Future of the blog

[Ed]

Given the changes to the site, meaning I cannot include nude content in the blog (I can’t bring posts inside the age verification area), is there much point to the blog?

 

I’m considering treating the blog more like a notice board with a basic intro and instructions for new visitors and a very small number of posts about key/important news and changes, but not attempting regular(ish) updates there. Instead new material would instead appear in the forum which I can control with the age-verification system.

[ptHarry]

@ed: “I’m considering treating the blog more like a notice board “

That makes sense to me:

• it’s the first thing a visitor sees, and therefore the best place to introduce the site to new visitors
• responding to a blog post currently has limited visibility (especially as responding to a post on page 3 of the blog does not bump the post to page 1)
• if a blog/noticeboard post invites a response (eg the existing blog “Would you get naked in front of your friends?”) , it would be better to duplicate the blog post as the opening post of a similarly named forum post. The noticeboard version should then end with a link to the forum page where users can read existing responses or answer the question.
• maybe some of the panels in the rightmost column should also become “notices”. The problem here is that in the mobile view, that column does not show up until after all the blog posts have been shown. So Latest Forum Activity in the current layout is unlikely to be seen by most mobile users that do not read to the very end of the blog. The display order in mobile view is horizontal, ignoring the activity column, then the next row, and finally the activity column. But if those panels could become blog/noticeboard posts the panels could be promoted to better positions in mobile view. For example:
  • Welcome to Naked Experiment
  • Quick Guide to our Community
  • Latest Forum Activity
  • Would you get Naked in front of your Friends
  • Who’s Online
  • Get Age Verified (with a description about the benefits)
  • etc

 

 

[Ed]

Those are two separate systems. I can’t combine or intermingle them.

[Ed]

There is a bodge I can use to display latest forum posts in a blog post. It’s not ideal but would that do the job?

[Ed]

I don’t think I should have this blog post and the header version too. That will cause confusion.

[TheG]

The blog can be a good way of starting a conversation, though I agree with @ptHarry that comments on blogs have limited visibility. It was a very long time before I realised it was even possible to comment there, though now I know about it I do look out for updates. The blog can also make the site look currently active, but to make that happen, someone would need to keep it updated.

Maybe we take it in turns and whoever makes that month’s least popular post has to wear one-too-few items of clothing for a week.

[Ed]

If I go with the noticeboard approach, I’ll probably switch off comments on the blog posts.

Regular updates for the blog become borderline impossible if I can’t include most photos or videos. Updates would have to be text only as there’s no way to put the blog in the age-verified area.

[TheG]

The pagan site I used to belong to (until it suddenly closed down 🙁) used to play word games on a couple of its forums, which now I’m old and cynical I suspect was just a way of keeping the site updating. The best one was adding a line to a story, which went off in all sorts of random directions. Maybe that could work as a blog. If comments were only allowed from supporters, it should limit the spam / undue weirdness.

[Author]

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