Are you tired of going to DotNetKicks and finding the same stories on the front page for days in a row? Trust me, there is some great content out there that never makes the front page. You just have to look a little deeper. When you do, you can help put some of that great new content in front of the masses. Even if you don’t submit stories yourself, you can still help out by giving the initial votes that push a story to the front page.

Why don’t these great articles make the front page? I can only speculate with two reasons. First, there are only so many users currently looking through the upcoming stories as well as submitting new content. Second, a lot of new content is added in the off hours and sort of slips by without ever reaching the critical mass or tipping point necessary to hit the front page. It just never makes  it in front of the right users who kick from the upcoming queue.

So how do you find this content? The way to see it all is to stay on top of the upcoming stories queue. I know there is quite a bit of spam (it’s getting better as pointed out by John in the first comment), useless stuff and things you might not be interested in so I will show you some other ways.

Build a list of Friends

A great way to monitor the new content without having to spend your time in the upcoming queue is to build a list of friends. If you have spent anytime at all on DotNetKicks, I bet you have noticed that certain users tend to submit and vote up the stories you are interested in. Luckily DotNetKicks lets you add other users as friends to your profile. You can then view all of the stories that your friends are submitting or kicking.

1. Each story lists who it was submitted by. By clicking “read more…” you can also view who kicked the story to prominence in order.

2. If you have seen a particular user’s name a few times and liked the stories submitted or kicked, just click on the user’s name and then select “Add ‘username’ as a Friend".”

3. When viewing your own profile you can then click on “Kicked By Friends” or “Submitted By Friends” to view what your friends have been up to.

-Click your username to view your profile

4. Unfortunately, you can’t grab an RSS feed of the “Kicked By Friends” or “Submitted By Friends” data, but you can grab a feed of any individual user including yourself which isn’t a bad why to archive what you have been interested in.

View and Subscribe to the Categories You’re Really Interested In

I believe each of us has certain content that we are most interested in and want to stay on top of (for me it’s jQuery and ASP.NET). On the right side of the DotNetKicks home page near the bottom, you can select the category of content you want to keep your eye on. When you select one of the categories you are shown the latest stuff in that category, not just the stuff in that category that has made the front page. You can go here and view the latest content or you can subscribe to the feeds for the categories that interest you. Then when there is great new content in your categories, make sure to give it a vote so that it might rise and benefit others.

I urge you to spend some time promoting new content for the benefit of all. Along the way I am sure you will learn quite a bit and probably make some new friends (please consider adding me as a friend) .

Have you found another way to find great new content on DotNetKicks or disagree with me. Let me know in the comments.

   [dzone]