Blog feed

I've subscribed to my blog feed using Vienna as the feed reader.

It works fine, but noticed a couple of things.

In the list of posts anything to do with following is just titled:
@Ultrabubble -
Wheras updates are
@Ultrabubble - Posted a new update
and blog posts are
@Ultrabubble - Test blog post
(might be better if there were a difference between new blog posts and updates, or if updates didn't show at all)

The detail looks like this:
@Ultrabubble - @Ultrabubble is now following @The Jamroom Network
From: (Untitled Feed)
Date: Today at 19:32
Enclosure:
--------------------------------
@Ultrabubble is now following @The Jamroom Network

All items in the feed are From: (Untitled Feed)
Should that not be something like... From: Ultrabubble's Blog on the Jamroom Network


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)
updated by @ultrajam: 11/05/13 08:18:08AM

Haven't even looked at the blog feed - I'll check it out though. Thanks!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

@Ultrabubble if your blog posts have a "Read More..." in them, they should show up in the site blog list too. I think there is still a newer version of jrBlog yet to go up onto test.jamroom.net ??

because blogs don't seams to be feeding there, but just so you know about it, here is my blog post about it:
http://www.jamroom.net/michael/blog/3/testing-out-the-blog-system

And the docs about it:
http://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/development/816/using-the-read-more-button-to-get-your-blog-promoted-on-jamroomnet

no forum smiley faces.....?

No Emoticon support as of this time - not sure if I want to add that to the core or not - probably be better as a module.

Quick question on the read more setup - how can we "enforce" the read more "break point"? I'm going to suggest we just use "truncate" instead, and just always link to "read more" on the developer profile. That way the developer doesn't need to care, and we can control what makes it on the front page.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

truncate sucks when there is any sort of html in the page. and stripping it makes it weird too.

I'd prefer "If you want it to appear in the list, put a pagebreak in or it will smolder in obscurity" but if we _had_ to do it, strip_tags|truncate would work.

Guess we could make a check for the pagebreak as a validation for a blog post though.

I do agree, I just know we're going to run into situations where someone is posting 800 words before the pagebreak, so we're going to need to come up with a way to deal with it one way or another.

I also think we should have some sort of moderation before including blog posts on the front page - otherwise we can get developers firing off small posts just to maintain screen space on the home page.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

hmm, heres something else a bit weird. I just wrote on this post, didn't really take much notice of what the title of it was, then went back to the main page.

My expectation was that the top post would be the one I just wrote on because newest posts on the top, but it wasn't which force me to think "aagggh, your making me think.... what was that post I just wrote on called. aaagghh, now I have to read.... damn you.... probably... 'Blog Posts' ?? maybe ?? YES!! "

ah ha, quick response. Do we need a feature in here too to respond to stuff?
Good point.

The top post on the forum is a "sticky" post - right now you can tell by the dotted outline on the post counter, but probably something more obvious could be called for.

Yeah there's no BBCode support, or anything like that at this time, but I'm sure it is going to be needed. I'd like to keep it to a minimum though - i.e. no embedded images and stuff like that, as it just throws stuff off. Definitely am going to need syntax highlighting as well, so let me look into that in the morning too.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Gotcha. Didn't associate dotted button with sticky. actually didn't notice the button was different.

as for the moderation on blog posts. I think leave it until it becomes a problem, we have enough that needs doing now without adding another thing to do that only _might_ need doing.

I'll take a look at validation for "Read More.." and see if I can set it to a min/max char count for blog posts. That would be good to have.

I think a means of setting the "intro" text by the author is essential. A second text field (no editor, maybe hidden by default revealed when you check a "use different intro text" checkbox).

Maybe another checkbox for choice of whether to submit for consideration for publishing on the front page etc - making an author insert a ReadMore as a means of doing that doesnt make much sense imo.

I think "submit for consideration" is nicer than "insert readmore to get on the front page", and some sort of editorial judgement will have to be exercised (maybe until authors are "approved" or something)


--
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

If the jamroom network is publishing things written by others on it's home page, I think it should be approached from an editorial judgement on quality/relevance point of view rather than a moderation to check it isn't a spam post or just plain wrong.

Authors should see getting something onto the front page as something to strive for, not a moderation system to try to get around.

And readers perceive something as being better quality if it is "chosen for them" rather than automatic (even if it is mostly automatic).


--
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)
updated by @ultrajam: 09/12/13 03:37:02AM

Heres an example.

Codrops Collective http://tympanus.net/codrops/collective/

It's just a feed of links to articles and websites. It isn't a rolling list though, it "comes out once a week" published on a Sunday.

Somehow, it feels more relevant to me when it's done that way. I doubt there is much more going on in the way of curation/editorial control than a codrops author adding their link post to a category, but it does feel that way to me at least.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

I worry about building more work.

Used to work in a rafting company. There were paid salary workers. They HAD to be there. So in the quite months before the busy season, they justified their pay by building things to do. When the busy period came they couldn't cope with all the forms and systems they had built and were always totally stressed.

You are right, building a successful brand does take time and effort. Some would say that it should take most of the time and effort put into a project. And there is the view that the value of a company/project is almost entirely in the brand, not in the buildings, staff, systems etc.

It would be a shame if every busy period the front page was full of posts about greedy developers and foxycart.

I don't think that "editorial control" involves much more time than "pending moderation". And not being of high enough quality / relevant to the brand / fitting in with this month's publication emphasis does get around a lot of "you are censoring my posts", "I have a right to say what I think on your front page" stuff. There's enough of that in forums.

Front page things could be pretty much automated, moderation/pending queue plus a time delay. The perception of the network team curating/controlling what is published could be done with a few lang strings and occasional editorial column post. And I think it would add to the perceived value.

Developers opinions can be posted on their own profile blogs. Comments and forums provide all thats needed as a free for all. Hopefully there will be plenty to choose from when cherrypicking material for the front page.

If there isn't enough material, a monthly front page update would work well - it gives time to push authors to write content to fill a specific gap on the front page. If there is a lot of material maybe select what shows weekly on the front page using a hidden "Team rating" on articles they've read over the preceeding week. There doesn't necessarily need to be an actual publication editor, but it might help if people assume that there is one.


--
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)
updated by @ultrajam: 09/12/13 05:05:11AM

Any blog posts or material that makes it on the front page of Jamroom.net will be selected to be there - I think it would be a mistake to allow blog posts/comments (or any other place where opinion and quality can vary widely) to automatically rotate in or be selected based on some criteria.

The "manual labor" in selecting and maintaining a quality front page is time well spent.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net