Blogging Essentials -- User Feedback On the Radio Chapters

Blogging Essentials :: User Feedback On the Radio Chapters

Last updated: 6/16/2002; 10:20:35 AM

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Blogging Essentials :: User Feedback On the Radio Chapters

Listed below is the user feedback on the Radio chapters in Essential Blogging (and Chapter 9). The distribution of this is Scott Johnson, the UserLand folk, Guy Haas, Russ Lipton and a few others. LARGER NOW. LOTS LARGER. EMAIL ADDRESSES DELETED BECAUSE OF THIS.

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Ernest Svenson [1] sent this email to you through the Radio UserLand [2] community server, re this page [3].

I read your 3 chapters in the proposed O'Reilly book on Blogging. I enjoyed them very much and even learned some stuff. I especially liked your description of the 3 button choice for Post, Publish, or Post & Publish. I only have one question. I assume that if you post only and then later come back to "publish and post" that the website will show the time of "posting" rather than "publishing" but I really don't know. It's on page 12 of chapter 3. Perhaps you could clarify that. Anyway, that's not a criticism. I really liked your book and your site. Keep up the good work.

[1] http://radio.weblogs.com/0104634/

[2]

http://radio.userland.com/

[3]

http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/

| I don't use Radio, so I can't say whether this is a real problem or not, but one thing that people seem to have trouble doing with Radio is blogrolling. Radio blogs don't seem to include blogrolling links very often, and I've seen a couple of comments on Radio blogs about users not knowing how to add a list of links to blogs they read to their page, so the first thing that comes to my mind is that perhaps Userland just forgot to document a way to do this. It seems to me that it should be possible to edit the templates to do this, but maybe there isn't a table devoted to it in Radio's object database by default. Given that blogrolling is an important aspect of blogs traditionally, you might want to inquire with Userland about this. ralph [fuzzyblog@brandi.org] 5/25/02; 11:53:34 PM | | Hi Ralph,

Good comment. Radio calls this "Navigator Links" and they do appear going down the side of the screen. It's actually a dedicated ui option in the Radio Preferences ui. It was in the content that I submitted to ORA along with a link to even a more detailed tutorial.

I'll do my best to see that it's more clear. Thanks Scott

Scott Johnson [sjohnson@fuzzygroup.com] 5/26/02; 3:07:17 AM |

Hi:

Another review, in this case, Chapter 3. I did like the "for idiots" approach of this chapter. Just some comments:

- Page 17. "The link field is rarely used. [...] You can ignore this field and your weblog will work fine". Ok, ok. But, what's the purpouse of this field?

- Radio Gotchas. Too much pages for gotchas, although there are some really good tips (saving content with Control+C). I think this book doesnt want to be blogging software manual, but quick guides.

- Thanks for the link to TechNet Cast's MP3s of the O'Reilly Conference ;)

Greetings,

Víctor R. Ruiz | - Todos estos momentos se perderán, como

http://rvr.infoastro.com | lágrimas en la lluvia.

Hi!

When you get a chance can you please tell me what I need to do to get

the "Comments" link to appear at the bottom of items as it does in your

blog. I selected for Comments in Preferences but to no avail. Thanks,

Cheers,

Patrick Blake

Visit my blog at

http://radio.weblogs.com/0108540/ -- new listings daily.

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Hi!

Please ignore my previous message. Just figured out how to do it. BTW, O

really dig your blog!

Visit my blog at

http://radio.weblogs.com/0108540/ -- new listings daily.

Mike [1] sent this email to you through the Radio UserLand [2] community server, re this page [3].

Hi Scott,

Just read your O'Reilly chapters - a very good introduction to Radio! I hope it all goes well for you.

Just a heads up about http://radio.weblogs.com/0107789/2002/05/25.html#a124

which has some extra info on your If I was Scooter McNealy rant - I'm not sure if you know about the POI project or not.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Mike

[1]

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107789

[2]

http://radio.userland.com/

[3]

http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/

Hi,

I am the webmaster of NewsIsFree and I a few comments about your Chapter 9.

As you say, NewsIsFree produces over 2000 RSS feeds which can be integrated in Radio's aggregator.

But it is itself an aggregator, with is much more powerfull and customizable than Radio's, although it is also quite a bit more confusing ;-)

It also supports the Blogger API, so you can post items directly to your weblog if it's software supports that API (like Blogger, Radio, Movable Type, Drupal, etc).

We'll gladly add blogs, especially if they have RSS feeds (since it's the easiest way of getting the data). However, a better catalog of RSS feeds is Syndic8, that you mention only briefly.

NewsIsFree also features a powerful search tool, like Daypop, so you can search for recent events, before they show up on Google ;-)

Finally, you mention mention as one of NewsIsFree's "pros": it's free. This is true, but only for personnal and non commercial use. You may not use our feeds on a commercial web site, or for professionnal purposes (for example if you use Radio's aggregator for business matters). I'd appreciate it if that could be made clear in the text.

Great work, I hope the book is succesfull,

Mike Krus

http://www.newsisfree.com/blog/ ICQ: 30900412

Hi Scott,

Hey, I'm a grad student at Princeton, of course I'm geeky.;-) But I'm afraid that's not how you meant it.:( No, in the programming sense I'm not very geeky. I don't use Radio. I use Greymatter (

http://www.noahgrey.com/greymatter ) and didn't find much about RSS in its own documentation. I wasn't sure if it was something that specific to the blogging software. If it is, I'll have to ask there, I guess.

I will say, by the way, that had I seen the Essential Blogging book ten days earlier, I may have gone with Radio instead of Greymatter because you do a very nice job of walking the user through the process (I just went through your chapters). Maybe I should send this to the editor as well.:)

If you have any pointers on RSS, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks,

Eszter

On Sat, 25 May 2002, J. Scott Johnson wrote:

> Hi Eszter,

> Are you using Radio now for the content or is it some other content?

> And, if it's other content, are you kinda geeky or not?

> Scott

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Eszter Hargittai

> Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2002 9:44 AM

> To: sjohnson@fuzzygroup.com

> Subject: Essential Blogging feedback (fwd)

> Hi Scott, sorry, just saw that you wanted to be cc'd on comments.

> Here, I just refer to a typo in ch.9. that I thought you might like to

> see.

> Otherwise, I'm still on the lookout for documentation that makes RSS

> accessible (say I wanted to syndicate my own content, that is), I

> didn't see that in the book, did I miss something?

> Best, Eszter

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------

> Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 09:37:57 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Eszter Hargittai

> To: gnat@frii.com

> Subject: Essential Blogging feedback

> Hi,

> I was wondering why you don't include Greymatter among the possible

> blogging software. (

http://noahgrey.com/greymatter )

> After checking out blogger.com, moveable type and userland, I opted

> for greymatter. I don't have a cs background not do I know perl or

> php. I do my own html coding, but that's about it, and yes, I do have

> access to a cgi directory. I felt that greymatter was more flexible

> than the others, it is completely free without banner ads (although I

> will be making a donation as it is so great), comes with extremely

> user-friendly instructions and has a very helpful support forum site.

> It may be too late to include it, but I did want to bring your

> attention to it.

> Regarding the manuscript, I've only looked at parts of it and just

> have a typo to point out: p.6. of Ch 9 the URL

http://www.fuzzygroup.com/go/?addToBlogdex doesn't seem to work.

> Best,

> Eszter

> ---

> Eszter's List:

http://www.eszter.com/elist

> How to win the Nobel Prize:

http://www.roadtostockholm.com

> My blog:

http://www.esztersblog.com