The Reader Appreciation Project

You all know by now how important is to give your readers good tips, so they stay motivated to subscribe and read your blog regularly.

But do you know what’s even more important than giving your readers useful tips?

Giving them in form of lists.

If you believe what I’ve written so far, that’s OK, your readers probably love you already. But doesn’t this blogging world start to look like a cookbook? Take two eggs, scramble them on a plate, add some salt and pepper, some small cut bell peppers, throw everything in a hot pan, wait one minute, turn on the other side, wait another minute, put everything on a plate, decorate with parsley, eat, enjoy.

Although there are great recipe books available for almost everybody, some of us are lousy cooks. Or maybe we are good, but the ingredients we use aren’t always that fresh. Or our timing is not exactly the right one: 30 seconds more on the fire can change the taste of the food we make.

Do you see my point? Why writing in lists, when the outcome would be unique anyway? Why respecting the cooking recipe, if I think my food could have a better taste if I cook by inspiration? Do you think the guests you invite for dinner care more about your cookbook rather than about the result, the food itself? If I were a cooking expert, supposed to produce the same outcome each time I combine the same ingredients, that would make a sense. If you go to a restaurant and order a Caesar salad, each time you expect to get the same combination of foods which we use to call Caesar salad.

But cooking by the book when nobody expects that can be a little frustrating, don’t you think so? Having an infinity of blank pages waiting for me to fill them in could be a challenge for creativity and not for making more and more lists. Why limit myself to a given frame, when I feel like crossing the boundaries? Only because I assume that readers cannot focus enough to read a whole page which is not broken into bullet points?

I’m smarter than that and I’m sure my readers are smarter, too.

What do you think about lists?

Running low on ideas seems to be an issue most of the bloggers face every now and then. At least, this is how I explain myself the numerous posts on this topic I come across every day. Is this a concern that readers would be disappointed if they don’t find you posting with your usual frequency? Or is it maybe a concern that they’d go away and never ever come back to read your blog again? Or maybe that’s just their ego, not allowing them to just break the routine and skip posting until they have something to say to their readers…

Whatever the reasons, we want to be creative and to live up to the expectations of others. That’s why we need backup plans and strategies. Let’s see some of them:

Pat B. Doyle provids her readers with an impressive list of 23 great ideas for blog posts.

Lisa, from Hit Those Keys tells about counterweighs to beat Inertia and produce “New Work”.

Spinebreakers publish an audio interview with an author who has never experienced writer’s block. It seems that having multiple jobs ongoing at the same time is key for him to never have this problem.

Finally, this is how Rudyard Kipling explains the six words which prevent writer’s block.

What’s your way? Do you want to get rid of your writer’s block when it comes, or you are just living it to the full and stop posting for a while?

Ajax Edit Comments has a new home at AjaxEditComments.com.

This weekend I released an update to two of my plugins hosted here.

Ajax Edit Comments

The first update was for Ajax Edit Comments. Oliver from the cforms-ii plugin approached me and asked if I was interested in making our plugins compatible.

Being a huge fan of cforms, I was thrilled with the opportunity and the willingness of the cforms author to assist in compatibility. After hashing some e-mails back and forth, we finally got our plugins to work with each other.

Another feature added to Ajax Edit Comments was the automatic deletion of security keys for every 100 comments. RT Cunningham expressed his frustration with an ever-growing database filled with security keys. After discussing ideas, we agreed that every 100 comments was a good place to delete the comments. In the future I may make this an option that a user can configure, but I haven’t had much demand for it, so we’ll see.

As a side note, Ajax Edit Comments is approaching the 50,000 download mark. It’s an incredible milestone, and one I’d like to thank you all for. So, thanks for your support of this plugin in the form of translations, links, word-of-mouth, donations, and just plain using it. I’m still impressed when I comment on a random blog and it has the plugin installed.

WP-Grins Lite

WP-Grins, written by Alex King, was ported over by me to the jQuery library. For those not familiar with jQuery, it’s a far less bandwidth-intensive library compared to Prototype. The end result was WP-Grins Lite.

Several commenters chimed in with feedback, and so far the results have been very positive. Alex King informed me that he planned to port all his plugins over to jQuery, and I would be grateful if he released WP-Grins Lite as his official version.

The update I released for this plugin resolved some WP 2.6 (curse you!) issues, and fixed a rather peculiar bug on a blog where it was loading the JavaScript four times (weird).

So What’s Next?

As far as programming goes, I’m starting to take more client work, which is nice, but means I have less time to work on side projects such as the two listed above.

I am looking forward to WordPress 2.7 and the comment API. For the first time, users could have comment management at the desktop or mobile level. I will be following this closely, and who knows, you might see something from me here.

Conclusion

For all who have downloaded, or used either of the above plugins directly or indirectly, thank you. Thank you for putting up with me, and for helping me make better plugins.

When I started blogging, it was all about giving. Giving, giving, and more giving.

Writing for free, programming for free, talking, e-mailing, more blogging, more writing, and soon I got over my head.

Everybody is busy in their own way. Priorities shift constantly, and interests change.

One thing I’ve struggled with lately is how to keep on going. My personal situation has changed since I bailed out a friend who was kicked out of his apartment (long story). I’ve met a nice lady friend. I used to use blogging and programming to pass the time, now I have to make the time.

It’s a struggle, and one that I’m sure we all face. Some of us have kids. Most of us have day jobs. Some of us have school. And some have all three and then some. Yet we still find the time to make it online and share with the world our thoughts and knowledge.

Just this week I had to tell a guy who requested CSS customization on Ajax Edit Comments that I wasn’t able to help him unless I billed him my hourly rate. I felt bad about it, but there wasn’t much I could do. I had a paying client I had to finish a job for, and the custom work would have competed with that.

Andrew Rickmann also raised a thought-provoking issue. If someone had a site you didn’t particularly agree with, would you still help? So not only is our time being competed for, our ideals are as well.

My question to you is, how much are you willing to give away before it’s too much for you to handle? If you do client work, how do you determine what work should be paid for, versus not?

Thank you for reading.