New feature for all forum members! BLOGS
 

We have just released Forums Blogs:

Fully Featured
It's is a fully-featured blogging that will enables Graal community members to create their very own online blogs within forums. With support for fully formatted WYSIWYG posts, attachments, comments, trackbacks and pingbacks, draft posts and categories.

Blog Home Page
The blog homepage will allow to aggregates activity from all graal members into a single page – with information about the most recent and highest rated blog posts, recent comments, a featured blog post (selected by the administrator or at random), full support for browsing posts by date and overall blogging statistics.

Syndication and Subscriptions
Site wide and per-blog RSS feeds allow syndication to external readers, and full support for forums subscriptions enables you to join your favorite blogs and receive regular email updates.

Profile Support
Profile information is displayed alongside blog posts, and existing profile pages are enhanced with information about blog activity.

Blog Control Panel
With The Blog Control Panel you can control every aspect of your blogs, from permission controls (who has access to view and comment on the blog), to full management of blog categories, draft posts, trackbacks/pingbacks and subscriptions. Blog owners also have the ability to moderate comments on their own blog.

Excellent.

Wow....wasn't expecting this.
I am so out of the loop. :(
Very nice.

Let's hope this won't be used to inform a very apathetic audience about the daily exploits of the author.

lol, more for me to moderate. Good thing I don't work. x.x

Cool!
Not sure if I'll use this...

Bad updates itt. We don't need blogs on forums, unless these are going to be purely developer blogs.

You use it if you likes, Stefan and I will use it for development news.

Meh, updates are good, but this wasn't really needed. However, it could be interesting to see how it works with a server; I'll try to test out some of these new features for Vesporia.

I'm not hating it, nor am I loving it. I'm sure someone will get some usage out of it... but I picture it being the next projects of the forums.

I took advantage of the blogs by posting my thoughts. At least it's going to a good use, for now.

I imagine they'll be moderated though, which kind of defeats the purpose of blogs. People like blogs because they can say whatever in them.

Can I use the blog control panel to block Darlene from viewing all of mine?

No

No.

I guess the blogs could come in handy?

No what?

Who knows, try actually replying to a post instead of to the thread in general!

Everything having to do with the forums will be moderated. We dont need a bunch of disgusting content. You can say whatever you want, as long as it conforms to the standard forum rules, unless they make different rules.

You quoted my post, thus, you know who I was replying to :P

But your defense for blogs was the the OP can control it themselves! Darlene, you're not making much of an argument here.

Who said it'd be disgusting? I never mentioned disgusting, I simply stated the fact they will be moderated, and that kind of ruins the venting associated with blogging. Or, really, the ability for someone to speak their mind.

Given that half my posts/topics end up deleted for stupid reasons, we can't really say whatever we want.

Well, I did, but you did not quote mine so I had no clue whether you might have been refering to something else instead :\

Anyways the appeal of blogs is not to defy whatever rules you might otherwise be under, especially as you are still bound to a lot of them depending on your local jurisdiction and your hosting provider.

The appeal of blogs is to speak your mind without the threat of punishment for doing it.

"x is disgusting to Moon Goddess" is pretty much equivalent to "x will get you banned", soo...

I am going to wager that you read a bunch of ****ty blogs.

Using the ESRB rating system:

• Graal Forums = E10+ (Everyone 10 and older)
• The Lounge = T (Teen)
• My Blog (Ideally) = M (Mature)
• "Disgusting Content" = AO (Adults Only)

Just because people complain about your moderation doesn't mean they want to post "Disgusting Content", just more mature things.
That is an opinion.

If the blogs will be moderated, it should be strictly by the rules by specially appointed blog mods. Not by the forum mods who interpret the rules as they see fit and decide what is and isn't grounds for ban. Rules would need to be more defined it less vague.

That idea interests me.

No. There are plenty of instances where people get in trouble by posting stupid crap on the internet, be it by their school or prospective employers or whatever.

As I said in some dude's blog post's comments, blog posts are about being centered on an individual instead of whatever forum you are posting your thread in, and being on-topic by definition. So you are somewhat protected against the "hey, this is offtopic, I am deleting it" part of the rules, but not at all the "do not post illegal material", for whatever definition of illegal. (Even the offtopic part might not apply, this is the Graal forum and it makes sense to require a certain amount of ontopicness.)

I hardly read any blogs at all, but those that I have read a few entries from usually tend to have cursing and other things deemed 'inappropriate' by the forums, even though they are very harmless(no nasty crap or anything like that).
Whether or not I read ****ty blogs is no denial that blogs are often used for venting.

True, that's their own stupid fault. But they're still not prevented from posting that content if its not illegal.

Not posting illegal stuff on blogs is common sense.

No one here wants to post illegal things either. But people would prefer their blogs aren't moderated down to a 13 year-old's level.

What makes you think that whoever will be appointed blog moderator will be more to your preference than the fine folks who were appointed forum moderators? The show is run by the same guy, anyway.

What makes your idea of a blog more important than mines? So perhaps you think a blog is about an individual... but perhaps I think it's about ranting and raving. Since I will be the one writing the blog, I imagine what I think my blog is about is more important than what you think a blog should be about.

Having separate moderators for blogs shows that they're held to a different standard.

Yeah, okay, most content on the internet tends to have more cursing and things deemed inappropriate on this forum, but that does not mean that is what the internet is all about. You can have interesting content with or without cursing.

So are many forum threads in forums with less lenient rulesets. That does not explicitly make it part of The Forum Experience.

Because the "fine folks" here have been getting away with murder for too long now because of the rules sucking.

I'm not saying someone perfect would be picked, but if someone should be moderating blogs, they would actually have to go by the rules as opposed to being mod = god. Right now, if Darlene just doesn't like my post, she will delete it. She has been known to delete posts because it doesn't fit her standards of what the rules say, even though the post was completely in line.

I think you just do not get it! I am not saying you do not get to rant and rave and whatever else you feel like doing as long as you stick to the rules, but it is still going to revolve around you.

Um, they can....appropriately. If it is so hard to be appropriate, then dont use the blogs. *shrugs*

Perhaps we should amend the Constitution of Graal so mods can only hold their station for a year or so?

Yeah, but I cannot imagine Unixmad allowing a different set of rules. :\