Marc
27th August 2008, 09:21 AM
NOTE: Like many features here which are common spam entry points, to have a personal Blog you must have a minimum of 10 posts in the 'business' forum discussion threads.
When vBulletin came out with a Blog mod (addition) which integrates with the vBulletin software, I purchased a license for it because I figured it couldn't hurt. Back when I started this web site I would have LOVED this because I was writing a lot. But, over the years, my interest in writing has waned. Anyway, for those of you who are interested, I hope the following helps.
Unfortunately, I don't know much about blogging and the software people use, not to mention particulars like a blog API Key. Thus, this basic introduction / instruction.
Your Blog here can be set to 'Private' (Reading and posting restricted to Members on your contact list) or you can set it to 'Public'. The choice is yours. See Setting Your Blog Preferences and Permissions below.
Basic Terms
Blog – This is a personal page that a user can post entries to. Definition on Wikipedia Blog.
Entry – An entry is a post made to the blog of a user.
Categories – A category is used to allow the organisation of blog entries.
Draft – While creating an entry a user has the option to save it as a draft and post it at a later date.
Trackback / Pingback – Trackback and pingback are methods for letting a web author know that you've linked to their document, it is common for blog entries to be interlinked across different sites.
Akismet – A system to scan any web content to identify if it is spam, you can read more at the Akismet site. NOTE: I have not connected with Akismet yet. I will in the future if blog spam becomes an issue which Akismet can help control. (It's a paid service at US$50 a month for me to license for the site as a whole). However, if you have your own Akismet key (as a 'non-commercial' blogger you can get one free), you can use it here. Akismet is a spam prevention system (http://akismet.com/) created by automattic who also engineers WordPress. For akismet to work, you must enter a special key obtained by creating an account on http://WordPress.com - For most of you, just leave the place for an API Key blank. It is not required.
Blog Control
There is a Blog link (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog.php) on every forum page in the Navbar and in the page header. This link takes you to the 'All Blogs' page.
Setting Your Blog Preferences and Permissions
There is a link in your UserCP (http://elsmar.com/Forums/usercp.php) (User Control Panel). The link is in the Left Sidebar at the very bottom (just titled Blog (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog_usercp.php)).
http://elsmar.com/jpg/UserCP Left Column Controls.jpg
In your Blog Control Panel page (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog_usercp.php) you will see this set of controls:
http://elsmar.com/jpg/Blog Controls.jpg
Note that you can have several 'different' Blogs. You do this by setting up different Blog Categories (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog_usercp.php?do=editcat).
http://elsmar.com/jpg/Blog Categories.jpg
The below are the basic Options you have as general blog settings:
http://elsmar.com/jpg/Default Blog Options.jpg
If you take a few minutes and check out all the links/options, most of this will be self explanatory to those of you who know about Blogging. I herein admit my ignorance.
About Trackbacks
I don't know a THING about Trackbacks and the like. The best I can tell you is to check out the following article which explains things pretty clearly. Trackbacks -- also known as pingbacks in some blogging applications -- started out as an ingenious method of having two different Weblog articles cross-reference each other automatically. It's best explained by example. Say you'd written an article on your site about trackbacks. I could point to it here on my Weblog with an explicit link, then people who read my article could ostensibly click through and read your piece too. If someone started out at your site, however, they'd never know that I also wrote about the same topic and that I had linked to your article.
So what if when I submitted my article to my Weblog management system (Movable Type, in this case) it automatically notified your Weblog that I'd included a link to your article within my own? That's useful because you definitely want to know what people say when they respond to you and link to your article. Read more from the 'Ask Dave Taylor' article... (http://www.askdavetaylor.com/what_are_weblog_trackbacks_and_why_should_i_include_them_on_my_blog.html)
Trackback
_________________________________
Here is a YouTube basic instruction on Posting in a vBulletin Blog. It's short and not very clear, but it's a start...
1SiMGgFCxcg
NOTE: This post will be updated as I learn more about the vBulletin blog feature set and other aspects of blogging.
For those of you who have some Blog knowledge, feel free to add to this thread.
Thanks!
Marc
When vBulletin came out with a Blog mod (addition) which integrates with the vBulletin software, I purchased a license for it because I figured it couldn't hurt. Back when I started this web site I would have LOVED this because I was writing a lot. But, over the years, my interest in writing has waned. Anyway, for those of you who are interested, I hope the following helps.
Unfortunately, I don't know much about blogging and the software people use, not to mention particulars like a blog API Key. Thus, this basic introduction / instruction.
Your Blog here can be set to 'Private' (Reading and posting restricted to Members on your contact list) or you can set it to 'Public'. The choice is yours. See Setting Your Blog Preferences and Permissions below.
Basic Terms
Blog – This is a personal page that a user can post entries to. Definition on Wikipedia Blog.
Entry – An entry is a post made to the blog of a user.
Categories – A category is used to allow the organisation of blog entries.
Draft – While creating an entry a user has the option to save it as a draft and post it at a later date.
Trackback / Pingback – Trackback and pingback are methods for letting a web author know that you've linked to their document, it is common for blog entries to be interlinked across different sites.
Akismet – A system to scan any web content to identify if it is spam, you can read more at the Akismet site. NOTE: I have not connected with Akismet yet. I will in the future if blog spam becomes an issue which Akismet can help control. (It's a paid service at US$50 a month for me to license for the site as a whole). However, if you have your own Akismet key (as a 'non-commercial' blogger you can get one free), you can use it here. Akismet is a spam prevention system (http://akismet.com/) created by automattic who also engineers WordPress. For akismet to work, you must enter a special key obtained by creating an account on http://WordPress.com - For most of you, just leave the place for an API Key blank. It is not required.
Blog Control
There is a Blog link (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog.php) on every forum page in the Navbar and in the page header. This link takes you to the 'All Blogs' page.
Setting Your Blog Preferences and Permissions
There is a link in your UserCP (http://elsmar.com/Forums/usercp.php) (User Control Panel). The link is in the Left Sidebar at the very bottom (just titled Blog (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog_usercp.php)).
http://elsmar.com/jpg/UserCP Left Column Controls.jpg
In your Blog Control Panel page (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog_usercp.php) you will see this set of controls:
http://elsmar.com/jpg/Blog Controls.jpg
Note that you can have several 'different' Blogs. You do this by setting up different Blog Categories (http://elsmar.com/Forums/blog_usercp.php?do=editcat).
http://elsmar.com/jpg/Blog Categories.jpg
The below are the basic Options you have as general blog settings:
http://elsmar.com/jpg/Default Blog Options.jpg
If you take a few minutes and check out all the links/options, most of this will be self explanatory to those of you who know about Blogging. I herein admit my ignorance.
About Trackbacks
I don't know a THING about Trackbacks and the like. The best I can tell you is to check out the following article which explains things pretty clearly. Trackbacks -- also known as pingbacks in some blogging applications -- started out as an ingenious method of having two different Weblog articles cross-reference each other automatically. It's best explained by example. Say you'd written an article on your site about trackbacks. I could point to it here on my Weblog with an explicit link, then people who read my article could ostensibly click through and read your piece too. If someone started out at your site, however, they'd never know that I also wrote about the same topic and that I had linked to your article.
So what if when I submitted my article to my Weblog management system (Movable Type, in this case) it automatically notified your Weblog that I'd included a link to your article within my own? That's useful because you definitely want to know what people say when they respond to you and link to your article. Read more from the 'Ask Dave Taylor' article... (http://www.askdavetaylor.com/what_are_weblog_trackbacks_and_why_should_i_include_them_on_my_blog.html)
Trackback
_________________________________
Here is a YouTube basic instruction on Posting in a vBulletin Blog. It's short and not very clear, but it's a start...
1SiMGgFCxcg
NOTE: This post will be updated as I learn more about the vBulletin blog feature set and other aspects of blogging.
For those of you who have some Blog knowledge, feel free to add to this thread.
Thanks!
Marc
