Improve Your Blog Functionality

October 26th, 2009 | Blog Tips, Blogging, Comments, Plugins

comments You can improve your blog functionality in order to improve your traffic, readership and the number of people that comment on your blog posts. When you improve your blog functionality, it can have a profound impact on the capabilities of your blog. Here are some tips to improve your blog functionality by making small tweaks and improvements to how your blog works.

Improve Your Blog Tip #1 – Install a plugin to track top commenters.

One way that you can reward the readers that are participating in your blog as well as to encourage other people to get involved is to install a plugin for top commenters, which works for WordPress blogs. This is going to put a little box on your sidebar with the names and the links to the commentors that have had the most participation in your blogs to give them a little big of recognition.

Improve Your Blog Tip #2 – Customize the sidebar on your blog pages.

When did you last make any modifications to your sidebar? The chances are, the people who regularly read your blog will have grown accustomed to what is already there, and they probably completely tune your sidebar content out as a result. From time to time, it may benefit you significantly to change things up just a bit, adding new features or new content to your sidebar.

Improve Your Blog Tip #3 – Separate your trackbacks from your comments.

Most blogs are displaying their pingbacks and their trackbacks along with comments from the blog’s readers. They may be helpful in showing your readers that other people find your content to be valuable but they can also actually get in the way, interfering with conversations that are going on throughout your comments section. There is a simple way to separate these things in WordPress, so if you use WordPress, make sure to separate your trackbacks and your pingbacks from your regular blog comments.

Improve Your Blog Tip #4 – Adjust and improve the about page of your blog.

Some of the people that read your blog are going to want to visit your About page so that they can find out more information about you. When was the last time that you took the time and made the effort to update this page? Make sure that you are taking a look at how effective it really is when it comes to communicating with your readers.

Improve Your Blog Tip #5 – Add a sitemap to your blog website.

Users can really benefit when you have a sitemap available to them. WordPress users can make use of a sitemap generator plugin that allows a sitemap page to be designed that lists out all blog posts and pages for easy access.

Photo Credits: geishaboy500

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