Five Months of Reader Appreciation
14. Aug, 2007 
6 Comments - Leave your comment
The Reader Appreciation Project was launched a little less than five months ago. A lot has happened in these five months and I’m personally looking forward to our six month anniversary. A lot has happened since the last time I laid out our stats and site news, so please bear with me.
The RA Project Re-Design Launched
The new RAPROJECT theme was launched a few weeks ago to mostly positive criticism. Any negativity was quickly silenced with clubs and malice. But seriously, the design has been extremely well received and I’d like to thank all the readers and authors for adjusting rather quickly to what I considered a radical change (for the better, I hope).
Features you’ll see on the new design on our main page include a Reader Appreciation Spotlight, and also a feature called ‘From the Vault’ which features an old post of ours resurrected from the archives.
One other thing worth noting is our new author pages, downloads in the footer and sidebar, and recent posts scattered just about everywhere. If you haven’t seen our design and are browsing from the feed reader, please take a moment and check out the new design.
RA Project Badge
The Reader Appreciation Project is planning on releasing its own badge sometime in the near future. We’re hoping to either have a badge that anybody can download and place on their site, or have a badge as kind of an award that we give to bloggers we feel appreciate their readers.
Any feedback on the badge is very much appreciated, especially since we have yet to work out how we’re going to give the badge out, or what text will be on the badge itself. I expect the badge to be about 100 pixels in width and 200 pixels in height. If you have any ideas of some kind of slogan or phrase that can go on it, please respond in the comments.
Calling on Guest Contributors
This blog is truly all about the readers, and we’re hoping that some of our readers might be willing to do a guest spot on the project. As far as incentives, you’ll get a link back, a spot in our sidebar, and a dedicated author page where readers can look up your details.
If you are interested, please send an e-mail via our contact form.
RA Project MyBlogLog Community
Bes helped start the Reader Appreciation Project MyBlogLog Community. All the authors are there, so please join us in this new community.
Posting Schedule
The posting schedule is still Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. To stay up to speed on the project, please subscribe. If you’d like to contribute a guest post or perhaps join us as an author, please contact us and review our contribution policy.
Posts/Comment/Feed Stats
There are currently 145 posts, and 1,523 comments. As of today, we have 67 feed subscribers. Why not make it more?
Plugin Stats
- WP Ajax Edit Comments currently has 7,199 downloads.
- WP Do Nothing currently has 109 downloads (I still can’t believe people download it).
- WP Categories and Posts currently has 597 downloads.
- WP From the Vault currently has 4 downloads.
Technorati Stats
RA Project is currently ranked 12,757 with 877 incoming links. Our blog authority is 343.
If you feel so obliged, please add RA Project to your Technorati favorites.
Conclusion
A lot has happened in a few months. A redesign has launched, a new MyBlogLog community is live, numerous updates to Ajax Edit Comments have been released, and numerous articles have been published.
Thank you all for being our readers, and thank you very much for reading.
Other RA Project Articles
Author Info
Have you considered a watermark, rather than a badge?
Hi Andrew.
Hmmm, do you mean watermark on an image that we give out, allowing others to put a watermark on images to support the Reader Appreciation Projects, or something else?
Sorry, I mean a watermark that could sit unobtrusively behind text, or form part of the design of a comments section of a site, possibly a background image to the comment field.
It is just a general thought really that there are alternatives to badges, or possibly options in addition, that can be integrated a little better.
Congrats on the accomplishments achieved thus far. It looks like this blog and it’s authors have come up with a winning formula. It’s nice to see so many people are commenting on your site and most of the articles really get the reader to think.
@Andrew,
That’s a good idea for a comment area watermark. I never would have thought of something like that, but it’s very unique. I personally haven’t seen something like that before.
We’ll definitely get a badge, it’s just now a question of what the wordage will be and how we’ll give it out. We could give it out the way Liz Strass gives out her badges, or allow them to be freely downloaded and put on a website as a pledge to a reader.
@Jeffro2pt0,
Yes, activity has definitely gone up in the past few months thanks to readers/commenters such as yourself. Thank you.