There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding among people I talk to about what a blog is. I’m not sure whether the following definition is complete but it should cover the main aspects of blogs.
Points identified in blogs
1a) Blogs allow users through a semi-WYSIWYG system to post content and generally allow them to preview it before publishing
1b) Several bloggers can post content to the same site
2) There is generally a system for categorizing and/or tagging articles/content
3) The articles are published on a page that displays the user or users articles. Most blogs are a page of a specific person’s articles/content
4) There is generally an indication of the time and the categories the article is posted in
5) In nearly all cases there is a form below the article for posting comments that can be activated or deactivated by the blogger per article.
6) Comments that have been posted about the article are usually displayed below the article in the same page. In some cases a short summary is displayed with a link to the full article followed by all the comments (regardless of the number of comments).
7) With blogs there is a system called trackback or pinging that allows a first blogger to alert a second bloggers’ readers that he has posted something about the second blogger’s article as well as updates.
8) Blogs have a system of blogrolls that are just links to sites that the author wishes to display (generally) in the sidebar.
Note Both 7) and 8) are important factors for blogs since they link bloggers together and help to get blogs known.
9) A calendar that displays events or previous posts
10) The last comments
11) An about the author page
12) RSS feeds
The same points handled by Links
Follows my approach to the above which is by far the only way to do it !
With a few modifications 1a) is feasible in Links through the browser.cgi script. Also 1b) is can be managed using the editor status and browser.cgi
2) This is obviously easy in Links
3) This can be obtained through a script like the Personal Page plug-in I explained but I’m guessing you could maybe get something working using user templates in pagebuilder.
4) This is already available in Links
5) This is just a case of using an include of the add_review template.
6) This requires a few minor modifications at most
7) This is not yet available in Links
8) This is not yet available in Links
9) This is not yet available in Links (but isn’t in all blogs either)
10) This can be obtained using globals that have been posted in the forum and just need to be user specific (which can be done with the Personal Page plug-in)
11) This can be done using the personal page plug-in, pagebuilder, using a text field in the user database…
12) This is simple, I used pagebuilder but there is also and XML plug-in I think.
One issue I can see at the moment is a blogger being able to validate comments posted about his blog if there are lots of other users in the same situation…
What Links also lets you do. Obviously Links can offer far more and with the Personal Page plug-in (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...i?post=286271#286271) for example I can let users decide what templates to use to display the short descriptions of their articles (you could have loads of different sorts). It is possible by using CSS to define the general page layout and/or colours as well as fonts and hyperlink colours… All this can be done with select options so that any user can click to choose with example images how to change the look of the page without needing any html or programming knowledge.
Some strategic/conceptual ideas :
Not offering blogs to users because they can get it for free elsewhere is a mistake in my opinion. More and more sites are using the “get your free blog here”, not to provide something new but to keep up with the competition.
I have seen on some sites plain simple articles with a comment on this that links to a forum and with better integration this may have looked OK but in this case it just looked weird. Why well because more and more people are used to the blog format of an article followed by comments.
A blog is not only a good community tool it is also becoming a norm for content that people give their opinions about, people are used to at the end of an article being able to give their opinion.
If you have a links site then letting people create content for your site is a pretty good idea, bringing in turn people that will comment on the content created…
Obviously this type of system provides you with a similar type of offering to MySpace, when properly implemented...
Let me know what you think...
John
Significant Media
Points identified in blogs
1a) Blogs allow users through a semi-WYSIWYG system to post content and generally allow them to preview it before publishing
1b) Several bloggers can post content to the same site
2) There is generally a system for categorizing and/or tagging articles/content
3) The articles are published on a page that displays the user or users articles. Most blogs are a page of a specific person’s articles/content
4) There is generally an indication of the time and the categories the article is posted in
5) In nearly all cases there is a form below the article for posting comments that can be activated or deactivated by the blogger per article.
6) Comments that have been posted about the article are usually displayed below the article in the same page. In some cases a short summary is displayed with a link to the full article followed by all the comments (regardless of the number of comments).
7) With blogs there is a system called trackback or pinging that allows a first blogger to alert a second bloggers’ readers that he has posted something about the second blogger’s article as well as updates.
8) Blogs have a system of blogrolls that are just links to sites that the author wishes to display (generally) in the sidebar.
Note Both 7) and 8) are important factors for blogs since they link bloggers together and help to get blogs known.
9) A calendar that displays events or previous posts
10) The last comments
11) An about the author page
12) RSS feeds
The same points handled by Links
Follows my approach to the above which is by far the only way to do it !
With a few modifications 1a) is feasible in Links through the browser.cgi script. Also 1b) is can be managed using the editor status and browser.cgi
2) This is obviously easy in Links
3) This can be obtained through a script like the Personal Page plug-in I explained but I’m guessing you could maybe get something working using user templates in pagebuilder.
4) This is already available in Links
5) This is just a case of using an include of the add_review template.
6) This requires a few minor modifications at most
7) This is not yet available in Links
8) This is not yet available in Links
9) This is not yet available in Links (but isn’t in all blogs either)
10) This can be obtained using globals that have been posted in the forum and just need to be user specific (which can be done with the Personal Page plug-in)
11) This can be done using the personal page plug-in, pagebuilder, using a text field in the user database…
12) This is simple, I used pagebuilder but there is also and XML plug-in I think.
One issue I can see at the moment is a blogger being able to validate comments posted about his blog if there are lots of other users in the same situation…
What Links also lets you do. Obviously Links can offer far more and with the Personal Page plug-in (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...i?post=286271#286271) for example I can let users decide what templates to use to display the short descriptions of their articles (you could have loads of different sorts). It is possible by using CSS to define the general page layout and/or colours as well as fonts and hyperlink colours… All this can be done with select options so that any user can click to choose with example images how to change the look of the page without needing any html or programming knowledge.
Some strategic/conceptual ideas :
Not offering blogs to users because they can get it for free elsewhere is a mistake in my opinion. More and more sites are using the “get your free blog here”, not to provide something new but to keep up with the competition.
I have seen on some sites plain simple articles with a comment on this that links to a forum and with better integration this may have looked OK but in this case it just looked weird. Why well because more and more people are used to the blog format of an article followed by comments.
A blog is not only a good community tool it is also becoming a norm for content that people give their opinions about, people are used to at the end of an article being able to give their opinion.
If you have a links site then letting people create content for your site is a pretty good idea, bringing in turn people that will comment on the content created…
Obviously this type of system provides you with a similar type of offering to MySpace, when properly implemented...
Let me know what you think...
John
Significant Media