Raving Atheists Blogs

I wonder if anyone has heard any news about the blog sections of this site.

[Eva]

what kind of news?

[PanAtheist]

peepnklown wrote

I wonder if anyone has heard any news about the blog sections of this site.

The blogs didn't take off.
I think these days ocmpoma is the only one that blogs here.

If the blogs could be integrated into the forums, they really could be popular and successful.
By integration, I mean that when someone creates a blog post, it would also appear as the start of a new thread in the forums, and the comments made on that blog page would also appear as the following posts in the corresponding forum thread.

A blog entry would be a front end, a "skin", to a collection of thread-starting posts by the blogger.
Also, the forum presentation would provide a link to the blog presentation.

The benefits are obvious:
1) the reader could easily enjoy their favourite raving atheists bloggers, by checking out their blogs;
2) the casual forum-user would not miss out on anything, as they'd see all the blogging contributions as they would appear to on the forums. They'd also readily discover blogs that might interest them.
3) the blogs and forums would not compete against each other, but actually boost each other.
4) keen raving atheist writers can easily assemble their output as a blog, but still contribute everything they write to the forums.

It would be a win-win situation, which I believe would give the Raving Atheists a huge boost.

If I had the technical expertise I would have volunteered to set something up like this. Does anyone know how to set this up? Or does anyone know of a blog-forum collective where this is already being done?

[Eva]

that sounds good. however, since we don't know if it can be set, bloggers should start a thread about their blogs and copy links to them....other poster should leave their comments in each respective blog.......

[Chris]

Actually vBulletin does offer blogs http://www.vbulletin.com/features_blog.php

I'd like to know what the majority would like to do. Abandon blogs and move the forum to the top level of the domain and add vBulletin blogs (I'll need to do some research). Or leave things as they are, add blogs and I need to do some massive upgrading. Current blogs in use can be left intact.

[Kate]

CHRIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like Pan's idea; I had hoped when the capacity to blog was added to the site that we would become a community of bloggers as well as a forum. I'd be more than happy to tweak the old blog if necessary to accommodate a change to the site's structure.

I suppose I should link to my co-bloggers here more often... a failing I hope I can remedy in the near future.

[ubs]

As wonderful as vbulletin is, their blogs are pretty ugly and Pan's idea is awesome, but I think would require more coding resources than we have available.

I favor a simple redesign of the front page to give the blogs THE prominent position with the latest entries appearing on the front page and a column of latest comments and entries on all the blogs running down the side.

This way,

1. None of ocmpoma's entries are lost in a conversion
2. No one has to touch the vbulletin code and all of the front page would be an rss mashup.
2. People will be drawn to using the blogs because they are more visible
3. As each person can moderate their own blog, there will be some portions of the site that are more civilized like the bad old days, but without breaking up the group.

Chris, I wanted to start a blog on this site but, it says that bugs need to be addressed before I could create a blog. I am in favor of blogs.

[Eva]

chris!! glad to see you here...

hope we can do this. we need this re-vamping...

[psychodiva]

I have a blog elsewhere and wonder if - when all is settled- it could be moved to here lock and stock ?

You should be able to import the blog -- at the other site, you should have an 'export' option somewhere which will download the blog to your pc, then you can 'import' it here, which uploads the file and re-constitutes it as a blog.

[Chris]

Really the only way to do what Pan suggests is to use the vBulliten blogs and I admit they aren't pretty but they are made to integrate with the forum, plus prettiness and usefulness are two different things. Anything can be made pretty but will it be useful?

What I can do now, is make a sidebar here on the forum that shows recently updated blogs, much like it does on the blogs page now.

You know, it would be really nice if all yall just come over tonight and we'll hash out all our ideas.

[ubs]

Chris wrote

What I can do now, is make a sidebar here on the forum that shows recently updated blogs, much like it does on the blogs page now.

Ooooo. I like that idea.

You could combine the rss feeds for both the comments and the entries for each active blog in feedster and then run that combined rss in your new column.

After it's set up you could give that feedster login and password to a volunteer to update without compromising security of the wordpress mu or the vbulliten.

If only the blog title bumps to the top - as it is now - the blogs appear more static than they are because some writers are more prolific than others. For instance ocmpoma might post five times in a week and so the list appears to be at a standstill.

Also if your interests only occassionally coincide with a particular blogger, you are less likely to check their blog if it bumps to the top...but if you could see the title of the post, or a conversation unfolding it might enhance their traffic.

Chris wrote

You know, it would be really nice if all yall just come over tonight and we'll hash out all our ideas.

We're flying to Hawaii as we type.

[ubs]

I like the blog feed. It's very nice.