Related Posts in Feeds are Clutter?
There’s an interesting post over at JohnTP.com pondering if adding related posts to feeds is considered clutter. He also has a poll up. (Go vote!).
As the author of some “Add Related Posts to Feed” WordPress plugins, you can imagine that this caught my eye. I, personally (and obviously) think this sort of thing is generally a good idea.
My hope is that it gives new subscribers something to explore, a way to learn about other articles. In other words, perhaps it makes a site a bit “stickier.” I theorize that subscribers that have been around for a while will just ignore it — just like they do ads.
Digression: I am not a big fan of monetizing feeds. Want to sell ads? Sweet! For me, that means hoping the folks the show up via searches will help subsidize things a bit. It just doesn’t seem right to push ads on the folks who want to read my stuff daily though. Perhaps I’m overly naive?
But I digress… back on topic:
Can it get out of hand? Sure. It is all too easy to toss everything and the kitchen sink at the tail end of each article in a feed. I swear, some guys have way more “stuff” after the article than they do in the article itself. Yuck. In that situation, related posts just doesn’t buy anything. They’ll never be seen. The reader tuned them out along with all the other gunk.
Say, did you notice my related posts plugins don’t do anything if the feed is sending excerpts? Heh, I’ll spare you my rant on excerpts for another day…
All that is lead up to this question: What do you think about Related Posts in the feed?
Those that subscribe here have seen ‘em for a few weeks now. I think my avg. uniques/day has gone up a small bit (I don’t dare attempt to quantify that on just a couple weeks sample.) Doesn’t seem to be cheezing any one off…
Leave a comment here or over on the JohnTP article (and do be sure to read the comments already there). I’d really like some feedback!
First Release: Visualize Advanced Features
This very simple little WordPress plugin shows the Advanced Toolbar button in your WordPress 2.1x WYSIWYG Post Editor. No more fumbling around for the correct hotkey to show these “hidden” buttons. Just click the button (see red circled image below).
If you use the wysiwyg editor, you’ll want to give this a try. I think you’ll be pleased.
Update: September 23, 2007 — it appears that this functionality is now native in the upcoming WordPress 2.3. As such, upgraders to that version won’t want this.
Big shout to Mark Steel for the code.
License:
- GPL License. Use it, build from it — ideally, credit me as the idea guy with a link back to here. Say nice things about Mark too.
Instructions:
- Download it from my
downloads pageWordPress plugins page - Unzip it
- FTP/scp/carrier pigeon it to your server, put it in the plugins directory
- Login to WordPress, activate it.
Future:
- Open to ideas… perhaps research TinyMCE and see if there are other interesting buttons to show?
History
- 11.Feb.2007 – First Discussed (no formal release)
- 28.Feb.2007 – Release .02 – Uses Mark Steel‘s simple yet elegant code.
- 18.Mar.2007 – Release .03 – Changed to GPL license, moved hosting to wp-plugins.net
[Released with Mark's permission]
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