In Blogger GTD, Leo mentioned that it was a good idea to have one inbox for all your blogging related notifications. I hate cluttering in my inbox, but I do agree that it makes sense to have a single point of reference rather to spend 5 minutes checking some information in one place and then spend 5 minutes checking information in another place. As Skelliewag says, those 5 minutes add up over the course of a day and by the end of it you’ve wasted an hour.
Directing everything to my inbox would never work for me, but it is possible to have a single start page for all your blog maintenance activities using Netvibes. If you aren’t familiar with Netvibes it is a combination of an RSS feed aggregator and a widget platform. It is analogous to iGoogle (but works better). In simple terms Netvibes lets you put lots of information in one place and look at information from several web pages on a single page.
If you’ve never tried it out before then please visit http://netvibes.com — they let you play around with a default page even if you don’t have an account.
This is what I put on my blog maintenance start page. Replace internetducttape.com or engtech.wordpress.com with your blog URL.
Column 1: Comment Administration and Social Site Monitoring
The first column is for things that I want to respond quickly to — comments and checking to see if my site is submitted to Digg or Reddit.
Box #1: Comments RSS feed: http://internetducttape.com/comments/feed
Or you could use my WordPress Comment Extractor / WordPress Trackback Extractor to get only the comments or only the trackbacks.
Box #2: Shortcuts to WordPress administration activities using the Netvibes Bookmarks widget.
Bookmarks: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Bookmarks
I add the following bookmarks:
- Moderate Comments: http://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php
(also see WordPress Comment Ninja) - Moderate Akismet Spam: http://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?page=akismet-admin
(also see Akismet Auntie Spam) - Manage Posts: http://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit.php
- Manage Pages: http://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-pages.php
- Layout Sidebar Widgets: http://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php
- Layout Edit CSS: http://engtech.wordpress.com/wp-admin/themes.php?page=editcss
Box #3: Social Site Submission Watchdog is a custom Yahoo Pipe I created.
Click on this link then
- change your blog URL
- click on Run Pipe
- copy the RSS link to Netvibes
Column 2: Blog Stats
It’s a bad idea to check your blog stats multiple times a day, but is it so bad if you’re also checking blog comments, emails and instant messages at the same time?
Box #1: This will only work for WordPress.com bloggers, which is too bad because it’s a great way to check stats at a glance.
WordPress.com Mobile Widget: http://gamespotting.net/wordpressnetvibes.html
Box #2: Technorati Rank from RSS. Another custom Yahoo Pipe. This one is a little more complicated to install because you’ll need your Technorati API key.
Click on this link then
- change your blog URL
- find your Technorati API key and cut-and-paste it
- click on Run Pipe
- copy the RSS link to Netvibes
Box #3: Filtered Blog Reactions from Technorati. This is another custom Yahoo Pipe. It shows the blog URL as the title and links to the front page instead of directly to the post.
Click on this link then
- change your blog URL
- click on Run Pipe
- copy the RSS link to Netvibes
You could use this RSS feed instead: http://feeds.technorati.com/search/internetducttape.com
Column 3: Direct Communication
I use the second tab as a way to keep a quick check on how I stay in contact with other bloggers — through Gmail and Twitter.
Box #1: Gmail: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Gmail
I use a dedicated Gmail account for blogging — I don’t receive any personal or work related email with that account.
Box #2: Twitter Replies RSS feed: http://twitter.com/statuses/replies.rss
This shows some of the power of Netvibes — you can view password protected RSS feeds.
Box #3: Twitter: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Twitter
Create Your Own Blog Maintenance Start Page
This gives you a few ideas of how I use the service, but the possibilities are endless.
For instance there is a Facebook widget: http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Facebook
Not to mention several widgets that let you directly embed a web page. Using those generic modules you can embed Google Reader into Netvibes and other crazy stuff like that.
What are you going to put on your blog maintenance start page?
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42 Comments
This is a great tip! I’ll try this tip using Protopage instead of Nitevibes.
@Bastich:
Let me know how that works out for you. I might update the post to include a list of sites other than Netvibes with the same functionality.
Interesting mashup.
Very, very cool. And extensive.
I’ve submitted it to digg, for what it’s worth:
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Using_Netvibes_to_Manage_Your_Blog_Maintenance/
I think it’s a unique idea and many could benefit from it. Plus it might draw out other ideas on how people manage their blogs.
@Ben Yoskovitz:
Thanks for submitting it to digg. I’ve added the digg widget to the post.
That was really helpful. I am going to start using Netvibes from now on.
Great post.
I’ve been using Netvibes as my internet homepage for many months. It’s fantastic to be able to see blog comments, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and a range of other things to do with my blog and various other online stuff at a glance.
I’ve set up links directly to my blogging software, Technorati, my Bloglines feeds and a few other related pages.
I’ve also set up tabs with various news feeds so that I’ve constantly got a way of quickly sourcing information for blogging topics.
very useful trick
Thanks so much, I’m giving it a go in Pageflakes. Yet again a ‘why didn’t I think of that’ moment!
Thats a pretty nifty tool
Here’s a link with some more ideas about how bloggers can use netvibes as a time saver:
http://www.michaelmartine.com/2007/07/21/can-netvibes-help-you-be-a-better-blogger/
Thanks for this post. I love it! It is will be really helpful.
Hi,
very good post on a another Practical use of Netvibes!
I have made a post on it in my own blog on Netvibes Experience.
(http://netviber.blogspot.com/2007/09/write-novel-short-story-blog-with.html)
very practical post engtech. you made netvibes proud. :D
Someone should do a Pageflakes and iGoogle versions of the same. I have half of the above stuff in Google and other half(along with lot of other stuff) in mugshot/mashable. They all ask for the origianl account passwords though!
Thanks for the tip! I have been using NetVibes for a few months now and have found that I prefer it over my old google one.
Very handy specially for those blogging on limited free time.! :) Will try this.
Love this idea. I might have to institute something similar, though I’m pretty much a baby with my blog. A comparison of other tools would be fantastic.
One word AWESOME but many times over…..
Vijay
Thanks for posting the Yahoo Pipes feeds. I don’t use NetVibes (or iGoogle, or any of these new-fangled home page services), but I did subscribe to the filtered Technorati and Social News feeds for my blog. Now I’ll be notified if anything changes, and I don’t have to go look at a new page to do it.
Thanks!
@Vijay Teach Me $$:
Glad you like it!
@9cherries:
I originally used Google’s igoogle.com as a personal homepage. I found it was faster at loading than Netvibes, but the supported widgets weren’t as good. I couldn’t find a widget for Twitter, the wordpress.com widget is broken on iGoogle, etc.
@J.D. Harper:
You’re welcome. Yahoo Pipes is hard to use, but I managed to get the hang of it so I’m quite happy to share my pipes with others.
I want to thank you for the stuff you wrote awhile ago on TiddlyWiki. I’ve been using dcubed / d3 gtd (offshoot of MonkeyGTD) for organizing. I notice that you’re using Tracks instead of a TiddlyWiki solution. What made you choose one over the other?
@BlogForSale:
It’s been such a time saver. I think it saves me at least 30 minutes a day.
It’s also great for breaking the ‘check stats here, check stats there’ wilfing.
@Sheila:
Me too. I started out with the google homepage but netvibes had so many more prebuilt widgets to use.
@syahidali:
not too proud. I still think Netvibes is a pretty crappy RSS reader compared to Google Reader. :)
But it’s a much better start page than iGoogle.
@Bruce from The Books:
How is it working out with using this technique with Page Flakes? I haven’t tried their service and I don’t know how it compares to Netvibes/iGoogle.
@Rodney Olsen:
Sounds like you’re using it the same way I am.
My next task is to create some new tabs for filtering the resources I use for finding interesting links / discussions to make a personal http://popurls.com
@engtech
I found that after you get too much information into a TiddlyWiki, the performance goes way, way down.
And, as much as I like the TiddlyWiki interface, it’s kind of a mess. It would really help if it was more just one file. It could have a separate preferences file, a CSS file, and plug-in directory, and get those things out of the Tiddlers.
And I would love it if Tiddlers were actually their own individual text files, which would eliminate the performance problems of larger TiddlyWikis. That would also make it easier to get your data out of TiddlyWiki; as it stands its darn near impossible to export data from it.
I chose Tracks because I’ve found that it’s clean, simple, and it has most of the features that I need. I’m using the SVN Trunk version, rather than the most recent stable release, which added a lot of much-needed features.
For example, it has a field called “Show From” that hides a Next Action until the specified date. I hate seeing things on my to-do list that I can’t actually do yet, so having a built-in tickler file is handy.
I also really like being able to tag actions as well as assign them to projects and contexts. Plus, you can star really important actions, and there’s a neat little stats page that I’ve been meaning to explore. It’s also easy to get your data out of it using RSS feeds or by the export function.
And it’s toy that I can play with to learn Ruby on Rails.
This is extremely helpful for a new blogger like me. Thanks very much for the post!
One question: I can see another tab on your Netvibes page called “Once A Week.” What’s the stuff you put on there?
I don’t know how often you moderate, but I’ve got a comment stuck in the moderation queue.
Oh Yeah! Another Netvibes user…. good on you. I do the same, it saev me so much time and energy. I made a howTo video using Jing too, you can access it from my blog - http://tinyurl.com/22jjby
Cheers. Alex
@gamedame:
The “Once a Week” tab has my Facebook account on there. I’m also going to put some feed aggregators on there to get a list of the most popular links on subjects I’m interested in for that week.
@J.D. Harper:
Thanks for the in-depth comment. Especially since all the time you spent writing tiddlywiki documentation.
I’ve noticed the slowness, particularly when it comes to synching with tiddlyspot.com sometimes.
Tracks has been on my radar, and you’ve convinced me to make the jump. I’m guessing http://tracks.tra.in isn’t running the Trunk? I’ll put it on to my own server.
Glad I could help.
Tracks.tra.in seems to be running a version even earlier then than the current stable release, although I might be wrong about that.
You’re best off running it either on your own server or locally. My server had some problem with FastCGI that I wasn’t able to resolve in my Ruby newbishness, so I found that running it locally was better for me. That also means that you’ll have access to it even without an internet connection.
Of course, if you do this, you’ll lose the ability to play with all of the RSS feeds that Tracks generates, unless your local machine is also connected as a web server.
Hope you find Tracks useful!
Apparently my wordpress.com profile still thought I was blogjones. blogjones = J. D. Harper.
@blogjones:
for running Tracks locally, would that be using Instant Rails?
Yes.
Great minds think alike, I’ve had a desktop page like this for years linking to all my control panels and such, this just extends that concept into the web 2.0 era, definitely something I need to do.
db
I’ve been playing with this for a few days now, and am very happy with it. I also did some extra things that I found important and your readers might as well.
1) I added one of Netvibes’ “To Do Lists” to keep track of the posts that I’m in the middle of working on.
2) Using the information found here:
http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail-tips/get-rss-feeds-from-your-gmail-labels-157701.php
I took all of my Google Alerts (that I use to see what’s going on in the world and as inspiration for new posts), created a filter to mark them as read, archive and apply the label “Alerts.” I then took the RSS feed from the above link and put it on my Netvibes page. That way instead of my inbox getting full of new story ideas, they get shunted automatically, and quietly, to my blogging start page. Voila! Ideas delivered to where I start my blogging experience.
-Jimmy
Excellent ! Thanks for a great tool. Will try it out next week. I run a few WP sites and this should help a lot.
Joe
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