Wordpress blog

[Wilbefast]

Hi guys, you probably remember a little while ago I was asking about how to start a blog. Well, I've got it all set up and so on, along with a corresponding modDB account. It was suggested that I make a thread here to let people know when I've done a post, which seems like a good enough justification for a little shameless self-advertising:

http://wilbefast.wordpress.com
http://www.moddb.com/members/wilbefast

Updates are once a week on Wednesday (one just went up): please let me know what you think of the content, variety, presentation, timing, etc, etc. I ask because I'm not doing very well, despite all the publicity I got from the Wolfire blog post: is it just a matter of hanging in there, or am I doing something wrong?
I'm measuring success in comments by the way, I'm getting about 15 and 10 hits a day on Wordpress and ModDB respectively, but I'm not really sure if that's okay or really bad - I mean, most probably go there by accident

Any advice from experienced blogger would be very welcome

[Endoperez]

I didn't know the blog updates on Wednesdays...

I might give the abomination a try when I have time, perhaps next weekend.

[Jeff]

Two small tips:

1) I highly recommend making videos of your games on YouTube. That will let people check them out a lot easier. YouTube can drive quite a bit of traffic.

2) I would recommend installing Disqus, especially if you want more comments. It is much better for encouraging discussion than Wordpress' flat comment system and since it is centralized, I think people are more willing to comment using it, since it tracks their comments in one location.

[Wilbefast]

What annoys me about Wordpress comments is that they need to be authorised, which takes the impetus out of discussion a just tad. I hadn't actually considered Disqus, but I think it's a great idea. Not entirely sure how though... I do everything in the browser, being a noob and all...

Youtube videos are another good idea - still struggling to get recording and video-editing software to work on Ubuntu ("Record my Desktop" sound doesn't work)

[tokage]

Maybe you should start to link to other blogs from your blog. The start of the morality thread would have made a good link with a teaser quote and your own short oppinion on the topic and maybe you get traffic from a track back (not really sure how to set those up, though). As I understand it blogs live a great deal of linking to each other.

[Blorx]

Oo! Oo! You could link to me!

Yeah, in all seriousness, I have nothing interesting up just yet. Working on learning 6502 Assembler language and I'll probably blog about that a few times before I have anything solid to put up.

If nothing else, it'd be similar in topic.

[Wilbefast]

Maybe you should start to link to other blogs from your blog. The start of the morality thread would have made a good link with a teaser quote and your own short oppinion on the topic and maybe you get traffic from a track back (not really sure how to set those up, though). As I understand it blogs live a great deal of linking to each other.

Good idea - I'm pathetic enough to look at who's referring views to me

I think videos are a high priority: I probably wouldn't download a game if there wasn't a video for it, so how can I expect other people to?!

[Armored Wolf]

I think videos are a high priority: I probably wouldn't download a game if there wasn't a video for it, so how can I expect other people to?!

Agreed. No video, no money. If I can't see my game in action (as opposed to a screenshot) I'm not buying said game.

[Wilbefast]

Well, I was on the IRC the other day: tried out 6 different programs without any luck at all. The ones for Ubuntu (RecordMyDesktop, Istanbul, XVidCap) don't redraw the screen, whether I run the games on wine or in Virtualbox, so at best I get a black box or maybe the first frame. There's also no easy way of capturing sound from the soundcard.
The ones for Windows (Fraps, Camtasia, Wegame) won't even run on wine or in Virtualbox For the moment I guess I can ask around, see if people can record stuff for me - bloody annoying though.

As for Disqus... not sure if it's possible to use unless you're running your own server, which I'm not.


Anyway - new blog post today = updated Zombie Run.

[TheBigCheese]

Just as constructive criticism, I would finding more 'interesting' topics for the blog posts. That's not really the word I'm looking for, but the best blogs that I read generally posts things that are novel, innovative and make me think, "Huh. That makes sense".

While the choices/problems posts was interesting, I didn't really have much motivation to finish it through, since I felt like I already understood most of what was said. Either that or the topic itself had already been kicked dry by a lot of discussion I've read elsewhere.

Also, length isn't everything, so I would try to keep text between pictures and heading to a maximum of 3-4 paragraphs, just so it doesn't overwhelm anyone.

Videos are great too, but for your games, I would try to point out things that are new, novel, and exciting that set it apart from any others. For instance, I had no clue what either zombie game you made was, so it would be helpful to have a link to a post with an intro and description for each (see how Wolfire always links the word 'Overgrowth'. Games are great, but if I don't really have any reason that draws me in immediately, I won't read too much further.

I did subscribe with Google Reader, though, so I'll be reading any new posts that pop up.

[Wilbefast]

Hmm... I have been neglecting internal-linking - it feels somehow incestuous

Also the links are already in the side-bar:


The user is always right of course, I'll take extra care in future. I'd like to make myself a custom theme (modify the CSS) but I'm not sure if that's possible either without hosting the site yourself

As for long-windedness - definitely my biggest fault. I'll try to write less next time

[TheBigCheese]

Haha, to tell you the truth, I don't think I even looked at the sidebar. Not sure what that means. Probably because most wordpress/blogspot sidebars just have that useless "archive" widget that shows all the posts ever made.

Here's a good example of something I found via stumbleupon (stumble your non-gamespecific posts if you don't already) that was interesting and engaging to read.

http://mcarthurgfx.com/blog/article/a-l ... -generator

Lots of pictures, clean style, and an interesting topic.

Edit:
So I think I've decided that the problem is the theme colors. The text is washed out by the similarly colored background. It's overwhelming in a way. Maybe a brighter theme if possible, though, as you said, you would need a privately hosted server.

Edit: You might also make sure you capitalize headers and the title. It would make everything look much more professional. (Also the title's a little strange. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue like Wolfire. You might change it, though it's not really crucial)

[Wilbefast]

True, that is very interesting

Now I feel terribly unoriginal. Maybe it's just because I go on like a broken record about all this stuff on the forums. Perhaps with practice I'll learn to be more interesting

Apparently I *can* edit the CSS now... can I replace the background image with something suitably disturbing... yes

Ah, now this should be fun...

edit: Work in progress - just messing around for the moment (saved the html and css and then replaced all the images). Any suggestions apart from brighter colours?



Something I just noticed: the sidebar isn't being coloured in for some reason - the top part of it has been replaced with a sheep, but the rest should be drawing a dark-blue rectangle as in this picture.

I'm going to up the sidebar font big-time

[tokage]

Regarding the sidebar, there is no sidebar in my RSS-feedreader. There are links though.

Also, judging from the WIP you are making it worse. But I'll wait till it's finished...

[TheBigCheese]

True, that is very interesting

Now I feel terribly unoriginal. Maybe it's just because I go on like a broken record about all this stuff on the forums. Perhaps with practice I'll learn to be more interesting

Something you might try would be to to use stumble upon for a few minutes and find something cool, and then make a post about it using quotes from the article and pictures as description.

Something I've learned on the internet is that whatever you come up with, someone's already thought of it first.

Though I do like the mspaint pictures. You might do a blog post on your process (unless you want the blog to be more technical) referencing that Mona Lisa in mspaint video.