Since my experience with making readers suggest... well sucks. I was lazily thinking how to boost up number of suggestions.
1. Let owners tag their blog with topics.
2. Let owners receive suggestions made in blogs on same topics (optional).
For example I tag my blog as "freeware" and "portable" in settings. If someone makes suggestion to some other blog marked as "freeware" or "portable" I get that suggestion as well. Probably with visible note where it was suggested.
Bloggers are happy because they get lots of suggestions and lots of opportunities to link and connect with other bloggers.
Readers are happy because they get multiply articles and answers to their suggestions.
Extension of idea - let readers suggest to topic instead of specific blog. Readers asks "I need software for..." and all blogs with "software" tag get that suggestion.
It's great being able to customize the Skribit widget. But you can't customize everything and on my blog, which has a pretty minimalist styling, the widget looks bad (no offense meant), so much so that I don't think I'll be able to install it. I'm very fussy about looks, but I reckon I'm not the only one out there!
Of course I can just add a link instead of the widget, but that doesn't give the same functionality.
I would have thought a simple Wordpress plugin, maybe, would do the trick in a neater way and give a widget that would integrate better with most people's blog layouts.
At http://nrkbeta.no/hva-skal-vi-skrive-..., we have put up a skribit widget. But it is showing only 5 suggestions even if the field has been made bigger. How come? Where do I set it up to show more suggestions?
I tried widget in my blog today and weight graph shows that it adds around 300+Kb of java script. I try to keep blog light and that's almost three times rest of my index page including images and rest of scripts.
I understand that widget packs some fancy features, but does it really has to be that heavy?
PS as far as I understood alternative to widget is using RSS feed+link but that sends visitors away from page to make a suggestion.
It'd be nice to set a status on a suggestion such as "requested" (by default), "working on it", and "Sorry, no" Declined suggestions maybe don't appear on the widget but people who click through to Skribit see it.
In the "Recent" tab on the skribit site, there is a lot of "Why do you use Skribit"s popping up as people add the widget.
My perception is that Skribit is people driven, so perhaps the "Recent" tab should filter out the "Why do you use Skribit" suggestions. I think it would be cool to NOT filter them out of the blogged tab, as I would love to read how people are using skribit. The problem at the moment is that the "Recent" tab is pretty much unblogged suggestions, and the auto "why" question is clogging that up.
We've been paying a close attention to our users and how they're using Skribit, and it's common to hear them ask 'How do I get my readers to make suggestions?', so I thought it'd be great to have a place to share tips on how to do this.
So, how do you encourage your readers to make suggestions?
I use skribit as a kind of "blogging to do list" - I was adding a task to my remember the milk (rtm) to do list, and I thought:
"Wouldn't be cool if skribit could sync with my rtm account?"
I know this is probably technically complex, and I don't expect to see it overnight. I also realize that there are many to-do list apps out there, and they all might not have the same API/whatever. It just would be WAY cool if I could blog about something and have that something ticked off my blog todo list.
I went to suggest a topic on a blog's skribit widget, and I decided to log in. (Click login.) I typed in my user name (titanium_geek) and the password field (was empty) was filled. "oh cool" I thought. "firefox has remembered my password." However, the focus on the "login" button was greyed out. I clicked it, thought "huh?" then realized that I had to type in my password, as the asterisks looked suspiciously like "password" like length. I typed in my password, and finally was able to log in.
So, I was wondering if this could be fixed? It's very confusing.
When logging in with an OpenID, clicking the "Login" button brings me to a page to sign up, when I've already registered. Clicking the "Clickpass / Enter" button logs me in properly. Seems like the forms' "login" button should be hidden when you choose to log in w/ an Open ID?
I thought I'd start this discussion as I was talking to a friend of mine and fellow skribit user, and he didn't know that there was a new shiny skribit release to look forward to in the near future. Skribit needs to communicate better.
How about a twitter bar for @skribit on the home page? Following Skribit and Stammy on twitter is how I keep up with skribit stuff.
Blog more, please! :) Oh, and website improvements (like the FAQ update) should be rolled out quicker. I hope this is constructive criticism.
Skribit is currently (Monday, June 2nd) suffering from the effects of second hand Digg'ing, we're trying to get the site back up as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
I wanted to give everyone an update since we hinted about putting up a new update today. Some last minute testing revealed some errors, particularly in IE. A lot of them have been resolved, but there was enough of them that we felt it was best to take more time to test.
This release is our best update yet, and we're really excited about getting it out. It won't be held back much longer.
I think it would be cool to add a box on the skribit home page (could use some tweak love btw) that has the "recently blogged" title. While I don't think "recently suggested" or "popular" should go away, I'd like to see stuff that has actually been blogged. I really hate how I see an interesting suggestion, and then forget about it before it's actually written about. So- a "recently blogged" section on the home page would be rad.
web page functionality: when you log in, you stay on the log in page. I was "huh, I thought it worked. log in. log in again." then I noticed it said, up the top, really small, "Hi Creative hedgehog!" (this is me.) Perhaps a forward to the main page, or the profile page, or where-ever a good starting off page would be.
Hi I'm try to update the header and footer for my blog widget and when I change font colors or background colors and hit save, it just pulls up a blank screen with nothing on it and my changes aren't save.