Boring Site Polls: The Link List and a Job Board?
August 4th, 2008, 11 Comments »
Due to my own busyness and ambivalence, this site’s redesign is moving at a glacial pace. However, it is happening.
In the spirit of revamping things around here, I’m considering dispensing with my links page. Despite what the page claims, it is no longer an accurate representation of what I read. I used to use Bloglines, and I shared my public feeds on that page. That’s no longer straightforward, because I use a variety of aggregating and filtering services (most notably, AideRSS) to mash and morph the feeds to which I subscribe. Plus, I switched to Google Reader a while back.
As a result, my blogroll is littered with old sites I don’t read, defunct sites and inaccurate links. I’m very bad at maintaining it because it’s a chore, and always at the mucky bottom of a long, long list of tasks.
So, should the old blogroll stay or go? I could discuss the pros and cons of killing it, but Rebecca recently did a good job of considering the issue. Looking at my site stats, it ranks #68 in popularity over the past two years. Do you ever use my links page? What do you do on your site? Should I keep the thing? Here’s a poll:
Adding a Job Board?
I receive an email mentioning a job in the Vancouver technology or marketing industries at least two or three times a month. Depending on my inclination and busyness, I occasionally post these to my site. I thought it might be useful to include a job board page on the site where all of these jobs could live.
Somebody recently pointed me at Job Thread, which displays local jobs specific to the industries I specify in a widget. Somewhat like Google AdSense, you earn money “based on a number of factors including the quantity and quality of traffic your Widget generates”. I ought to reject them for the needless capitalization of ‘widget’, but never mind that. That’s not quite the right thing, because I don’t see a seamless way for people to submit jobs that would ensure they appeared on my site. Plus, I want something more robust than just a widget.
Ideally, I’d like a system where anybody can submit a job listing, which would be held in moderation until I approved it. Then it would be posted to a page, and eventually retired to an archive after a couple of months. I imagine one could hack something together with WordPress, but does anybody know of any ready-made solutions? Plus, you know, if there’s a money-generating angle, I wouldn’t complain. I’d do it out of the goodness of my heart, but I’m not going to turn down a little passive revenue. Any advice?