Dando and I got an interesting idea in the chatbox. While talking about writing guides, I got the idea of making more guides that were more like blog posts, and then Dando said it would be cool if members could run their own blogs on the site.

This would actually be really cool idea. The only problem with it is that it may not be such a big thing right now with so few members here. But essentially, I think this could replace our clunky guides system while promoting more user-made material and variety.

Here's my vision, although it's a bit blurry, of what this idea should do:

1) Everyone will have a blog page, and if you want to see their posts, you're gonna have to go to their page. Or if you prefer, you can just look up your latest unread posts in the "Everyone's Blogs" forum board.

2) The content of blogs can be anything. It can be a post about what you hate to see in caves, or a comprehensive review/commentary of a level or video, or a guide on how to use a new glitch that you just researched. Or it can be garbage. But the reason why this is so cool is that it gets more information written down by more people. Here's a perfect example of a good blog post:
http://www.interguild.org/members/forums/topic.php?id=1016

3) We need to somehow pick up the greatest blog posts and put them all into one area. That way, people can browse them if they're looking for guides or commentaries or lists, etc. This is the part of the idea that will replace the current guides system. I'm hoping that our collection of guides/articles/content-in-general will be much bigger, more varied, and just plainly more representative and dependent of the community.

I'm not sure of how exactly we'd set the whole thing up, but it seems like a really cool idea.

so it doesn't look like this is a favorable idea. (from what's been said in the chatbox, for those who weren't here). Oh well...

but I still really like the idea of somehow getting people to write more about stuff, especially when it comes to writing down the dozens of HATPC glitches that we know. Orca's wondering why we don't just use forum topics, and he's right. Maybe we could start a new forum board or something for this stuff, and the guides page will simply be a collection of the best topics? Actually, that sounds like a really cool idea b/c it means it would be super easy to implement.

I don't know. I actually kind of like the guides. I am NEUTRAL about this idea. But a blog post would be kind of cool...

well, maybe the name "blog" is throwing everything off. I'm not saying something is wrong with having "Guides", it's just that the way that our guides system is set up really stinks. I was just thinking of a way to get people to write more stuff on their own, and then put all the good stuff into a "guides" list.

I like the blog idea. There are several topics that are just too small to write a guide about, or have so many parts that I would have to take too much time to write it.

The reason this wouldn't work with normal forum posts is that it will become more difficult to reply on them that way. You can edit the first post to put in your latest blog, but that would mean you would have to store your older ones somewhere else and that could be annoying.
To have something like a tabbed first post, where your latest blog appears on top, but you can still bring up the older blogs by clicking a button or choosing one from a menu would be ideal.

I approve of a blog that doesn't interfere with the Recent Posts and Comments.

eh? you guys actually like the idea? (there's something seriously uncool about using this smiley...)

well, the whole idea of that would be because there would be no other way to keep up with the latest posts if the only way to see them would be by going to that user's blog page. I really don't see what the difference would be especially when new levels, videos, guides, and news posts already come up, and I don't think we'll be getting so many blog posts that it'll become a problem.

And jell, that's not what I meant. The suggestion was to just make a new forum topic for every post. But yeah, I still prefer the idea of giving everyone a blog, because that, in a way, can inspire people on what to write about.

Also, I think we should place limits on the blog, saying that your posts must at least be in some way related to the site or games in general. Because we don't wanna start getting people who post their fantasy stories here or something.

Actually im not against the entire blog idea.  other than that regular forum topic rather than a blog thing, which i think has already been resolved, this is a pretty cool idea.  im just saying, why work on this when you could be working on something more important, like, uh, i dunno, aeon?  aeon seems like its really important. or something.

It's just that these big projects take such a long time that sometimes it's nice too see updates when it comes to other things, mainly to keep this place interesting, in the meantime.

you know, i really feel like setting this up. I've been getting lots of good ideas for blog posts lately.

Yeah! Just think of all the new blog posts you could make about how you're not working on Aeon!

Note that I'm not entirely against this idea, but I'm against doing it right now

actually, the Aeon Update thread would be much cooler if it was a blog. That brings up an interesting idea, though. The original idea was to give every user their own blog, but what if you wanted to start multiple blogs? Like what if I wanted to start a HATPC related blog, and then an Aeon-Progress blog? Instead of everyone having a blog attached to their account, people should be able to create as many blogs as they want. Actually that's kinda extreme--maybe putting a limit on like 5 blogs per person sounds good.

You know what would make the Aeon Update thread even cooler? Actual updates!!


I guess you can do this, but I would still very strongly suggest that you at least make one moderate update to Aeon before working on this blog idea.

I say stop talking about it and do it lol

too busy releasing this new layout, but thanks Flame.

hahaha no worries

i think restricting the blogs would be a bad idea. Let people have their freedom, and it is unlikely someone would waste their time writing a blog about something completely pointless  

yeah I think that's what i was trying to say, but it might have made it sound like we're just gonna get bad posts most often. lol

argh, I wish I had more time to work on this...

but in the meantime, we should probably figure out how we're gonna do this part:I was originally thinking of having some kind of category or tag system, but now I think it would be better to have the staff maintain a bunch of "Lists". We can have one list for HATPC Guides, for example. Maybe have further lists inside of them, one for glitches, another for layout and design. That could work pretty well, and we could also control the order of the lists, so that the best go on top or something.

i think u need to work on the most important parts of the layout first, not the fanciest parts of it. then move onto this