Pre-Announcement of Member Blogs

[Robert]

I'm excited to announce the addition of member blogs sometime over the weekend. As many of you may recall, ToeQuest offered journals to members until the recent upgrade of the forum software, at which point the journals were no longer compatible. Since that time I've been searching for a replacement and found one that was far superior to what we previously had. This was a commercial product in alpha testing that I've been watching closely and recently it entered beta test status. Even though its not a final product yet, I have enough confidence in it to integrate it into ToeQuest at this time.

These are full-featured blogs and will be hosted on ToeQuest for all interested members. They are currently free to all members (but you can always make a donation ). If you previously had a Journal with ToeQuest I will move all your previous entries to your new Blog for you.

I've included some of the features below:

• You will have full control and management of your blog through your blog control panel (separate from your user UserCP).
• You can set your blog to public or private.
• Your blog can contain content blocks such as archives, calendar, categories, favorite entries, about me, and several others that I'll be designing for you.
• You can create and maintain your own categories.
• Display a calendar that shows current month and days on which you have entries.
• Your entries can be public, viewable by your buddies list, or private.
• You can stick your entries so it always appears at the top.
• You can post a draft entry, only visible to yourself, until you manually publishy it or set an auto-publish date.
• Users can rate your blog entries.
• Users can send your blog entries to friends.
• Users can subscribe to your entries so they receive email notification when comments are posted.
• Users can add your entry to their list of favorite entries.
• You can report offensieve entries or comments in others' blogs.
• You can see who is viewing your blog.
• RSS feeds will be available for your blog entries
• Comments can optionally be posted by guests as well, but they will have to enter their name and email address. Image verification will most likely be added for this.
• If you wish to post a comment that only the author can read, you can; comments can be private.
• A blog directory will list all the blogs at ToeQuest along with statistics such as Top Blogs (most entries, most comments, most views, highest rated), and Top Entries (most comments, most views, most favorited, highest rated).
• Search is available on entries or comments.
• I should also be able to place latest entries or comments on the home page.

I've purchased and downloaded the sofware and should be trying it out on the test server tomorrow.

Ok, that's enough for now. I'll keep you updated and I'll send out an email announcement once it's ready to go.

Regards,
--Robert

[mkirkpatrick]

Many thanks Robert,am grateful for all your hard work and endevour to make this one
of the best sites on the internet,many thanks.


regards michael.

[Robert]

An update... I'm going to hold off on installing the member blogs until the 2nd beta is available. There have been some issues with the current release and I don't want to take a chance on messing things up. So lets let this baby shake out a bit more then will get her installed.

[mkirkpatrick]

Thanks for keeping us up to date and informed Robert,not sure what I will do with this when it finally arrives though?
What does one do with blog!!


regards michael.

[Robert]

A blog is kind of like a diary accept it can potentially be read by 5 billion people! Functionally, it will be very similar to the Journal that we previously had at ToeQuest, but with many more bells and whistles.

But primarily, what one does with a blog is to mention it at social gatherings (e.g. Parties) to appear cool and in touch with the latest Internet trends. This would be very similar to how you earned such profound respect in the pubs you frequented on your recent vacation, where you mentioned your Zoints profile.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
--Robert

[mkirkpatrick]

A blog is kind of like a diary accept it can potentially be read by 5 billion people! Functionally, it will be very similar to the Journal that we previously had at ToeQuest, but with many more bells and whistles.

But primarily, what one does with a blog is to mention it at social gatherings (e.g. Parties) to appear cool and in touch with the latest Internet trends. This would be very similar to how you earned such profound respect in the pubs you frequented on your recent vacation, where you mentioned your Zoints profile.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
--Robert

Thanks Robert I need some street cred,so this will do nicely!

regards michael.

[Robert]

A quick update... Beta 2 has become available and I'm currently testing it in the test forum. It's looking pretty good so far. I have a little more work on the new menu setup before I release it. I wanted to release the new menus and the member blogs at the same time. Unless I find any problems in my testing it should be very soon now.

--Robert

[mkirkpatrick]

Thanks Robert,I look forward to giving it a try,if I figure out what to do?

You are doing a grand job,forum grows and gains support.

regards michael.

btw,when is the next chat topic session due,it seems like ages since the last one,the chat
room is hardly used now.

[Robert]

The member blogs are ready to go. Just click on 'Blogging' in the lower menu bar and select an option from the dropdown menu. If you had a journal before then you already have your blog ready. Otherwise, click the 'New Blog' entry and get started! Or is it 'Create Blog'? Your initial blog will be a bit plane, but check mine out to see some of the possibilities. Users have a lot of control in the blog content and how it is organized.

I'll make a more formal announcement tomorrow with additional guidelines but feel free to play with it now. This is beta #3 so there could be problems, although I haven't seen any yet. Please post problems to this thread and it get it fix up right away.

Keep on Blogging!

--Robert