So, all good things must come to an end… well, sorta.

The Holy Worlds blog has been back in commission for about a year now, give or take. Things have been working well during that time, and we have had at least one post a week (sometimes up to three). However, the blog still has a long way to go before it reaches its fullest potential and fulfills the visions we have for it.

When I created the HW Blog system, I created it to focus on one very large blog need we had at that time. Contribution. Poor Jay was trying to post once a month—twice, if he could swing it— just to keep our blog from drowning into nonexistence. So my first step with the blog was to make some major changes and give it an overhaul.


Obviously the system would fail if we tried to tackle too many of the blog’s issues at once. So, I decided that we needed to address one issue at a time. The issue that was the most pressing was, as I said, contribution. We needed people to contribute, because it doesn’t matter how many people you get to look at the site, if you don’t have something new every week for them to look at, they will fade away.


However, this is no longer an issue. Phase one of blog rehab has been completed. Now it’s time for Phase Two.

I am a stats freak when it comes to blogs, my own included. I typically check them every day (HW once a week or so, because every day might be a bit much for me to keep up with). In viewing our blog stats we see that everything is not hunky-dory. While we do not have an issue with blog visitors, our lowest page views per day is 9 and our highest is 143, we do have an issue with our members viewing the blog or sharing the blog with friends.

This led to some interesting questions. Why? I mean, I’ve heard lots of HW members talk about how much they love the blog. After pondering it a bit, the answer became pretty clear. Our members get to see the blog posts before they ever hit the blog. Do you know how many times a blog post is viewed before it hits the blog? Anywhere from 63 to 226 times (good work Aussie on Poetry Tips). And I know that you all were not editing those posts.

See, by allowing our members to see the post before it hits the blog, we create two issues. One, it means our blog stats are lower because the blog shows mostly people outside of HW worlds who are reading it, and not HW members. Two, it also means that our members forget to share the posts with others. What do I mean by that? Well, it is quite simple. If you are reading a blog post that you love, and it is on the blog, you can snag that URL and tweet it, Buzz it (or you could before Buzz died), Google+ it, e-mail it, Facebook it (can you do that?), and whatever other techno thing you want to do with it. If you read it in the submissions folder you think “Wow, great post, I need to remember to share that”. We all know how easily we will forget to go back and share that post when it is released on a Thursday. I’m guilty of that, I know.

So, what are we going to do about this? Well, the deed has already been done. A Blog Editing Team was created, consisting of seven individuals, and the Blog Submissions Room has been locked down.



It is true, but it is not as frightening as it sounds, trust me. The editing group is a small group comprised of individuals who were chosen based off of one of two things. 1.) They have shown over and over again that they care about the blog’s editing needs and take care of it on a consistent basis. 2.) They are a good editor who wants to help edit, but the old system did not work well for their editing style.

The members of the editing team are as follows: Aubrey Hansen, Jonathan Garner, Azlyn Rose, Elly, Katherine Roid, Elanor, and myself.

This new system will eliminate my Moderator and Editor threads (thank goodness). It will also mean that you all have to wait until Thursdays to read the stupendous blog posts. This new editing system changes little, to be honest, in how things work. However, I am confident it will change many other things.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to voice them in the Blog Folder in this thread: Questions on the Blog Changes

All Fools Day Quest!, hosted by the Glitter Spreader, is up. Please join in the fun.

Please vote on a single account across all Holy Worlds forums!

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Written by TerraRandom.

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