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Currently the only way to navigate from a main site to its blog is from a link hidden all the way at the bottom of the page:

Let's play the 'Where's blog' game

and that's it. To a new user, or the public it's not very easy to see that there's an actual blog tied to the site, let alone any feed of recent blog posts. I have two major suggestions to add to each site that has established its own blog.

1. Move the blog link to the very top

review chat meta help

Most sites that I've visited, and has a blog, has a link to it directly above. Please let's do the same.

2. Advertise recent/popular posts on the side of the site

Stack Overflow already does this with Careers 2.0:

amazing jobs

It has direct links to job listings. I propose we do the same thing only with the blogs. It'll link recent and most popular posts on the side of the site to catch the attention of site users and public visitors.

Can we please give a little more love to the promotion of our site blogs?

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  • having the blog link on top, iirc when there was a new post, was the default behaviour at some point, wasn't it?
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 15:29
  • 4
    Doesn't 2 already happen in the "Community bulletin" section?
    – Anthony Grist
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 15:29
  • @AnthonyGrist only when a new blog post is posted and isn't permanently there. Since most sites don't blog every day or even every week, it's often missed. I'd like to have something more consistently there.
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 15:32
  • The links in the header serve the primary purpose of the site, namely, asking and answering questions. The blogs are nice, but they are tangential to the focus. I don't want the extra clutter.
    – George Cummins
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 15:33
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    @GeorgeCummins then, by your criteria, the chat link shouldn't be there.
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 15:35
  • I think it serves as well, when it is used to help a user understand a problem that can't be fully developed in comments. Admittedly it is the least-used link for me, but it serves a minor purpose. EDIT: TBH, I'd be okay with removing it, too. ;)
    – George Cummins
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 15:36
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    @JourneymanGeek Yes, it was. It even had a flashy "new" badge in red next to it. They ditched it in favor of moving it to the community bulletin AFAIR.
    – slhck
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 15:36
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    FWIW, the length of time a new blog post is displayed in the bulletin can be adjusted. See: meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3780/…
    – Shog9
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 16:19
  • Yes, please, and thanks. The way things stand right now, the blog might as well not exist. I've been a member on this site for years but only discovered that there was a blog relatively recently.
    – Ben Richards
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 17:31
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    @Shog9 and Kronos - users who aren't logged in (i.e. those who may be most interested in general-audience blog posts!) don't even see the community bulletin board. Anonymous users may literally have no idea the blog exists.
    – nhinkle
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 17:43
  • I had made a more general feature request regarding the visibility of the Community Bulletin (because blogs/featured posts were no longer as visible). Feel free to borrow any ideas from there.
    – Manishearth
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 17:49
  • That's funny, I wasn't even aware there was a blog until reading this post and I've been a member for 8 months...
    – Xarcell
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 18:37
  • @Xarcell that's the problem that I'm trying to solve.
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 19:19
  • @nhinkle I would like to make the link at least visible to the public, if not these "announcements" as well.
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 19:19
  • +1, the blog could do with some more publicity. As @Xarcell said, many of us either don't know it or are simply vaguely aware of its existence and never visit.
    – terdon
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 19:20

2 Answers 2

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4

You can always make a Community Promotion Ad, which will periodically show up on the site sidebar. Programmers.SE is already doing this and is getting a few extra views from it.

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  • 4
    That's more of a work around than it is a solution.
    – Zane
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 16:45
  • @Zane That depends on what you consider to be a solution. To me, if this is effective enough to get more views for the blog, than it is a solution.
    – Dynamic
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 18:49
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    I would consider a solution to OPs question for the site to make a change to increase the visibility of it's blog section.
    – Zane
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 19:02
  • @Zane I'm looking to have a more permanent/public solution
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 19:21
4

Looks like there's a lot of support for making the blog more visible.

The one thing I'd point out is the low frequency of the posting on the blog. There was a span of over two months in between the last two posts. For a blog, that's a long time. To put it in perspective, it's even longer than the time in between posts at Coding Horror.

This might backfire. You have a nice prominent link to the blog, and hence more people will check it out, but nearly all of the time, there won't be a new post there. People will check it less, and then it will just be clutter.

So, I'd recommend a couple of options:

  • Notify the user of a new blog post in the StackExchange dropdown when they visit that site, or
  • Add the link where you suggested, but also put something like a "new!" box next to it when there's a new post.

That way people won't be checking all the time only to see the same aging post.

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  • 1
    We're looking to improve our time between blog posts, but part of the problem is that nobody k ows about it, which makes it difficult to recruit new bloggers.
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jun 8, 2013 at 0:46
  • +1 I really like your first suggestion of adding blog posts to the notifier box (but only as long as blog posts are very infrequent).
    – Ben Lee
    Commented Jun 13, 2013 at 21:11

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