pelf-ism is contagious

I know it’s been more than 2 weeks since the last Rediscovering chenpn.com installment.

A lot of things have happened to me in the past 2 weeks. I have been caught up with planning and organizing our 3rd Annual Terrapin Independence Day, and I’ve initiated a month-long blogging campaign on matters related to the environment @ The Giving Hands. I have also been experimenting with a popular social bookmarking service, del.icio.us, and have very recently been planning the revival of my (pretty defunct) turtle blog.

Now, shall we proceed to the next question in the Rediscovering chenpn.com series? The title of this post laid it out very clearly that I’d like to know what you have learned from chenpn.com.

During my recent guest-blogging stint @ Lorelle On WordPress, I blogged about what I have learned from blogging. In short, I have learned that blogging is about learning, reaching out to people and making friends along the way, and blogging is also about expressing ourselves. I find blogging entertaining and satisfying and blogging has changed the way I think and look at things. Besides, I have also learned that blogging for money isn’t my cup of tea, and that I’ve learned that I wanted to be a campaign blogger.

So yeah, what have you learned from chenpn.com? Has it made you a better person, or your blog a better blog? How?

Rediscovering chenpn.com series:

1. Why do you read chenpn.com?
2. What was your first impression of chenpn.com?
3. What have you learned from chenpn.com?

Hi guys! First off, I’d like to thank each and everyone of you for your comments on the first post of the Rediscovering chenpn.com series. Thank you very, very much, I appreciate your time and feedback…

… and to reward you, I will feed you with more questions, heh!

First impressions *shrugs* We’ve read and heard too much that first impressions are important and everlasting. The first impression either lands you on the job, or it doesn’t. It either increases your RSS subscribers, or it doesn’t. It either makes your first-time visitors come back for more, or, well, it doesn’t.

I know I am guilty as charged. When I land on somebody’s blog for the first time, it’s very important that the blog theme and layout appeals to me (and my eyes). I have the notoriety of not coming back to a blog because the blog theme and colour scheme and font type and line height doesn’t appeal to me much. Much has been said about how content is king these days, but when the colour of the blog hurts your eyes way before you finished reading the first paragraph, I’m sure you too, wouldn’t stay any longer

And as much as I’d kill the blog I’ve just landed on, I do stay on to browse the categories and a couple of posts because I believe in giving bloggers the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, the blog theme may not be nice (it’s quite subjective anyway) or the colour may be blinding, or the font size may be too small for my liking (or I’d have to strain to read the posts) but if a blogger has good, quality content, I wouldn’t think twice before subscribing to his/her blog feeds.

Similarly, when I’m subscribed to somebody’s RSS feeds, overtime, if I find myself reading the feeds without wanting to click through to leave a comment, I’ll unsubscribe myself from it. And that’s the end. I will not return to that particular blog unless I chance upon it again while blog-hopping or while browsing a blog aggregator (e.g. Project Petaling Street or SARAWho or Frenzrss or 9rules).

So my question is this — What was your first impression of chenpn.com? How different (or similar) it is compared to the other blogs you’re currently subscribed to? And how different is chenpn.com from your first impression? Were you ever disappointed because the content wasn’t up to your expectations? Or were you excited about finding it?

So would you please tell me why you kept coming back to read chenpn.com? And if you’re reading this from your feedreader, would you please click through to tell me about it? Your feedback is greatly appreciated..

Rediscovering chenpn.com series:

1. Why do you read chenpn.com?
2. What was your first impression of chenpn.com?
3. What have you learned from chenpn.com?

I am planning a major overhaul of chenpn.com in the next few months — yeah, it will take me *that* long because I know next-to-nothing about site redesign and what-nots. I don’t know what I’ll do to my site at the moment because I haven’t really looked into it, but I reckon there will be a few changes in the layout of the blog theme, probably the sidebars as well to remove (or reduce) the cluttered (or informative, from another perspective, heh) stuff. There might be changes in the header image as well though I’ve had that changed a couple of times but only a couple of you realized it, so maybe I should make a more drastic change so that you’ll start noticing them, heh

But before I get to the core of the site overhaul, I need your help, my faithful readers and visitors, in defining a couple of things, and one of which is my blog goals (yeah, you read that right). You see, I started blogging in October 2005 and at that time, I wanted my blog to serve as a “newsletter” where family and friends checked me out. I had wanted to send out less mass emails and just tell them to “go read my blog”. But of course that didn’t *really* materialize because halfway through, I realized I didn’t want my family and friends to read my blog.

So, to help me redefine my blog goals, I need to ask you a couple of lot of questions. And your feedback will subsequently assist me in determining where chenpn.com should be heading in the next couple of years. So yeah, this is one HUGE task!

Now, the million-dollar question — Why do you keep coming back to chenpn.com? Is it because of the content, or is it because of the pretty header image (gulps)? Is it because I pinged some of my posts on Project Petaling Street? What makes you bookmark chenpn.com? What makes you subscribe to its feeds? And what makes you make a few clicks to come to the site and leave a comment?

So would you please be kind enough to tell me why you kept coming back to read chenpn.com? And if you’re reading this from your feedreader, would you please click through to tell me about it? Your feedback is greatly appreciated..

Rediscovering chenpn.com series:

1. Why do you read chenpn.com?
2. What was your first impression of chenpn.com?
3. What have you learned from chenpn.com?