The core of the Bolter & Chainsword is the discussion forums. After all, the B&C started as a discussion forum in the late 1990’s, back during the heady days of online discussion forums and the 3rd edition of the Warhammer 40,000 game. Over time, we have expanded the site’s capabilities to better support the needs of our members. Something we often lose sight of is the fact that Warhammer 40,000 is a hobby with various aspects. The most obvious of these are the painting of miniatures and playing games, but there are other aspects such as modeling (converting miniatures is an art in and of itself) and developing background for the game. Each of us has our own preferences for the various aspects of the hobby that we participate in. Regardless of our individual preferences, just discussing the hobby (as we do in our discussion forums) is not part of the hobby. The discussion forums, like our other capabilities, are simply tools that enable us to engage with other members of the hobby in a variety of ways. All of these capabilities are intended to enable the site to live up to its mission statement:

The Bolter & Chainsword exists to help the members of a global hobby community to better understand, engage in, and enjoy all aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 hobby through constructive discussion and the sharing of hobby-related content.

The blogs are one of the most important tools at your disposal for sharing your own hobby endeavors with other members of the community, especially when used in conjunction with the galleries. While many members use the discussion forums for this purpose, that option should be considered secondary to the blogs. The most important aspect of the blogs that make them superior to [just using] the discussion forums is that all of your projects can be found very easily since they are all contained in your blog. While each member is limited to a single blog, each project that you pursue can be covered in its own category within that blog. In addition, you can present other content. For example, my own blog includes a series of editorials about the hobby and the site in the Editorials category, as well as several other hobby projects that I have begun (and probably not made nearly as much progress on as I would like). I can start a project, let it lapse for some time, and then find it again very easily simply by going to my blog instead of having to search through one or more forums. Similarly, other hobbyists can find all of my projects very easily. Members can find blogs very easily by either clicking on the BLOGS button that appears at the top of the screen or by going directly to a member’s profile and clicking on the Blogs button that appears there.

Earlier I suggested that the discussion forums serve as a secondary support for the blogs. The first application of this principle is the use of links in signatures. In this way, a member can include a link to their blog in their signature, giving visibility and access to their blog from any post they make in the discussion forums. In addition, members are encouraged to duplicate their blog posts in relevant discussion forums, giving relevant groups within the community more immediate visibility and access to blog posts that might be of interest to them. For example, a project that covers the creation of a Space Wolves kill team might have the main content covered in the member’s blog, with “billboard” posts in the Space Wolves and Hall of Honour forums. These posts might show an image or two of the miniatures in the kill team, along with some text and a link to the blog post which shows even more. Members can even post updates to those billboard posts (in addition to the main blog category). Where only covering projects in discussion forums often limits other members’ exposure to your works, interest in one project [category] gives these members much better visibility of your other projects. This provides more opportunities for members to engage with and inspire each other. Other members can comment on your blog entries, allowing for the same type of discussion that happens in the discussion forums.

Blogs are very easy to create and they are absolutely free, available to all members of the community. The normal rules of the Bolter & Chainsword still apply in blogs, so you’re limited to Warhammer 40,000 content and standards of behavior. Unfortunately, we can’t convert/move existing discussion topics/posts into blogs (not yet, anyways – I’m going to suggest that change to Invision); and members can’t just click a button to re-post a blog entry to one of the discussion forums (another thing I’m going to suggest to Invision). So there’s a little work involved in using the discussion forums, but much of that is as easy as copy and paste (for now). We’re even going to shift our advertisers from the discussion forums to the blogs, giving them much better control over their advertising content here.

Overall, the blogs provide a much better opportunity for you to share your hobby-related content with other members and we encourage you to take advantage of them.