Oliver WhiteHey guys, this is just a quickie to say thanks to all the people who have sent me well-wishes over the last month or so. Breaking my wrist wasn’t a particularly great thing to do, but it has proven to me that I can still blog, even one-handed! The support shown by the awesome community of commenters, readers and fellow bloggers is something you should all feel proud to be a part of.
Now my cast is off though, and the slow road of torturous physiotherapy begins, posting will actually slow a little. And I really mean it this time; despite concerns in December I actually had my busiest month in January in terms of post frequency.
The reason for the unscheduled pitstop is that I’m taking a short break [pun very much intended] to put my feet up and look at wildlife for a bit. My mind won’t be completely away from the site though and I intend working on some upcoming posts and features, as well as continuing some work on the fantabulous redesign that will probably land in November. Yeah, my lack of coding skills requires me to think that far in advance.
So anyway, on that note I have a question: What would you like to see added to or removed from BlogF1? Please be honest, it is rare that I get feedback on the site and I only require the comments to be constructive. The world is pretty much your oyster at the moment. Of course I cannot guarantee I’ll agree with you, but it would be good to know where you think you would like to see the site in the future.
Some examples to get your mind whirring:
- Damnit Ollie stop being so diplomatic and throw a personal opinion in every now and then.
- Post more/less.
- Get some guest writers.
- Make the site work properly in Internet Explorer 6.
- Make the advertising less intrusive.
- Post shorter/longer entries.
- Talk about other stuff associated with F1. eg. Special events, books, DVDs etc…
So that is pretty much that. It’s only a handful of weeks before we get to see if Heikki can challenge Lewis and get away with it, if Kimi is going to simply walk all over everyone else and if Fernando really can add six-tenths to the pace of a car. I said back in 2006 that ’07 was going to be a vintage year, and given what happened I’m not so sure I should make the same prediction for 2008. But needless to say it’s going to be mega, for nothing else but the above scenarios.
I can’t honestly think of anything I’d like to see removed – the ads are in the same places on each page so to be honest if you are a regular visitor then your eyes skim over and hardly notice them anyway!
Personally I prefer a mixture of long and short posts – something informative should normally be shorter than an opinion piece. As you like to keep us up to date with F1 news, I would like to see these kept fairly brief just to give us the facts – if you have an opinion on them then I’d like that in a post of it’s own which will be a longer one as you argue your case. Just my point of view though!
F1 nowadays does cover a lot more than just the race weekends so if you have the time and inclination to be able to include books, DVDs etc then by all means go for it – I’m sure your readers would lap it all up!
But most of all, try to keep yourself fit and healthy this year as BlogF1 will always be a worthwhile read while you are at the helm 😀
Thanks a lot Craig, muchly appreciated good sir.
Ollie, even though I’ve been away from blogging, but blogf1 is one of the handful sites that I always visit whenever I get a chance.
So from that perspective, as Craig said, don’t remove anything. Yes, you should continue with the Q&A posts as you did last time. Also having a Guest Blogger, say after a GP weekend, would also be a nice addition.
But I still love the things around the way they are. Yes, to spice things a bit you can be *less* diplomatic now-and-then 😉 and take care of yourself as this season is going to be equally, if not more, interesting like last season.
Thanks Neeraj, good to see you’re still around. You’ve given me some things to think about, much appreciated.
november??
personally, i would move the circuits page onto their own domain, or at least make them more prominent here. you have a stunning array of information listed and it just feels a bit lost. same goes for the almanac.
Thanks “me”. I have actually got a domain for the circuits and started to design a separate site for them. But realising the shear amount of work needed I sort of gave up for now. This may or may not be a part of other stuff I’m trying to get back into?
I think November is a good month for a redesign launch. The season’s over and it gives me three/four months to tweak it before the next season begins. I could do it mid-season but I think it may be a bit much for me to deal with. We’ll see how it goes.
Great ideas, clever people think alike. 🙂
something else i was going to mention a while back, is photo credits. looking at the honda launch, for example:
http://tinyurl.com/yvkv7h – keith credits beneath photo
http://tinyurl.com/ywvnz2 – we credit on the photo
http://tinyurl.com/26rkjy – didn’t spot any credits on blogf1
i’ve always thought it a bit odd, considering the effort you go to with your ‘credits and buttons’ page, that you don’t attribute photos to anyone. naming sources shows you haven’t just lifted them from autosport or wherever 🙂
~70%: Sheer laziness/forgetfulness.
~20%: Not needed or genuinely unknown.
~10%: I remember to provide a source/link.
You’re right, I should be more attentive to this. I most certainly do not lift images from Autosport (or equivalent); I don’t think I have an account to view their hi-res versions having decided a long time ago to refuse to pay for text information online. I actually use the teams direct for most images, although I am also quite lazy when it comes to image formatting.
“You’re right, I should be more attentive to this.”
i had a quick scout around the web to see what others were doing and noticed very few actually make the effort, so it’s probably no big deal at all.
we were considering paying xpb.cc for monthly image rights but they’re bloomin’ expensive. maybe it’ll be something for the future though, because they offer more variety than stuff from the teams.
btw… november??
“we were considering paying xpb.cc”
Scout further, there’s better out there. I’ve found the images available through the media sections of F1 team sites adequate enough, although a little lackadaisical post-race.
So did January work out well for a re-jig of Sidepodcast?
“So did January work out well for a re-jig of Sidepodcast?”
yup, there’s more to come. the biggest challenge was to figure out the underpinnings of wordpress. after that the rest was easy 🙂