What are asides (uh-sides) anyways?

Something you should have noticed of recent is that I’ve been using asides. Asides just takes a category and separates it from other posts, or your main posting category. Since I strictly use tags to categorize my posts it’s easy, I have two wordpress cats; asides and general. General goes to the main page (where you might be reading this post). The asides category just gets separated from my “general” posts and is even listed outside of the previous posts list into a special asides box, you can see it on the homepage. Seperating the categories almost creates two blogs in one.

And that is why I love it so much. Asides lets me post so much, since I can separate my posts I don’t have to worry about burying “good” posts with commentary or link posts. So viewers of the homepage will see what I deem as more “important” before they see what is less “important”. And this is why I changed from the previous scheme, I hated to post after an already good post; symbolically I was pushing them aside (get it?), that’s why I would go days without posting anything. Now I can push “aside” the posts I want.

Hence aside. Pronounced uh-sides not A-sides…I think.

The problems:
RSS users will be updated with all posts in chronological order and won’t even notice the difference. This might be good for the people who don’t like the asides layout but still contradicts what I said before; I still am burying posts with asides in RSS.

Home page viewers might not even notice the asides, something I don’t mind if they are new because I rather have them see the “good” post anyways. But returning visitors who don’t notice the asides, won’t notice I’ve updated my blog and posted some content I did want them to see, eh-em Nathan. This could be solved with a different layout which I’m contemplating and figuring out now.

Suggestions? Examples? I really like BinaryBonsai’s new theme but I will not be doing that much work, I’m sticking with squible and just hacking the S- out of it.

About the Author, Dan Cameron:

I'm the owner and solution engineer at Sprout Venture, a web solutions company that specializes in web development including WordPress.

I started my first blog in 2003 and transitioned to WordPress in 2004. Since moving to WordPress I've written a few plugins and themes for public consumption. Lately I'm busy engineering/building/coding and have only been able to share a few code snippets.

If you're in need of some web development, web design or custom WordPress plugins and/or themes contact me, I'll be happy to discuss it with you.

Read More »

  • Dan
    Fixed. I also fixed the credits color and the rss feed for the asides on the homepage.
  • Dan
    Yeah, That is one of the few things I need to fix before I get to a 90% completion. This being one of the easiest and most important.
  • nstryker
    hey, did you know that the post titles blend with the background on the asides archive page?
  • Crazysox
    good to know...
  • Dan
    I'd also like to say that it works. Ever since the redesign I have steadily increased my RSS readership and have finally broken 60 readers. Half of those could be "the gang" but still a noticeable increase without changing content is pretty cool.
  • Dan
    Filtering out what you want to read through a feed reader is the right way to go. Asides makes no difference what-so-ever because you have a direct link to the post.

    The reason asides are indifferent to RSS is because aggregates mark posts as read and then disappear. So the most noticeable posts stand out for themselves because the user has read all the posts and can judge for themselves.

    If you were to come to the homepage viewers rarely search around. They may look at the first 3-4 posts to see if they like something. First impression is everything.

    And this is what asides is for, the first time viewers and maybe the people that only want your major posts.
  • Personally, I always read all feeds in RSS, and I'm glad that the "aside" posts are presented right along with everything else. I can filter out what I don't want to read on my own, and if there is a good post, I will still see it, since I'm seeing all of them.
blog comments powered by Disqus