Overview
About This Club
A club for members of the B&C to discuss the Blogs feature and how to improve it. Only members with blogs, either at the B&C or externally, may join the club. Contact the admins if you would like to join this club.
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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?
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Captain Caine 24th joined the club
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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?
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zulu.tango joined the club
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firestorm40k joined the club
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Mike Zulu joined the club
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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...
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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 ).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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Ioldanach joined the club
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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).
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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...
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Please reply in this discussion only if you either have your own B&C blog or you have your own external blog (and if the latter, please include a link to it). This is a transcript of the replies to the title question that we received from various members in the PM. This transcript is provided for continuing discussion and background, especially as additional members join the club and participate in the effort to improve the Blogs feature. @Mr Farson 3. I think the lack of comments if the big demotivator but that could also be a me issue and my content. @The Yncarne My main barriers to updates are personal motivation. I find it difficult to take good photos which is outside the software. Photo dumps aren't always great to look at. @Wormwoods My main complaint is the lack of interaction that seems common when comparing Blogs to Threads out in the wild. I got a LOT more eyes and comments on my WIP Thread, which was basically just a hobby blog, than I have for my actual hobby blog. @Noserenda typically blogs didnt get much engagement even if i think they are a better presentation personally so after a while i just stopped posting them as often, then at all. @Brother Nathan i do find the actual blog section less enjoyable to navigate than other sections what likely impacts more as i have left off posting in blogs and should restart is that theres so little interaction by readers. yes i like to collect my photos and show my progress and have had it useful to back scroll over certain things iv done, but without interaction then why post it online? it can be a very lonely hobby elsewise so to some extent everyone posting does want more interaction be it a literal reaction or the occasional conversation relating to it. (ie no one i work with talks 40k, the all game. non of my family either so whilst i do have a gaming group i play with the validation of 'peers' does help with the inspiration to push on. which is ultimately why i do use forums over other media. now where the lines are for most blogs of how much interaction they want in their posts? throwing off on tangents or such but i do feel like interaction and increasing it may be a very important part. its especially off when you compare visit count to post interaction. i wonder how that compares across the site. its something i found slowed my progress in the tyranid section too as only a few frequent it compared to other sections. likely a difficulty across the site? @firestorm40k 3. Aside from if I close my tab and aren't able to find my blog again in a hurry it'll be a combination of personal factors - having time to post (or not), and also whether I have anything to post about. It might be a couple of months between posts, but when I do I try to make sure I've something worth posting about! @Bouargh ... And yet, like everyone else, I would like more interactions and coments. This is the frustrating part sometimes, especially if you want to propose material taht you think might be fun sharing. Another stuff that is sometimes "irritating" is the disparity of contents within Blogs or within posts. this may require an explanation: There are some posts which are basically like blogs and their authors might be incitated to use the latter instead of updating the post. They are telling us a story that may be worth being journeyed through a blog There are some blogs that are just one liner posts. with very limited content. I am not an Ayatollah, but may be Blogs should come with a requirement for a miniun content in words... To tell a story @Tomcatgunner So as someone from the advertising side, I've looked at the source pages from different people reaching to my website on a blog update vs. forum post. also on blog posts I get 0 interaction/feedback from people vs. forum I get some regular feedback, I get 4-6x as many eyes on a forum post than a blog update. I could post both, but that seems to be overdoing it. Now if I could cross post from blog to forum when I highlight different groups/factions/etc that would be the best of both worlds. @W.A.Rorie 3-My main barriers are as others have posted that it seems few read the blogs and comment. There are some that always like and occasionally comment. But it feels there are others that would rather light fires and start fights in threads then actually care about the hobby. @apologist 3 – Like lots of the contributors to this discussion – such as @Tomcatgunner – not getting as much feedback on a blog as a project log would have, tends to sap that enthusiasm – which leads to a vicious spiral. @drakheart 3. The main barrier to updating are my own available time @Xenith The reason why I'd update individual forum posts over the blog are: 1) inertia. My BA log has been going for over a decade, and there's some pride in the age, post and view count. I want that to persist. 2) Lack of traffic on blogs. Posts in forums get way more attention and views. @zulu.tango As other have mentioned, lack of engagement be a damper. I occasionally don't feel I should update the blog with minor progress and have to wait until I have a milestone update to justify the post, but that's likely more of a personal problem. @Mike Zulu Lack of free time. As you can see, the main complaint about the blogs is that there is much less engagement than there is in the discussion forums, due to a lack of visibility. As we improve the blogs, I hope that this will change and that there will be other complaints.
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Please reply in this discussion only if you either have your own B&C blog or you have your own external blog (and if the latter, please include a link to it). This is a transcript of the replies to the title question that we received from various members in the PM. This transcript is provided for continuing discussion and background, especially as additional members join the club and participate in the effort to improve the Blogs feature. @Mr Farson 2. The motivation is to have a lasting way to showcase progress I make. A think a blog allows me to take more time between posts than a thread. @firestorm40k 2. I have a painting log for my army project, but there's stuff I think are better suited to the related blog, such as 'fluff' or narrative posts, battle reports, or just posting about overall hobby process and how ideas develop. I'll continue to use my blog for that side of my hobby journey with my army. @Bouargh I am stubborn and I like the idea of getting a traceability of my contributions I can browse. It has in my opinion more sense to use a blog for stuff that needs a series of updates like a progress view of a project over one year. It is also great for posting opinion, like at shrink, or rants, without pretending geenrating noise; buzz or harvesting answers. Yet... @ZeroWolf 2. This is a hard one as its external factors that impact me updating my blog, my last post was at some point last year for example when my painting time became severely limited. I'm slowly getting it back though and aim to revive the blog in due course. @W.A.Rorie 2-My motivation is that if I do not update my blog I feel I am slacking in the hobby. Also sometimes posts do not fit in sections like life issues and talking about certain things hobby adjacent and easier to say in the blog. @apologist 2 – Enthusiasm for the project. @drakheart 2. When I have something I wish to share with the community @Xenith Admittedly I haven't updated my blog in a while. I have paint logs in the relevant sections (BA, WIP, Heresy) that I update with photos more regularly. The blog I have mainly started using for battle reports and general musings, however in the last year I have barely played 40k. @zulu.tango I enjoy having an avenue to track various hobby projects and put down my thoughts/process in a place I can review at future dates. It being public gives me some accountability in the process and is more fun to maintain than a hobby journal no one will see @Mike Zulu When I have free time and satisfied with what I have to present. As more members begin to use blogs and join this club, it will be interesting to see their answers to the question in the topic title.
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Wormwoods joined the club
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Bouargh joined the club
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Please reply in this discussion only if you either have your own B&C blog or you have your own external blog (and if the latter, please include a link to it). This is a transcript of the replies to the title question that we received from various members in the PM. This transcript is provided for continuing discussion and background, especially as additional members join the club and participate in the effort to improve the Blogs feature. @Mr Farson 1. I find it pretty easy creating blog entries and uploading images. @The Yncarne It's pretty easy to create and update blogs here. @Wormwoods Seconding everything @Mr Farson has said, really. @Brother Nathan as some others have noted i quite like the layout of the actual blog posts and ease of putting them together. @firestorm40k 1. I really like the blog feature, and creating blog posts has some neat facilities (such as categories and being able to link to your galleries) that are very useful. I'd say the only issue is that it can be easy to 'lose' your blog one the blogs home page when others have added entries to their blogs, pushing it from the front page. To get round that I leave a tab with my blog open for when I need it. @Bouargh It is quite easy to use on a computer. Yet I gave up trying to use it on mobile as I am not that able with touch screens... @ZeroWolf 1. I found it quite easy to set up and create new posts. It's like making an extended forum post. @GreenScorpion Hi I think I agree with most points, the blog setup is quite simple and easy to use especially when compared with blog platforms outside of this forum. @Kaede45 I’ve been enjoying the blogs as a means for me to write down my ideas & put them in a public space where I can get feedback & critiques to better flesh out my ideas. @Harrowmaster I find that it is very easy to create a blog and maintain it (from a technical standpoint). @W.A.Rorie 1- The creation and updating is easy. I had other blogs via blogspot and I feel that B&C is easier to use at it also host my photos in my albums and that their are individuals that do read and react to the blogs, so I am aware it is giving traffic. @apologist 1 – Easy to set up, and fairly easy to update. The main sticking point for me is remembering where to find it! I'm sure there's a better way of bookmarking it than my current method of clicking on 'blogs' at the top, then scrolling through each page in turn until I find it. I appreciate the fact that creating a new entry appears very familiar to normal posting elsewhere on the forum. @drakheart 1. I found it really easy to use, no issues there. @Xenith It was quite easy, things are laid out well and the blog creation process was simple. Though I have created and run a few blogs in other places. I can't speak for someone new to it. @zulu.tango Incredibly easy @Mike Zulu Easy enough. There are some nuisances with formatting, but most not unique to B&C (Blogger/Blogspot used to annoy me the same way. Some do require me to swap between IPS mode and B&C theme to double-check the formatting. So the initial batch of feedback is unanimous in that users of the Blogs feature find it to be easy to set up and maintain blogs. Subsequent participants may feel differently, however, or they may want to reinforce the conclusion, so replies are welcome.
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ZeroWolf joined the club
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W.A.Rorie joined the club
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Kaede45 joined the club
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If you are not yet a member of this club and would like to join, please contact the administrators by private message. Welcome to the Adeptus Bloggus club, a club dedicated to improving the blog experience at the Bolter & Chainsword. This club is a continuation of a private message discussion conducted among the administrators and community members who, at the time, had B&C blogs with more than 10 entries or who had external blogs (clicking the link will only work if you were in that conversation ). We saw that the discussion was branching out and had the potential to become very complicated, so a club allowed us to explore the issue more efficiently and effectively. This club will definitely remain active in the short term until we get the blogs where we want them. The club may remain active indefinitely, however, as an ongoing method for evaluating and improving the blogs. For those of you that are participating in a club for the first time, you'll see that a club works as a sort of miniature version of the Bolter & Chainsword. We have selected the features that this club has based on the perceived needs of the club (i.e., a discussion forum and gallery images). Clubs, too, are an underutilized feature, but they provide members of the community with great utility in their pursuit of the hobby, especially in terms of running special projects such as this.