This is one of the most horrifying comment areas out there:

Now that’s a long scroll. This isn’t from a product landing page or a shopping site with pages upon pages of “special” offers. This is a blog, for crying out loud!

Let’s assume for a second that only the top box (which is the actual comment form) exists and focus on that. It’s just too busy! My eyes were all over the place with the sprawling combination of boxes and text.

I know it takes effort to align form elements. (Or not, since this particular site uses tables to do that.) But it would be much easier on the eye if all the input fields appeared in a linear fashion, one after the other, to minimize the confusion.

Linear is not always necessary, but always keep forms as simple as possible, if you can help it. Take a cue from Smileycat’s comment form design showcase and note how functional and uncluttered those forms are.

Okay, so you get through the ordeal of leaving a comment, but this blog says you’re not done yet! It continues to nag you with the “Blog this at your site” and the “Tell a friend” sections. It doesn’t help that the lack of comments subconsciously discourages the reader from actually commenting. Even if there are any comments, those two extra panels have already separated the reader from the “leave a comment zone” since the comment box is now too far away.

The Share This button is certainly more desirable, both in form and function, than these bulky boxes. If you don’t think a button will cut it, what about collapsible panels with JavaScript?

Since the comment form above belongs to a blog in a blog network, many more readers will be turned off and confused by this comment form on several different blogs. It’s not too difficult to elminate this usability problem: Don’t complicate the process. Don’t ask too many questions. Don’t look desperate. Just let them comment.

Related reading:

• Why do blogs screenshot tweets?
• What’s your Internet like? (Hint for dealing with clients)
• Usability & accessibility means no user is left out
• Twitter tweet embedding finally arrives, but is it any better?
• Siliconera: Blog Network Theme Done Right

Anyway, they manage to lay their hands on the excellent videogame blog Siliconera, which wasn’t in the b5media template of course. It is now.

Luckily, this theme update to the gaming blog is well done, and a great example of having a general template adapted to the blog in question. Sure, there are things that could do with some polish, but I think it does Siliconera justice.

Check out the launch post. Good work, b5ers!

Related reading:

• Multiple Blogs or Power Houses?
• Wisdump Redesign: Public Beta
• Wisdump Redesign: I’ve Decided, Finally!
• Wisdump redesign concepts
• Wisdump redesign concept, part 3

Time to install 35 WordPress blogs! Even if that 5 minute install was all that was needed, it would be around 3 hours of work, and that’s not counting setting up your databases, uploading WordPress files, and so on. Then you’ve got your average plugins, API keys to paste into Akismet’s settings, activating the right theme, fixing the permalinks…

Yes, I know. Who launches 35 blogs at once? No one of course, but you get the picture. Every blog takes some time to setup.

You can do all that just once, and then launch a new (basic) blog in a matter of seconds, with WordPress MU. It’s pretty easy too, as long as you use one domain for your blogging enterprises. Then again I’m sure there are hacks for multiple domains out there…

I recently used WordPress MU in a Swedish blog networkish project, called pakten.se. Check it out if you like, it’s in Swedish though, and the front page isn’t done (links in the top bar to dig deeper). That was an experience.

Which brings me to the point of this post. You really should investigate solutions to make things easier on yourself if you’re managing multiple blogs. WordPress MU might be one solution, but chances are you’ve got a bunch of domains and don’t want to hack around too much. There are other options though, like subversion, but that’s not exactly my expertise.

You need a technical strategy for managing multiple blogs. Sure, you can just update them all when a new point release is out, but that takes a lot of time. It might be the best solution for you, but make sure you’ve got your strategy clear to you from the beginning, otherwise you’ll have a hard time along the road.

After all, while you might not launch with 35 blogs, you might end up having the administrative responsibility of that number, or more. Updating them all is a bother to say the least.

Do you run multiple blogs, and do you have a technical strategy for how to handle them? My guess is no, most of us probably bites the bullet and take it as it comes. Even though it’s a bother every time we need to update, right?

I can tell you this though. Having WordPress MU to power my Swedish blog network, seven blogs strong at the moment, is a breeze, although the way there wasn’t.

But that’s another story, and it’s available over at Devlounge, so check it out.

Related reading:

• Why do blogs screenshot tweets?
• What are you doing to Break Your Design Mold?
• Top 10 Web 2.0 Winners
• The Next WordPress Default Theme Contest
• Siliconera: Blog Network Theme Done Right

On one hand, having a bunch of smaller blogs means that you can cross-link and -promote to launch new projects, as well as drive traffic from one blog to neighboring niches. That’s a good thing, and what blog networks such as b5media does.

So what’s the problem with this? Well, do you have enough energy and focus to really manage a bunch of blogs to an extent that they are successful? Chances are you’re spreading yourself thin, and that means that the blogs aren’t reaching their full potential. You might end up with a bunch of blogs sporting a few hundred visitors daily, which might or might not be enough for you.

On the other hand, if you build one (or a select few) power house blog, you can put all your focus on it, making it precisely as good as you can since there isn’t anything else competing with the time and energy you spend on it. This should result in a better publication, which in turn should be able to amass a whole lot more readers, and that means more money.

Then again, you’ll have a hard time to launch it since there isn’t a network of smaller blogs to promote it across. You might also be having a hard time to take it to the top notch level, since competition might be hard, and when you’re putting all your eggs in one basket you’ll have to generate a whole lot more than you do for each small blog if you go with the wider solution.

If you need to make $500 monthly, that’s $50/blog if you’ve got 10 smaller blogs, compared to actually making $500 on one power house.

I think the latter is harder.

On the other hand, becoming the #1 voice in a niche is pretty hard if you’re not being the best you can be, i.e. are spreading yourself thin, so if you want to achieve this power houses might be for you.

I don’t know what’s best. What do you guys think? Multiple blogs, or power houses? What’s your poison?

Related reading:

• Siliconera: Blog Network Theme Done Right
• Multiple Blogs, Thoughts on the Technical Aspects
• Don’t Make Commenting Difficult

Networking is good. You should always push your products, services, and whatnot across your network of sites, blogs, forums etc. The idea is to try and catch that visitor who might be interested in your other work as well, and not just the site s/he’s on. While relevant networking usually works best, sometimes you’ll find that people have very broad ranges of interests, and a diehard chopper fanatic might be in to knitting as well. The beauty of the Internet helps this knitting biker to get his fix within a network, nifty and nice everybody involved.

However, while it is true that people might have interests beyond the niche, you’re still better of to push for neighbouring niches rather than random ones. Chances are, someone interested in PlayStation3 might also be interested in PlayStation Portable, or someone reading a blog on HDTV might want to read about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. It’s the logical step.

So how should blog networks push their readers across their board?

I think that the Splashpress solution is a sound one, which probably doesn’t come as such a surprise since I’ve been involved in it. Establishing sub-networks within the big network makes for more branding. If you visit The Blog Herald or 901am, you’ll see that they both are included in the same network of mainly news-focused sites. Another sub-network includes podcasting site Audival, and blogosphere snarky commenter Jack of All Blogs – another sub-network with a slightly different focus.

Building sub-network and having the sites within link to each other in a more protruding form helps build the brand of all these sites. While some sub-networks are more easily defined than others – a sub-network focusing on movie blogs such as Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, traditional DVD and so on, is more obvious than the one with Biziki, Bloggy Award, Audival and so on – you’ll find that there are gains to be had here.

So let’s recap, the benefits with sub-networks within a blog network are:

• More visible network linking to relevant sites, while still having the opportunity to do traditional blogroll-style links to the rest of the network.
• Borrowing reliability strength across the sub-network. A young and promising blog will have it easier if the first time reader sees one of his old favorites being closely networked with it.
• Branding the sub-networks helps when releasing new blogs into the network, it will immediately borrow from the sub-network’s established brand, and therefor seem more complete than it actually is.
• Better traffic opportunities between sub-networked sites (compared to a massive links list).

There are several other possibilities as well, depending on how you sub-network. You could sell ads across a sub-network instead of just on a per blog basis, have a mashed up RSS feed so that readers interested in the niche(s) covered by the sub-network can subscribe to everything at once, and so on.

Sub-networks is just so much more exciting than a massive blogroll in the sidebar. Blog network owners adopting this strategy should find that they are a lot more effective as well.

Related reading:

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