Blog Improvement Discussion

Hi Everybody!

Hoptis asked me a while ago to paste in the selected bits of our e-mail discussions regarding the improvement of our little sub-forum. It's been a crazy week, so I haven't had a chance to get to it, but here it is:

As far as the suggestions for improvement, here's the short list so far:

* A direct link to blogs from the main page (and perhaps the forum list at www.bluelight.ru/vb as well) as well as/instead of the link in the 'Quick Links' section of the pulldown menu. Just as a means to improve visibility and access
* A 'Posting Guideline/Announcement' link (a la 'Other Drugs Guidelines') or other sort of Sticky post system for announcements
* A listing of who is moderating the area, so that posters can know to whom to address any issues/complaints


I was also wondering if there was a way to change the number of 'Recent Blogs/Comments' seen per page? As a nicety more than anything else. And if the poll functionality can be extended to Blogs? Not that we do much voting, but once a month we vote on the Topic of the Month, and the poll just looks more slick than the current setup.

From what I've heard, changes to the layout and what not in Blogs are not trivial, and as such I completely understand that these may not be able to be implemented, or if so not soon. I know how little time one can realisically can devote to BL . It's more of a wish list than anything else at the moment; nothing's broken, and none of the suggestions need to be implemented any time soon.

On the other issues, I'll try and look into all of those as soon as I can, some of them will be possible, some of them not. The polls one, at first glance, seems impossible but there are many workarounds for this, including the possibility of adding a notice to Blogs which directs people to a poll in a BL forum somewhere.

PS. Have you ever seen this?

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/contactlist.php

I'll update it this weekend to remove spork, though I agree it would be nice to have the mods listed somewhere in Blogs too.

Also you should be aware, the home page for the Blogs module is here:

http://www.vbulletin.com/features_blog.php

Have a look at the demo of version 2.02. I hope to upgrade our Blogs to this version by year's end.

Thanks for pointing out the contact list. In my nearly 10 years here I've never seen it, and think that it's great. I'll pass it on to the user who made that particular suggestion. The poll thing is probably the lowest priority thing in the pile; the way we are doing it now works well enough for our purposes.

Thanks as well for showing me the blog features list. I don't doubt that there are many features that I haven't used yet, and many more that most users don't use. I'll be sure to give that a good reading when I get a chance.

I think that's it for now. Talk to you soon!

That's pretty well it for now. Hoptis is on vacation for another week yet IIRC, but this should be a good place to discuss potential improvements to Blogs in a manner more public than PMs.

To add another note: this month the topic of the month really seemed to fizzle. It was a good idea, but I haven't been around enough to properly promote the cross-forum idea. Do we want to keep going on with the 'sub-forum' themed months, just do regular themes, or can the theme of the month altogether? Personally I'd like to see it tried for another month at least, but I don't know how well the cross-forum theme idea is working. I just need to get out there and start talking up Blogs in places other than, well, Blogs.

So yeah, let's discuss these points, and add some more suggestions as we think of them, shall we?

 

Thanks honey......
My friend has been pretty emotional, which is understandable, since she and her bf have been together for 3 yrs and moved from tx to washington together. I'm basically all she's got (seriously)- Her mother, though there for support by phone, is a heroin addict and not exactly someone she can realllly count on.....Can't really mention it in view b/c i talked her into a BL account a while back and I don't want to embarrass her
Alright.....talk to you soon.

 

Take all the time you need Dez. Oh, and I think that I'll start a new Blogger thread, since we've drifted pretty OT in this one