Blogging

[JamesBrown]

I have a large forum in the recreation/travel niche. Travel blogs are quite popular and fit with the forum nicely. I've looked at the solutions on offer and don't think they are quite ready yet. I'm thinking of using another platform to run alongside the forum, maybe wordpress.

Is anyone else using a blogging solution alongside their forum?

 

[=MGN=RedEagle]

My thoughts are writing a blog in 2014 is useless. There is just so much out there and it is hard to get noticed. A few blogs have "made it" but few rise to the top. IMO, vlogs are the only good way of getting traffic. I started a vlog two months ago and got 60,000 views, mostly for free from YouTube.

My two cents.

 

[JamesBrown]

This is about providing a blogging facility to members of your forum rather than getting noticed. As for vlogs, most are awful. Show me yours and see if you can get to 60,001

 

[Robby]

I have a large forum in the recreation/travel niche. Travel blogs are quite popular and fit with the forum nicely. I've looked at the solutions on offer and don't think they are quite ready yet. I'm thinking of using another platform to run alongside the forum, maybe wordpress.

Is anyone else using a blogging solution alongside their forum?

Hello,

I don't think blogging is useless.
I'm using wordpress multisite so that every member can have their own blog on one wordpress install.

 

[JamesBrown]

Hi Robby, is it working well? Can I take a look? Thanks

 

[Robby]

Working very good, best example of multisite is wordpress.com.

 

[=MGN=RedEagle]

This is about providing a blogging facility to members of your forum rather than getting noticed. As for vlogs, most are awful. Show me yours and see if you can get to 60,001

My bad. I thought you were gonna blog by yourself. Yes, member blogs is a good idea and I am really look for such a feature on my forum. They are mega popular on my one website.

 

[RickM]

The problem with member blogs is that it creates a deserted area on your site. I've yet to see a forum that offers member blogs that actually has multiple active blogs on it. Most of them get 1 post then get abandoned, leaving it look awfully messy. Most people wont want to blog on someone elses site when they can run their own blog for free, and have complete control of the site, AND retain ownership to what they write.

Personally forum user blogs are a bit of a pointless thing IMO, but this is purely based on the fact that I've never seen any that have taken off. Maybe someone here could provide links to ones that have been a success?

 

[=MGN=RedEagle]

The problem with member blogs is that it creates a deserted area on your site. I've yet to see a forum that offers member blogs that actually has multiple active blogs on it. Most of them get 1 post then get abandoned, leaving it look awfully messy. Most people wont want to blog on someone elses site when they can run their own blog for free, and have complete control of the site, AND retain ownership to what they write.

Personally forum user blogs are a bit of a pointless thing IMO, but this is purely based on the fact that I've never seen any that have taken off. Maybe someone here could provide links to ones that have been a success?

My crowd does not know how to setup their own blogs. It may sound strange but that's not odd in my niche.

 

[Walter]

My crowd does not know how to setup their own blogs

Exactly. Not everyone is capable or even interested in running a blog technically.

I've yet to see a forum that offers member blogs that actually has multiple active blogs on it.

One of my forums has dozens of active blogs.

 

[JamesBrown]

The VB site we just ported to xF had must have had over 200 blogs, a fair few of those were abandoned, but they were a popular part off the site, some of the travel blogs had tens of thousands of views. Losing these was a big price to pay for XF and something I need to sort soon.

 

[Barbossa]

I always like to keep everything in threads & posts. Its easy to keep track. Tried Wordpress and Xenforo together. First off, pretty pain to blend their style together. To me, customizing forum_view, thread_view pages and postbits for different forum category too give kinda blog look, made me & my users happy.