Too Many Entries in a Blog

Wendy complained to me. She has a friend relating to Shanghai. She wanted to share some information about Shanghai with him. She thought my blog is a good place to get started, but later, she found out there are just too many contents in the blog, covering too many topics, that she was not able to send a single link (besides the homepage) to her friend.

This is true. Livid once wrote a blog article about this issue:

One day I found a nice blog, so I carefully read all the entries on the home page. I became interested in this blog, but when I read the long list on archive, I found it is a pity that I cannot read the long list of article, since I don’t have enough time to do that. What a pity. I believe it is a pity for the blog owners as well.

Any solutions to this problem? If this is solved, it will greatly increase the page view per user metrics…

No one is able to read all the articles on my archive list, and the category page (example) is too confusing now. That is the reason why I have 1300+ entries, but Pageview per visit is still 1.80. It means in the first six months of this year, on average, people visit 1.80 pages on every visit. That is very low for a website. :-)

Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

14 thoughts on “Too Many Entries in a Blog

  1. For starters, you could stop publishing OOB (out of blogging) posts. I don’t mean to be rude, but just keying in my thoughts.. if your really don’t have much to write on a day or are busy, the just dont post anything (for that day) :)

    Secondly, you could delete/phase-out old/obsolete entries.

  2. Maybe just convince people to give up such an ambition in an era of information explosion. Search whenever there is a need.

  3. I think it’s unrealistic to expect anyone to read all or most of the archived entries on any blog. What the past entries do is it gives readers an idea of what your web site is about. If they like your contents and your style, they will become regular readers via RSS feed or e-mail subscriptions.

    Once they become regular readers, they will read all your posts one entry at a time (I do anyway).

    And past posts should not be deleted because it serves a useful purposes for people searching a particular topic via search engines such as Google. It helps build more information on the net.

  4. 2stly to reduce the “getting lost” entry OOB, fligth details, and this things shall be avoided, its ur blog right, , u may decide what u prefer to write right, but inthis case, same Wendy friend when entering ur blog, usefull info, are lost in a sea of non usefull posts.

    instead to get a the flight scehdule to Qindao in expample is more usefull to find out a website or phoen number in english and/or Chinese, that will give the flight schedule of any available city, much more usefull to the majority if readers, when if u post only Qindao it is usefull to only few or maybe none of the readers.

    as well try to give code to the blogs titles easy to find them on a web search, ie. for Flight Info or Train Info or Subway Info in Shanghai, it could be SH ( which mean Shanghai) TR (Transportation) so it will read SH TR New Subway line 8 open…

    or SH TR new South Railways Station Open or SH TR Flights from/to Bejing.

    therefore will be more easy for the new comer or us reader search for info on Transportation, health, gov offices, or enviroment issue ( this not need never read up to date a blog on enviroment :-) ), or other major topic….

  5. “as well try to give code to the blogs titles easy to find them on a web search, ie. for Flight Info or Train Info or Subway Info in Shanghai, it could be SH ( which mean Shanghai) TR (Transportation) so it will read SH TR New Subway line 8 open…

    or SH TR new South Railways Station Open or SH TR Flights from/to Bejing.”

    That could also be a good way to re-archive the items… like an archive for Shanghai topics, an archive on public transport, a topic on personal items, etc etc… that way, I think, it will become a lot easier to search for specific topics on your website in specific archives.

    Also, about the OOB.. I don’t think it’s bad to have items like that, they’re good because the frequent readers among us know when to expect a new item when you are not able to blog for a few days (not that i mean that it should be a commitment because I think it should be your own free will to enlighten us) but maybe it is possible not to archive the OOB items? That way the archive will become a bit smaller :)

  6. I would think that for you, an IP professional, it would be relatively easy (and fun) to devise an improved serach method or a compartmentalized hierarchy to enable extraction of information threads. For example, so long as you have the time, you can expand upon your existing tags/categories and devide the posts into such groups as “travel from SH”, “get around in SH”, “movies”, “parties and places”, “charitable outings”, “Beijing”, “Henan”, “personal activities”, “commentory with readers”, “blog upkeeping”, and so on. Each group can be on a separate sub-site with comprehensive charts of recent_posts and recent_comments on a main page or atop every sub-site to guide interested readers.

  7. -repost with corrections:

    I would think that for you, an IT professional, it would be relatively easy (and fun) to devise an improved serach method or a compartmentalized hierarchy to enable extraction of information threads. For example, so long as you have the time, you can expand upon your existing tags/categories and devide the posts into such groups as “travel from SH”, “get around in SH”, “movies”, “parties and places”, “charitable outings”, “Beijing”, “Henan”, “personal activities”, “commentory with readers”, “blog upkeeping”, and so on. Each group can be on a separate sub-site with comprehensive charts of recent_posts and recent_comments on a main page or atop every sub-site to guide interested readers.

  8. Yes. I can do that. The current category page is not good enough – too many tags, and too confusing. Example: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/blogtips.htm

    The category structure you suggested is very nice:

    Travel to Shanghai

    Get Around in Shanghai

    Living in Shanghai

    Movies

    Parties and Places

    Beijing

    Henan

    Personal Activities

    Commentory with Readers

    Blog upkeeping

    I rely on people’s sense from outside. I am too involved and cannot have too much sense about how articles should be organized in a reader’s view, especially from the first time visitor. I would appreciate if someone can help me in giving suggestions. Thanks, bigbro.

  9. Move your technical entries to another blog. When I want to read about Shanghai, I don’t want to see stuff about C#.

  10. Good suggestion, Dave. I will archive it in another seperate area, but won’t move it. I am the same person, and I don’t want to blog on two blogs. :-D

  11. Bigbro and DaveG, I’m sorry to say this to you, by your suggestion you will simply turn JSW’s page into

    1) a Lonely Planet guidebook and

    2) a personal blog, and thus not very interesting.

    Dividing a blog into two parts (one for tourists and one for commenters) is not the idea of making a personal blog. Then it becomes commercial.

    JSW created his blog in a high spirit of sharing his world to us (except some freaks disturbing sometimes).

    Tourists looking for hints can find lots of details of Shanghai here.

    If people can’t find their way in JSW’s quite easy menu, then they can simply find another easy tourist homepage or site.

    I know that China is not an easy country for foreigners.

    For tourists it’s a heaven, but I have spend 3,5 years here, but still feeling very annoyed about some things, and sometimes it comes out through the comments.

    It is just so natural for a western person to express him/herself.

    We can comment the most outrageous things in our own newspapers at home, but here in China there is a limit controlled by the government.

    “Crackdown”, “imprisoned”, “executed”, these words are daily headlines on many newspapers here. It IS hard to deal with for expats and foreigners in China.

    In JSW’s blog, the personal touch is paramount.

    We have followed JSW on many journeys, even half around the world some times (unfortunately mostly eastbound to USA), and he provides us with details of almost everything that he perceives.

    That is the really GREAT thing of this blog !!!!!

    Please keep it this way, Jianshuo !

  12. It seems that you are a hard working blogger. I am an MBA student in America. I was an Engineer in China before I came to America. Nice to know you. Can we link each other to attract more people?

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