Reaching out — where does disclojure.org go from here?
I read once that it takes 21 days to create a new habit, and I have been posting here for 31 days now, so I guess this is a new habit for me.
When I started this blog I did so in order to be useful to the Clojure community, which today is small, friendly, smart, and it is growing fast. I still intend to be useful and this is the reason for this post.
I am reaching out to you my reader for advice on what would make this site more useful to you and the community. I have thought of a few things:
- Create a section for clojure projects. Many projects are springing up that are either built in Clojure or are tools for Clojure
- Write more original articles (I am planning on creating more time for myself to be able to write more about clojure… stay tuned)
- Maybe create some sort of forum? — there is already an awesome list for clojure, so that would be redundant.
What do you think?
If you have any tips that you want to share, please post them in the comments section. I will be giving some more thought to the potential new features in the coming weeks, but I’d love to hear from you.
6 Comments to “Reaching out — where does disclojure.org go from here?”
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Option 1 is good… just keep doing what you’re doing. Seems to be working.
Thank you for working on this blog! I’d like to see more of 1 and 2.
I say nay to option 1, unless it’s just something you’d like to do.
For me, I like to view your content through my google rss reader. I have the clojure reddit on there too, but it only gets about one hit a week. Your site is definitely the best place for daily clojure news. So, if I had a vote, I’d prefer to see more of the same: clojure news. Option 1, hosting projects, seems like it’d detract from disclojure’s “News site” focus.
Editorials would be a good idea. Perhaps also allowing other people to write up articles, tutorials, and opinion pieces on disclojure as well.
Another thing you might want to do… Your current daily-roundup format is nice and convenient, however, on my reader I have no incentive to ever go to your actual site. The links to the relevant content is right in the summary. Other sites tend to list summaries individually, then link back to their own site for the full summary. From there, if the user is interested, they click on to the actual content. Taking this route might increase your page hits, if that matters to you.
Either way, thanks for this useful site. I’ll be thinking about other ways you can improve the site.
John
I agree with #1, but I would be interested in your thoughts so I vote for #2 also. It would be great if we could see an additional: Today in the IRCs. ;)
-m
I like disclojure as a Clojure news site, with daily tweets and the like. Having news/announcements for new Clojure projects would be cool though.
Hey, thank you all for your feedback. Here are my thoughts:
@Anonymous — I am happy to hear it works for some!
@TwoSheds — A section about projects is probably what I’ll look into next. There is a lot of cool stuff being put out there, but it is hard to find sometimes, or even know that it exists and what it does!
@John — disclojure.org does not necessarily have to be all News. I started with the news because it was the low hanging fruit and because I wanted to see if I had the discipline to post daily. It looks like I do, and now I need to find more time to work on new content.
Having others post or cross-post on this site is something that I have also considered, but I haven’t figured out where to start. I know wordpress allows for this though.
Also, I am not too worried now about getting hits on this page as much as having a wide reach. I am more interested in building a network than I am at building a site, hence the reason to publish the full articles in RSS feeds. I might not do the same with editorials and other original content though, because long articles sometimes seem to be cumbersome in RSS readers. Also, having to click on the RSS reader seems to detract to the usefulness of the news updates.
Finally, I might eventually think about using ads in this site, if the hosting costs increase substantially, and in that case I can also use ads in the RSS feeds.
Keep your ideas coming!
@fogus — thanks for you interest in my thoughts. I am really looking forward putting original content in there.
@Nathan Youngman — Thanks for your support. I was actually thinking about creating a form to allow developers post news and announcements about their projects, so I can relay them to the community. I agree that would be useful.
Thanks again you all for your feedback. It is really helpful!