Interviews | The Reader Appreciation Project

Ronald Huereca Interview

04. May, 2010 20 Comments

Today we are going to go through an exclusive interview with the creator of the famous Ajax Edit Comments. We are going to interview one of the only guys in online history who went from stardom to completely offline, and back again, to even more attention than before. He achieved this through releasing and upgrading the Ajax Edit Comments to the new paid model and by releasing the hot new book WordPress & Ajax.

Ronald Huereca & Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress & owner of Automattic

That’s right, we are going to be interviewing Ronald Huereca, one of the previous co-founders of RA Project. Ronald also runs Ronalfy. Buckle up: Ronald allowed me to interview him in his only and most thorough interview in history. Right here at RA Project. We are going to be covering his adventures leading him to programming, to the now public suicide attempts, to his new plugin and book that is causing a storm in the online world.

You can browse through any part of the interview by using the navigation links on the top or bottom of any parts of this interview. You can also leave a comment at any time on any part right away.

Interviews

Interview: Jeff from Jeffro 2pt0, community, interaction, and comments

09. Nov, 2007 4 Comments

Hello everyone. Today Iâ€™ll be interviewing the creator of Jeffro2pt0, Jeff. Jeffro 2pt0 is a site that revolves around talking about the emergence of the newer web and blog applications, and related technologies. Jeffro 2pt0 is an increasingly popular site which blends in a lot of interactive elements to show readers what other readers are doing on and around the site.

Because of the different initiatives Jeff is taking around the site, it is becoming more and more important to keep the readerâ€™s level of comfort in mind. Jeff has also been a supported of RA Project for a while now. So far, Jeffro 2pt0 seems to be doing well in keeping up with what the readers want, in terms of the readers having enough tools to interact with Jeff and one another around the site. I decided to interview Jeff as he seems to be good at making sure that the things he rolls out on his site are well planned, or at least are under control, which can affect reader appreciation a lot in my view.

One of the things you may notice is that the questions can sometimes be very specific and long, or a bit general and short. This style of mine allows for more input and output from generally the person asking the question and mainly the person explaining the things as an answer.

Interview with Jeffro2pto – Readers, comments, interactions, and beyond

Interview: Vivien from Inspiration Bit, on inspirations for reader appreciation

03. Oct, 2007 1 Comment

Picture of Vivien from Inspiration Bit Vivien runs the popular site Inspiration Bit from Canada. Vivien also runs her own company VG Universe. Since starting Inspiration Bit in December of 2006, Vivien has been able to convert her new site to an increasingly popular destination for people who want to learn more about different kinds and techniques of inspiration for different things.

Vivien was one of the original supporters of RA Project since the opening day. You can find Vivien being mentioned regularly on this site as she is not only a good friend of RA Project but a good friend of the RA Project authors including myself.

Because of the way Vivien runs her site and the way she appreciates others online, I asked Vivien if she could answer a few questions related to reader appreciation. I am grateful that Vivien agreed. Here are 9 questions I asked Vivien, and the answers that she contributed to everyone including RA Project and the blogosphere. The person “Bes” asking the questions in this interview is me, by the way. But you already knew that, right?

Interview with Vivien – 9 questions & answers regarding inspiration, reader appreciation and more

Interview: Shawn Blanc on Community and Disabling Comments

24. Sep, 2007 5 Comments

Shawn Blanc is a full-time intercessory missionary, on top of being a husband, blogger, musician, and a host of other talents. He runs two blogs: The Fight Spot and ShawnBlanc.net.

Shawn has been very successful on building a community of readers on The Fight Spot, so it came as a surprise to me when he launched another blog (ShawnBlanc.net) with comments disabled. Shawn was gracious enough to be interviewed by me and to answer some of my questions about community and disabling comments.

Listed below are ten brief questions regarding community and comments on blogs.

1. Ronald Huereca: You have a very active community on your website The Fight Spot. What is the difference in a community formed around The Fight Spot when compared to your other site ShawnBlanc.net?

Shawn Blanc: For sure the obvious difference is the comments. TFS (The Fight Spot) has comments enabled, while shawnblanc.net does not. Those are two very purposeful decisions I’ve made as to how I view the two sites.

I think of The Fight Spot like a Bible study small group. It’s a safe place for folks to ask questions and state their opinions and give feedback. Sometimes someone just wants to say “thanks for that article”, while other times I’ll get really deep and thought out questions. I’ve set myself up as the Bible Study Leader, and so most of the community reads The Fight Spot to get teachings, encouragement and pastoring.

On the other hand, the community around Shawnblanc.net is quite different indeed. For one, it is a completely different demographic of readers — consisting primarily of Mac savvy web and design geeks. Since comments are not a feature of the site, all the feedback I get comes through direct email or trackbacks.

I think the best way to describe the community around Shawnblanc.net is a bunch of peers hanging out giving each-other high-fives. But really, this describes the vast majority of the Mac Savvy design community in general. My site is just one more URL that has come to the party … so to say.

Ultimately, your site will attract like minded folks. The Fight Spot has a strong community of Christians going after God, and Shawnblanc.net has a strong community of geeks who like gadgets. For me, instead of developing one blog that blended the two (which is what I tried to do for a while on TFS) it is easier and more fun to have two sites devoted to each.

One more thing I’ll add, it was a whole lot easier to build the readership base on Shawnblanc.net than it was on TFS. What took me 18 months on TFS has taken me 7 weeks on shawnblanc.net. Read more…

Interviews

Interview: Doug Parent, the “Adult MySpace” owner

16. Sep, 2007 7 Comments

Image of Doug Parent, interviewed on RA Project It’s a porn site. It’s a social networking site. It’s an adult community site. It’s Doug Parent’s creation. Doug Parent is the owner and creator of what he and many others call the “Adult MySpace.” I had the pleasure of talking to and interviewing Doug via e-mail, regarding the topic of Reader Appreciation.

Doug Parent left a comment on my personal site last month, and that got me thinking: Dougs’ comment was nice, yet his site was an adult site that many people would object to. How could Doug fit into the concept of reader appreciation? Should Doug be appreciated based on the site he owned?

Doug was kind enough to answer the questions I had for him. Below is the brief interview that took place between me and Doug. Please keep in mind that you may think Doug’s link below is not safe for work nor children.