TOPIC:

I know we've got a healthy number of beer bloggers in Beoir; anyone have any tips or useful links/books for the complete newbie?

Things-to-do lists?
Things-NOT-to do lists?

Any reason to not use Wordpress?


I could really use some really useful links or book references for getting started. I've avoided it for far too long and probably make some posts that are WAY to long for the Beoir forums and that would probably be better suited to a blog format, but I really don't know much about actually having a blog.

-When you post something is it pretty much immediate and forever?
-Is there blog etiquette that I should be aware of?
-Any security settings that I should be aware of to prevent people from getting infected from links posted by commenters?
-To allow comments or not allow comments: what are the pros and cons?
-Maintaining separation between work and hobby-life on the blog.
-Anything else I should know about but don't even know to ask about?

IS there such a thing as a private/friends-only blog or are they all kind of by definition publicly accessible?



I'll take any information that anyone is willing to share. Still not sure this is something I want to do or keep up with, but there's only one (fun way) to find out.

I definitely don't want to add any more "noise" to the blogosphere but I do enough random/weird crap and I really want a place to just keep a running log of the experiments that I'm playing with, the beery places that I travel, and the beers that I taste and it seems like by definition that's a web log AKA "blog"...



Thanks!
Adam

Oh yea:

Banner-ads: What are my options for preventing banner-ads from being displayed on my blog? -Does this just depend upon the blog provider that you go with or is it user-configurable? (Wordpress allows ad-free blogs, right?)

Image Copyright Issues: Is it OK to reuse an image you found online on your blog as long as it doesn't say that it's copy written or have a watermark or is it one of those situations where you can only use images that are specifically made available to everyone and marked as such?
(Is there a statute of limitations on this sort of thing; are brewing/ beer images > a certain age available for anyone to use?)

(This is going to get complicated quickly, huh?)


Adam

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: I could really use some really useful links or book references for getting started.[/quote:1jahgeq6]Look at the blogs you like: what they do, how they're formatted in terms of layout, content, frequency. Copy the things you like about them; don't do the things that you don't like. A blog is a social medium, not a standalone artifact. There's no manual of how to do it well.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: When you post something is it pretty much immediate and forever? [/quote:1jahgeq6]That's the idea. Though, like a newspaper, its value is in its currency.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: Is there blog etiquette that I should be aware of? [/quote:1jahgeq6]It's mostly common sense. Don't go round other people's blogs pimping yours, but making sensible comments on the blogs you like is a way of bringing writers and readers to yours.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: Any security settings that I should be aware of to prevent people from getting infected from links posted by commenters?[/quote:1jahgeq6]There are a variety of strategies here -- captchas, modding etc. Whatever works best -- it's trial and error.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: To allow comments or not allow comments: what are the pros and cons? [/quote:1jahgeq6]If you're not interested in reading people's comments on what you write you're not going to get much out of blogging.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: Maintaining separation between work and hobby-life on the blog.[/quote:1jahgeq6]If you want to write about different topics, use tags so people who aren't interested in them all can cut to the bits they want.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: Anything else I should know about but don't even know to ask about? [/quote:1jahgeq6]Probably. You learn as you go.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: IS there such a thing as a private/friends-only blog[/quote:1jahgeq6]I'm fairly sure Blogger offers this as an option. Like not allowing comments, it isn't really blogging, though.

"Biertourist":1jahgeq6 wrote: Is it OK to reuse an image you found online on your blog as long as it doesn't say that it's copy written[/quote:1jahgeq6]Copyright is automatic: once you've created something it is your copyright unless you say otherwise. So you have to assume every image belongs to someone else and may not be re-used unless you have a specific document saying otherwise. Wikimedia has open-source licences on most of its pictures, and you can search on Flickr specifically for pictures you can re-use. Also, Boak & Bailey[/url:1jahgeq6] (an excellent beer blog) have an archive of beery pictures that are free to use for bloggers.

In practice, if you can't get written permission to use an image you don't own it's good manners to mention where you got it from when you re-use it.

"TheBeerNut":10y3g9ur wrote: A blog is a social medium, not a standalone artifact. There's no manual of how to do it well.
[/quote:10y3g9ur]

Crud! I was LITERALLY hoping someone was going to include a link to "Operating Your Blog Well" on Amazon.co.uk or something... -That was my dream outcome...

<!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

Adam

Here you go[/url:fb5ah2az]. Knock yourself out.

But it's like driving a car or writing a book: if you don't know what it is or how it works [i:fb5ah2az]why the hell would you want to do it[/i:fb5ah2az]?

What you posted first is definitely what I NEEDED to hear.

There's some gold I'll be mining from in there for a while. The item saying that the value of most blogs is often measured by how up-to-date and relevant-in-time the information is, definitely made me stop and think because I realize that I might be abnormal when it comes to how I consume blogs.

I usually don't follow them so closely that they're effectively "news sources" whatever content they're producing, but over time I classify Blog X as another source of content for specialty information A, Blog Y as a source of information for specialty information B, etc... I personally use them more a resource materials that specialize in information that is gleaned from EXPERIENCE. (There are a ton of other resources for raw technical information, but when it comes to information that comes from experience, I think that's when I go to a blog.)

-I definitely think of the blog more as a decentralized content creation & "distribution" and I don't normally think of the social aspects. (I don't think of a blog as a social media like Facebook or an online forum or email distribution list; I think I'm completely missing that aspect of it.)

I was kind of shocked by the idea that a "closed" BLOG would be missing out on some of the primary benefits of having a BLOG at all. -Can you expand upon this idea?

(Again, remember I'm in Information Security by day and when I think of user-submitted content I'm thinking of it through this lens; it's VERY difficult to ensure security of or appropriateness of content in user-provided comments.) Many of the blogs and sites that I see comments sections in are just riddled with responses from bots, people trying to sell stuff, links to malware, and flame wars.

I don't think I understand the positive side of the comments sections. You probably blog more than anyone I'd be able to ask this question to and seem pretty passionate about this being an important feature on blogs, so what is it that you get out of the comments? What (positive things) does the comments feature bring a blog?
(Because again, as a "security guy" I'm blinded by an in-built fear of user-provided content and am probably missing the benefits because of it.)

Adam