Using the forum as a blog

[Andy]

Blogging on Science for ME

Have you considered that you can post a blog post on S4ME? After all, a blog post is effectively just a longer forum post.

The forum software offers text formatting,
the ability to use images

and posting on the forum provides immediate access to an audience, our membership.

What it can't offer is any sort of analytics, apart from how many times your blog post/forum thread was viewed. It lacks the ability to wrap text around images. And while I'm sure that official blogging platforms offer more bells and whistles, most of the time anybody who just wants to blog occasionally will be unlikely to want anything too fancy.

So to get started, all you need to do is sign up here, https://s4me.info/login/, if you aren't a member already. We have a "New Users - How To guides" thread that covers many of the basics of using the forum, https://s4me.info/threads/new-users-how-to-guides.924/ and a "User Manual" thread that goes more in-depth on many subjects, https://s4me.info/threads/user-manual-science-for-me.889/​

 

[Andy]

One example of (part of) a blog on S4ME can be found here, https://s4me.info/threads/a-brighte...of-me-cfs-research-discuss-simon-m-blog.5921/, where Simon replicated the first part of his blog on the forum.

 

[MeSci]

I have a blog on Phoenix Rising here: https://forums.phoenixrising.me/blogs/blog/mesci.6237/

which I'm adding to as I am able (many years of ME to go!), and it's not clear (to my commonly-fuzzy head) whether one can post blogs here in forums other than 'General ME/CFS News' and whether one can avoid lots of subsequent posts coming up in the same font, as in Phoenix Rising.

 

[Andy]

I have a blog on Phoenix Rising here: https://forums.phoenixrising.me/blogs/blog/mesci.6237/

which I'm adding to as I am able (many years of ME to go!), and it's not clear (to my commonly-fuzzy head) whether one can post blogs here in forums other than 'General ME/CFS News' and whether one can avoid lots of subsequent posts coming up in the same font, as in Phoenix Rising.

I understand that PR has a specific blog "plug in" which is separate to the main forum area. What I'm suggesting here is that it is perfectly viable to use the forum software here as a way to blog, given that blogs just tend to be posts of longer length. Currently we have no limits to where someone might chose to put their blog post, however, should this idea prove to be somewhat popular, we may well set up a Blog sub-forum, in order to keep things organised.

Never having used PR's blog area, I'm not aware of the font issue. Here we obviously have a standard font, which people will tend to use by default, however, if people so wanted, they could choose any of eight fonts. As far as I know though, a different font would need to be chosen every time you post. Not such a problem if you wanted to use a different font just for a blog post but potentially annoying if you wanted a different font with every post on the forum (which will be why we will all tend to stick with the default).