Call for Expressions of Interest - Become a Blog Author

[Son of a Beach]

Bushwalk Australia is considering running a blog (ie, "Web Log") site in addition to the forums and other sites we currently have. Initially, the blog would be fairly independent of the forums (apart from the theme and domain name), but in the long term, it may be integrated with the forums for authentication and for posts/comments.

There could be two forms of blogging running on this site. Firstly, an official Bushwalk Australia Blog, and secondly, the availability to sign up for your own personal blog (personal blogs would have a choice of themes, but not be able to use the official BWA theme).

You can see what the official blog would look like here: http://bushwalk.com/blog/
There is an example of a personal blog on the site here: http://bushwalk.com/blog/beach/

For more information on the concept, please read the blog article at: http://bushwalk.com/blog/blog/2011/11/21/blog-with-us/

As that linked article states, we are looking for volunteers to become authors for the official BWA blog, and for people who would be interested in having their own personal blog running on the BWA site under the http://bushwalk.com/ domain. Note that if there is not enough interest, then this will not go ahead, so for now, this is just a call for expressions of interest.

Please let me know (either in this topic, or by private message) if you would be interested in becoming a BWA blog author, or if you would be interested in running your own personal blog on the site. In either case, please also provide some idea of what kinds of articles you might write, and how often you would post articles.

Why a blog?

A blog is very similar to a forum in some ways, however it is focussed more on the presentation of quality articles than on public discussion. A blog would give us the opportunity to provide an ongoing series of articles and reference materials written by a select group of authors, which would (on average) be of higher quality and more informative that the average forum post (some of which are excellent, and some of which are not at all informative - eg, just one liner questions).

[doogs]

I would like to. I don't really know how often I would write, hopefully fairly regularly. My life is reasonably busy and very enjoyable so I am sure I could find something to write about. I just hope my written English skills are good enough to be classed as an author and my words called essays or articles.
It will be a great way of documenting my bushwalking adventures for friends and family rather than the usual photos on facebook

[Son of a Beach]

I should add that for the official blog (if it gets off the ground), authors articles would be proof read, and possibly edited before publication. Additionally, the actual dates of publication may be managed somewhat, in order to try to spread the publication rate evenly.

[Son of a Beach]

The blog is now live publishing a series of articles on a Franklin River expedition (by yours truly). If anybody would like to start writing articles for the blog, please let me know as soon as possible.

For those who've already expressed an interest either here or by PM, please let me know if/when you're ready to start writing and what your idea is for your first article, and I can set you up with a blog account.

The blog is still considered as a trial, and a decision will be made on its future depending on how many articles get published and how many readers it gets.

[Stibb]

I can't seem to find a quick link to the blog page. Is it because it's only a trial still? Now, with the great blog from your Franklin trip a new quickie up the top would be useful

mod: merged

[walkinTas]

Good point Stibb - I'm sure Nik will get around to it when the blog becomes "official".

Meanwhile, if anyone is looking for the blog - "You can see what the official blog would look like here: http://bushwalk.com/blog/" - as per Nik's first post. Just /blog/ on the end of the site URL.

[Son of a Beach]

Good point, Stibb & wT. I've added a blog link to the top of the various sites (except for the blog itself, which has a "home" link).

[walkinTas]

Thanks Nik. I notice we can't click the logo in the blog. On the forum and Wiki, clicking the logo return one to the front page of the forum (board index).

So, for consistency, should this also happen on the blog?

OR, should clicking the logo in the Forum, Blog and Wiki return one to the home page for the blog or wiki or forum respectively?

OR, should logo's not be clickable at all?

[Son of a Beach]

Yes, I like clicking on the logo - it's a big target. I'll have to see what I can do. The skin also doesn't work well at all on mobile devices. I need to tweak it somewhat to improve this. I just hate CSS!!!

[walkinTas]

I've not played with word Press, the new Moodle has device detection so you can set themes according to the visiting device.

Looks like its and after market plugin for word press --> http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mob ... ce-detect/.

[Son of a Beach]

doh! I've already done this for my family blog years ago, and forgotten about it. I'll have to see what I did, and fix it up on the blog here. It may have been that very plug in.

PS. Done! I used the 'WPTouch' plugin, though - same as in my family blog.

I still have to go in and make the logo clickable though.