Doobybrain.com

I occasionally read up on the 3sixteen blog because they always have great photos of boutique clothing store interiors. I like looking at the photos and getting inspired by the way some of the photographed interiors look. I always find it funny that urban-inspired brands always have such clean-cut storefronts since I don’t normally associate the word “urban” with being anywhere near clean (maybe that’s changing).

While browsing the site however, sometimes I forget that 3sixteen is actually an urban clothing company itself! With the exception of the splash image and the header image on the content portion of the site, there is generally no mention of 3sixteen apparel and accessories (there are exceptions of course on some special dates). The site primarily features other brands and their storefronts and personnel. No problem with that of course, except for the fact that sometimes I forget that they are a clothing brand and not a blog about urban fittings and trimmings. For self-promotional purposes I don’t see why they wouldn’t make the main site a showcase of their current collection while setting up a sub-domain for the “3sixteen blog” to house what is now serving as the main face of the company’s online presence.

Since I do like reading about their interactions as a clothing company with other clothing companies in the industry, I wonder sometimes why 3sixteen hasn’t already moved on to a real publishing platform. The website is already set up like a traditional blog — at least in appearance. There are separate “posts” with titles and dates all grouped together in sequential pages, and these pages collectively are the 3sixteen blog.

Coming from the perspective of somebody who has tried this technique before (earlier editions of Doobybrain.com were built on this idea of trying to maintain a blog-like site while still editing in traditional HTML), I can tell you that it’s do-able…but it’s a lot more work and it’s not beneficial to your readers.

There’s two major things that I think the 3sixteen blog lacks at the moment that is keeping their content from being much larger and more influential than it already is: syndication feeds and permalinks.

Yes, RSS feeds of some sort and permalinks to individual entries.
Think about this: If I were a blogger on the interweb and I read an absolutely fantastic post that one of the bloggers at 3sixteen published, how in the world would I link to it without having to quote the entire post on my website? I just simply can’t. Sure, I could give the URL of that page, but come a week later, if I punch that URL into my web browser, the content would be vastly different than when I read it a week before because of additional posts added since that time. Any link I make to this site now will be rendered useless as soon as a few posts are added making any trackbacks from my site to 3sixteen completely ridiculous. It’s a lot harder for me to say to folks, “Oh, just keep clicking to the next page until you see this and that, and when you finally see it, that’s when you know you’ve found it.” I would much rather just say, “Here, click this”, and offer them a direct link to 3sixteen content.

As for the syndication feeds, I just think it’d be a great move for 3sixteen to enable people to subscribe to their posted content through RSS feeds. It provides a means of instantly broadcasting new content on the page to the rest of the internet and it also will undoubtedly increase readership — who wouldn’t want these things, yeah?

In that respect, I wish the site would publish with some sort of publishing platform (say, Wordpress or something similar — there are tons to choose from). I have a feeling that all of those urban fashion blogs out there would be very grateful.

Hopefully somebody from the company sees an outgoing link from Doobybrain.com in their site’s webstats and is encouraged to do something about the situation. The site is aging.

Check out the 3sixteen 2007 collection and then visit their online store to see if you like anything.