agilitynerd's dashboard

A comment on the question "What happens during a long Maintenance at widgetbox.com?" in Widgetbox:

A number of top end ISPs create an "outage RSS feed" solely for this purpose. That way it is an opt-in feature. A special twitter feed for the same purpose is also provided by some hosting providers. – agilitynerd, on November 14, 2008 20:48

A comment on the discussion "We want to hear what you think of the new Widgetbox Blog Network!" in Widgetbox:

Dave,
Thanks for the update. I saw that announcement, it is very helpful. Unfortunately, in the past month I've received only 6 page requests from widgetnetwork and none from widgetserver. My blog serves a small niche market (I serve 500 to 1000 non-robot/non RSS pages a day). It looks like widgetnetwork isn't a good fit for my blog at this time, so I'll be removing the widget.

Thanks for listening to my new feature requests.

Best Regards,
Steve – agilitynerd, on November 14, 2008 20:31

agilitynerd replied on November 01, 2008 12:19 to the problem "See More Recent Category Posts Has Wrong URL" in Widgetbox:

It certainly was unexpected to me and seems an unusual navigation approach. I guess this is a case where one man's bug is another man's feature.

agilitynerd replied on October 31, 2008 21:21 to the problem "See More Recent Category Posts Has Wrong URL" in Widgetbox:

Dave,
I don't think we are talking about the same thing. I'm not talking about the widget I'm talking about the website for the category.

In the Recent Posts section (center left side of http://www.widgetbox.com/network/pets) is a list of the 10 most recent posts for *all* blogs in the network category. When you scroll down the page there is a link at the bottom that says "See more Recent Pet Posts ->" clicking on that link doesn't take you to 10 more posts for the entire category like you would expect. It takes you to the list of posts for the blog that is currently the first entry in the list of recent posts.

That can't be what anyone expects to happen. If you click on an individual blog entry in that list you expect to be taken to that specific blog, but not when you click on a link for the entire category of blogs.

agilitynerd shared an idea in Widgetbox on October 31, 2008 20:14:

Enhancement Requests For New Network Widget

Now that the new network widget has been deployed I have some suggestions for ways to make it even better:

1. Have the user defined color gradient include the Add Your Blog button and the Get This Widget areas.
2. It would be even better to have more control of individual colors like Google Adsense does.
3. The scrollbar on the right hand side only supports "grabbing" the scroller. It could support click scrolling (clicking off the slider should scroll by a page).
4. Make rounded corners an on/off selection
5. Allow replacing the category picture in the top right corner with a blog specific picture/icon. For example the Pets category has a picture of a cat, but 27 of the 30 blogs in the category are dog related blogs.

Anyone else have some ideas?

agilitynerd reported a problem in Widgetbox on October 31, 2008 19:38:

See More Recent Category Posts Has Wrong URL

If you go to Network Category http://www.widgetbox.com/network/pets at the bottom of the list of recent posts from all the blogs in the category is a link titled "See more Recent Pet Posts". Instead of a link to more posts on the network it is a link to the posts of a specific blog. It appears to be a link to the most recent blog in the list.

agilitynerd started following the question "changes won't take" in Widgetbox.

agilitynerd replied on October 31, 2008 16:16 to the question "Network widget just got bigger and more colorful" in Widgetbox:

I just changed the color, copied the code to my blog, and clicked publish but the color is still the same blue...

After publishing the preview on the page shows blue also even though I changed the color to #FFFFFF (white). While editing the color the widget correctly showed the new color but once I clicked publish it reverted to the blue color.

I've cleared my browser cache, to no avail...

agilitynerd asked a question in Widgetbox on October 31, 2008 16:01:

Network widget just got bigger and more colorful

Seems that a new layout for the network widget was pushed this AM. It was displaying strangely for a couple hours and now a new style has been pushed that is taking *even more* screen space than before. Even worse than that, the color scheme and font are really clashing with everything else on my blog. The previous grey color scheme was innocuous and blended in with almost every blog.

I assume I can't revert to the old widget?
So how can we customize the style?

agilitynerd started following the question "Widgets and SEO" in Widgetbox.

agilitynerd marked one of Dave Rhea's replies in Widgetbox as useful. Dave Rhea replied to the question "What referer is used by the network widget?".

agilitynerd replied on October 09, 2008 04:06 to the discussion "We want to hear what you think of the new Widgetbox Blog Network!" in Widgetbox:

It would be nice to have some concrete information and statistics about how often and when our blogs are featured in the widget and in the top 10 rankings.

There was an "official" reply indicating that it is a proprietary algorithm. It isn't like it needs to be protected like Google's Page Rank algorithm(s), it isn't too likely to be "gamed" by bloggers. Just provide the general parameters involved in being chosen for display so we know it isn't just a random selection. Bloggers that post frequently *and* have users choose their blog entries from the widget should be weighted higher than inactive or "uninteresting" blogs.

To put it bluntly, unless a blog is displayed frequently in the widget they really won't see any increased traffic from the network. So knowing more about what it takes to be displayed frequently allows conscientious members of the network to get the benefits of the network.

Conversely, should inactive blogs be purged from the network?

Network members give up valuable page space for the (very large) network widget and in order for it to be beneficial it really needs to provide more readers than the tiny RSS icon... So statistics that can be viewed (ala Google Analytics) as to the efficacy of the network would help members determine if they are really getting a benefit from being on the network.

Thanks!

agilitynerd replied on October 09, 2008 03:52 to the discussion "Beta Feedback" in Widgetbox:

It would be nice if there was information on revenue sharing for members of the network (it was alluded to in an email I received about joining but I can't find any details on the website).

Is there any kind of dashboard for seeing information like:
- how many clicks my site gets through the widget
- how many times my site's latest entry is viewed in client widgets
- total number of views for the network widget containing by site

IMHO the widgetbox network is a combination of web rings and RSS feeds so it would be helpful to get the same (or better yet more) information as get from feedburner about the distribution of my feed.

It would also be nice if all questions raised here in the forum were answered.

Any chance for a release and/or feature plan?

Thanks

agilitynerd asked a question in Widgetbox on October 09, 2008 03:40:

What referer is used by the network widget?

When I look at Google Analytics for my blog how can I tell which hits came from Widgetbox? Is the referer field set to widgetbox or from the actual site hosting the network widget?

agilitynerd asked a question in Widgetbox on October 07, 2008 13:33:

Why is leaderboard position so variable?

I'm confused by the leader board position changes of my blog. When I first added it to the network it was number 2 (which was a little strange for a new blog). Then after ~week and yesterday it was #3. I posted my third post in a week and this morning it was #23. In a group with only 27 members with little activity this seems like a strange shift in ranking. Another blog that was #2 yesterday is now at #24.

agilitynerd replied on October 04, 2008 01:28 to the idea "Submit your suggestions for additional Widgetbox Network Channels here!" in Widgetbox:

I'd like to see a dog channel since there are so many dog blogs they could be separate from the generic pets channel. Actually "performance dogs" would be even better since it could cover all the dog sport blogs (agility, flyball, obedience, freestyle, disc, etc.). IMHO readers of those blogs are a separate group from pet dog owners.

A comment on the question "Additional customizations for the network widget?" in Widgetbox:

George thanks for the reply.

Inspecting the DOM after the widget is installed it looks like the width of the widget is in the arguments to the flash movie. Is it against the T&Cs for me to change that width?

Thanks. – agilitynerd, on October 03, 2008 18:06

agilitynerd asked a question in Widgetbox on September 27, 2008 15:54:

Additional customizations for the network widget?

I'd really like to remove the images from the network widget since most of them look terrible when resized to fit in the widget. They also add significantly to the download time of the widget. It would also let it be narrower to fit my blog's side bars. If you had a version narrower than 160px and corresponded to the 90px or 125px sizes used by Google that would be even better.

Do the T&Cs prohibit me from running some jQuery to fix up the widget?