Building a Better Blog

Most of you who read my blog, are bloggers yourselves. So we’re all interested in improving our blogs — doing more with them and making sure they are worth maintaining.

I thought the tips given by Abraham Piper in a guest post at Between Two Worlds, would be helpful to share. He approaches blogging as a service for our readers, and I thought that approach was helpful.

Here’s his post title and link. Let me know what you think.

12 Ways to Improve Your Blog by Serving Your Readers: What I Didn’t Say at Band of Bloggers (HT: Shane Vander Hart)

Following Comments with Co.mments

From time to time, I like to post blogging tips. Today is one of those times 🙂 .

If you are like me, every once in a while you put your toe into the discussion area beneath a blog post. And yes, at times I jump in with both feet. Now commenting can be fun—and with fundamentalists, sometimes it’s outright scary! Hey I’m a Calvinist so debating shouldn’t scare me, but it can and does zap me of energy and will power, every once in a while.

So if I happen to forget about some discussion I was having, a day or two could go by without me responding to a response to my comment. Or I may have enjoyed reading the discussion and wanted to follow it, but with the hustle and bustle of life, I’ve just simply forgot about it. Or worse, I can’t remember where I said that, or what it was that I was reading.

I’ve been looking for a tool to help with this problem for some time. I know with certain blog types, I can subscribe to the comments of a particular post. but I wanted all my current conversations in one place.

Well recently, I stumbled across Co.mments. And I found my solution!

Co.mments lets you easily track conversations on just about any blog. You can add a button to your browser toolbar, and just click “Track co.mments” when you are on a post you want to track. It doesn’t seem to work with forums as well, but it works great with blogs.

You receive email updates with the comment(s) already in the email. Plus there is an option from within the email to remove the conversation from your tracking page. The only drawback is that you will always get an email with all the comments that were there before you started tracking new comments. Perhaps they’ll fix that ultimately. It’s still a great tool, regardless.

So check it out. Start tracking co.mments today!

The Best of Bob's Blog: A Year in Review 2007

Better late then never! Its February 1st, 2008 before I’m reviewing 2007. In my defense, we’ve already had 2 family-wide illness cycles since January 1!

Since I blog on so many different topics, weeding down my choices to 10 is difficult. So I’ll add a few honorable mentions, and then add in some favorites and other assorted distinctions for some other posts. This is fun for me, but it also can make some of my readers aware of older posts around here that might be worth checking out.

Without further ado, let’s begin, in reverse order.

Casting Crowns & MercyMe: A Look at Motivations
This post explores the motivations behind 2 of my favorite (and also two of the most popular) CCM groups.

Thinking God’s Thoughts on Abortion
This post explores why we shouldn’t relativize the abortion debate.
  

Was Sin a Mistake??
Thoughts on the Trinity, sin, and creation.
  

Holding on to the Cultural Norms of a Bygone Era: A Look at Fundamentalism’s “No-Pants-on-Women” Oddity
An introduction to one of fundamentalism’s strangest debates.

My 219 Epiphany
My journey with regards to understanding perseverance of the saints, and how Scripture doesn’t teach a simplistic “once saved, always saved” eternal security idea.

Thoughts on the Battle of Jericho
One of my better devotional posts.
  

Calvinism: A Man-Made Philosophy??
This post addresses the common criticism that Calvinism is just a logical system of thought, and not really Biblical.

Morality, Music and the Bible
What Scripture does and doesn’t say about music and morality (check out the comments for a heated debate over the appropriateness of contemporary music for worship).

Powerful Preaching? “” A Case Study
An important post contrasting moralistic and Christ-centered preaching.
  

The “Sinner’s Prayer” Problem
Why the “sinner’s prayer” idea is really a problem.
  

These posts deserve to be in the top 10, but two others are worthy of honorable mention.

Before you go, let me point out some assorted favorites, facts, and other interesting posts worth at least a mention here:

Comments, Kind and Otherwise

I suppose my blog is controversial enough to attract extra attention. Unlike some blogs, the comments around here aren’t limited to props from my group of online friends. You don’t have to look far to find debates and places where my own friends disagree with me, too. And then there are those occasional zingers.

Recently, I received all 4 kinds of comments I typically receive, and so I thought I’d highlight them in this post.

First, there are on-target comments which agree with my post. The first 3 comments under my recent “Big If” post stand as examples. 2 of the 3 are from blogging friends, the third is from a new commenter.

Second, there are opposing-view comments. These usually are on-target to the post/question at hand. And I welcome them. They can challenge me to defend my views. And the best ones have a humility of spirit which begs me to respond. I try to respond to most of them. I haven’t yet responded to today’s example under my recent “Oxygenating your Spiritual Life” post. Steve, I’ll respond soon.

Third, there are the drive-bys. Zingers. Gotchas. I’m not sure what to call them. Many of them seem to prove my point about fundamentalists. They are an example of harsh, mean spirited, judmentalism. And for some odd reason, these comments almost always display misspellings and blatant grammatical errors. What is it with hyper-fundamentalists and an inability to type?

Anyway, I recently got 3 comments registered under 3 different emails (so I am assuming they represent 3 different people), which perfectly embody this kind of comment. Since this exchange is so interesting, let me share their comments (with no editing) here:

DLM — You were never a true fundamentalis. 1 John 2:19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. If you truly embrass to Word of God and Jesus as your Saviour you would want nothing else. Unless you desire to consume it upon your own lust.

Pastor sm — Amen Brother it about time somebody with a spine logged in on the sorry excuse for a christian site.

Reggie — They wont leave the post up very long. They do not desire the truth theywould rather have their lascivious life style. Jude 1:4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

What am I to do with comments like that? How are they even helpful? It almost seems like they are slapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves on how they put me in my place! If you’re interested you can read my response here. I don’t know if I’ll get a follow up response from them or not.

After dealing with comments like that, it’s so nice to read the final kind of comments. These are the general testimonial “Thank-you” comments. They sometime come via email only, but they usually encourage me to keep blogging on fundamentalism. Sometimes they come from those who have left the movement, other times from those within who are reforming.

Today I received a wonderful comment under my About page. It’s comments like these that keep me going. Thankfully, I’ve received scores of responses like this in one form or another over the years. (I need to go back and count, one of these days.)

I forgot to mention the spam comments. With WordPress, it’s rare that one squeaks through. What’s it up to now? Something like 45,000 spam comments on my blog alone! Crazy. You can see the number on my sidebar, down toward the bottom.

Oh, and one more thing. I regret to tell you that sometimes I am not so prompt at responding to comments. I try, but sometimes the opposing position comments require a bit of work to respond. And sometimes I can’t tell if the comment is worth responding to or not. As a general rule I try to respond. Please keep in mind my commenting policy, however. And give another comment if I haven’t responded yet. That will remind me and let me know you do wish to hear a response!

That’s it, I’ve spoken my piece. And whatever comments come, I’ll have to deal with them. Oh the joys of blogging! But hey, its usually lots of fun!

A New Old Look

Is the sixth time the charm? I don’t know but this is the 6th blog theme I’ve had for my blog. I don’t know if anyone remembers the red and tan original Blogger blog. Then we had an olive 2.0, an orange 3.0, then a very brief blue and green 4.0, and recently we’ve been all blue. (See below for samples of these previous looks.)

I think I’ve finally hit on the absolute best theme, and it’s been under my nose all along! I picked this theme for my KJV Only Debate Resource Center blog, and so I’ve shied away from using it for my main blog. But when I noticed that my blogging pal John Chitty recently updated his theme, it got me thinking. I checked out the themes again, and with WordPress’ new theme previewer, I found it easy to sample my options.

When I tested my idea of resurrecting my first header image (from 2.0), I was hooked. That hall with the stone arches (from St. Johns College at Cambridge) has always epitomized a “Reformed” feel to me. And the hallway leads you deeper in (semper Reformanda). There are many of you who haven’t seen this picture, so I hope you’ll give your impressions of it.

All along I’ve been looking for something green (not olive!). And I’ve finally found it. It has numbered comments with links, to boot. Plus it handles pictures and quotes well — no small feat compared to other popular WordPress blog themes. So Misty Look (the name of the theme), it is.

It didn’t take too much work to tweak my sidebar a bit, and rearrange my pages. But I couldn’t be happier with almost everything about this theme. I probably won’t change my KJVO blog either, since it is so rarely visited (in comparison to Fundamentally Reformed) and since it really isn’t a normal blog where I post all the time. What makes this really crazy is the fact that I’ve been maintaining another blog (of sorts) for my grandfather, and for that one I used Misty Look, too! That blog is designed more like a web page, which promotes some paddles he is selling to earn money for a missions’ cause.

Anyways, this new old look appeals to me. What say ye? If I can ever edit the older posts to make the colors consistent, I’ll probably be happy for a long time. But I can’t say a new and perfect edition of this blog won’t ever appear. 7.0 would only come if WordPress.com gives us a fantastic new theme. We’ll see.

UPDATE: For posterity’s sake, I’ve included near screen shots of the 5 previous designs for this blog:

1.0

For this first one, it had a tan instead of gray background, and was a blogger-template hack. (Picture obtained from themes.wordpress.net)

2.0 3.0 4.0

5.0

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: I’ve decided to also include in this old post, the version 6 and 7 screenshots. The current version of the blog is also included as version 8. –4/24/2010

6.0 7.0 8.0