Radosh.net

1. Update the non-blog pages of Radosh.net. Don't even click that link. It's embarrassing. Or, if you prefer, a nostalgic reminder of what this site used to look like. Of course, this resolution is something of a cheat for me, since what's involved is upgrading to the latest version of Movable Type and transferring all those pages to MT -- and for that, I'm pretty much dependent on the charity of Radosh.net CTO Kevin Shay. So really I can only hope that one of his resolutions is to be more charitable in 2009.

2. Update the blogroll. Or, perhaps, lose the blogroll entirely. The whole idea of that static list of links seems pretty outdated by now. It's not like I actually use them anymore for reading blogs (which is good, since who knows how many of them are dead). What I should probably do is switch to something similar in spirit but more dynamic, more easily kept current, and a whole lot shorter. Open to suggestions.

3. Post more frequently. Used to be I'd put up a one line joke every now and then. These days, I tend to send such slim entertainment to Facebook instead. For instance, yesterday I posted this story to my profile with the comment, "Someone stealing from Dane Cook? That's a switch." It hardly seems worth sharing with a general audience. But since the alternative seems to be silence, perhaps I'm wrong. Similarly, I've never really posted links to stories and other blog posts I've found interesting unless I have something of my own to add to them. I know lots of bloggers do that, but it seemed pointless to me. But now I think it might help keep the site lively. What do you think?

4. Judge the anti-caption contest in a more timely fashion. My sluggishness in this area is a sore spot for some of you, I know. The problem is that Sunday night and Monday are particularly bad times for me to start scrolling through 200 entries. I suspect the solution will be to start posting the results on Friday afternoon. Weekend off for everyone.

5. Tags. At first they just seemed like clutter to me, but I can see the usefulness now. The only reason I haven't taken this step is that the prospect of going back and adding Huckapoo tags to five years worth of posts is daunting.

6. More posts about Huckapoo.

7. Ditch the Amazon affiliate links. I like promoting my friends books -- and I can see from the logs that I do actually sell a few copies every now and then -- but once again, it's such a pain to go into the template and switch them up. Perhaps as a compromise I'll make it exclusively a list of my friends' books, rather than a mix of that and other things I like. That way I'll only have to change the links once, when the paperbacks come out.

8. Try Google ads again. I experimented with them briefly when the service launched, but I found them ugly and didn't make any money off them. I think its worth trying again. Now that people are used to seeing them everywhere, they're less off-putting (right?). Also, it's not like BlogAds is making me rich.

So that's what I'm going to do for you this year. If there's anything I'm overlooking, be sure to let me know and I'll get right on it. For your part, I have to say I'm extremely fortunate among bloggers to have such civil, thoughtful, entertaining commenters. The conversation almost never veers toward Hitler and I don't believe anyone has ever attempted a "first." Every now and then someone will get trollish, posting something outlandish or obnoxious or ridiculous that seems to invite everyone else to pile on. Fortunately, everyone else seems to understand that the best way to put a stop to that is to ignore it. Keep up the good work. Keep feeding me tips as well, I always appreciate that. 2009 will mark my 7th year of blogging. Somehow, I'm still looking forward to it.

Posted by Daniel Radosh

8:33 PM