Tweaking The Blog

Thanks, everybody, for your kind words and what I think is a pretty successful launch in the Patheos big city (as someone called it).

The comments on the “introductions” post offered some suggestions, and I want to follow up on that. First, what is your opinion of posts that only show the first six lines on the main page and then you have to click “read more” to get the rest of them?

That’s the basic format Patheos uses and, I was told, for good reason. I guess when there are lots of posts on the front page, webcrawlers can get to them easier, visitors can browse earlier posts they haven’t seen yet, it looks better with the web design, and I don’t know what all.

I felt my posts were more long form, so I asked Patheos if they could make the text box bigger. They put a larger character limit, but that hid the formatting (paragraphs, block quotes) for some reason. Where it stands now is that we have formatting, long posts, and I said I’d put in my own page breaks.

But I don’t know. . . .Maybe there is nothing wrong with the six line teasers, though maybe I should change my writing so that I start off with a journalistic “lede” (journalese for “lead”), a snappy summary that makes you want to read on. You readers are the main consideration. Do you mind getting only six lines before you have to click “read more”? Or is that some of the only exercise you get and so you are all for it? (Let’s see if you mind this jump:

The Patheos template has quite a few features that it will take us a while to discover and appreciate. For example, a post on a particular topic may conjure up links to earlier posts on the same topic. There are links to other Patheos blog posts, which may prove interesting and which I’m sure will bring more traffic here. If you’ve noticed other good features, please let the rest of us know.

But also, what features would you like to have? Perhaps there is a way to get them. I heard a request for comment numbering. Also for e-mail notification for comments. What else? Have you noticed cool features on other blogs that we might replicate here? I’ll ask the wizards behind the curtain if some of them might be possible.