markjgsmith

cat << EOF > The evolution of my javascript, technology and web development newsletter

I started the newsletter back in November 2020, and I’ve published an edition every week since. That’s 21 editions so far!

In the beginning, I would extract the best links from the linkblog, prepend them with a short single paragraph intro section, usually a bit about what I had been up to that week, and that was it.

However It was apparent to me that 20-30 links in an email was quite a lot to parse through, so to draw attention to some of the links that had made an impression on me that week, I started to link to them from the intro. This worked well, though over time, the collection of links grew in size, and so did the intro section.

Eventually, though the content remained high quality, the intro section became a bit unwieldy in length and had a ‘wall of text’ problem. Readers commented that it was difficult to parse and find the content they were interested in. Since the intro was turning into a sort of meta index to the links, I added some subheadings, a few re-occurring ones and a news section that changes based on the latest trends.

Ideally I would link internally from the intro section to the relevant link further down the page, but Substack doesn’t yet have a way to do internal linking. I contacted their support to ask if it was possible, they have passed on the suggestion to the product team.

In the interim all the intro links are to the relevant post on the linkblog, which contains any comments I made when I posted it, and the link to the article. By looking at the surrounding links you can also get a sense for the ‘context’ when that link was posted.

It’s a work in progress, I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions via email or in social media comments. #

cat << EOF > Experiments with the newsletter structure and content

In the last few newsletters I have been experimenting with the structure and content quite a bit. The result is a much better newsletter that is easier to parse, where it’s easier to find interesting content, and where it’s possible to see the context around individual links.

My newsletter is evolving, slowly but surely, things are starting to take shape.

The current newsletter structure:

• Intro
  • News
  • Tutorials
  • Technologies
  • Write-ups
• Special mentions
• The best links from the linkblog’s last 7 days
• Footer

The last 2 editions have been particularly strong, with a focus on the news section, which is further subdivided into the latest trends, and changes week to week based on what I’ve been seeing.

Last week for example the trends were Congressional Hearing, Social Media Features, Chips, NFT and crypto currencies getting real, Other Bits and Pieces. These were different to the week before, but there is some similarity, because the topics developed and evolved.

The other sections are re-occurring and a way to more quickly find content you might be interested in. These categories seem to cover most things, but they might change a bit in the future. There’s structure but I’m not going to be militant about it and will add / remove sections as needed.

Navigating through a massive link dump is tedious, so the intro section aims to be a sort of meta index, to make it a more pleasant experience finding articles to read. It vaguely mirrors what was going on in my head when I found and posted the link, though that evolves throughout the week, culminating in a synthesising of the topics and trends.

Generally I’ve been very happy with the news narratives that emerged and also with the sprinkling of interesting javascript, technology and web development articles. I’m still working on getting the balance right, but I’m into the new format.

The other thing I’ve been experimenting with is to use linkblog hash links in the intro section. The idea here is that I want to somehow make accessible the context around a linkblog link, hopefully over time you’ll get a better sense for how the narratives emerged.

Since I choose all the links and write the copy, I have a lot of editorial control, but you can see the reasoning and source material behind a particular narrative and so you can more easily judge for yourself what to think on a particular topic.

Something that has been mentioned is the ‘double jump’, i.e. you have to click twice to get to the article: once to get to the linkblog link and then again to get to the actual article. It’s a little unusual, and there might be a better way to make the context available and have a way to get to the article more quickly. Who knows, it might even become ‘the thing’ that sets it apart from other newsletters.

Another aspect I experimented with in February was a Javascript Core Special Edition. That was a fun edition to put together.

As for the future, I’ve really been enjoying Twitter Tweet Threads recently, IMO it’s one of the platforms best features. I want a similar feature! :)

I’ve been pondering how to update the linkblog to create something similar, a way to group a collection of linkblog links on a timeline. I’ve got some ideas of how this could enhance the newsletter. There are a couple of wrinkles still to iron out, but that might be happening sometime in the future.

The newsletter is a work in progress, I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions via email or in social media comments. #