Announcing EntropiaForum Blogs!!

[Eron²]

alright so for a long time i thought about starting a diary here but never did ... diary girls or something just never got to it, i like the blog thing and have set one up for eron.

on another forum (not eu related) that has blogs they have a really cool little link to the avatars blog, it would be kinda cool to see that here so we know who is bloging

example:


edit: the "1" next to "blog entries" is a hyperlink to the blog, i think its kinda hard to see in that pic but i tried

[711]

Originally Posted by Eron²

alright so for a long time i thought about starting a diary here but never did ... diary girls or something just never got to it, i like the blog thing and have set one up for eron.

on another forum (not eu related) that has blogs they have a really cool little link to the avatars blog, it would be kinda cool to see that here so we know who is bloging

example:


edit: the "1" next to "blog entries" is a hyperlink to the blog, i think its kinda hard to see in that pic but i tried

That link with the number of blog entries is shown here on EF as well

Note that the row and link will only show if the user actually has made at least one blog entry.

[Eron²]

Originally Posted by 711

That link with the number of blog entries is shown here on EF as well

Note that the row and link will only show if the user actually has made at least one blog entry.

was that added after my post as i didnt see if before but anyway thanks for pointing it 711

[711]

I may have a solution for importing existing diary threads into the new EF Blogs (fingers crossed). It may take some time to implement, but I am hopeful.

More details to come soon.

[Wistrel]

ah good to hear it.

Also as that other guy said. Being able to keep the dates would be good. For those of us who really care about our diaries its an important record of time gone by and experiences/thoughts about the game over our Entropian lifetimes.

It probably sounds insignificant but if you can do this it will be greatly appreciated I assure you.

Plus it would be a real shame to sideline so much great content

[Paolo]

Originally Posted by 711

I may have a solution for importing existing diary threads into the new EF Blogs (fingers crossed). It may take some time to implement, but I am hopeful.

More details to come soon.

Great news, 711!
Thanks for trying, and take your time... we can wait ;D

Paolo (the other guy)

[Wistrel]

okaaaaaaaaaaaay..... feedback on this now I have tried it:


- when writing entries you need to move the 'my pics' and 'smileys' boxes someplace else. If you don't give people a decent amount of horizontal space to write thing they will write shit or more likely not write at all cause its too hard to work with such a small space

- when viewing a blog entry, « Prev | Main | Next » needs to be shifted elsewhere (maybe opposite side to "Posted Today at 05:29 PM" ? or at the bottom). At the moment it is really unpleasing to the eye to see two "boxes" that are not aligned at the top.

- Turning off comments doesn't seem to work. I tried this and could still comment

- Deleting comments leaves a rather messy looking "this comment was deleted" sorta thing. It looks like there could be an option for a "hard delete" as well as the available "soft delete" can we have this option please?

- If these are in any way meant to replace the diaries (they've been locked so I assume this to be so) we need to be able to make posts always display at the same width as before. This is especially important if there will be an "import diary" function soon as most of us formatted our entries to fit a certain width.

- re: width settings above. At the moment "view entry" is fine but "view blog" sticks an annoying extra avatar pic on the right hand side of each entry messing up the forum look if you have pictures (the stick out thing) which many of us will have assuming you can move the old diaries over.

- titles: Can we have an ability to edit the font of titles (subjects) please? My old diary always used standard text in bold. Since we now have to submit a heading for each entry can we at lease choose how that heading will look?

- titles: looking more at this I think the "Posted Today" and "Updated Today" stuff could do with being in the darker grey bit at the end of the posts (where the word "comments" is) as it isn't as important as the title and impacts on the look of things.... hmmm thinking some more on this, maybe there should be a dark grey box at the top. Similar to the one on the left hand side avatar box but including the posted and updated lines and the rate this entry

- Rating entries: This is fine and all but can we have an ability to rate a blog overall? Individual ratings arn't much use when you want to get a general idea on what is good to read.

- viewing all blogs: we don't seem to have a way to do this like we could before. It was pretty usefull to be able to see who had updated, how long their diary was, how popular it was and how well rated in a glance as we used to be able to do with the old diary subforum. Am I missing something?

- Random featured blog: This needs to probably ditch the avatar embedding on the left side so that the blog entry can fill the full width so it can be viewed as intended

- on the same page the recent comments collection of pictures and text seemingly randomly positioned looks terribly messy

Think thats about all I can think of for now. Bet you love me Sorry if it all sounds very negative. It isn't intentional. I just want to see the quality of things go up rather than sideways or even (hopefully not) down.

Wistrel

[Cougar]

Originally Posted by Wistrel

okaaaaaaaaaaaay..... feedback on this now I have tried it:


- Turning off comments doesn't seem to work. I tried this and could still comment

- Deleting comments leaves a rather messy looking "this comment was deleted" sorta thing. It looks like there could be an option for a "hard delete" as well as the available "soft delete" can we have this option please?

Think thats about all I can think of for now. Bet you love me Sorry if it all sounds very negative. It isn't intentional. I just want to see the quality of things go up rather than sideways or even (hopefully not) down.

Wistrel

About those two, i went to your blog and the comment box is not available to me (and i guess to others), also i don't know if you have any deleted comment there or not, because at least from this side, i don't see anything else besides your entry. (disabling comments might be hiding them or they might just not appear to anyone else but the blog owner)

[711]

Originally Posted by Wistrel

okaaaaaaaaaaaay..... feedback on this now I have tried it:


- when writing entries you need to move the 'my pics' and 'smileys' boxes someplace else. If you don't give people a decent amount of horizontal space to write thing they will write shit or more likely not write at all cause its too hard to work with such a small space

I agree that the editor box is too small. The good news is that I am pretty sure there is a mod to move the smiley/pic boxes to the bottom, widening the text area.

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- when viewing a blog entry, « Prev | Main | Next » needs to be shifted elsewhere (maybe opposite side to "Posted Today at 05:29 PM" ? or at the bottom). At the moment it is really unpleasing to the eye to see two "boxes" that are not aligned at the top.

Another good suggestion, this will be a simple edit.

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- Turning off comments doesn't seem to work. I tried this and could still comment

When your blog comments are turned off, you can still leave comments, but other members cannot (nor can they view any comments you make).

There are 3 possible settings for comments in your Blog User CP:

• Comments On - Comments posted by others are displayed immediately
• Comments Moderate - You need to approve any comments before they become visible to other members
• Comments Off -Other members cannot see any previous comments, nor can they leave new comments

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- Deleting comments leaves a rather messy looking "this comment was deleted" sorta thing. It looks like there could be an option for a "hard delete" as well as the available "soft delete" can we have this option please?

I will investigate the various options possible with regard to blog owners managing comments after being posted (this is only an issue id Comments is set to On, obviously). If it is indeed possible for blog owners to 'hard delete' comments from their blog entries, I wouldn't have a problem enabling it; after all your blog is your space on EF, so you should have as much control as is practical.

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- If these are in any way meant to replace the diaries (they've been locked so I assume this to be so) we need to be able to make posts always display at the same width as before. This is especially important if there will be an "import diary" function soon as most of us formatted our entries to fit a certain width.

- re: width settings above. At the moment "view entry" is fine but "view blog" sticks an annoying extra avatar pic on the right hand side of each entry messing up the forum look if you have pictures (the stick out thing) which many of us will have assuming you can move the old diaries over.

Yes I have seen this. This will take a bit longer to address, as it will require a major modification of one of the forum templates that can be used exclusively for the Blog area. In the meanwhile, I will investigate some page reorganizations to alleviate the table stretching.

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- titles: Can we have an ability to edit the font of titles (subjects) please? My old diary always used standard text in bold. Since we now have to submit a heading for each entry can we at lease choose how that heading will look?

- titles: looking more at this I think the "Posted Today" and "Updated Today" stuff could do with being in the darker grey bit at the end of the posts (where the word "comments" is) as it isn't as important as the title and impacts on the look of things.... hmmm thinking some more on this, maybe there should be a dark grey box at the top. Similar to the one on the left hand side avatar box but including the posted and updated lines and the rate this entry

The Blog add-on is a fairly new official addition (less than 2 months old) to vBulletin, the software that powers EF, but custom mods like you describe are already emerging. vBulletin has a very large and active community of developers and designers constantly publishing nice modifcations, so I will have an eye out for those that will work well on EF. Actually, I have already seen a mod that allows even more user-level customizations than you describe. I will take a closer look at that one soon.

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- Rating entries: This is fine and all but can we have an ability to rate a blog overall? Individual ratings arn't much use when you want to get a general idea on what is good to read.

I don't think rating of entire blogs is possible in the base blog software. However it is quite possible that a mod will be made to do this (or might even already exist). I'll keep the idea in mind.

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- viewing all blogs: we don't seem to have a way to do this like we could before. It was pretty usefull to be able to see who had updated, how long their diary was, how popular it was and how well rated in a glance as we used to be able to do with the old diary subforum. Am I missing something?

The EF blog system has a very powerful subscription feature that works just like subscribing to a thread in the forum. You can subscribe to an entire blog, or an individual entry (to keep up with comment discussions and edits). When you create the subscription, you can set whether you want email notifications (just like for threads) of updates. These subscriptions and notification settings are managed through your Blog User CP.

The 'subscribe to this blog' link is in the left side column menu when viewing another member's blog. The 'subscribe to this blog entry' link is at the bottom right-hand corner of every blog entry.

In addition there is the trackback/refback system, by which you can automatically be notified whenever another blogger links to your blog; note that this trackback system includes any blog or website on the internet (not just on EF) that supports the trackback system (most blog platforms do). I will be putting together a comprehensive guide to using this powerful system; for now you can read a quick overview in the Blog FAQ

I also posted a (somewhat technical) overview of the linkback architecture in response to another member who was quite confused about the new trackback system in use on the forum (an independent system to the one used in the Blogs, but very similar). Linkbacks - what are they?

Originally Posted by Wistrel

- Random featured blog: This needs to probably ditch the avatar embedding on the left side so that the blog entry can fill the full width so it can be viewed as intended

- on the same page the recent comments collection of pictures and text seemingly randomly positioned looks terribly messy

All of these layout issues will be addressed and customized. Right now everything is pretty much the default install. You can rest assured that I will be continually making adjustments and improvements to the Blog platform over the next few weeks. However, my first priority right now is working on the Diary=> Blog importer, as well as the massive maintenance/upgrades of the EFD system.

Originally Posted by Wistrel

Think thats about all I can think of for now. Bet you love me Sorry if it all sounds very negative. It isn't intentional. I just want to see the quality of things go up rather than sideways or even (hopefully not) down.

Wistrel

I very much appreciate the feedback, Wistrel. Posts like yours will help me target the high priority issues that need to be addressed to make the new blog system as appealing to our members as possible.

In good spirit though, I will give you a bit of ribbing

In your blog you posted:

Originally Posted by Wistrel's First Blog Entry

Still, I find myself now in the awkward situation where, to complain about blogs in a blog is an exercise of sheer hypocrasy... or stupidity

which quite ironically follows this opinion:

Originally Posted by Wistrel's First Blog Entry

but somehow the idea of a blog just seems like an insult to the written word to me. A nasty subculture of trash, poorly written, spelled and without thought to readership or quality!