August 2nd, 2007 at 7:11 am
If you’re reading this through your feed reader you can’t actually tell. Head over to the blog and you’ll see that the formatting is mucked up now, as I told Wordpress to feature about 5 posts per page. Now that I’m doing “Asides”, which are “posts” to Wordpress, but much smaller, there is a whole lot of whitespace and a giant side pane. Yikes. That, and doing this whole microblogging thing is addictive. Better not let it be a crutch, like Steve Rubel. Wait, did I say that out loud?
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 am | Permalink
I peeked at your Home page to see what you were talking about. I assume the italicized text with the bar beside it are the asides?
Asides, when used this way, are a LOT like microblogging. (Or perhaps “miniblogging,” since the entries are more than 140 characters.) They come across in your feed as short posts and there’s no way to distinguish them from other content.
I’m not sure about the benefit of this. Why not call a post a post and allow yourself to write short posts when you only have a little bit to say? There’s no rule that says all of your posts need to be long, well-developed thoughts.
I’ve seen Asides displayed a different way — for example, in a sidebar. Not sure how they appeared in a feed — I wasn’t a subscriber.
It’s easy with WordPress to get caught up in site development tricks. I can’t tell you how many I’ve tried and rejected. Although asides have been on my list (near the bottom, admittedly) of blog features to try, your experience with them has removed them from the list altogether. Sorry!
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:48 am | Permalink
Hi Maria,
Well, its an experiment and one that I’m still … uh, experimenting with. Maybe there’s a way to offer “aside-free” feeds.
Or, maybe I should title each “aside” with the prefix: “ASIDE” or “MICROTHOUGHT” or “Partially Developed Brain Fart”.
As I say … still experimenting. ;)
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:55 am | Permalink
Oh! I hope I didn’t offend you. Didn’t mean to. Just feedback.
I do like the “partially developed brain fart.” That’s usually what my comments are. :-(
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:01 am | Permalink
Its all good, as they say, Maria … its all good. I take a great many things with a dash of metaphorical salt, and I trust my readers will tell me if the seasoning is too … uh … strong (to flog that metaphor).
:)
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:45 am | Permalink
When I did asides I ended up filtering from the feed… and then eventually giving up on them.
There are plugins that will let you show your latest tweets as asides.. that might be useful.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:49 am | Permalink
I’d like to put my latest tweets in my sidebar. I know that Alex King has a plugin to do that, but it’s for WordPress 2.1 or later and I haven’t had the time to upgrade. I guess I should make the time!