The Digital Reader

This is just a brief note to let my readers know that I have updated this blog’s mobile site again. I only made a couple minor changes, both of which I think you’ll like.
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This is just a brief note to let my readers know that I have added a new commenting option to this blog. In addition to leaving a comment on a post, you now have the option of checking a box and getting email notifications when new comments are left on that post.

I got a request for this today from Juli Monroe. She blogs over at TeleRead, and I finally had a chance to meet her today. While we were chatting she happened to mention that she wished she could get email notices when new comments are posted to the blog.

This was a feature I had never considered, but I am always willing to consider requests (especially when they don’t involve any work on my part).

This is just a brief note to let my readers know that the broken reply button has been fixed. I’m not quite sure why, but the button which let you respond to an earlier comment (and not the post) somehow broke early this morning.

It started working again after I reset the integrated SEO plugin. There’s no reason why one affected the other, so i can’t explain why a reset fixed the problem.

But it appears to have helped. Go figure.

Somewhere around 1 in 6 of my readers visit the mobile website on a regular basis so here’s some news for the rest.

Last night I made a few changes to the mobile version of this blog, which I use to support readers with smaller screens. I modified the freely available blog theme Carrington Mobile and inserted a Google search bar. I also embedded a few Google Adsense ads here and there.
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For as long as I have been writing posts for this blog, I have been linking to other websites with the links set to open in a new tab in a web browser (as opposed to a link which opens and replaces the webpage you are currently reading).

I got a request today from one of my readers. He wanted me to stop setting all the embedded links to open in new tabs, and I am seriously considering complying with his request.

I’ve spent the past hour reading through the new and old usability arguments against opening links in new tabs (here, here), and I have read the design arguments in favor of opening links in new tabs (here, here), and I’ve decided that usability outweighs design. It does in this case, at least.
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It’s been a fun year here at The Digital Reader, and as I look back at the most-read posts it is interesting to see what people choose to read. Some were popular for obvious reasons; others surprised me.

The most popular posts, according to Google Analytics, include a couple reviews and a couple bits of news, but mostly how-to posts. That fits with what I have seen in the weekly tracking posts I used to do.

I could in fact stop writing news posts and I wouldn’t see much of a drop in traffic. But then I don’t know what I would do with my time.
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It’s been quite some time since I last discussed how many visitors this blog is getting, and today that interregnum ends.

It’s been a great year at The Digital Reader, and website traffic has never been better. Over the last 6 months* this blog was visited 1.4 million times, up from 932 thousand visits over the same period of 2011. I had over a million unique visitors, a significant in crease from the not quite 700 thousand in 2011. Page views were also up 50% over the second half of 2011, with 2.1 million pages having been read in the last 6 months.
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Have one or more of your comments on this blog gone astray recently? If so, you might have fallen victim to an over enthusiastic spam filter.

A few days ago a friend and regular reader told me that her most recent comment had vanished. This puzzled me, because I wasn’t in the habit of blocking people, especially not the ones I like.
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There’s a lot of potential gadget buyers showing up today after searching for obscure devices, so I thought it might be useful to post an open topic.

Got a question? Ask.

If you’re getting an Android tablet for someone for Christmas, I’ve written a couple getting started posts (2011, 2010). The newer one has a bunch of suggestions from readers on what apps you might want to install.

Got a really cheap Android tablet, one which is so cheap that it doesn’t have a decent app store? Then you might want to install Android Market using a set of simple instructions which have worked on many Android tablets running v2.3 Gingerbread to v4.0 ICS from many different brands (here).

I am busy cooking today but I wanted to take a moment and wish my readers a happy, happy turkey day.

image by Steve A Johnson