A Revisit to Jordan Planet
Few days ago, the new site of “Jordan Planet” was introduced. It uses the well-known CMS Drupal. So far, I got positive feedback from Jordan Planet bloggers and readers, there are some points that we need to address, and some extra pages and privileges that should be created to get this thing going.
Now what concerns me is that Jordan Planet may be drifting from having “Quality Blogs”. The thing is, it can not be clearly defined, but at least, I think there should be a clearly announced definition of what kind of blogs Jordan Planet hosts, and would like to have. Basically, Jordan planet is about Personal Blogs, there are some Jordanian Blogs that are limited to either news, Daawa, rebloggging, jokes, tech-talk and so. A Personal blog in my opinion is a mixture of everything mentioned and above, and add to it the personal touch.
Another thing that may be reasonable to ask, is to have a link to Jordan Planet in the pages of Jordan Bloggers. There are some buttons prepared by Haitham, and another nice one by Jeff. They will be all placed in a Jordan Planet page soon. Linking to Jordan Planet will help it grow, and make a better connection and bound between Jordan Planet Bloggers.
Picture or No-picture.. well, one of the side effects of the new Jordan Planet system, is that it doesn’t display pictures in the items read. This brought up conflicting feedback. Some really wanted to see Jordan Planet with pictures of different posts, while others considered this as an opportunity to visit different bloggers sites. Now, with the old system of Jordan Planet, I rarely visited most of Jordan Bloggers site, as EVERYTHING was posted in Jordan Planet. Since the new system was up, I discovered that Haitham Sabbah have a new theme for his site.
Definitely there is a big room of enhancement and growth for Jordan Planet. Natasha and Jeff had been really helpful, providing me with lots of feedback and ideas. I hope that others will help up as well with their feedback and ideas (Maybe Jordan Planet can have a discussion page within it’s site. Do you think that is needed ?)
Buttons linking to JP is a great idea and it helps the technologically-challenged, like yours truly, spread the word about this site. Keeping a standard for the hosted blogs is important and I personally agree with your description of the kind of blogs needed on JP. As for pictures, showing them would probably reduce traffic to the original blogs, yet not having them creates a “broken” post or a sense of “huh! something is missing here” which may seem odd for first-time visitors. I am not sure what the solution is but it may lie in showing a small, low-resolution thumbnail instead or writing a disclaimer about the syndication technology; creative web designers may have better and more feasible alternatives. The idea of having a discussion board is acceptable provided it is moderated and does not deal with the content of any certain post. For that, I think the discussion should be restricted to the original host’s blog. Also with the increasing number of JP bloggers, the number of posts per site update is growing. It is still at a manageable limit but it may reach a stage where there is a whole page worth of new stuff every few hours. Just something to take into consideration for the future.
Otherwise, great work Isam! Gracias (bil lahjeh al mahaliyyeh)
Just wanted to thank you for your efforts in improving Jordan Planet, I love the new version, it’s great. My thanks to Haitham, Natasha, Jeff and all the ones who played a role in the improvement :)
I don’t think I can be much of help here but I like the buttons idea, loved Iyas’ thumbnail suggestion and find a discussion page interesting.
As for your definition of Jordan Planet Blogs, I guess I have to disagree with you. To me it doesn’t have to be a mixture of everything to have a personal touch, a blog should reflect the thinking of the blogger and not the interests of the readers. And when reflecting your own ideas, discussing your own opinions, your blog automatically gets its personal touch, and shows us who you really are. It’s true having a bit of everything will give the blog a better shot in increasing the number of visitors, but a blogger’s goal -in my personal opinion- should be reflecting one’s own thinking in what one finds most interesting, not the number of visitors. So if a blogger is mostly interested in tech, let it be, as long as (s)he is providing helpful info.
Anyway, that was my opinion, and again thanks Isam for everything.
The fact that you are using Drupal gives you a powerful tool in hand, yet it all depends on the mission of JP.
For example, if the mission is to keep it as a reblog of Jordanian Bloggers, then I suggest two things:
1. Reduce the Cron job intervals so that it is updated with latest posts as soon as they are published on the original blog.
2. Instead of aggregating the complete post, aggregate only the headlines.
However, as you said, automated aggregator (auto reblog) is not always a good idea, specially when you think of it as warehouse of all what is posted around the Jordanian Blogs. In that case, you can’t do anything but accepting the fact that that’s what the blogger have to say in his blog. On the other hand, moderated reblog is the solution. But then you may lose the interest of some bloggers coz everyone would like to see his posts reblogged in JP.
Therefore, I believe mission has to be first established and published, then everyone will have to just adhere to that fact. I have two examples which might help. My AraBlog reBlog (http://arablog.net) is a one man show, it only reflects what I see appropriate to publish and what not to. On the other hand, Mahmood and I stared building http://BahrainBlogs.com we first formed a founding members who to the initiative to put together the mission and how we see it should be running. Although bahrainBlogs is not an aggregator, however members of that group can post anything there, but only certain posts can make it to the front page, and the rest will just show at the top of the page as a headline which will take them to the full post. So you see we are using a rating system, when the rating reach some level, the post get pushed to the front page.
Having said all this, I think mission should be first stated, then you can take it from there. If the mission is to have it as aggregator, then maybe it should aggregate the headlines only. I would prefer someone reading the full post on my blog rather than at JP, not that I don’t like JP, I love it, but I like my readers to be in my atmosphere and surrounding, yet discover more about the blog.
What else?… I had something more but I forgot now, maybe later :-)
Sorry, you look to be moderating the comments. I realized that later. Maybe you need to mention that on top of the comment box!
Or the comment was too long it did not make it here!
I’ll post in my blog then and ping this post ;-)
It’s Great Isam.
I just had this comment since sometime and it’s annoying me.
I don’t think that the separators between are obvious. I sometimes feel as if I’m reading a continuous blog and the names of the blogs do not appear clear.
Maybe you can add some stylish line or enlarge the name of the blog.
Other than that, everything is cool
I always wanted to thank you for your efforts.
Regards
i meant the names of the blogs from the feeds :)
Thanks for the shout out Isam. I don’t consider myself a Jordanian blogger — doesn’t seem my place. But I do consider it my home away from home. I’m pleased to have my efforts considered and appreciated. My motives are transparent: I’d love to have the rest of the world see what a competent, intelligent, complex and fascinating place the kingdom really is. I think “The Planet” can do that.
I have two other buttons near finished, one with a flag, the other a variation of the current spinning globe theme (an animated GIF) that’ll surface on Natasha’s blog soon alongside the one there currently (in the Miscellany sidebar section). Keep up the great work!!
Congratulations for the new look, good work Isam.
I have quick comment about the new site, if any visitor can leave his/here comments/feedback then it would be great. Discussion page plus any other interactive areas like vote will be a great addition.
Wish all the JordanPlant bloggers there a nice blogging and hope I can join you soon.
The new Jordan Planet looks really good Isam. I’m proud of you. By the way the article about the Jordanian blogging community that I wrote for JO will appear in March. So we still have some time to perfect it before then;-)