The Redundant Ancient Gaming Noob: A Blaugust to Revive Blogging

August is nearly upon us, and with it comes the annual event of Blaugust. Initially something of a challenge to get bloggers to post every single day for a month, it was a meant to rally our little corner of the internet and get us involved and cross linking and all that.

A bit hard core in its first round… post every single day in August, 100 word minimum… it lost a bit of its edge over the years. Last year it was very free form, post or don’t post, whatever.

This year however Belghast is back with a new, revived vision for the event. While there is still room for the occasional poster, it is also an attempt to roll in aspects of the lapsed Newbie Blogger Initiative of old in order to get new people into blogging. And so Blaugust Reborn was… born… yeah.

Blaugust Reborn

Belghast has an explanatory post about his vision for the event which also includes links to officially sign up, which puts you on “the list” and such, as well as a link to the official Discord channel for the event. It still being July there is yet time to get on board the Blaugust train, but don’t loiter, go now!

Here is a list of the participants so far, or at least those that have a blog on the list:

Some of those names are likely familiar, others are new. I put myself on the list, so you are free to copy it elsewhere without fear of leaving me out. I know you were concerned about that. Also, I am going to bet that Shintar will click on every link and tell me if I miss-linked somebody.

Also, there is the option to sign up as a mentor. I opted for that, mostly because after nearly a dozen years I am set in my ways and have some fairly firm opinions on the whole blogging thing. 4,733 blog posts will do that to you.

Also, a bunch of those sites already have posts up about Blauguast. As usual, I am running late on the whole thing. There have already been a raft of posts on the event and the first round of topics. But that leads to my first bit of advice on blogging, thus helping to fulfill my mentor obligations.

Don’t worry that somebody else has already posted about a topic if you want to write about it.

Your views on a topic may differ, you may bring fresh insight, you may have your own story to tell, and as a rule, somebody will hear about this topic for the first time from your site. If you want to be really neighborly, link out to other people posting about the topic. But don’t stifle yourself just because somebody else wrote about it first.

In fact, we’re supposed to be in the prep week where we post some advice around the technical aspects of blogging.

I have opinions on that which I can cover quickly enough. My main message is:

Avoid a situation where you must pay money for your blog to ensure its continue existence.

Don’t self host. Don’t set up shop at a site without a free plan. Your blog exerting even a minor financial burden makes it all the easier to quit and delete you blog completely, something you may come to regret later.

This goes double for anybody just jumping into blogging.

Also, if you delete your blog you’ll be contributing to link rot, the bane of the web. So don’t do that either. And paying to blog makes it more likely that you will do that.

Anyway, going the free route likely means using WordPress.com, Blogger, or Tumblr, each of which has their own ups and downs.

Blogger – The oldest blogging platform around. Owned by Google, which mostly neglects it. Has the best blogroll side bar widget, so is very blogging community friendly. Also has pretty bare bones, laughably inaccurate stats. It will count your own activity towards stats, even when you’re logged in. It is very, very free and open to customization if you are handy with HTML and CSS. If you’re not, the default templates can be a bit bland. Is mildly awkward until you get used to its quirks, but benefits a bit in traffic from Google searches… but only if you link your blog into Google+.

WordPress.com – The place to go if you want some interesting layouts and new features springing up. A lot more detailed stats that are not inflated by your own actions nor the actions of comment spammers. I know the latter to be true as there have been days when I have received more comment spam than page views. Also, very serious about tags and categories. You can create RSS feeds from either, for just your blog or across all of WP.com. Restrictive about what you can customize. Static blog roll options, unless you hack together a Rube Goldberg venture like I have. New features tend to show up unannounced and as often as not don’t work as expected for the first month or two. The free option means ads on your site, which have grown a lot more aggressively prominent over the last year. But if you pay to get rid of them, your blog won’t disappear if you stop.

Tumblr – All the layout options of WordPress.com with even worse stats than Blogger. Lives in a self-contained community of likes, follows, and re-posts, which can be gratifying. You can find people like yourself. Has the Facebook/Twitter problem of people following you in the hopes you’ll follow them back. Comments are odd. No ads that I have seen. More porn than you might care to imagine.

I have actually used all three and, even after settling on WordPress.com, I have setup versions of the blog that syndicate onto both sites. Behold TAGN as a Blogger and a Tumblr site, though the Tumblr site really sucks because I want it to send people here. That never happens though. Mostly everybody just comes here directly or gets sent here by mistake via Google, with “by mistake” being the dominant route.

While I am here, I might as well dispense one more piece of free advice, worth exactly what you paid for it, double your money back if not satisfied.

Choose your blog name carefully.

If I could go back in time I would tell myself that the name of this blog is one of those things that is funny the first time you hear it, but which gets less funny each subsequent time, and after a dozen years I’ve heard it a lot of times. And yet it is my brand, and to ditch that is to start over. So I carry on under that burden.

Your blog name should be short and distinctive… and, if possible, start with the letter “A” because people like me will alphabetize things and most people will only click on the first few links in a list before getting bored and moving on.

Anyway, that is it, my announcement about Blaugust to join all of the others. Again, go visit Belghast’s post for links to sign up and join the Discord channel. Also, there is a Twitter group and a spreadsheet around here somewhere.

Onward!

The Redundant Ancient Gaming Noob

Thursday, July 26, 2018

A Blaugust to Revive Blogging

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