Ad Astra Personal Blog?

[MDGarcia]

As the subject says, we're contemplating offering personal writing blogs for our members.  They would most likely be Wordpress, though I'm wondering if I could adapt the LiveJournal open source for use, here... I'd need someone who knows perl really well to pull it off.

Anyway, if we could get an idea of who would want it (and actually use it), I think it wouldn't be much of a problem to implement it.

MDg

[SLWalker]

As the subject says, we're contemplating offering personal writing blogs for our members.  They would most likely be Wordpress, though I'm wondering if I could adapt the LiveJournal open source for use, here... I'd need someone who knows perl really well to pull it off.

Anyway, if we could get an idea of who would want it (and actually use it), I think it wouldn't be much of a problem to implement it.

MDg

Wordpress is decent.  LiveJournal can be embedded, if you're on a paid account like I am -- my LJ is my primary blog.  But I guess for anyone who actually wants one and doesn't have one elsewhere, they could have one here.

[MDGarcia]

Wordpress is decent if we come up with some kickass Trek themes for it   Otherwise, users would be subject to the themes we'd make available.  But it would be that difficult, honestly.

LJ on the other hand, is a beast.  And I speak from personal experience.

MDg

[Guest Guest]

I already have an LJ... (and two not-very-muchly-used blogs on Trekspace... and Myspace)... and... so, it's not that I wouldn't WANT one - I just already HAVE one/some! 

It is a nice idea, though!  8)

[Nerys Ghemor]

I'd definitely appreciate a blog.

[MDGarcia]

What if I threw in an email address?  yourname@adastrafanfic.net?

[Teddog]

I dunno. Like others, I already have an LJ where I sometimes ramble about ficcing. 

I've seen this idea work to an extent over at some other community-based sites. Anime On DVD (or whatever its called now) comes to mind - users there will use the blogs to make posts that they want to discuss, but are slightly off topic or are too rambling and personal for forum posts. That's probably what I'd use it for, although I wouldn't be using it on a regular basis because I have my LJ.

[MDGarcia]

And I ditched LJ when they made the 'we own what you publish' change to their TOS and moved to a private Wordpress blog I host myself to prevent that from happening.

MDg

[SLWalker]

And I ditched LJ when they made the 'we own what you publish' change to their TOS and moved to a private Wordpress blog I host myself to prevent that from happening.

MDg

Calm down and back away from the keyboard. ;-)  I still use LJ too, and still like it, and a lot of people do.  Yeah, the TOS sucks, but I really and seriously doubt they're gonna take my fanfic and publish it.  CBS would eat them.

[Teddog]

And I ditched LJ when they made the 'we own what you publish' change to their TOS and moved to a private Wordpress blog I host myself to prevent that from happening.

MDg

Calm down and back away from the keyboard. ;-)  I still use LJ too, and still like it, and a lot of people do.  Yeah, the TOS sucks, but I really and seriously doubt they're gonna take my fanfic and publish it.  CBS would eat them.

Not to mention that if you're writing original fiction with the intent to publish, there are already legal reasons enough not to post it anywhere on the internet.

If LJ wants to attempt to make a profit off of my ramblings about various male characters' posteriors, I would be much amused. You know, not that I'd ever post such filth.

[SLWalker]

Not to mention that if you're writing original fiction with the intent to publish, there are already legal reasons enough not to post it anywhere on the internet.

If LJ wants to attempt to make a profit off of my ramblings about various male characters' posteriors, I would be much amused. You know, not that I'd ever post such filth.

LMAO!  Especially not when the television writer who you may or may not ramble about the posterior of is a fan of your LJ and site.

[Teddog]

LMAO!  Especially not when the television writer who you may or may not ramble about the posterior of is a fan of your LJ and site.

And the sad part is that I'm not so much worried about him, but his wife!

[MDGarcia]

I live in calm.   It takes a lot to get me riled up

MDg

[Terilynn]

Oh not me.  I rant.    Well - I live in calm because I rant.  I rant, therefore I am...

[SLWalker]

Oh not me.  I rant.    Well - I live in calm because I rant.  I rant, therefore I am...

Me too.

[MDGarcia]

It's been almost a year since we put the site up, and I'm going to revisit this for anyone wanting to.  I know this is an old thread, but I'm curious if this has changed at all?  I'm in the middle of setting up something similar for United Trek (neck-deep, actually), but I think it would very cool for our authors to have a personal site here at Ad Astra.

MDg

[Nerys Ghemor]

I personally would not have the time to use it...but that doesn't mean others wouldn't love it!

[Robert Scorpio]

It's been almost a year since we put the site up, and I'm going to revisit this for anyone wanting to.  I know this is an old thread, but I'm curious if this has changed at all?  I'm in the middle of setting up something similar for United Trek (neck-deep, actually), but I think it would very cool for our authors to have a personal site here at Ad Astra.

MDg

What exactly does that mean?

Rob

[MDGarcia]

There's an app called Wordpress MU, that allows for multiple blogs to be housed on a single site.  Like yours might be scorpio.adastrafanfic.net or something like that.  Someplace for you to sound off or update your readers or talk about writing.

MDg

[CaptainSarine]

I think that could be pretty cool, but that's just me.

[Miranda Fave]

It would be  8) . Not sure if I'd have much to say on one myself - but certain other people probably would and I'd be interested in their blogs.

[kes7]

In theory, I like the idea, but in practice, it's been nice having this one central place to come read updates and chat about everyone's stories (Fic Talk on the forums), and I think following blogs would either become a tremendous time suck for me or it would wind up going the way of my Google reader account -- 800 new entries by my favorite bloggers that I haven't made time to read yet.

[Miranda Fave]

That's a good point actually. Er.

[trekfan]

Hmm...that's a tough one. I like the idea of giving authors a way to update readers without resorting to starting a new thread in the fic talk forums. Eventually, we'll reach critical mass there with all the story update threads. But I find kes7's concerns valid here-though we certainly don't have 800 authors here, we do have quite a many, and scanning through all the blogs would be time consuming. I only follow one blog religiously (Terilynn's-cause she's awesome and it's awesome).

Rather than a blogging area, maybe we should set up an update child board on the fic talk forums, to clear some of the clutter out of there.

[Miranda Fave]

Or perhaps the fanfic updates could all be put into one subforum. I think people like having the chance to update and having commentary or questions about stories.