Blog Publishing - Purposed Change - Seeking Community Feedback
Hello Everybody.
It has been some time since we have asked for 'community input' on a purposed major change at ChristianBlog.Com, however, we feel the time is right for us to do so in light of a possible change that we have been looking into for the last week or so.
Something happened a short while ago... something that happens all to often... something we have thought a lot about but had no good solution to...
Until a few days ago...
Here is the situation:
Someone goes into the chatroom, or sends our friendly Technical Support a message saying they do not understand how to create and publish a Blog Entry.
There are questions such as:
What does a "blog link" mean?
How do "tags" work?
Why does it keep telling me I have to press an update button when there isn't one?
What is a related link?
These are just four of the most popular questions that we encounter. Questions we explain on our website, but questions new members who tend not to read documentation end up asking. Most of the time we take the time to explain it, and sometimes we just point them to our online documentation.
Last week two of our Team Members were in the Team Chatroom yapping away when someone came into the main chatroom and started asking these questions.
After a few unsuccessful tries at trying to explain, the first Team Member gave up and passed it along to the other Team Member, hoping that the second Team Member could make sense to the person asking the questions.
That situation lead to further conversations about how to solve this constant issue.
The solution came about as a surprise to us... because it's such a "simple fix".
Of course, nothing in life is a "simple fix"... especially when dealing with the lovely laws of the State of California.
So, here is the idea, the situations behind the idea, and all that.
The idea was to "reverse" how things presently work!
Right now Premier Members have access to the ubber-cool and super-easy "InstaBlog" system for publishing Blog Entries. It is a simple system that allows you to "type => preview => edit => publish". It has none of the main features that most Bloggers never use.
Likewise, right now Free Members do not have access to the InstaBlog, and must go through the typical "type => preview => edit => blog tags => related links => publish/postpone" system. A system that is focused more on "Power Bloggers" - those folks who want the extra features that power blogging allows them to have.
So the new idea is to swap them around.
We give everybody access to the existing "InstaBlog" feature.
Then, for Premier Members, we give them the ability to access the present "Power Blog" system that allows them to select a specific Blog Link, add tags, add related links, add who can view, select a given license, non-instant publication, and all that normal stuff that Power Bloggers are use to having.
We feel this change will provide newer members a MUCH easier system, a faster learning-curve, reduce overall technical support, and encourage Power Bloggers to become Premier Members.
We talked with the powers-that-be and they cannot find anything that would keep us from doing this in regards to city/state/federal/international laws, so no change in policies would need to take place. An initial concern of ours was the Blog Licenses factor - would we have to limit the existing Blog Licenses or not - but as we already allow the Blog Author to select a Blog License within the InstaBlog, that turned out to not be an issue.
We would still institute the "blog character length limitations" for non-premier members.
In closing:
The idea here is two-fold:
(1) To make an easier-to-use website for those people who are not use to a full-scale blogging system.
(2) To reverse our system and allowing Power Bloggers the ability to edit the Blog Link, add tags, add related links, set who can view, delay publication, turn off rss/bbcode/smilies, allow no-comment blogs, and the other features we now have in our non-InstaBlog system.
This would be a drastic change to the way we operate, but on the flip-side, it would create an easier to use system, and allow those who are Power Bloggers the ability to use a very powerful blogging system.
So, before we take any further action on this, we felt we should open this up for public discussion. As much as we could just "implement it", that is not how we tend to operate ChristianBlog.com.. we are a "community" - and this is something we would like the community to discuss before we move forward with this idea.
Thank you,
ChristianBlog.Com
(btw, this blog was written and published via the "InstaBlog" publishing system!)
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Author: support
Location: Eureka California USA
Gender: Male
Age: 36
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