Handmade Artists' Forum Blog!!!!!!!!!

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

For those of you that actually read the weekly newsletter you already know this.
But the handmade artists forum now has a blog!
The address is http://handmadeartistsforum.com/ I bought the domain name a couple of days ago.
There's not a lot there obviously but I did take the time to put our featured members ads up on a members shops page, click the members shops link at the top of the page and see.

Now for the fun part.

I'm looking for someone two  head up this project. Should have some working knowledge of wordpress software. I will help get this thing off the ground but would like one or two of our blogging members to help me as authors.

This is how I see it working members can submit their blog posts by email to me and whoever helps me, we will copy and paste it into a post and voila you have a blog post. I don't care if your blog posts are an article about handmade, shop promotion, tutorial, show experience, whatever. The point is between our collective membership  we have expertise in this industry and this will be another platform to share it.

The purpose of this blog is not to replace the forum but to enhance our presence in syberspace.
I intend to promote this blog also but not until it has at least 30 posts and gets established. The possibilities are endless so I would like to open this thread for input and for volunteers. There is alot to discuss on this matter so lets here what you think.

enjoy

[Jeanne]

Great idea.  What assistance with the Blog do you need?  I have no problem helping.  Just my way of giving back for all the great ideas I have gotten.

Jeanne

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

Well first of all, what I need is ideas and participation.
Thoughts on color schemes, the theme I'm using is highly customizable.
Then I need someone willing to add posts that will be submitted by email.
Need ideas on pages and topics. The theme I'm using is the same one that I use on http://chainmaillebymboi.com it hads drop down pages for the menu bar so the site can look more like a website than a blog.

Once we get 30 posts or so I will start a project wonderful campaign to run traffic to the site to promote all the artists work.

The thing that makes a blog or website work though is content. So I need all the bloggers to submit posts to become our content. The content should be original, if you make a post on your blog but want it to be on the Forum blog also that's fine, but you should cahnge around the words add a litte take away some. Search engines are smart they don't like duplicate content.

So right now I'm looking for volunteers and feedback as to the direction we should go as a community.
This project is going to take a while to get going so lets hear what you think.

[Manic Butterfly]

That sounds great Andrew-I'd love to help in any way I can, I'll try to shoot some ideas your way.

I'll take a look and see if I can come up with any suggestions 

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

Thanks Manic and Jeanne, I'm looking for someone to help with the writing and administration for this project. It would help if you have blogging experience and especially wordpress software. Wordpress is very user friendly and I can help teach anyone is wants to get involved.
 Now who is in?
Like I said the posts can be about anything handmade, your shop, tutorial, any type of article along these lines.

Thanks again

[Manic Butterfly]

I haven't started a blog yet-contemplating starting one, but trying to figure out which to use-wordpress, or blogger-I know Jeanne has a blog   I'm a fast learner, so I'd be happy to do any admin work on it-and would love to learn wordpress in the process. I also have lots of information & tutorials on many different jewelry making mediums that I've saved, which I can contribute. I love to learn, and I am also a packrat on my computer, so my desktop computer is now a storage computer, and I mainly work on my laptop LOL. 

[gemlover]

How does one get a link to member site/store on the blog?  The blog is a great idea, also a page of links to member blogs would be good also.

John

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

Go to this thread http://handmadeartistsforum.com/forum/index.php/topic,202.0.html and the details are listed, every ad there will also be listed on the blog

[Jeanne]

How does one get a link to member site/store on the blog?  The blog is a great idea, also a page of links to member blogs would be good also.

John

John:

See the list of tabs above the ads on the forum.  Links to members sites are there.  Andrew gave you the link to the member ad sites info.

Welcome aboard.

Jeanne

[ArmoredHearts]

I should have checked the forum here, I emailed you my interests. Articles are coming soon.

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

Armored if you sent it to me I didn't get it, could you send again or discuss here or both

[lisianblue]

Andrew - I'll help - I'm not sure about wordpress, but I have used other soft ware for doing web pages, and am familiar with html, ( and have a book with code - it's about 8 yrs old - )  and have done some web page editing...........................I have a brain( I hope I do) and I can learn the wordpress stuff. 

you've really done a lot!  And I love this forum - so I'd be more than happy to help out! 

[ArmoredHearts]

Armored if you sent it to me I didn't get it, could you send again or discuss here or both

I emailed, responding to the recent newsletter interest in helping. I have two articles started, I've got forty two projects going today, Maille related and not. after another pot of coffee and a nice long walk with my baby jar tumblers strapped to my calves my mind will be ready to finish those articles.

I'm so glad I don't have children. Passing on this ADD/Multitasking gene would be abusive.

[Chainmaille By MBOI]

Sounds great we have 4 helpers so far, that may be enough to admin the site unless someone else wants to jump in. Now we need content Armored seams to be working on some stuff. I was thinking we need to get some to head up a featured member of the week deal. Weather we just pick someone from the list arbitrarily or have some criteria.  It can be a short and sweet weekly feature and can be handled however you want to. I think I saw some thread earlier where one of members was going to do that on their blog I forget who but maybe we can work that out together. So who wants to handle the feature member weekly post?

[Jeanne]

Because of the fact that the more you post on a blog, the more exposure you get, why don't we do a daily feature to start out.  It doesn't have to be a huge article, but maybe start with the people that post the most like Matt, etc or who joined first and show a pic or two and list all their sites and info.  Sort of an expanded steampunk...get the idea?  Then we can do an in-depth weekly article on members. 

What do you think?