username my readers can read my Profile and also see a list of all the posts I made on the blog as an author.
To recap, my first priority is that any “features” for inclusion in the blogging space be optional. And my second priority is the elimination of the blank spaces currently appearing under the titles of my blog articles at at the end of them (ie. the advertising spaces).
yeah customizable related posts would be great!
Related Posts would be a great feature as I do this manually now and it’s time consuming. I’d love to be able to add my related posts with a couple of clicks.
Related posts would be good, but it would have to be from the SAME BLOG. I hate it how my categories link to the tags page, instead of posts in my blog under the same category.
Ads? Very nice idea. It is about time. It is one ways to reward blogger even few cents a day. I dont mind sharing income with WP 😛
Related posts, then ads, for sure.
Related posts and Ads would be nice.
How about the titles of the comments/replies? That way readers would be made better aware of the existence of those comments, and would be able to determine which comments may also be relevant. This would encourage comments, because it promote their meaningfulness to the blog. In turn, greater community interaction would be fostered.
related posts would be sweet!!
“related posts” please and thank you
Related Posts
or
Automatic Social Bookmarking Links. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaallllly want that.
maybe including ads and earn a little bit money would be interesting, as hosted wordpress version can do and blogspot too, althogh it may be a different philosophy. Anyway, it is interesting “related post”, visits would be incremented coming from other wordpress blogs
I would vote for the related posts as it can be beneficial for both the reader and the writer. The reader can easily find out the related posts that have been made about the topic he/she is reading and it may be a great way to “give life” to died away posts too.
“one of the places we think is pretty under-used on our themes is the spot under the post and above the comments”
The key word here is under-used. Is this correct grammar usage?
I have to agree with you on this. I look forward to what you have to offer. Not sure about above the post but at the end, it will be quite used for related posts. Maybe offer an option to have both top and bottom or just one instead of the other.
“Email this post” or “Related posts”
related posts and ads !
related post and popular post.
I’d like related and/or random same-blog posts.
related posts please
Related posts! Thank you!
A great thing to put under a post is obviously an optional customizable standard footer (that can only be edited by the head editor) (and is automatically put under every post, and perhaps also every page) in which can be placed a small thank-you-for-reading notice (mentioned earlier in this thread by someone else) and/or a copyright notice and/or perhaps a tiny small commenters code of conduct and/or perhaps a link to a longer code and/or disclaimer and/or the WordPress.com Terms of Service. Also links to the next post and the previous post can be nice under posts (even though it’s usually placed above the post) (also mentioned earlier). Some people may like to show the number of views an individual post or page has had. Summarising: Footers, next and previous post links, and views-counters. Personally, I’m more worried about privacy problems caused by search engines and other robots.
A ‘related post feature’ sounds good, but isn’t. Its output is the result of an algorithm, which cannot understand the meaning of the text. So the algorithm will do some kind of text comparision and find ‘similar’ texts based on something like word counting. It may be related in some cases, and in other cases it may be unrelated in a very nonsensical way – and without any possibility for the algorithm (and by looking at the generated link, for the reader) to decide, which of this cases is given.
To create and implement a good ‘related post feature’ is difficult. Such an algorithm has to decide, which part of a posting is ‘important’ text and which part is a less important one for the meaning. To make things completely hard, this has to work at least in the most popular languages used by wordpress.com bloggers, and of course with the many different styles of expression. Even thinking on implementing it in my native language (German) is a good headache. (For English, it may be a lot simpler, because of the mor regular grammatical patterns.) Some kind of ‘metrics of meaning’ has to be invented, which seem to be a hopeless hard job to do. If you want to get an impression of algorithmical stupidity in real language processing, just take altavista’s babelfish, translate an english text to German and back one time, it is always a good laught.
From my point of view, it seems better to try another useful feature for the place under the post. I suggest one or more of the following:
– Posted last week, month or year in this blog. Simple to implement, but it brings older posts to reader’s attention.
– For people using wordpress categories as a tag system (like me): Recent posts with a similar combination of tags. This kind of metric is simple to implement and may reveal to related posts with a high degree of similarity. But it requires a very special usage of the category system seldom seen on wordpress.com.
– Another funny possibilty with a little user tracking: Users interested in this post are also interested the following posts. Of course, this requires HTTP-cookies, but a cookie is used already to remember the informations given in the comment form, so it don’t hurt that much.
– A less nice idea is the display of the recent referers (who spelt it with one ‘r’ in this RFC?) to this post, because it creates the opportunity to create a kind of referer-spam.
– Some links to make it easy for the readers to link a post to various social bookmark services could be very useful. This is a really simple feature, but it can help bloggers a lot to attract new readers from the bookmark services.
Just some of my ideas…
And please ignore my strange English, my native language is these real hard dialect full of irregularities from Germany, which makes me wonder why I can speak it every day I think about it. Every mistake I made it my attempt to make English as irregular and complicated as my loved German… 😉
Related post
and
Ads
😀
I’d like to see related posts. Anything that keeps people reading my blog instead of going somewhere else is GOOD! Ads would be my second choice.
Oh…wow…I also highly support The Digerati’s idea: Email this post and Print this post would be terrific options! I hadn’t even thought of those.
☻ I think Author Profile is OK!
Related Posts would be a great widget! But no ads, please.
When you say “ads”, is that referring to ads you place, or ads the site owner places? I’m assuming it’s the former. If so, PLEASE don’t do it.
I think I would agree with escrbitionist.
Related posts. Hmmmm, Matt, sounds like a possible version of Sphere to me.
Accurate Blog and Feed Reader Stats :))
Ads of our own choice.
or perheps
Number of hits
I vote for have a different number of posts on the home page vs. other pages. For example, I like to have 1 or 2 posts on my homepage but I hate it when in the “category” listing it also only puts 2 posts and forces the user to keep scrolling. This especially sucks on themes that just list summaries on those lists….
aA
customizable “related post” please !
Seeing what most people say, I’ll add to my “related posts” wish one pereptory wish: please, no ADS! (if there are to be ads, please, on the sidebar), and two other just normal ones: stats for that post in particular, to see how often it has been visited on the whole, and a little space for outside related posts, belonging to other blogs.
That would be just perfect.
Thanks a lot!
I will like these things:
1. Related post
2. Ads
3.Random same-blog posts
What about Javascript compatibility – so that we can focus on our communities!
Related posts. As it is now, I add related posts manually to almost all my posts. It takes more time, but i feel like readers get more out of it.
Anything but Adds 😮
i think Ads is the best idea
1- Ads
2- Related posts
Hello,
I like “total stats of that post”.
Thank You.
Renato
BTW, it would be nice to have also Translation widget available on the sidebar.
Related posts and top posts from the same blog.
Maybe even top posts or related posts from a range of selected blogs or topics by the user.
Related posts only. Hate ads, always try to avoid them as much as possible!
And as an aside, thank you for a great service!
Wow, that’s plenty of comments. Going to close it off now.
For those who were wondering, it is of course your ads. We do show our ads occasionally on WP.com, but anything more than that would be at your discretion and with your adsense ID.