Somewhere to Write

Welcome to the second day of Blapril postings and with it comes a batch of new sign-ups to join in this process. I really should probably stop even jokingly referring to them as victims, because we really want this to be a joyful experience for all involved. At the time of writing this we are up to 38 members of this giant band of adventurers and I couldn’t be happier to share the journey. If you want to keep tabs on all of the new sign-ups I am intermittently updating the list that can be found on the Blaugust Media Kit page. I decided yesterday that this makes a lot more sense than trying to post a new list every single day.

Free as in Beer

Yesterday I talked at length about what I consider to be the most important step of creating a blog, which is figuring out what to call it. Today I am going to focus on carving out some real estate for you to hang out a shingle and start writing. Essentially you can divide your options into two clear camps, those that you are hosting yourself and those that you are having someone else host for you. Even that I guess is a little less than clear because technically if you rent server space and install your own site on it, you are technically getting someone else to host it. However for the sake of this discussion today I am going to focus on the options that are completely free and allow you to be writing within minutes of signing up.

WordPress

WordPress is effectively the 500 pound juggernaut in the blogging world. It is fast and easy to get signed up and comes with a pretty solid blog reader as well. If you manage multiple sites it also allows you to set up a scenario where you can manage and update all of them through a single interface. The negative however is that all of the freedom to be gained through using WordPress comes with the self hosted version which can be found at WordPress.org. WordPress.com is the turnkey solution that allows you to push all of the hassle onto someone else, but in order to get many of the features you might want it requires a paid plan. However in the free version you get a <yournamehere>.wordpress.com domain name and the ability to start posting instantly.

I’ve been a proponent of WordPress.com for years as a first blogging experience in part because you are going to out grow whatever first platform you start on. I personally started on Blogger and migrated to self hosted WordPress because I was limited in my ability to do the things I wanted to do. Knowing this the transition between WordPress.com to self hosting the software from WordPress.org is extremely smooth and there are lots of tools baked into the default software to ease this transition. I am a big fan of starting with the free version of WordPress because it is going to give you a lot of flexibility moving forward when you decide that your free site isn’t enough for your current tastes.

Blogger

Next up I introduce you to Blogger.com the blogging application hosted and maintained by Google. The nice bit about this tool is that if you are already a denizen of google, you can just pick up and start integrating with the various google tools immediately using an account you are already familiar logging into and is hopefully protected by two factor authentication. The negative for me at least is that it is hosted by Google and has essentially been in “maintenance mode” for years with the last features being added in 2017 and a bunch of things slowly deprecated and removed in 2019. The killer feature of this blogging platform is the way that it manages your blogroll, and this used to be even more killer when it integrated with Google Reader, which was unfortunately sunset in 2013 which was a dark time for the blogosphere.

The folks that love blogger really seem to love it, and like I said I started out my blogging life with a small blogger that will never see the light of day. What I found frustrating about it is that it seemed like I lacked the level of granular control that I personally wanted from a blogging experience. I think for others that is more of a positive because they ultimately place those design decisions in the hands of a limited selection of prebuilt themes and just get to the business of writing. My biggest concern is that Google loves to cancel its products, and I feel like they have been gunning for Blogger for quite some time originally trying to turn Google Plus into the new blogging platform. It has not happened but given that it does not seem that they are actively working on the platform, I am not sure that the future does not see this site closing down.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a strange platform but one that bears mentioning. It is among the most straightforward platforms for just getting in and writing about something and offers a lot of clean mobile options if you want to blog on the go. It is also an excellent platform if you want to do a picture blog or post your artwork, because it is very image forward in the way that people consume content. I personally find it a bit lacking when it comes to writing anything long form, and while I syndicate to the platform I think it does a generally horrible job at actually conveying my posts. I think Tumblr works best when you are wanting to use it like a Long form Instagram.

The main reason I bring it up however is its sheer simplicity and its wide adoption by a number of specific subcultures of the blogosphere (and fandom). Much of what was formerly the Live Journal community found its sea legs over on Tumblr, and if your voice is targeted towards one of those communities then you are going to find a lot of traction and support (as well as a fair amount of drama) on Tumblr. Other than just syndicating my blog with WordPress tools to Tumblr, the only time I really use it is to log in and look at interesting pictures. I use it mostly to look at comic art and other fandom art, and Ammo from AggroChat and the creator of most of the artwork you see adorning this blog has a great Tumblr. It is definitely an option worth exploring if your vision is extremely image heavy.

Medium

Based on my understanding, Medium was created by one of the twitter co-founders and started its life as a way of sharing a longer form post on the micro-blogging platform similar to TwitLonger but with more “bloggerly” sensibilities. What it has morphed into over the years is a pretty solid blogging platform that is more focused on sharing articles than sharing an entire website with the public. Its content aggregation platform is focused on the type of content being shared and less on the author, but this allows for more organic discovery of your posts so long as people are searching on one of the various things you have tagged on. You don’t so much have a “site” with its own name, but you do have the ability to link to your Author page and that then links to all of the posts you have written.

I include this as an option because it has a really good writing platform with a bunch of very nice features. The end result is a very pretty and legible article, but you have to accept that you have very little control over the look at feel of it. You can insert images, create headers and even create those little call out snippets to drive interest in the piece, but you won’t be able to change font and formatting or shift away from anything other than the stark black on white theme. If you just want to write however and want your ideas to percolate among other peers that you may or may not know about then this might be a platform for you. That said it is really hard to actually create a brand that is anything other than you as a person on a platform like medium.

Get in and Get Writing

I am sure as soon as I post this, folks will chime in about other options. I largely focused on what I consider to be the four easiest options for getting up and running and blogging this afternoon. All of the above have options for getting started in minutes, and if you are late starting with Blapril they can serve as a bit of a jumpstart into blogging. As I said before you are likely going to outgrow your very first attempt at blogging, and like talking about an escape clause yesterday, my personal choice is WordPress just for the flexibility and ease of migrating elsewhere. However all of the above can serve you nicely as you begin this journey.

The Name is the Thing

Yesterday technically was the first day of the Blapril event, but traditionally I don’t really make posts on the weekend apart from advertising podcasts. As a result today is my first day of Blapril celebrations. For those who have not been reading regularly and are curious what the hell Blapril is, then I direct you to the original announcement post as it has all of the relevant links and such. Over the weekend a bunch of folks signed up and the numbers are looking a bit better than they were. So lets get the business type stuff out of the way and here is the updated participants list. If I were smart I would throw this on the media kit page or something so I don’t have to keep re-posting it every single day like I have in the past.

As of the time of writing this we have 33 Participants, which is pretty great for just something that got announced last week. I am always super thankful to the level of support that I get each time I venture forth into madness. Like so much of this blog is me talking to myself and a form of therapy, but it is heartening to know that I have this community that is willing to help out and support me whenever I need it. Since we are living in a time where you should tell the people you care about that you love them and do so often, I am telling all of you in the Blaugust and now Blapril community that I love you dearly for your willingness to go down this rabbit hole each year.

The Most Important Decision

Now we get to the heart of today’s post. When you are thinking about starting a blog, you are confronted with so many different decisions that need to be made. It is very easy to go about this in the wrong order and start by setting up a website and going through the nuts and bolts of technically creating the blog. However of all of the decisions that you are going to be asked there is one that rises to the top of the heap. You need to know what to name your en devour because at least on some level this will ultimately dictate the type of audience you draw in from that point forward. Without maybe meaning to, your name is broadcasting a lot of things to people who come across in in a list of blogs or hopefully in organic google search results.

It goes so much further than just naming a thing however, you also need to make sure that you have a clear runway for whatever vision you are creating. Social Media right or wrong is inexplicably linked to blogging, and unless you have been around since a time before Twitter you are going to likely need an account on that platform as well as pretty much everything else that might someday rise to the realm of broad social relevance. So in choosing your name you not only want to try and pick something that you can easily get a meaningful domain name for, but also a Twitter account, a YouTube channel, an Instagram, a Twitch account or anything else that happens to become important at a later date. There is a reason why I am an early adopter of social media platforms, it isn’t necessarily because I LOVE social media… it is because I am effectively planting my flag in the ground and claiming a chunk of real estate for future usage.

Similarly you are not always going to get there first. So for me when I can’t get Belghast on whatever platform I am targeting I go for BelghastStern which is my consolation prize. So I think it is equally important to put some thought into your escape clause for when you can’t get your brand on a specific platform. I loathe the word “Brand” but sometimes you have to call things what they are because you are effectively building a brand for your blog, something that will ultimately make it recognizable and stand out from the crowd.

I Did This All Wrong

I’ve written a version of this post so many times now, but effectively I consider myself to have failed miserably at branding. Tales of the Aggronaut is so rarely what my blog is actually called. It is called Aggronaut.com or Belghast’s Blog by the vast majority of my readers or when someone from the media talks about it. Belghast is a brand that seemingly has worked because “it me” and I have landed on a name that is relatively uncommon. Tales of the Aggronaut was a thought experiment that served its purpose well until that purpose was no longer what I wanted to be writing about. Aggronaut was at the time what I thought to be a clever name for one who navigates or explores Aggro, aka the threat we are all trying to hold while tanking in an MMORPG.

So since this blog started it’s life as most specifically a Warrior tanking blog for World of Warcraft, the name made a lot of sense. However “Aggro” has another context, as someone who is aggressive or one who is being angered. I like to think I am a fairly chill and even keel sort of person, and in that context the name doesn’t really fit the sort of content that I create. We doubled down making it even worse when we started a podcast loosely connected to this blog and decided to call it AggroChat. Again the name gives the absolute wrong impression about the sort of content you are going to be consuming, but we stuck with it because this blog’s name was already established.

The name you choose will ultimately live with you for the life of your blog and will shape and dictate how people interact with it. Fortunately for me… Belghast became the bigger brand and while I should have probably gone with Belghast.com or Belgha.st but at the time of creating this blog I didn’t realize I would be the key factor in the equation. Coincidentally I own both of those addresses because like I said above I took the time to stake out that real estate for if I ever wanted to change my mind at a later date. There is part of you that needs to be thinking through all of the possible things that might impact you and coming up with a bit of a plan of how to deal with it. For every Ello that turns out to be nothing there is going to be an Instagram that ultimately blows up.

Your Exit Strategy

I’ve talked about this before, but I think it is extremely important to give yourself a way to shift things up as you yourself change as a person and as a writer. On April 17th, this blog will be 11 years old and during the last decade I have changed a lot as a person and most definitely as a writer. Like I said this blog started as a World of Warcraft Warrior Tanking blog, something that I felt deep passion for at the time. While I am back in game right now, the last time I had played Retail WoW prior to that was November of 2018. Your tastes will change and with it you need to give yourself a way to change the blog to fit your new tastes without burning down all of your work and traction you have made in both the community and in google’s search engine nonsense.

I’ve pivoted a bunch of times throughout the course of this blog’s history, because while I don’t exactly think my name is great it is fairly non-descriptive and is not specifically focused on a particular game. This allowed me to stay a float and relevant until I finally reached the point where I became the brand and this thing I do just became another bit of data associated with it. You are going to outgrow whatever name you create for yourself. You are going to outgrow it more quickly however if you focus on being too specific. The best blog names are fairly general and can be highly malleable to fit whatever the writer wants to be talking about.

I’ve always particularly liked Wilhelm’s “The Ancient Gaming Noob” because it is evocative without actually pinning the writer down to it being a blog about a specific thing. Similarly I’ve always like names like Bhagpuss’s “Inventory Full” because it speaks to a conundrum that every gamer is familiar with and again allows for so much room to pivot freely between subjects. Another great name is Roger and his “Contains Moderate Peril“, because while sure it sounds “gamey” it absolutely does not have to be because so many things we engage with have a bit of peril in them. The idea being that all three of those names are memorable but have the sort of wiggle room in them that allows the author to shift them to what they need to be at that moment.

Check Availability

As I said before, it is important that you can adapt the brand you are building towards a bunch of different platforms. When coming up with a new name, make sure that someone else that you don’t want to be associated with is not already using it on the internet. You also do not want to go down the road of ending up with a copyright fight on your hands, so make sure it isn’t actually used in anything that could bring forth legal woes. Next see if the a domain is available, because even if you start on one of the free services with WordPress.com or Blogger.com, it is likely at some point that you may want to register a proper domain name. Lastly run down through the various social media services and see if you can get this name you are crafting or some reasonable facsimile at least.

Once you have found a name that resonates on all of the levels I have talked about today, then you probably do have something that will stand the test of time. Then you go about actually creating the site and getting it up and running. The name will serve as a guidepost as you create a logo, choose a theme, pick a color scheme, and all of the other assorted tasks that come with setting up a website for the first time. However all of this said… it isn’t the end of the world if you wind up with a name that doesn’t exactly suit your tastes years down the line. I have survived with what I feel is a lousy name for a blog just fine.

A Dose of Blapril

Sometimes events coalesce in a spontaneous manner and develop an inertia of its own. Most of us are dealing with the effects of social distancing and maybe even full on quarantine thanks to the time in which we find ourselves. So a few weeks back I wondered what Blaugust would be like this year, which lead to me starting to contemplate pushing it a bit forward to give us something to focus on instead of life in Pandemia. Then completely disconnected from this I was approached by Roger and Tessa from the Blaugust discord about maybe pushing the proceedings forward so we had something good and pure to latch onto. This started the ball rolling a bit, but yet again completely disconnected from the other events Syp reached out to me saying that he thought we should do a Blapril, and as a result you are getting this official kick off post.

The idea being that we can use a dose of internet togetherness to combat the negative effects of social distancing. When I thought about the name Blapril (pronounced Blay Prill), it reminded me of one of those pharmaceutical commercials that you get with the evening news where they never quite tell you exactly what the drug does… but they absolutely catalog all of its possible negative side effects. The only negative side effect here however is a renewed sense of community and a bunch of interesting blog posts to read during the month of April. Once again we rally around the blogging community and support each other with good ideas and helpful tips and gain the side effect of forgetting that each day we change out of our daytime pajamas into our evening pajamas since we have not left the house in a week and a half.

The Schedule

Something that we started over the last few Blaugust’s was setting up a bit of a schedule that is completely optional to follow. The idea being that if you find yourself in need of a bit of a structure you can fall back to the overarching theme of a specific week. If you instead have nothing but ideas flowing out of your head and enough posts to completely make it through the month of posting unaided, then by all means go with it and ignore the schedule. I personally do a little mix of all of the above and generally write a post or two on topic during a specific week and then do my normal daily blogging thing the rest of the time. However once again I feel like I should reiterate that the schedule is a completely optional thing as are the rest of the “rules” of Blaugust or in this case Blapril.

  • March 29th – April 4th – Blapril Prep Week: This is a time for those of us in the community who have been through this process a few times or at least feel like we have figured out this blogging thing to help those of you who are new to the process to get started with some advice posts. Additionally this is a time to sign up for the Discord if you have not already and start mingling with the folks who are active there year round. This is also a time for the newbies in the bunch to get started on setting up their blog and getting those first few “Hello World” posts out there.
  • April 5th – April 11th – Topic Brainstorming Week: This is a time for the mentors among us to throw out topics and ideas for posts to help you out when you find yourself staring down the tyranny of the blank page. We all have those days when we cannot figure out what to write about and being able to fall back upon the community for ideas and inspiration is a tried and true method. The prevalence of topic ideas also helps the newbies get started a bit with a constant flow of things to write about.
  • April 12th – April 18th – Getting to Know You Week: Tell us about yourself and your preference as a gamer or whatever thing that you happen to like doing. This is also a time to reach back into the wayback machine and dredge up interesting stories that you don’t mind telling the community. For the newbies it serves as a time of introducing themselves to the broader community and bonding.
  • April 19th – April 25th – Developer/Creator Appreciation Week: One of the things that has happened over the years with Blaugust is that it enveloped some of the better ideas from other events and combined them as part of the single month long celebration. Years ago Scarybooster started this idea of devoting a week to the sharing our love of the Developers and Studios behind the games that we play. Last year this morphed a bit to also include a celebration of the various content creators that we enjoy as well, so I am officially tweaking the name of the week a bit as a result to serve both purposes. Essentially it is a time to gush unabashedly about the things that you love.
  • April 26th – May 2nd – Staying Motivated Week: Towards the end of the proceedings we start to have a drop off in post frequency as folks hit their writing wall. The idea behind this week is to share the tips and tricks that we have learned throughout the years on how exactly to stay motivated and keep posting on a daily basis. I feel like this is even more relevant this year since we are all going through massive disruptions to our usual schedules and having to deal with all sorts of external changes impacting our well being both physically and mentally.
  • May 3rd – May 9th – Lessons Learned Week: The goal as always with Blaugust and now Blapril is to revitalize the blogging community and ignite those fires fresh for another year of posting. As such this is a marathon that we are running and not a sprint, so we continue forward a little bit into the next month for folks to have that cooldown lap and talk about the things that they learned during the month. This could be a discussion of your own personal journey, or focused on some of the things that you learned from the community. The idea being to keep it going just a little bit longer so that maybe the habit of posting regularly sticks.

The Awards

Something that has existed since the very first Blaugust was the concept of winning some sort of an “award”. In reality this just means that you get permission to use a dorky image that I cobble together each year, but the spirit is that you challenged yourself and followed through with the process. Daily blogging is not a thing for everyone, so as a result we have a bunch of “awards” at different levels of participation from the “I was here and got the t-shirt” level to actually standing on the medalists podium at the end of the month. A rundown of the “awards” and what it takes to earn them is as follows.

  • Newbie Blogger Award – This is a special recognition for anyone who started a blog during Blapril or is relatively new to blogging in general and is using this event as their entrance into the larger blogging community. You are the hope for the future and we are going to celebrate it!
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You made at least 31 Posts during the weeks outlined for Blapril 2020.

Mentorship

One of the benefits of getting our act together and coming up with what appears to be a reasonable format, is that we already have a council of mentors ready to answer your questions and assist with your blogging. However if you feel like you are a grizzled veteran of all things blogging and have something to offer the world, then we are always open to more. Ultimately mentors should have at least two years of blogging experience under their belt in order to gauge the ebbs and flow of content creation in front of a live studio audience. We are not expecting perfection, just a willingness to share the lessons you have learned along the way with fledgling participants and a large dose of patience for questions you have answered a bunch of times before. Mentors should be relatively even keeled and only prone to fits of hyperbole when it is used for comedic absurdity. Mentors will be clearly marked as such in the Discord and can likely share some sage advice for those who seek it.

How Do I Participate

  • The first step is to fill out the Sign-Up Form for Blapril 2020 which can be found here. Only those who have signed up will be given credit towards the awards.
  • Next make sure you are active on the Blaugust Discord and the link for that can be found here. This is the third year we have been active on Discord and it is a community that has managed to stay evergreen throughout the years. Maybe even share your content each day in the appropriately named “share-your-content” channel.
  • When you share your content on social media please use the hashtag #Blapril2020 for tracking purposes and to make it easier for those watching the event to find fresh content.
  • Mingle with your other Mentors and Participants because this is a community event, and part of the fun is getting to know the community. These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I personally deeply value my ties with other bloggers that I have built up over the last decade of doing this thing.
  • If you are so inclined there is a “gaming-together” channel on Discord for impromptu grouping in various games while the event is going on.
  • Welcome to Blapril 2020 as we use the power of internet togetherness to help combat those negative side effects of social distancing.
  • If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such, check out the Media Kit page which is the final resting place of all Blaugust and now Blapril related media.

Blaugust 2019 Wrap up

As of Sunday September 1st the running of the 2019 edition of Blaugust was finished. Yesterday I spent some time going through all of the blogs that had participated and tabulated the number of posts. Bonus points for Nait for helping me find a few posts that were not clearly visible on the front page of a few of the participating blogs. By final tally here are some of the statistics for 2019.

  • 1305 posts were made by Blagust 2019 Participants
  • 66 Individuals Participated
  • 11 Newbie Bloggers Participated
  • 55 out of 66 made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze
  • 36 made at least 15 posts qualifying for Silver
  • 31 made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold
  • 27 made 31 or more posts during the month of August qualifying for Rainbow

We had one outlier this month and I went back an forth about it, but Data_Error embarked upon a project of making a post for every Pokemon and as a result wound up with a nonsense 83 posts during the month of August. Wilhelm and Bhagpuss both came in with over 40 posts with 49 and 42 respectively, making me think I need an entirely new award for over 40. I was however super impressed with the fact that Three of our newbies made 31 posts or more and one Newbie got the 25 or higher needed for Gold.

Without further ado, lets dig into the awards.

Bronze Award

These are individuals who made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2019.

Silver Award

These are individuals who made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2019

Gold Award

These are individuals who made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2019

Rainbow Award

These are individuals who made at least 31 posts during the month of August 2019

Honorable Mentions

These folks signed up and in a few case built brand new blogs, but didn’t quite make it to at least five posts. However I applaud anyone for signing up and making an effort.

I’ve always updated the media kit to include links to the various new award images. At some point I will dig through the backlogs of Blaugust and upload all of the previous awards there also. I think it was a really great year. We had a little less attendance than last year, but we also had a significant chunk of our participants make it to Rainbow. More important than anything is that it infused new life into the community with us branching out and reaching several folks who were brand new to Blaugust.

I want to take an extra moment to thank all of the Mentors who have watched the Discord and answered so many questions over the past two months. They also added support in so many other ways behind the scenes.

2019 Mentors

Here is hoping that we have a great year of blogging and that I will see you all next year for another Blaugust. During the months between please stay active in the Discord so we can hang out and continue the Blaugust magic for the entire year to come.