I think the term "Public" muddies the issue a bit. For the most part, I avoid public exposure. That's one reason I put the post on an anonymous blog for which I don't seek (but don't mind) followers. And changed the names of all my characters in a Workshop submission, even though that's a members-only area. I may well even publish my current WIP under a pseudonym. I mostly build small networks of people with common uncommon interests, and don't even really seek wide exposure within WF. The popular/literary thoughts were specifically meant for the people who participated in the original discussion, but have led to a couple of other WF contacts interested in the subject. The thing about being able to set it "public" was for getting formative feedback from half a dozen other literary writers in my circles who aren't WF members. Originally, I didn't plan to copy and reformat a Word version of it for emailing to them, though that's what I ended up doing for about half. I did get some earlier comments that led me to change parts of it, modifying a term or two and incorporating some overlooked dimensions. For my purposes, whatever the previous limit was would undoubtedly be adequate going forward.
For what it's worth, an essay I wrote on mental health is 6,222 words, and the file size appears to be 28kb. I am going to show my ignorance of how forums and the internetz works, for the purpose of learning from someone who actually knows and can enlighten me... But my lack of understanding would suggest that somebody would have to make 35 posts of 6000 words to equal 1mb. And 1000mb is equal to 1GB, or something like 35,000 posts of 6000+ words, or a minimum of 210,000,000 words. I don't even know if that's humanly possible. However, file sizes of offline Microsoft Word documents might not translate at all when it comes to indefinitely hosting content on a live forum. So my mathematical musings might be completely off base. Anyway, I don't think I ever encountered a word or character limit with the blog system.
if there is a character limit, I think 10,000 words seems unreasonably low, unless there’s some compelling technical reason for it. I greatly enjoyed Also’s post, and it would be a shame if posts of similar complexity and length were barred from the blogs.
There's quite an exceptional amount of formatting in the post. Not only are paragraphs color-coded, but some of them contain many highlighted words and phrases, each of which requires toggling into Arial and back. So in this case, the BBCode (or whatever XF uses internally) inflates the character count quite a bit. I'm sure the character count is just an oversight and a default value. (And by the way, you have to click on the title of the post to see the full, formatted version. At present, you're most likely to see only the overview/description, which has defaulted to an unformatted copy of the full text. Once I can save changes again, I have an abstract of the post that's appropriate for the list-view pages.)
point of note @NWOPD currently every blog and blog comment is coming up in the moderation queue... strikes me that's not really necessary
I've removed the character limit for all blog posts. I don't foresee it being an issue. I've disabled the BBC format stripping for now, though I think it might be better to strip it specifically from the general blog homepage unless we opt for a larger preview for recent entries. Removed the moderation queue function for blogs, except for new members. Open to further suggestions for improvement or any issues anyone might be having. I finally have a weekend off from the job, so I plan on putting in some work then.
Comments under blog posts show up in reverse order. There's a Sort Comments widget at the top of the comment string that lets you as the reader choose to see them Newest to Oldest or vice verse, and the default is Newest to Oldest, which makes them show up in reverse order. You have to go in every time you visit a blog and switch it to see them in the proper order, which is pretty annoying—the default should be Oldest to Newest (the way the comments were written). Any way this can be changed?
Hello, I skimmed through the thread. Will new blogs see a return to the right hand side of the site when they are ready again? I mean underneath the "Recent Posts" section there used to be three new blogs for easy viewing what was new. Thought that was a useful way of gaining readers and blog publicity. Will they return there?
I've just re-added the recent blog posts on the forum homepage. These are the types of details I appreciate you guys pointed out in this thread, and hope you continue to do so. The new system is very dynamic, but with that comes a lot of details/settings and it's easy to overlook something like this. New sidebar block has a preview option when you hover over the link.... keep or hide the tooltip preview?
Currently trying to sort out the blog categories and talking with the developer. For now I've added a few new base categories for new entries. Need to find a way to combine old categories into a few instead of listing 100+.
Go to the blue nav bar across the top of the page, hover on Blogs, then click on Your Blogs. It'll show you an image with the name of your blog on it. Click on that and you're there. If you click on Blogs List it seems to show you all the blogs you frequent at the top of the list. Or maybe they're the most recently-updated.
I’m on iPhone. I don’t have a blue nav bar with ‘blogs’ on it. I found it somehow and posted and entry, but now they have to be approved??? And why has the link to my blog been removed when I click on my name? It used to be in the same place I access my post alerts.
this is a good point for @NWOPD though - blogs and comments are still coming up in the moderation queue for approval regardless of the status of the poster
iPhone as well, if you expand the menu you don’t see it in the drop-down? I’ve reviewed the permissions, there are separate ones for create a new blog and new entry that’s why I missed it. @bigsoftmoose it should skip the moderator queue now. As for the username shortcut for the blogs, I see the blog tab when I view your profile that shows entries. I’ll look into adding it to the user pop-up preview.
Oh, I get that, yes. I mean the ‘My blog’ link that used to be in the list with everything else when I clicked my name at the top of the page. ETA: It’s there again now. Wasn’t there yesterday when I asked.
Nevermind, I got it all figured out. Man, it's scary stuff messing around in the blog! Some pretty unpredeictable results at times. But it's all good now.
