#thu1030

Features

My main focus was on the features of the page and making the blog as functional and visually appealing as possible, acting on viewer interactivity to capture the essence of web 2.0. Firstly I added the comment feature to my blog through disqus, allowing users to individually interact with my blog posts. I also added the like toolbar along the bottom of the browser window, which was provided by Wibiya containing a Facebook like, Google plus and twitter tweet button plus other sharing options. Along with this I have created a twitter account that contains all my posts creating another avenue to access my content and in the hope to bring more viewers. On the page a feed that features tweets from the freeskiing industry as well as my own feed on the left hand side has been added.

To increase visual appeal I have used a background which I had some difficulties coding it to fit the contents of the page as well as adjusting to different screen sizes. I fixed the problem through research on Google and searching through numerous options, which mostly didn’t work or were glitchy. I eventually found a solution which produced a sound result but found that many others had a similar issue in sizing a background to the correct aspects. Finally I added in the falling snowflakes along with the snowflake cursor, which was a code I found better theming the feeling of winter.

Content

These features would be backed up by the content to keep readers reading and develop followers. Currently as I write I have gained 26 followers with only 3 that are class members or friends and I am happy that they are all relevant followers. The content was updated no less than three times a week and I felt this was important for viewers in that they had something new too look at each time they visited.

Reblogging was also largely invested into my blog so that there was fresh content without the need for my own producement but also to gain followers through being noticed. I tried to make my posts as varied as possible using a whole range of different posting styles these included Videos, Straight text, Photo’s, Quotes, Questions to the community and lastly links with other relevant information or sites. These Links for example would take you to articles written by other ski magazines, blogs and ski communities. These link style posts were in the attempt to spider web my site out into the wide world web.

Additional pages such as the memorial page, which are in place for people to leave there own posts to be judged by me and then placed on the blog to start a message board for passed athletes. As well as this there is a donations page which links interested people to make donations to existing foundations set up in honour of fallen athletes. The About page was another addition which contains my own CSS and HTML as well as a Home button, which was created from scratch with the help of in class tutorials as well as my own research using sources such as w3schools and other posts by CSS guru’s (Chris Coyier was one who helped alot!) but these kind of guys are all over the internet. I felt when studying CSS that written tutorials were much more helpful than that of videos.

Content within my blog was not always content that I had produced, therefore it was important that I should credit those producers of any work I used, out of respect and to avoid breaching copyright. A lot of the content was youtube videos and photos and I tried to credit everything that was possible. Photo's are all clickable and will revert you to the site it was taken from and they also have the option to share. A particular post i created, credited work for a photographer who allowed me to use his piece of work. I supplied in the post his Tumblr page as well as his Flickr page and he was thrilled for the plug. This post was reblogged a number of times which help spread his name as well as mine!

Analytics

I started analytics in the beginning of march mainly to see whether my site was growing and results have shown it has. After studying the results you can identify some obvious trends and reasons for peaks in views. As well as the long null in results.

As seen above you can see a significant period of nothing, i was very annoyed to see this after not checking analytics for a little while and realising that it had stopped working. This was due to a change in theme resulting in the loss of the code that was originally there. Unfortunately this affects my results over that period and does not represent true numbers over the entire life of my blog. However, it still presents sound data that helped me see which viewer gaining strategies worked and which did not.

My main focus in gaining viewers was spider webbing as although important, Google Search Competition was fierce. The competition consisted of a large number of Ski Community Sites, Foundations for the fallen skiers and News Reports on these fallen skiers. I still tried to improve my Google Search Rating through using tags and specific words within my blog but it was no match for the already established and heavily hit sites. I also believe it is something that many people wouldn't search for but something they should stumble upon and share.

Therefore, I focused my energy on spreading the word through spider webbing and site linking. The way i did this was initially reblogging which did wonders in letting other bloggers know what my interests were and if they were similar a following began. The next step was sharing my blog with the ski community through posting forums within the sites such as Newschoolers; a freeskiing community. This was the most effective way of gaining viewers and the correct kind of viewers whom supplied some very positive feedback. When I posted these forums google analytics would show graphically a large peak in viewers. CLICK Through to see this forum. Other ways I tried spider webbing was simply providing links to other sites, blogs, foundations and news reports, in my posts a well as the additional pages. 

Although again not complete results you can see that I received a large number of viewers clicking through from Newschoolers.com which shows the effectiveness of advertising through these large communities.

Analytics is a fun way of viewing results and helps with motivation as you watch viewer numbers grow!

Challenges

As with most projects, I came across a few things that challenged me which were sometimes fixable but others impossible. The background issue mentioned earlier was solved after searching through a couple of sites. I also attempted implementing infinite scrolling for my theme and searched numerous pages for solutions, however the theme didn’t allow for it. I searched the theme and many others said that the catching elephant theme cannot infinite scroll which was a huge annoyance as it would be much more effective than the current setup. My Analytics reporting also proved difficult. When resetting the theme the code would need to be placed in the HTML code again and again and sometimes I forgot to replace it. This would leave large lapses in time where there was no data, effecting my overall analytical results. RSS feeds were a trouble that came about mainly because of Tumblr’s removal of the feature. I tried to find an alternative but they were either bugged or had instructions that were not comprehendible by me. It was something that I wished to implement into my blog, adding in news articles from Newschoolers.com that showed updates in the skiing community. 

Final Thoughts