This week I took the time to tinker with the pi-ProductivITy website. Two important aspects were addressed: SEO and blog comments.

Adding comments to articles is now possible for site visitors.

The addition of blog comments is the most visible change, but also the most challenging. I had published the three previously published articles in a standard “blog” environment. In doing so, I encountered a few important limitations:

• It is impossible with the usual tools to make comments possible on a 4-lingual blog. After all, the user would like to see comments bundled per article, while the previous effect meant that, for example, comments on the English version of the article would not be visible on the other-language versions of the same article.
• When changing the language choice of the blog, the user had to go to the article list again and again, because actually the different language versions of the same article were treated as “separate” posts.

That's why the entire blog has been overhauled and reconfigured. From now on, each article will be treated as 1 whole, with its 4 language versions and any comments from visitors.

Visitors to the site can now post comments or suggestions to the articles (directly on our website), and express an appreciation for the article with a 5-star rating.

The old versions of the articles will be “cleaned up” one of these days, and the new versions will be shared again on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Where possible and relevant, any comments on the articles will be made available in the four languages available on the website.

Less visible and less challenging (but a lot more work) was optimizing the website for search engines such as Google.

This "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO for short) takes place out of sight of the visitor to the site, but ensures, among other things, that when searching for core values via, for example, Google, the search results are presented optimally and that the "score" with the search engines improves (by intervening qualitatively on the site, not by paying for that score.

There are also now “share buttons” for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on every page of the site that appear as soon as the mouse moves over the "share circle" , so that the visitor can now easily share that information via these social media platforms.

I would like to hear (via the contact form or via comments on this article) what your impressions and suggestions are about the user experience of the website.