=][= THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN FORUM HAS ARRIVED, AND BLOGS HAVE CHANGED =][=

[Brother Tyler]

With the impending release of the new Emperor's Children codex and a range refresh, we are seeing a lot of Emperor's Children topics cropping up. To save everyone time later, the Emperor's Children forum has been created.

 

We are also in the process of revamping the Blogs and several important changes have taken place:

• Members may now create an unlimited number of blogs (increase from the previous limit of 1).
• A variety of categories have been created for blogs, helping members to organize their blogs and increase findability by other members.
• Links to related blog categories have been added to various forums.

This is a work in progress, but the basic structure has been created. There is a lot more work yet to come.

 

For those members that already have blogs, you can move your existing blogs around. First, you'll have to create the new blogs. Then you can select any of your internal blog categories and move them into the new blog. I'll post a mini tutorial about this later.

 

Planned work for the Blogs:

• Change the redirect icons (right now it's the red helmet) to the faction icons. We'll retain the red helmet icon for those blog categories of a general nature (e.g., the Modeling, Sculpting, and Painting Blogs icon linked in the + GENERAL PCA QUESTIONS + forum will remain the red helmet), but factions deserve some theme.
• Links to factions that don't have separate forums (e.g., the Raven Guard, the Iron Warriors) will be linked in the relevant Resource topic (e.g., the Raven Guard Blogs will be linked in the Raven Guard Resources post that appears in the Adeptus Astartes Resources topic).
• Recent blog entries will be displayed in forums, if possible. For example, the Dark Angels sub-forum (in the Adeptus Astartes forum) will show recently posted blog entries in the Dark Angels Blogs category. These will likely appear in the sidebars. I'm not sure that this addition will be possible, however, so I'll be playing around. Don't be surprised to see some tinkering going on.

Something you'll notice is that we don't have categories for games (the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness game is the obvious example). The concept with our Blogs categories is that games will be identified by including the appropriate tags. So if someone is creating a blog about their Ultramarines [Legion] army for the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness game, they would give their blog a nifty title, then assign the Ultramarines Legion and HHAoD game tags. Actually, we haven't quite settled on all of the tags for games, especially the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness game, but I'll edit this post once we figure that out. It will be much easier once we upgrade to Invision 5.0 and tags become pre-determined.

 

And just as we've added links to the related Blog categories, we will probably similarly add links to the related Gallery categories. So you may see a link to Dark Angels & Successors albums appearing the Dark Angels forum. And we might do this for Downloads, too. The intent is to give members easier access to related content around the site, saving you from clicks (e.g., you don't have to click the GALLERY button at the top of the page, then the Imperium category, then the Adeptus Astartes/Legiones Astartes sub-category, then the Dark Angels & Successors sub-sub-category).

 

We may consider similarly adding Gallery and Downloads content to sidebars, too, but I'm not sure if we can filter things out appropriately (e.g., so that only Dark Angels & Successors albums/images appear in the Dark Angels forum). If we can't, we won't add those sidebar blocks.

 

With the change in blog limits from 1 to unlimited, we will be adjusting the progressions for creating blogs. We are looking at revising all achievement progressions, however, so we'll implement all of those changes in one fell swoop. For what it's worth, we're looking at increasing from 5 to 20 levels, with some new colors added in. This will affect a lot of things, though, so we need to get everything prepared before we implement anything. Once we do, the system will retroactively award achievement badges.

[Xenith]

Very optimistic about the blog changes, I'll try to post to mine a bit more to check it out!

[Norman Paperman]

Awesome! I just took the plunge and started mine. I also started a thread with the same content in Works in Progress, it would definitely be cool if the one blog entry could show up on the WiP and Thousand Sons forums. I want to get it in the right places for maximum engagement, but I don't want to be doubling up comments or separating any discussions. I thought I selected Thousand Sons and Tzeentch when I was choosing my blog creation options, but my first examination after posting it didn't show up in the TS+T blogs link. 

 

I was also confused by the "Entry Category" field. It told me to create a new entry category, but offered no advice as to what that field meant. I put in "Works in Progress, Thousand Sons" in forlorn hope that it might help with linking to forums. It just seems to be a sub-header in the blog thread? 

[Indy Techwisp]

Since Deathwatch is still it's own army currently and is treated like a Divergent Chapter in game, should it still have it's own subforum?

[Brother Tyler]

23 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

Since Deathwatch is still it's own army currently and is treated like a Divergent Chapter in game, should it still have it's own subforum?

 

Answered here.

[Brother Tyler]

I'm working on tutorials/guidance for the blogs, but I want things to settle down after we upgrade to Invision 5.0 first (again, we don't have a plan/timeline for that yet, so it's strictly notional at this point). In the interim, however, here is a little bit of info.

 

First, we have created a structure of categories and sub-categories for the blogs. There was some debate about whether or not to include categories/sub-categories for games (e.g., the Horus Heresy Age of Darkness), but we decided to go with the factions/sub-factions since those provide a bit more granularity. Had we gone with categories/sub-categories instead of factions, things would have been diluted. For example, people looking for blogs about Orks might miss Ork kill team blogs in the Kill Team category. While some people might search by game, factions/sub-factions appear to be the more common search pattern. Proper use of tags will help people to provide more clarity on what projects are about.

 

It turns out that members can't move their blogs. I did a bunch of digging around and this is something that only certain staff members can do. Naturally, this throws a spanner in the works for members that created blogs when members were limited to a single blog. For those members that want to take advantage of being able to create unlimited blogs and who want to break their existing blogs up, instructions are provided here. Nobody has to scatter their existing blogs into multiple blogs if they don't want to, but I hope that you all do as it will really help with content findability (yes, that's a real thing) and you'll earn the achievements for having multiple blogs.

 

As far as the confusion about categories that  @Norman Paperman described, yes, I get it. There is the overarching structure that we've built, but members are also able to create their own internal blog categories. This gives members considerable freedom in organizing their blogs. For example, a member might have a blog that is solely dedicated to collecting and painting the models for a single kill team. Such a blog might need only one category, or they may decide to create a different category for each model in the kill team. Meanwhile, a member might have a blog dedicated to their DIY Chapter. Such a blog might have many categories, including categories about different aspects of the Chapter (e.g., heraldry, organization, rules, etc.), a category for the development of a Chapter article, categories for different armies/forces they might create for different games (e.g., a combat patrol, a kill team, a BFG fleet, a Terminator squad for Space Hulk, etc.). The common usage of "category" is confusing at first, but once you wrap your head around the differences between the default categories [that we have created for the overall blogs] and the internal categories [that each blog author creates for their blogs], it becomes pretty easy (and it's extremely useful).

 

As far as announcement/outreach posts, feel free to post them in any appropriate forum/sub-forum. For example, if your blog is about a squad of Dark Angels Legiones Astartes (perhaps using the Legionaries rules), it would be acceptable to post topics in the Dark Angels, Kill Team, Heretic Astartes, and Horus Heresy forums since members that frequent each of those forums would likely be interested. Invision has informed me that automatic announcement topics such as are created for downloads and articles are not possible with the blogs, so we are left with manual outreach (which sucks, I know). In the meantime, I've also tinkered with the sidebar blocks, pushing new blog entries closer to the top and increasing the number that appear. I tried to use subject-specific blocks in various forums/sub-forums (e.g., Dark Angels blogs in the Dark Angels forum), but it didn't work the way I wanted. I'm not done with that experiment, but it will require custom blocks (not my forte, so it will take time).

 

Another element of increasing blog visibility was to add links to related blogs in each of the forums. For example, at the top of the Dark Angels forum you can now see a link to all Dark Angels & Successors blogs. In addition, the Resource indices that appear in most of the forums now also have links to the blogs, gallery albums, and, where relevant, decals in the downloads. So if you look at the Dark Angels resources topic, you'll see links to Dark Angels blogs, gallery albums, and decals.