Blogs for Family History

[arthurk]

Has anyone here set up a blog as part of their family history research? It's something I've been wondering about doing, but I thought I'd try to find out a bit more before taking the plunge. Some questions, then:

Is a blog helpful, or more trouble than it's worth? (Is it the latest must-have accessory for the net-savvy family historian, though now possibly a bit passé?)

What do you use it most for? (I guess it could function a bit like a guest book on a website, or as a way for several people to keep each other informed about shared research without having to send multiple emails.)

Where's the best place to host it - a big place like Blogspot, a lesser-known one, or as part of your own website? (I gather the main places feed into search engines, so might be preferable if, say, you wanted to post a list of brickwalls.)

[EDIT: 5 minutes after posting the above I discovered that one of the UK's FH magazines has just added a blog section to its website, so that's another possible place to put it.]

All thoughts welcome!

Arthur

[GeoffD]

(I guess it could function a bit like a guest book on a website, or as a way for several people to keep each other informed about shared research without having to send multiple emails.)

I have a couple of experimental blogs for this very purpose, on Blogger. They have not been terribly successful, but early days yet. The biggest problem is the highly variable computer-savvy-ness of the participants. There has been no great rush of long-lost relatives stumbling onto the sites during their researches.

http://jacks-diary.blogspot.com/ is my first effort, which follows what I have of my grandfather's 1918-1919 diary. Links to the other sites can be found there. Have a look, and see what is possible through Blogger.

Happy Blogging!

[arthurk]

Thanks for the link, Geoff. I'm not sure why you say they're not terribly successful - they look OK to me, and there are quite a few people contributing. Anyway, since you know what you're doing, can you answer a couple of questions for me, please?

Am I right in thinking that at Blogspot you have one account, and then you can have as many blogs as you like, each with its own name? And can you have sub-sections within each blog (say, one for each surname or place of interest), or is everything just organised by date?

Which leads to my second question: every blog I've looked at so far is in reverse date order (most recent posts at the top). Do you know if there's any way to change that? It struck me as a bit of a drawback because you have to keep scrolling up and down to read things in the proper order - particularly noticeable when there's a long post or a long thread of comments.

Arthur

[GeoffD]

Yes, one Blogger account and multiple blogs within it. I'm not sure about the sub-sections - I think it pretty much post-by-post stuff. These things were set up to be 'stream of consciousness' diaries.

Date order is pretty much fixed, though I have heard of workarounds which I have not tried. If your invited contributors are full members, they can add to a post and keep stuff together that way.

Have a look through the Blogger FAQ and Help pages - stuff is explained fairly well there.

[arthurk]

Thanks, Geoff. I did look at Blogger's Help and FAQs once, but found it a bit overwhelming!

"Stream of consciousness" seems a pretty good summary of the original idea to me, but the potential does appear to be wider than that. I've got my own website where I (and I alone) can upload things, and a blog seems a reasonable way to add an interactive element.

So, having got my head round it a bit more, what I need now is time to do something about it...

Arthur

[GeoffD]

Just start one, keep it 'private' for a while, invite a few co-researchers, and give it a go. You can always delete it with the click of a mouse button.

Good luck.

[Neil Wilson]

Hi Arthur

Have you thought of setting up a forum instead of a blog. You control who posts to it just like a blog.
Reading your post about the reverse date order and scrolling up and down this might help with that?

Just a thought but if you want more info have a look at http://www.phpbb.com/
Neil

[arthurk]

Hmm, an interesting idea, but I think setting up my own forum might be a bit of overkill. Besides, if recent experiences here, and elsewhere according to this thread, are anything to go by, aren't forums rather vulnerable to spam etc? I'd like this to be fun and useful, not a constant burden. Or do blogs get spammed as well?

Arthur

[GeoffD]

Your forum wouldn't be as 'open' as this one. I am a member of a couple of small fora, and they seem to fairly spam free. The down side of that is a lot of 'hands on' control by the forum owner.

[MarkJ]

Hmm, an interesting idea, but I think setting up my own forum might be a bit of overkill. Besides, if recent experiences here, and elsewhere according to this thread, are anything to go by, aren't forums rather vulnerable to spam etc? I'd like this to be fun and useful, not a constant burden. Or do blogs get spammed as well?

Arthur

It is fairly easy to use the admin tools on a forum setup like phpBB which has already been mentioned. By simple procedures, such as only allowing registered users to post, it will stop the majority of passing spam. However, some spam is almost inevitable, regardless of the system used, including a blog.
Myself, I would set up a board using phpBB, then have a tinker around with it yourself - perhaps invite a few friends to test it out as well. Run it for a couple of weeks until you are familiar with the basics and then either begin to make it more generally available or create a totally new board for general use - again ensuring you take advantage of the spam reducing options such as registered users only etc.
Blog or forum, you will attract some spam after a while. But if you keep an eye on it, you can block things like open proxies which most spam is sent from and block problematic IP addresses.

Mark