Overview

If you haven't seen the announcement, the expanded Blogs Categories have been implemented and there is no longer a limit on the number of blogs that members can create. Those of you with existing blogs are free to turn each of your categories (presumably each as a separate project) into a separate blog. You'll have to create each such new blog first, then you can move the existing categories into the new blogs. I'll post a tutorial later.

I think it's a solid list and in your breakdown you answered a question before I could even ask it (my blog drifts from one topic to another depending on my current whims, I've been using tags to sort them).

That's one that would need a description. It's about tactics, battle reports, and stuff like that. I could see members creating homegrown rules blogs therein (unless they want to focus them in faction-specific Categories).

I like It, yet I am not sure I really understand what is underneath the GamePlay category. Does it refer to Bat Reps, leagues ... or other things? Or does it include also other stuff such as gaming aids, rooster sheet... and eventually the tokens mentionned as example?

We are close to changing the limit on the number of blogs that members can create from 1 to unlimited. The one thing that we need to settle on before that happens, though, is the Categories. We currently have two Categories: Members and Advertisers. The Advertisers Category will be kept, but the Members Category will be replaced with a slew of other Categories. Two quick notes... When capitalized ("Category(ies)"), I am referring to the Categories at the Blogs feature level - the Categories into which all blogs are organized. When not capitalized ("category(ies)"), I am referring to the internal categories that members create for the internal organization of their blogs. This discussion is solely about the Categories that apply throughout the Blogs feature. As much as possible, members will have complete freedom in creating their own blog categories. An important aspect of the content architecture is tags. We will create a system of Categories that works under most circumstances, with tags complementing the Categories. Since members will be given as much freedom as possible in both the organization and content of their blogs, there may be times when the baseline Category structure doesn't quite work. For example, we have opted to not create Categories for different games. Instead, projects that are focused on specific games should include the appropriate tags. Here is the current list of Categories that we are considering: Miscellaneous Imperium Adepta Sororitas and Ecclesiarchy Adeptus Astartes/Legiones Astartes Black Templars & Descendants Blood Angels & Successors Dark Angels & Successors Deathwatch Grey Knights Imperial Fists & Successors Iron Hands & Successors Legio B&C Legion of the Damned Raven Guard & Successors Salamanders & Successors Space Wolves & Successors Ultramarines & Successors White Scars & Successors Talons of the Emperor Adeptus Mechanicus and Cult Mechanicus Collegia Titanica Astra Militarum & Solar Auxilia Imperial Knights Chaos Chaos Daemons Chaos Knights Heretic Astartes Alpha Legion Death Guard & Nurgle Emperor's Children & Slaanesh Iron Warriors Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus/Black Legion Night Lords Thousand Sons & Tzeentch Word Bearers World Eaters & Khorne Xenos Aeldari Asuryani Drukhari Harlequins Genestealer Cults Leagues of Votann Necrons Orks T'au Tyranids Modeling, Sculpting, and Painting Game Play Editorials and Opinions To illustrate the envisioned outcome with the tags, imagine that a member is working on a project to create an Ultramarines army. Regardless of game system, that blog would be placed in the Ultramarines category (under Imperium and Adeptus Astartes). If that army is for the 10th edition of the Warhammer 40,000 game, it might be given the tag WH40K 10e (or it might not - the Warhammer 40,000 game is assumed to be the default, so it might be omitted unless you want to specify a previous edition). If that army is for the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness game, it should be given the appropriate tag (we haven't settled on that one yet, but it may be something along the lines of HHAoD 2e). It would be entirely possible for the member to simply create a massive blog intended to cover all of their Ultramarines projects, across different editions of different games, and possibly including all kinds of other things like battle reports, homegrown rules, etc. In this case, the member might use different categories within their blog, assigning appropriate tags to each category and/or the entries within. For example, the member might have both a Primaris army for the WH40K game, a firstborn army for the Horus Heresy setting/game, a fleet for Battlefleet Gothic, a kill team for the Kill Team game, homegrown rules for Captain Invictus, etc. The member might decide that each of these might be a separate category within their Ultramarines blog, assigning each the appropriate tag. There are going to be times when a member's concept for their blog doesn't fit neatly within the overall Category structure that we create, in which case the Miscellaneous Category is there. In this case, members should use (meta-/sub-)faction tags to help members to find the content in which they are interested. For example, At one time I created tokens for the 2018 version of the Kill Team game. These tokens spanned all of the various factions of the game. Tokens don't really fit into one of our Blog Categories, so I would have located that blog (had we had Blogs at that time) in the Miscellaneous Category and assigned the Kill Team 2018 tag to the blog, then I would have assigned tags for each entry in which I presented a faction (e.g., the entry with the Exorcists tokens would have had the Exorcists Chapter tag). All that said, if you think we need to make any changes to the proposed Categories, please post your suggestions here. Also note that the increase to unlimited blogs means that there will be a progression of achievement badges for creating blogs. The achievement for creating a blog has been changed to green (from gold). We are looking at the entire achievements system, though, so we won't implement the entire progression until we get the overall system redone. That is still a work in progress, though, so it won't happen for a bit. Once the revision is implemented, though, achievement badges will be retroactively awarded.

Threadomancy is actually an issue that I have long thought that we need to re-think. That's a broader issue, however, so I'll leave it for another time/place (though I second the notion that a member updating their own blog and crossposting the link the discussion forums does not constitute any kind of negative threadomancy). As far as encouraging more input on older blogs, I think that is something we should definitely do. To be honest, if I had more time I would mosey throughout the site and engage with members on all kinds of content, especially the blogs. As with everyone else, though, my time is limited. I think that part of our overall effort here is to develop methods for encouraging blog use by both authors as well as readers (engagement). There are multiple layers to that effort, however, including incentivization (achievements/badges), visibility (crossposting is just one element), and simple strategic communications concerning blogs, what they offer, and how they are superior to the discussion forums for personal projects. @Xenith's suggestion to include links in the forums (in the PM) is something that I definitely think we'll be doing, but that, too, is just one part of the overall effort. I think that we'll be developing methodologies for featuring blog entries (that's a staff action) and for getting more visibility of blog entries elsewhere on the site.

The Recent Blog Entries block has been removed from the sidebar on the main Clubs page. I haven't added anything else to the sidebar yet because the categories are going to be expanded, increasing the height of the first block. Once we get the categories finalized, we see what kind of room we have to play with and how we might fill that space (accepting the fact that we have to allow for heights of blocks to vary based on activity).

Yes, we will be looking at the sidebar sections to clean things up.

I like the grid also. Is there a way to switch ot remove the sidebar on only the blog page? Currently there is the blog page, recent blog entries and recent blog comments sections that all kind of promote the same thing - like the below, where I just left a comment on my blog, and now my blog is at the top of both lists. Would there be an option for 'popular blogs', like those receiving the most comments, to be highlighted?

I like how the grid looks, though am a little concerned about what will happen the next time someone decides to spam updates. I already feel a little weird about having two of mine up there together.

I do like the gridded layout, allows the header images to catch the eye more. Regarding catergory structures, I'd thought splitting it along the forum lines might make sense, that way, you're familiar with one, you're familiar with both.

One of the issues that was brought up in the preliminary PM discussion about Blogs was that the main Blogs page was difficult to navigate. We are operating under a few limitations, some of which might change. Limitation #1 - The software settings only provide us with two options for Blogs page layout: a list of blogs or a gridded layout. Limitation #2 - Members are only allowed to create a single blog. With regard to Limitation #1, we were previously using the list option. I just changed it to the gridded layout to see if members prefer that. With regard to Limitation #2, the option to remove the limit on the number of blogs that members can create was proposed. With a limit of a single blog, there is no real justification for discrete categories since all of a member's projects will be contained within the same blog. So we have two categories: Members and Advertisers. If we change the limit on the number of blogs that a member can create, we would have to change it to unlimited. Each individual project would then be a separate blog and you could find all of a member's blogs by going to their profile page and clicking on the Blogs tab. We could then create discrete categories to aid in content architecture. However, we would have to develop a logical category structure; and proper use of tags (something we're going to tackle separately) would become essential in helping members with finding the types of blogs that they're looking for. At this point, I'm working on a category structure to support multiple blogs per member. In parallel, the staff are looking at our current achievement progressions and developing an update. We'll incorporate multiple blogs into that structure. Once all of that is ready, we'll change the number of blogs that a member can create from 1 to unlimited. In the meantime, I'm open to suggestions for category structure. Note that I suggest looking at the structures for our discussion forums (categories and forums/sub-forums), galleries, downloads, and articles. Also, I'd like your feedback on the new (gridded) layout of the main Blogs page.

That's an interesting point. Threadomancy was much more of an issue when the forum received heavier traffic and necro-ing a dead post could be severely disruptive. Obviously the OP updating their hobby PLOG (for example) has often not been an issue as it adds content to 'their' thread and adding content to a Blog follows the same concept. However, replaying to a dead thread does not and might inadvertently suppress responses to Blogs (or it might just be human nature). Do we need to try and encourage more input on older Blogs to encourage more content from Blog authors?

144h later (more or less)... a follow up. Impact of cross posting in 12 MoH topic (Volkus): - BLOG with 80 views (+14) - 1 Like and 0 Comment - POST with 5 likes and zero Comment. (Number of view is irrelevant being a more global topic with lots of interactions and participants) Impact of cross posting in a standard topic in a low traffic forum: - BLOG with 97 views (+39) - 1 Like and 1 Comment leading to an answer (commented by the very same user that Liked the content) - POST with 143 views (+68) views, 0 Likes and 7 Comments in the discussion Repeating the process with another Blog entry related this time to Feb pledge in 12 MoH 48 h later: Impact of cross posting in 12 MoH topic (Kastelan): - BLOG with 40 views (+14) - 2 Likes and 0 Comment - POST with 5 likes and zero Comment. (As before, number of view is irrelevant being a more global topic with lots of interactions and participants) Looks like the initial hours/days of the life cycle of a BLOG post are key into reaching number of comments and likes (or similar support actions). After that vieers are just viewing. Could it be a matter of transposing netiquette behaviours usually rpomoted into the Forums to Blog´s posts? Ones refrain from commenting after a while in order not to fall into crimes of thread Necromancy?

Oh, I'm sensing an eventual power point presentation with clicks per announcement and traffic per blog. More seriously, this is a great idea. It might indeed be worth a bit more experimentation in different forum areas to see whether drives up interest.

Yes, it's probably a little too soon to tell.

48h later (more or less)... a follow up. Impact of cross posting in 12 MoH topic: - BLOG with 66 views - of which up to 10 are probably mine - 1 Like and 0 Comment - POST with 5 likes and zero Comment. (Number of view is irrelevant being a more global topic with lots of interactions and participants) Impact of cross posting in a standard topic in a low traffic forum: - BLOG with 58 views - of which up to 10 are probably mine - 1 Like and 1 Comment leading to an answer (commented by the very same user that Liked the content) - POST with 76 views, 0 Likes and 5 Comments in the discussion 1st elements of Conclusion: not everyone looking at a Post goes to the Blog entry referenced within. The deliberqte use of a vignette call to the Blog is eventually not a sufficient incentive. in anotehr way, finnally, traffic generated in terms of comments and interactions is not really different in these 2 types of contributions. But can we rate the value on a single isolated event? let's see if "more brings more" while repeating the experiment once and again. PS: I feel like I need an excel speadsheet...

Note that I've changed this club from Read-Only to Open. As Read-Only, everyone could read the discussions, but only members could participate and you could only become a member if you were invited. After thinking about it more, I expect to pose some questions to members that don't own blogs and I don't want them to have to go through the hassle of requesting to become members. So now, anyone that wants to help make the Blogs feature better can join this club without needing to be invited. There are some discussions that are/will be reserved only for members that own blogs, either here at the B&C or elsewhere. These will be described as "Blog owners only" in their titles. Replies from non-blog owners in those topics may be removed (though they may be retained if we think they are relevant). Similarly, there will be some discussions that are/will be reserved only for members that don't own blogs. These will be a little different as there will probably be points/questions made by non-blog owners that blog owners may want to address. As a general rule, the goal in these discussions will be to gain an understanding of why non-blog owners don't own blogs. While I expect that there may be some attempts at persuasion, I don't want to try to hard-sell people on creating blogs (though I am unashamed to admit that I'm a huge fan of them and you should create one ).

Thanks for the feedback. On the tags issue, I recall wondering about it when I saw it, too. I asked a couple of members (several mods did this) and they explained why they were doing it. In retrospect, it was a brilliant solution to a problem. Unfortunately, member names as tags won't work when we update to V5 (which is still in testing, so I have no idea when the update will happen). Tags will no longer be a free text option, but will instead be predefined by the site (the staff have begun discussing this issue, though we haven't moved to formal planning yet). No, this will not be some optional setting that we can undo. Fortunately, the blogs, as you've identified, provide the perfect solution.

Keeping in mind that my current blog efforts so far have been focused around consolidating all of my old projects, my feedback may be a little skewed here. I have to admit that my hobby time is hit or miss and all of my projects have stalled because of other non-hobby commitments. Despite that, I really would like to bring my hobby projects - mostly DIYs - to life on the tabletop. If nothing else, I'd like to have a kill team for each of my DIYs eventually. Since I'm revisiting projects that stretch back for years, finding the original discussions required some searching. It wasn't difficult to find each of the old discussions, but it wasn't as easy as I would have liked. I recall seeing some members using their names as tags at one point. At first I thought it was kind of arrogant - I wondered why they thought I would want to read about them. I clicked on a few of them on a whim once, however, and I came to the conclusion that they were using their names as tags as a way to find their posts (and I mentally apologized for my initial ill thoughts about them ). Even though I came to see the value in the practice of using one's name as a tag, I never pulled the trigger on doing that to my own topics. Once I found the blogs, I realized I didn't need to do that - I could just consolidate the projects into the blogs. I doubt that everyone else will want to do that, but some members might (and I highly recommend it). Now all I have to do to find my various projects is open my blog and everything is there, no matter how old (and unfinished ). This keeps me from forgetting things, maintaining visibility of my projects. I've also taken a little time to look at other members' blogs and I'm blown away. I have found them to be inspiring in many ways and I hope to achieve similar levels of craftsmanship (if only I could get some models painted!). I think that the blogs have really given the community a great feature for sharing their hobby efforts - almost like everyone having their own mini-website about the hobby without the pain of having to create and maintain (and pay for) an actual website.

The main barrier I have in updating my blog is a lack of hobby time. That has affected all of my participation here, not just with blogs. I'm slowly trying to carve out more time for the hobby and I am fairly certain that the blogs will be my focal point when it comes to my own projects. Some of the discussions are interesting and informative, but others are just other peoples' opinions and they don't necessarily help me much (just as my opinion doesn't really help them, I suppose). The blogs have really given me a way to focus my hobby efforts and plans - if only I had more time.

Thanks for inviting me into the club! I have found the process of creating and updating my blog and blog entries to be very easy. Creating/composing a blog entry is virtually identical to creating/composing a discussion topic/reply, so there was no real learning curve aside from one thing. One element of the blog entries that was new to me was the image that appears at the top of each entry. It wasn't difficult to come up with images, but it often required me to edit existing images from my articles. I finally figured out that I should take a screenshot of a blog entry to get the right dimensions, deciding upon 1288 pixels wide by 300 pixels high. If I used a smaller image, the system automatically stretched it and I couldn't really control which portion of the image displayed. By having an image prepared, I was able to exercise a bit more control. This is something that I would have loved to have known when I first started working on blog entries, though it wasn't difficult to figure out and it didn't really hamper my efforts much. For what it's worth, aside from my introduction entry, I've been using my blog to consolidate all of my old DIYs. I haven't yet reached the point where I'm creating truly new stuff, but I hope to do that in the future. So I suspect my feedback will be a bit skewed because I'm not really looking for feedback or engagement at this point (not that I wouldn't love to get any, of course, but most of these posts received feedback from other members back when they were first posted in the forums).

Since the software doesn't allow the automatic announcements, cross-posting is an excellent way for members to create visibility within the forums and draw traffic to their blogs. I really like the way you've done it (posting the URL of the blog entry and letting the software convert it into the link card), which I think is vastly superior to the way I was doing it (copying and pasting some portion of the blog entry into a discussion topic, then adding a link-as-text).

I did wonder what you were up to when I saw similar posts in the unread feed. Really you could do with a few more of us doing similar to get better feedback. Though really my wip thread is the only applicable one in my case as I don't have any other posts in the other sub forums that would match.

Hi, Since the discussion we got into private chats, it made me think about looking ahead if cross-posting in a more systematic way BLOG entries into FORUMs may lead to any kind of change in habits/traffic. My first attempts are in the following areas: 12 Months of Hobby - easy to implement and to align with the way the topic and challenge is working. BLOG: Volkus Scenery - Part 2 - Bouargh´s miniatures´ closet clean-up - The Bolter and Chainsword vs. FORUM: =] 12 Months of Hobby 2025 [= - Page 4 - + WORKS IN PROGRESS + - The Bolter and Chainsword A kind of Edito/Wish list in the Drukhari forum. BLOG: Another digression - This time about Drukharii - Bouargh´s miniatures´ closet clean-up - The Bolter and Chainsword vs. FORUM: Drukhari Wish List - + DRUKHARI + - The Bolter and Chainsword In both cases anyone could see how much Tags (Likes...) can be collected in both areas and how much comments are posted either into each Forums or bellow each Blog entry. With the idea to promote views and visits in the Blog of course . From a cualitative point of view, one can have a look at a few days or a few weeks. Since we talk of behavioural aspects, I do not expect any visible impact a short term. It will need maybe a more sistematic discipline in my Blog entries´ managment over the next months. While I am writting these lines, I realize that these 2 Forum areas are maybe not the most representative: Hobby related areas have a rapid turnover, inc. 12 MoH, which makes tahta impact is probably worth being looked at short term only. But one can repeat the action one and again. Xenos forums are not the ost active in the whole B&C forums, which makes that impact maybe very delayed and/or volume of feedback intrinsically limited Let´s see if cross posting bring fruits...