August 7, 2013 at 11:17 am
I have my blog syndicated through SQL Server Central. The problem with blogging is that there's no feedback on if you're providing a useful service or if people are opening it up and closing complaining about not getting those 2 minutes of their life back. Nothing you do would change that, but having a piece of the site as a call out to bloggers on what topics people want to see would at least make us know the demand.
Also, probably more for personal reasons, I'd like to see two blogs highlighted on each daily email. That bumps up the hits on a blog from an average of 150 reads to about 800, and is a great way of endorsing blog posts you feel would make people's lives easier.
August 7, 2013 at 12:50 pm
SteveHood79 (8/7/2013)
I have my blog syndicated through SQL Server Central. The problem with blogging is that there's no feedback on if you're providing a useful service or if people are opening it up and closing complaining about not getting those 2 minutes of their life back. Nothing you do would change that, but having a piece of the site as a call out to bloggers on what topics people want to see would at least make us know the demand.Also, probably more for personal reasons, I'd like to see two blogs highlighted on each daily email. That bumps up the hits on a blog from an average of 150 reads to about 800, and is a great way of endorsing blog posts you feel would make people's lives easier.
My apologies here. I've tried not to put too much into any newsletter, so I sometimes skip the blogs. I do try to pick 1-2 fairly often, but I look for the posts that catch my eye and include some good technical information. I do skip some that seem OT or too short, or don't send through a full post in the syndication.
If you think you've got a great one, ping me (sjones at ssc) and I'll look at it. I may miss them at times as I check 2-3 times a week, not every day
August 7, 2013 at 1:03 pm
SteveHood79 (8/7/2013)
I have my blog syndicated through SQL Server Central. The problem with blogging is that there's no feedback on if you're providing a useful service or if people are opening it up and closing complaining about not getting those 2 minutes of their life back. Nothing you do would change that, but having a piece of the site as a call out to bloggers on what topics people want to see would at least make us know the demand.Also, probably more for personal reasons, I'd like to see two blogs highlighted on each daily email. That bumps up the hits on a blog from an average of 150 reads to about 800, and is a great way of endorsing blog posts you feel would make people's lives easier.
+1
I barely check the blogs (even though I syndicate my own blog here) if they are not listed in the newsletter. I already have so many blogs in my RSS feed, taking the extra time to check all the blogs here manually would be too much. So a few highlights a day would be nice.
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August 9, 2013 at 8:07 am
Steve
My biggest complaint about the new layout comes from featured content section. My Outlook doesn't download pictures (to protect my privacy), so having the image of "Technical Article" on the left pushes the text to the far right, causing me to have to scroll right to see the first few sentences.
I don't have any problems with the editorial or forums. Just because the question has had answers posted doesn't mean I won't want to read it. I don't necessarily care for the way it is broken up into sections. Some of those sections show forum entries that have been there for a long time ("Are the posted questions getting worse"). Maybe this is a very active question, but I know its been there for a long time.
August 9, 2013 at 9:49 am
richardm-1037631 (8/9/2013)
SteveMy biggest complaint about the new layout comes from featured content section. My Outlook doesn't download pictures (to protect my privacy), so having the image of "Technical Article" on the left pushes the text to the far right, causing me to have to scroll right to see the first few sentences.
I don't have any problems with the editorial or forums. Just because the question has had answers posted doesn't mean I won't want to read it. I don't necessarily care for the way it is broken up into sections. Some of those sections show forum entries that have been there for a long time ("Are the posted questions getting worse"). Maybe this is a very active question, but I know its been there for a long time.
I understand not wanting to download pictures. We definitely want you to do that, and we've seen that the richness of the pictures makes a difference to responses, unsubscribes, ads, everything. However I get that some people don't want to do that.
However part of what you're seeing, is also the challenge even if you download pictures. Outlook causes issues with display because they don't render HTML well when it has CSS. We could say "just let it flow", but it can easily be a mess that people don't want to look at anymore.
We could do to text only, but response and interest drops dramatically. That's an issue as well.
August 9, 2013 at 9:52 am
As another note here, I went to a few non-technical people to show them the newsletter and get opinions.
Things were split. About half liked the narrow, fixed width format, about half didn't.
No decisions, but it is food for thought. It makes me think we might want to offer two versions.
August 9, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Luis Cazares (8/6/2013)
The forums part is mainly useless for the purpose that is presented (Database Pros Who Need Your Help!) because most topics are already solved.There could be some kind of outstanding topics to reduce the space used by the forums posts in the newsletter.
This is a good idea. I used to read the forums more, but they were usually already answered, so displaying the ones that have not been successfully answered would be very good. Of course, this would require developing the "Answered" functionality that was proposed in part 1 of this series.
BTW, I do enjoy the editorial, and read it daily.
August 9, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Phil Factor (8/7/2013)
I love the editorials, whatever they're about. Always read 'em. Almost every day I click on a link. I even like the pictures.I doubt if you'll ever cater for everyone with one design. Shades of Metro. Outlook users are always going to be a problem because the newsletter is rendered as a Word document so you're never going to get a responsive design to work in Outlook.
What about catering for those of us who like to spread it all out across the screen to have a web-based version of the newsletter that is fully-responsive to the size of the browser window that we can access by clicking on the link in the the current truncated version that's optimized for small screens?.
Phil said almost everything that I was thinking of, so I'll just say ditto. Especially about enjoying the editorials.
The one thing I would like to add is that it would be nice to have the question of the day in the Table of Contents. It's almost always the first item I go to.
Also, although I didn't like all of the formatting changes, I continue to love the contents. I learn so much from the topics on this newsletter.
August 31, 2013 at 7:45 am
Please get rid of the login requirement, it is just so 1995. If you need to post or answer a question, sure, but just having to login every time you click on an article link you want to read about is annoying. In this day in age, I, of course, do not want my browser to ever "remember about me".
Thanks
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