OK a silly question but I’m not really sure. I have visited sites where I have replied to, what I gather is, a blog. Is it a bit like this forum where a subject is raised and people add comments in a linear way ? So if I were to create a web site for my local town, I will want to add lots of pictures and reviews of builders and restaurants, the normal stuff but I’d like to allow visitors, to the site, to add comments or ask questions so do I create a “blog” page and do I start it off with a comment that people should reply to ? or should there be lots of blog pages, one for builders, one for restaurants etc. and then I guess it needs policing, I don’t want to spend my life keeping an eye on it to stop bandits hijacking it … a bit of advice from someone here with some experience would be most welcome, and forgive my ignorance. Roger
Well the most obvious difference between a blog and a forum is that often in a blog one single person makes the topics for discussion (then people comment) while a forum enables anybody to create topics (registered or unregistered) and there is no one topic.
I guess from a FW sense it’s like this forum has many users who create topics to discuss while most blogs would have a single person that raises a topic and other’s respond only to that topic. They aren’t allowed to do anything more than comment, typically.
Realize that in any good blogging software, you’ll have various settings and options to “moderate” the content, meaning either delete bad comments or check them before they are posted. There are also tools to help prevent spambots from posting junk and at least make sure real humans are doing the writing.
If you wanted to have different specific categories - food reviews - builder news - social event announcements etc. - of course you can have different blogs for each one so they don’t all get dumped into a single potpourri of blogging. The problem I see with this is that this would make many external links, each one driving people way from your site, unless you embed the blog(s) in an iFrame as I have done - or use some other method that I’m unaware of.
In cases where the blog becomes mostly informational - I know I’m considering moving the post(s) to new pages on my site to be able to categorize them better and keep them from getting ignored while buried deep in a blog’s history. One can always link to those pages from the main blog as well…
Of the blog packages I’ve seen - most all offer optional moderation - which allow you to see and approve messages before they get posted, and/or delete what you don’t like. A notification is sent to you when a new post has been entered - at that point you can approve or not.
Your blog entries can be news, information, personal ramblings, complaining, self promoting - anything you like them to be - and do not have to be put in the form of a question or ask for any kind of response.
Sometime around 11/10/09 (at 10:52 -0400) igirl said:
you can have different blogs for each one so they don’t all get
dumped into a single potpourri of blogging.
Another approach could be to use tags on the blog posts to identify
them by category, then show just posts to do with a particular
category (tag) when someone clicks a certain link. I’ve not tried
this myself, but in the abstract it is certainly one legitimate
approach.
Thank you so much everyone, interesting variations, I continue to be slightly confused, what about a forum then raather than multiple blogs … a little like this one … basically a front page where anyone can add a comment or ask a question then, with a good search facility, anyone wanting to ask about builders could search and find threads referencing builders … a bit like here, if I want so help with SEO I search, get as much info as I can and then, invariably, I ask a question about my specific point ! Good of you all to take the time Roger
Sometime around 11/10/09 (at 11:26 -0400) Roger Burton said:
I continue to be slightly confused, what about a forum then raather
than multiple blogs
A forum is where people go to ‘air and share’ their views with
others. A blog is for someone (or a coherent group of people) to put
their thoughts, info, etc. out there for others to see.
A forum is a ‘conversation market place’; this site is a forum.
A blog is more like interactive publishing, where comments can be
made by readers (if allowed) but the
articles/statements/announcements are only ever posted by someone
with authority to do so.
They are similar, and a blog can be used in a moderately forum-like
manner and vice versa, but the prime reason for each is not quite the
same.
Thank you so much Keith for pointing out what appears to be a subtle distinction, I think that the site I have in mind may work better with a forum type facility, so do I look for some ‘forum’ software ? Roger
Yep. SimpleForum is relatively easy to implement. But see if you can do what you need using a blog with comments. Forums tend to
take rather more on-going admin, and they’re usually more complex to
set up and to protect from spammers.
Any page you make can be commented on by others. It has a search, and
TAG’s to crate a TAG cloud as Keith mentioned. And there are loads
of WordPress templates you can choose to install.
Any time spent using WordPress for example is not lost. It will be
helpful in understanding how sites are put together, which in turn
aid building Freeway sites, as it gives you greater experience of
code, CSS styles. etc.
David Owen ::
Freeway Friendly Web Hosting and Domains
Also look at Vanilla, http://vanillaforums.org/. It’s free,
lightweight, well designed and actively supported though like most of
these things you’ll probably need to edit the CSS to some extent if
you want anything other than the default styling. Look at it as an
opportunity to expand your skill-set.
That makes a lot of sense Keith and Todd I like the look of Vanilla and expanding my tool box is always a good idea. Thanks to you as well David, I’ve had a quick look at WordPress and even I could understand some of it and again, if it means getting some more knowledge all the better, you being ‘my host’ means I’ll probably go down the WordPress route as you can advise me when I get it wrong … now don’t you wish you’d kept quiet Best Roger
A blog is where someone pontificates on a subject(s) and sadly all to often develops and even larger ego than when they first thought of the idea.
A tell tale sign is when they moderate ‘comments’ that point out their egotism and any falsehoods of their opinions, not that readers will ever see those. Some are so paranoid/opinionated they don’t allow any comments or feedback.
Thankfully there are plenty of well rounded and open minded bloggers to keep me interested in the form. But once I see a change in hat size/
As a balancing view, it’s also free software to create a web site. You
don’t need to use the comments features if you don’t want to.
Many web sites are built around blog software yet not used as what is
normally recognised as a weblog (blog). Many web site owners are using
blogs as part of thier sites because Google loves them.
David
On 11 Oct 2009, at 20:06, “seoras” email@hidden wrote:
A blog is where someone pontificates on a subject(s) and sadly all
to often develops and even larger ego than when they first thought
of the idea.
As a balancing view, it’s also free software to create a web site. You don’t need to use the comments features if you don’t want to.
Indeed indeed and here’s an example of someone who just wishes to share some specialist information without the need of a dedicated website (one for Keith):
Is it not true that blogs need to be hosted on separate domains dedicated to blogging? How exactly does one set up a blog on, for example, www.mydomain.com?
Do the blog pages actually exist in the FTP for that domain?
You just need hosting that is suitable for the blog software. The blog
can be put into any directory you wish. Either run in the main
directory, or in any other for example www.mydomain.com/blog (if you
already have a Freeway site in the mail directory.
I our case you just, open the hosting control panel, click on which
blog script you wish to use, type a directory (folder) you wish the
blog to be in, click install – then follow the setup procedure
Anyone can test the install process using “Test Drive a web hosting
control panel” on our site.
The pages don’t exist as single entities like a Freeway site so if you
FTP to look at the files. They are dynamically created by a templates
using database and scripts.
David Owen :: Freeway Friendly Web hosting and Domains ::
Is it not true that blogs need to be hosted on separate domains
dedicated to blogging? How exactly does one set up a blog on, for
example, www.mydomain.com?
Do the blog pages actually exist in the FTP for that domain?
“Google loves blogs in general because blogs are (usually) updated fairly frequently and (again, usually) focus on just one thing per post/page.”
Actually, I think a big part of why Google loves this is because of the URL strings that are usually created when naming things like the blog pages.
This holds especially true for things like press releases and news articles and it is the reason why you can usually find a news article or press release. The title of the article is usually the URL string.
Separate out each word in the URL string with a “-” and never an “_” for good, whitehat SEO!
Best Roger