It was fun while it lasted, but now it’s a shitty popularity contest. I would have thought the blog that have the best content would win. I guess not in this case…
6 Reasons you should install a Mobile Theme Plugin on your Anime Blog
- Easier to read and navigate on a small screen
- No zooming in/out needed
- Shorter page load times on 3G/EV-DO/EDGE data
- Avoid inefficiencies and running down of small data plan caps (such as AT&T’s 200 MB and 2GB data plans)
- Additional functionality on touchscreen phones
- It’s very simple to add!
If you ready to provide a mobile site, there is WPTouch 1.9.x*, Wordpress Mobile Edition and Wordpress Mobile Pack and it doesn’t cost anything to add.
* For more features and customizability, there is WPTouch 2.0 Pro, which costs $29.
WPTouch and other Mobile Plugins with WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is a must have plugin to prevent your host from suspending you for using too much resource. However, mobile theme plugins like WPTouch won’t load because it bypasses the browser detection. To solve this, you need to have the following set:
- WP Super Cache turned “HALF ON.” This needs to be set because Super Cache completely bypasses browser detection. Also, this setting is required in order to use Bad Behavior.
- Mobile device support: Self explanatory
- Exclude all the mobile devices browser strings: android, iphone, ipod, etc
The full and visual instructions can be seen here or the video tutorial.
Note: If you decide to use Wordpress Mobile Pack instead of WPTouch, you do not need to add the browser strings to Super Cache.
The O’ Mighty Baka-Raptor Fell…
Don’t worry Baka-Raptor, you’ll get ‘im next time.
Now thats out of the way, I congratulate Sea Slugs for winning.
My only suggestion to Sea Slugs is to get a mobile theme plugin such as WPTouch. As smartphones and mobile devices getting more popular, people want a mobile formatted site, especially with small data caps from cellphone carriers.
Don’t forget to vote for Canne’s Anime Review Blog. This poll will close in two days…
WPTouch 2.0 Pro Plugin First Impressions
I took the bait and bought WPTouch 2.0 Pro, which is a rewrite of the popular WPTouch plugin. I decided on this because there was a good number of users who read Chikorita157’s Anime Blog on the iPhone/iPod Touch and it will benefit the site overall… I’m pretty impressed on how well Brave New Code made this plugin. I bought a single license of it which cost me about $29/30 in the end for a single license. If you use it without activating, it won’t be supported and you cannot auto update the plugin (meaning, you have to update it manually).
A neat feature is that you can view a blog with WPTouch Pro as a Web App that is completely independent on the iPhone/iPod Touch as shown below (It uses AJAX, so no reloading pages):
Unlike WPTouch 1.9.x, the new version finally supports threaded comments. This is one of the features that was missing on the old version, which makes commenting hectic since my blog now uses threaded comments. In 2.0, it’s done pretty cleanly, better than the one on Wordpress.com.
Other features that WPTouch 2.0 Pro has includes improved menus, ability to register within WPTouch, Custom Themes, Custom Site Icons, WP 3.0 compatibility and other stuff I haven’t checked out. If you have $30 dollars to spare and you are a heavy iPhone/iPod Touch/Android user who browse the blog often, it’s definitely worth it and your users will thank you. If you can’t afford it, it’s not a big deal, except the lack of threaded comments can make a big mess if you use threaded comments on your blog.
Blog needs a new name
LOL… Had been called out by Baka-Raptor for having an unoriginal blog title. Yes, I have to admit that [handle name here]’s Anime Blog is getting a bit… redundant. Not specifically for that reason because I wanted to get a .com domain name for the website so the site will stand out more and it’s affordable enough to get (10.69 USD per year, that comes out to be $0.89 a month). Since using the handle as the domain seems lame and having the domain like chikorita157sanimeblog.com seems too long and uncreative, I must come up with a new name.
Consider the theme of my blog before suggesting a name. My blog is mostly about comedy, drama, slice of life with some moe stuff in it… and bishoujos. I will ultimately decide on it and it will become the new domain name. This change probably won’t happen until I return from vacation towards the last weeks in July.
Edit: Probably not… since I kinda botched up while registering the domain name, so I have to wait until I get a full refund. I will probably try again when I come back from vacation.
Oh dear lord…
Look we have here:
I’ve looked into Melative..it’s not very intuitive. Dunno where to start. MelScrobblerX doesn’t support Quicktime X. Sounds like a huge bust
Dude, Quicktime sucks for Fansubs… Unless you like waiting for the whole MKV to load and flaky sub support, go right ahead… Use a better media player, such as MPlayer OS X Extended that have better fansub and MKV support.
And also, Melative!=MAL Nuff said.
Is it me or MyAnimeList made more unnece…
Is it me or MyAnimeList made more unnecessary changes, like messing with the lists? Found this tweet made by @Yumeka36
Does anyone like the fact that MAL took away the “Show All” feature for lists? XP http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=218454
From http://twitter.com/yumeka36/status/16005991374
At Melative, we will never pull shit like this*… So if you can’t stand the changes the owner of MyAnimeList force on you, do yourself a favor and switch to Melative or AnimePlanet. That will make him listen or not.
Notes: To clarify, RyanA will never change anything that major without notifying the users. In this case, the owner of MAL failed to notify all the users that he is changing the functionality of the site. This is why he is getting a lot of complaints from many users.
Random Curiosity and the AniBlog Tourney Drama… Is it Justifiable ?
Today, it was revealed that Listless Ink beaten Random Curiosity with a very small lead. However, there was some backlash from some commenters. RandomC had been the controversy throughout the competition. In the second round, the editorial blog, Behind The Nihon Review gets beaten and everyone points fingers at Random Curiosity for being “elitist.” In the third round in the tournament as you know before, Listless Ink beats RandomC with everyone cheering except a few others that are questioning the results and saying the tournament lost credibility.
Since when the Aniblog Tourney was serious business? This is supposed to be fun and now there are some people blowing it up just because their precious and the so called “elitist” Random Curiosity lost?
There is a reason I did not vote for Random Curiosity in both rounds. While I commend them on their dedicated effort to share the latest episodic posts on Anime, they are a bad influence on new bloggers. It leads to redundant episodic blogs that copy their style because its successful and not make their own. Long summary and less on thoughts is a bad sign of a poorly kept episodic blog that gives reader nothing new to read (e.g.: Author’s thoughts, analysis, etc). Blogs need originality and creativity other than slapping a long summary and a few lines of thoughts. This is why I don’t write summaries and keep them at a minimum because most of the people are already going to watch that episode already. There is no need to have it that long…Also, Anime Blogs should be fun to write. If you just doing it for the fame or become elitist, I think you pretty much miss the point. Like with any type of blog, they are meant to share ideas we want to share. Passion towards a hobby or interest is what attracts readers… not dull writing.
Listless Ink won because it has passion and the author seems to enjoy what they are doing. RandomC is like what ANN and news organizations like CNN. They simply don’t have the passion and just doing a service for the people, nothing else.
My suggestion to prevent this drama is that they need to use something like wp-polls plugin and not Poll Daddy and ban all proxies.
So yeah, I will let the dust settle and I will go formal about this issue in my Round 3 followup when all the polls are closed.
AniBlog Tourney Round 3 Voting Digest
Since I didn’t do any reviews this round because I practically reviewed every blog in the tournament… here is a list I voted for:
Note: I vote for who I subscribed first… for blogs that I didn’t subscribe to, I use my best judgement
- Sea Slugs! Anime Blog
- Baka-Raptor
- 2-D Teleidoscope
- chaostangent
- Star Crossed Anime Blog
- Canne’s Anime Review Blog
- Major Arcana
- Anime Instrumentality
- Listless Ink
- GAR GAR Stegosaurus
- Fuzakenna!
- Reverse Thieves
- Kurogane’s Anime Blog
- Mainichi Anime Yume
- UNMEI KAIHEN
- Atarashii Prelude
Followup should be coming up soon…