Just a friendly reminder to all our members about posting blogs.

All blogs are welcome here on The Patriot Woodworker. But we need to remind our members what a blog is and what a post is, and I am reminding you all with a smile on my face and with a big "Thank you" for taking the time to even consider our site to post content on. This can be a touchy area with folks, it is easy to offend someone if you tell them that their blog is not well, blog material, and it falls more in the category of a post for the forum. I have noticed we have been getting quite a few blogs submitted that are more appropriate to be posted in our Forum rather then a blog format.

The definition of a blog is the following obtained from Wikipedia, I am posting this because folks have approached me and asked me just what a blog is exactly and I have told them well, it's basically an ongoing story of a subject or idea or experience. In it's basic form a blog is a diary of events.

So here is the Wiki definition

A blog (a blend of the term web log)^[1] is a personal journal published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Blogs are usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often are themed on a single subject. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Since I could not find a clear definition of what constitutes a Forum Post. I'll have to come up with my own. A Forum Post is more like a hit and run posting, you write about a singular event, experience, or technique or project in a few words or up to a few short paragraphs.

I would like to give you all some guides on what a blog should be for our site. Better yet let me link you to a few examples of some good blogging on our site. If I don't link yours don't assume you did anything wrong or your blog was not a good one, we have many blogs on here that are great that I can't mention all of them, nobody has done anything wrong here, we have just been reeeeally lax on the whole blog thing since we began as a community almost two years ago.

Please see the following links.

Scroll Saws 102 Greg Aksdal has started a blog which will be a series of writings about scroll saws, you can see in his blog it is lengthy, very informative, and full of links for the reader to engage with. Greg is going to write more in this series and a typical blogger writes in series such as Part 1 thru 10 for example.

Thickness Sander and Rolling Pins by Lew Kauffman. Lew has written a couple great blogs for us and they are in a series as well. Notice his parts, it's as if your following along with him on the build. This is a great example on being able to reference a project in all it's parts in one place. Very informative, and full of pictorial eye candy. These would be hard to post in the standard forum format as there is just so much to them thus the reason why the blog format fits perfectly for this.

Veterans Day Turn-a-thon by Frank Byers, another great blog chock full of information and full of links and photos that engages the reader.

Here are a few examples of blogs that were submitted that would get the attention they deserved if they were submitted in the better location on the forums.

English Walnut Burl by Brent Cashion. This is more of a forum post and would have done great over in the Classifieds Forum and quite possible Mr Cashion might have garnered some well deserved attention for his fabulous burl! It's all about getting the most exposure for your post that you deserve!

A Warm Welcome this was just a case of not knowing our site yet and how it functions, but welcome Bruce!!!!! Glad your here!

Like I said earlier, nobody did anything wrong here, this has been a learning process for all of us. Allot of you know me by now when I say we are all learning this together, I mean it. Just a short 20 months ago I had no idea what a hosting service was or what html coding meant! I am brand new at this forum hosting stuff myself, so please don't take this wrong guys. Your learning our site, and I am still learning how to run one!

So in a nutshell, a blog is full of pictures, links, information, a series of "How To's" and a series of informative articles. Blogs should be wordy, and thoughtful.

Forum Posts, what the heck are you doing today!! Questions, advisory's, what if's, how do I, look what I built, how do you build, what kind of finish do you use for this, an update on my project and on and on and on and you all get the point by now.

Above all, thank you all for being here and thank you all so much for your patience while you and I learn how the heck to run a woodworking community. Thank you all for your help and understanding. I am going to start going through the blogs and contacting members who will want to move your blog to the forum where it will get better coverage. If you want to go through your blogs at this time and if they are better off on our forum feel free to copy past them over.

Thank you all for your help in helping us maintain our site.

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

John,

Am I doing Blogs or Forum Posts?

Now I'm totally confused!

 

Larry

Larry, you have been posting in the forums, but your trailer rebuild would have made an excellent blog series the way you did it. It was a long process and on a timeline, perfect for blogging. And it's ok to post anything you want on the forums. We can have blog style posts and regular posts in the forum, but we prefer to have only blogs in the blogs section.

What I should have done was asked you to post your trailer build in the blog section. My fault.

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

I would not delete them Pauline. They are very valuable to us as a site and for our members future use. We dont' like to delete content here, you guys took the time to post it and that means something to us. If it does not fit into the blog parameters, just copy past it to the regular forum. That would be great!

Pauline Brechlin said:

John, 

Did you want us to delete our blogs then? Or just not to add anymore to them?

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

I'm guilty! I posted my cutting board build in the forums, I guess I should have made it a blog. Should I change It?