Some months ago I was asking a question: “Comments are integral part of posts. Why blog systems, like Radio Userland, do not take this fact into account?”

Fred, do not wait until somebody do it, otherwise you will wait for a long time I think… So I got an hour of my time today to test the concept. I hacked the b2Evoltuion blog system to build such a RSS feed.

The premise of the experience is that comments leaved by readers are integral part of blog posts. In fact, if someone leave a comment, most of the time it is to add something new to the blog’s post, something that have an informative value. I know it because my readers are good at it. I wanted to reflect that fact in my feeds content. So, it is what I do.

There is what it look like.

1. The comments are placed at the end of the post
2. The header of the comment section
3. The permalink of this specific comment
4. The number of the comment in the thread
5. The name of the comment’s author and a link to his URL
6. A link that will redirect the reader to the place where he could add his comment
7. The comment in question
8. The list of comments continue bellow

Simple no? Now the feed subscribers do not only have access to the post but also to the comments wrote about the post, by other readers, all that in the feed reader of their choice.

You want to have a look at that feed? You only have to subscribe to this URL:
https://fgiasson.com/blog/xmlsrv/rss2.feedwithcomments.php?blog=4

Advantages:

• It reflects the fact that comments are an integral part of posts
• Each time a post is commented, feed subscribers will be notified. It is sure that it depends on the feed reader, if the feed reader check if a change has been performed on an entry, then the reader will be notified, otherwise he will not.

Disadvantages:

• It adds information to the web feed and it become much more voluminous.

What do you think of it? Could you be interesting in subscribing to such a feed? Do you think that it could be a good information to have in a blog feed?

Note

It is really ease to add this feature to your blog. If you are using b2Evolution, you only have to download this php file and to put it in your /blog/xmlsrv/ directory. After that you will have access to it at that url:

yourdomainname.com/blog/xmlsrv/
rss2.feedwithcomments.php?blog=X

where X is the number of the blog where you would like to implement the feature.

Thank to Jack Vinson to remember me that I already wanted such a feature.

Technorati: [blogs] [feeds] [rss] [comments] [b2evolution]

There is a list of 32 things that I consider important when come the time to check for blogging software and a hosting service. This is the features I was searching for in prevision of the next upgrade of this blog. This list is not really intended to beginner bloggers because many technical features are in the list. However, the items in the list are present in no particular order. It is certainly not complete, then if you have others to add, leave them in the comment section or by email and I will take care to add them to the list.

Traditional blogging features

• Comment post. The system should give the ability to the readers to comment posts. It should optionally give the possibility to moderate these
  comments. I think that all blogging systems have the feature.
  • Max adds that it would be nice
    if comments were displayed in a pop-up window instead of the bottom of the posts.
  • Sudar adds that it would be nice to have a permalink for each comment. It is effectively really essential when come the time to track your comments!
  • Sudar also adds that it would be really nice if each user that comments has the possibility to receive all comments on the post by email.
  • Tom add that the system would need to have a preview comment feature.
• Anti-spam for comments. The system should give some sort of anti-spam system for comments. Spam comments are becoming a real pain on the Blogsphere.
• Anti-hammering feature. Tom add that the system would need a feature to prevent auto-spam bots by putting a limit of time between each post (Movable type is 15 seconds, b2Evolution is 30 seconds).
• Trackbacks.
  The system should give the possibility to other bloggers the to trackback posts.
• Anti-spam for trackbacks. The system should give some sort of contrul (anti-spam or moderation) on the trackbacks. I had many problems of spamming in my trackbacks and I unfortunately cannot do anything to delete them with Radio Userland.
• Search engine friendly. The title of the posts needs to be the name of the perma-link.
  • Max adds that it is not only important for search engine, but also for your readers, because it make the perma-link "human readable".
  • Jack say that would be even more interesting if the the underscores ought to be replaced by dashes. It seems that this way, URL are much more “search engine friendly”.
• Import/Export.
  The system should give the possibility to import and export the posts, comments and trackbacks to other blogging platforms.
• Categories.
  The system should implement categorization. It should optionally implement sub categories. It could also be interesting to dynamically create the categories with tags defined on posts (it could be viewable as a tag cloud).
  • Max specifies 2 important things that the category systems need to do: (1) post a single post in more than one category, and (2) create a web feed for each individual category.
• Archives.
  The system should implement a good archive system.
• Multiple-Blogs.
  The system should permit multiple-blogs. I should not be supposed to
  reinstall the software to create a new blog on the same host.
• Guest blogging. The system should permit to create profiles for more than one blogger.
• The source code should be accessible. The system should distribute his source code to give the possibility to the blogger to add/change features.
• Images.
  The system should give the possibility to the blogger to easily upload and add images to his posts.
• Search engine. The system should give the possibility to search within posts, and this on the entire blog including the archives.
• Full feed/Abstract feed. The system should create full and abstract feeds. Then the reader will have the possibility to choose which is best
  for him.
• Comment feed. The system should create a feed for the comments posted on the messages of the blog.
  • Max reminds me something we already talked about some months ago: the possibility to add the comments directly into the posts’ feed. It would be really interesting, because comments are an integral part of posts.
• Web interface. The system should give the possibility to post messages on a blog via a web interface.
• Post by email. The system should give the possibility to post messages on a blog via email.
• IP banning. The system should give the possibility to ban an IP address to the system.
• Binary file upload.. Jack add: “Not only should the system allow easy posting of images, but you may as well look for easy posting of any kind of binary. With images you want it to understand thumbnails (creating them may be a function of your host). What about videos, pdfs, podcasts, etc?”
• Good web post editing tool. Radio Userland have a good web posting editing tool. I only had to do my editing in Word then copy/past my text into it. I think that such web editing tools are essential. Otherwise you will have to do the editing, with HTML tags, by hand.
• Supporting user community. Tom add: You’ll end up leaning on it eventually! This feature is blog platform specific.

Layout management

• Custom code. The system should allow the possibility to add custom code in the template, like JavaScript code.
• Template modification. The system should permit the total modification of the templates.
• Search engine friendly. The themes need to be search engine friendly.

Hosting service

• Unlimited bandwidth. The provider should not restrict the bandwidth of their hosted blogs.
• Technical support. The provider should give a premium service to all of his customers via phone or email.
• Availability of the source codes. The provider should give the rights to the blogger to change the code of the hosted blogging system.
• Domain name. The provider should give the possibility to map a domain name to the blog.
• Statistics.
  Sudar adds that it would be nice if a good statistic system is implemented on the host server. It is more than essential, because bloggers are addicted to all type of stats.
• Unlimited space for posts. The provider should give unlimited space for text posts. At least 1 gig should be available for photos and other documents.
• Low cost. The cost of such a service should be under 15$ per month.

Some Wishes

• “Wizard” system for generating category/user/date-specific feeds. All of the tools I’m familiar with still require too much technical expertise to customize feeds, and even when you do this, there’s a good chance the feeds won’t validate. Tom’s wishe
• Full-featured API. I would replace “post via email” with this, as it allows one to post from a user-friendly desktop client (like SharpMT) as I regularly do. Tom’s wishe

Am I demanding? I do not think so considering the blogging systems available today and the cost of the storage space. The best blogging services are open-source, and 1 gig of storage space cost less than 1$. Why such services are so rare? I cannot understand…

Have I missed some feature? Do not forget to leave it in the
comment section or byemail; I will take care to add them to the list.

Technorati: [blogs] [blogging] [system] [service] [hosting]

Adam came up with a really interesting post about some A-List bloggers (Robert Scoble / Scobleizer, Dave Winer / Scripting.com and Steve Rubel / Micro Persuasion). He analyzed the content of their publications and tried to understand why people are reading them. This is not the first analyze done on the subject but it is an interesting one.

The main question is: “Why do people read these guys?”

“In fact I’d say they’re acting more like radio DJ’s (playing attractive mixes of someone else’s original content), rather than artists.”

“but for the most part, the A-listers in my industry are simple, useful link brokers”

If you take a look at his graphs, you can say that he could is right. However, I think that their success is a little more than this.

Why these guys become influent on the Blogsphere? I think that they are much more than just link brokers. I will give you a clue on why they are a little more than DJ’s with something that Adam said in his post:

“I do check in with these rockstar blogs occasionally and have even met several of them in person”

They are social; they easily connect with people; they have a whole lot of contacts. The result is that they have daily breaking news to broadcast and they take the time to comment and describe how they view them. Another factor is that when they write their comments on something, they do it in few lines: it gives the time to people to read them.

Adam pointed out another factor that I think is really important: they are passionate. This passion is transmitted by their writings. This passion is contagious and it is a factor why they easily connect with other people.

In conclusion, they are passionate people that master the art of socialization. I think that it is enough to try to explain why they can influence the way people see the Blogsphere and the Internet. I do not think that this is a question of blogging, but much more a question of social and human skills.

Technorati: [scoble] [winer] [rudel] [alist] [blogs]

Recently I was questioning myself about some uses of tagging systems. Then I found that tags could be interesting to use to handle some specific tasks. Yesterday I found another interesting use of tags.

Some days ago, IonZoft started a new service called TagCloud. What is a tag cloud? There is the tag cloud of my 25 last posts:

FredOnSomething’s tag cloud

The service will analyze your feed and add the most important words, and their frequencies, as tags in a “cloud”. The new service seems to work like a charm.

The simplicity of the system leads me to ask a question: should I use traditional static categories on my blog or should I use a dynamic tags cloud?

I think that the question is interesting. I know that some bloggers was questioning themselves about the real utility of categories. It is true that sometimes I do not know where to classify my posts.

What about using dynamically changing tags cloud instead of static categories? It could be interesting. Your “categories”, the tags in the cloud, will always reflect the thoughts you were having while writing your posts. You do not need to bother yourself with questions like: in which category should I put this post?

No really, I think that this application of tags could be really interesting. It would be even more interesting of blog systems like Radio Userland would implement such a feature.

What do you think of this new service? Do you see other good applications of such a service? What is interesting is that you have nothing to tag, and nothing to do; all the analyzing is done by a Yahoo content analysis web service.

Technorati: [tagcloud] [tags] [tagging] [blogs]

What makes a blog a communication tool? It is the fact that blogs are published over the Internet. However, what makes blogs a possible communication tool between two people? It is the posts aggregator and search engines like Technorati.

How it works? Technorati give you the possibility to create a feed where all items are the blogs’ posts that link back to a specific URL. By example, here is the feed created by Technorati for the URL http://radio.weblogs.com/0140770/. Then, when someone on the blogsphere is blogging about something I wrote, and link back to my blog, I am immediately notified.

Sometimes, bloggers answer to a question or to a specific post by posting a post on their own blog. The only way to be notified that someone is talking about something you wrote is by using such services. It is also why linking is so important in blog posts: it enables people to follow discussions.

I think that eventually we will be able to talk about the Blogsphere as a: distributed discussion forums.

• The forums. The forums would be the Blogsphere in itself.
• A forum. A forum would be composed of the blogs sharing the same topic.
• The topic. The forum’s topic would be the blog subjects.
• The threads. The threads would be the bloggers’ posts.
• The messages. The messages would be the comments wrote by the readers.

The whole Blogsphere is slowly developing itself as this. I can only hope that it will continue in this direction. We now have the technologies to archive this goal and to build such a network.

Technoratie: [blogs] [blogging] [blogsphere] [forums] [Usenet]