Sorry about the multiple postings of today’s article.

I wrote the post in Windows Live Writer and it gave me an error when I tried to publish it.  I assumed that meant it hadn’t worked, and I kept trying to “fix” it.  Hence the five or six repeats that went out.  Now that I know what happened, I’ll be sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Sorry.

Today’s post comes courtesy of the guy/gal/folks who run PoeWar.com.  If you do enough online reading about writing and freelancing you will eventually come across the PoeWar site.

I remember it from my early days, and sure enough, it’s bookmark resides within my oldest links.  Yet, I never really seem to end up at PoeWar on a regular basis, and it doesn’t have a spot in my recently reconfigured Speed Dial under "Business", "Writing", or "Freelance".  That seemed odd, because it is a great resource with a lot of useful information.

However, as I was getting ready to leave a comment on one of the posts I read I noticed that it was from over a year ago.  There is nothing wrong with commenting on older posts so long as the topic is still relevant and actively discussed on the site in question.  On most blogs, where a single author writes about a topic and then moves on to other topics, it sometimes seems like there isn’t much reason to comment on year-old posts, especially if the last previous comment was from long ago too.

The weird part was that I didn’t get to there by searching (which is usually how I end up at old posts), but rather by clicking a link under the heading Newest Articles.

Turns out that while PoeWar does update its writing jobs and freelance writing gigs listings frequently, they post new articles much less frequently.  There is nothing wrong with this, it just threw me for a bit of a loop.  After all, writers love to write so their blogs tend to be frequently updated.

I sometimes worry about not updating here often enough.  Usually it’s because I ran out of time after updating other sites, or finishing projects for clients, or whatever.  And yet, here is a very successful site that updates much less frequently.

Non-Blog Website Structure Provides Longer Lived Usefulness for Writing

As I pondered, I noticed that the key is in the site’s structure.  Unlike here at Arctic Llama where we use the traditional reverse chronological order, PoeWar offers no way to read it’s collection of articles by date.  Instead, articles are broken out into categories and listed there for readers to find after any period of time.  The Recent Articles heading on the front page gives readers a way to jump in and get a sampling before they head off to read the articles that might appeal to them within the various category listings.

Like many writers, I don’t like the idea of my writing becoming regarded as "old" or "out of date" unless what I wrote is actually out of date due to changes or events that have taken place since it was published.  By using the PoeWar format, articles don’t appear out of date because they don’t get older as you read them, giving rise to the thought that you’ve read "back far enough" on the site.  And, also because the date of each article is not displayed until after you’ve already clicked to load that particular article.  By then, you are usually ready to jump right into the content and past the small font date.

It is a brilliant concept, though not one that I would want to embrace completely.  I like the idea of my "regular" readers or even new readers being able to work their way through my stuff one article at a time starting with the most current thoughts and topics I’ve published.  At the same time, I’d love to be able to find a way so that something I wrote that was particularly useful could live on longer than a year or two.

I know that only the most dedicated reader would read back through 100, 200, or even 500 articles in order.  But, a new reader looking for information on something that I covered well 26 months ago would almost certainly click on a topic or category that matched up with his question and then find and read that article because, regardless of its age, it applies to what he wants to know.

I think in the coming weeks I’ll look to convert Arctic Llama into a hybrid of this model with a reverse chronological front page and dateless alphabetical Categories or Topics listings.  I’ll keep you updated on how it shakes out. 

Testing out a WordPress plug-in I came across called TweetSuite.  I does lots of different things (that list of Twitter tweets in the sidebar is one) but the main thing I am testing out is that it automatically posts a Tweet whenever I publish a post here on ArcticLlama.

On one hand, this is great because it saves me creating a Tweet manually.

On the other hand, I’m not so sure, because I don’t normally Tweet every post and when I do, I craft a manual one that has a solid description so people know whether or not to click it.

So, we’ll see.

Let me know what you think.

I actually have a pretty active freelance writing business, and while that is good for many reasons — most of them having to do with paying the mortgage and not having to go back to a cubicle — it also means that I often neglect my own sites in order to make up time on paying projects.

However, I was looking around in the various Google Webmaster Tools for some of my sites when I stumbled upon an External Link that made me stop in my tracks.

It appears that a site called Twitterholic displays other Twitter users who are “similar” to other Twitter users.

Ok, whatever, yet another Twitter add-on service.  But, here is where the funny Twitter surprise shows up:

Yes, that says “FannieSpankings” and no, I have no idea who that is.  I didn’t follow the link from there.  You can do the math.

Apparently, we are “related” because we both list Denver as our hometown.

The good news, is that it counts as an external link to the site  :)

Just a bit of humor for a nice Tuesday night.

Finally getting around to claiming my blog on Technorati.

Technorati Profile

Welcome to the ArcticLlama blog. Frankly, I had no plans to have a blog on the ArcticLlama web site, but it seems that there are a lot of questions out there and a shortage of good information. So, an ArcticLlama blog it is. This blog will focus, of course, on the specialties of ArcticLlama including, freelance writing, copy editing, SEO and SEM, and other content generation, both web content and other. What you will find here will not be some Ivory Tower academic studies culled from months of research and focus groups, but rather a real world perspective of a professional business services company. As always, what seperates ArcticLlama from everyone else is that we are real world professionals who are writers which means we know what business looks like, and we’re here to help.

So, pull up a chair and enjoy. We think you’ll like it.