Today I made a change to the sidebar here at the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and while it may not seem important, I’ll take a minute to explain it.
One of the disadvantages of the blog format is that the linear format means that when blog posts move off the front of the page, they tend to move off of people’s radar. This sometimes cut short what could be a lively discussion. A good example is the Jerry Jenkins post which has 13 comments and counting, but isn’t very visible. Tom Dunn emailed me today to point out that the “Recently Commented” blog on the sidebar provides a way to remedy that situation. He says:
It was just a couple of weeks ago that I noticed the “recently commented” box in the YAR sidebar. I think that this should be made more prominent somehow…
Now that I know the “recently commented” box is there, that is usually the first place I go because I like to see what people are discussing. I think this is really what is at the heart of YAR, people interacting with each other….even if it is via the internet.
Thanks for the suggestion, Tom. Hopefully you all will take advantage of the newly placed “Recent Comments” box and keep these discussions alive!
This is a great idea. It saves me a lot of scrolling to get down to that point. I always check there after I check to see if there are new posts. Way to go Tom and Tim.
Good plan. I’d been checking “recently commented” regularly myself, but it’s nice to see other people taking an interest in that, too.
I’ve known the same thing to happen on individuals’ blogs, where unfortunately the software doesn’t allow for adjustment like this setup does.
Any ideas what version of Safari or IE I should use to be able to vote on the poll? I’m using Safari 1.03. It does wonky things with the buttons on several sites I frequent. I’m getting a new computer in the next few months, though, and it should have the latest versions.
Today, when I click on the main blog, there is nothing in the right-hand column where the links to recent post, recently commented and blog authors was before. However, it appears when I look at a single post’s page.
Skylark, I couldn’t reproduce the error you describe, so either it was fixed before I looked at the page again or it has something to do with the browser your using. If you continue to not see the right column, you can email me at nafziger@gmail.com
I’d also recommend using the RSS feeds as an easy way to keep up with YAR (both posts and comments). There are lots of RSS readers out there – personally, I use bloglines, which is free and web-based.