I Need Some Feedback

[Rodri]

I am thinking of purchasing a domain and starting a blog-page. My blog would be about alternative solutions for sustainable growth, with a heavy focus on what individuals can do in their own lives to reduce their costs of living and improve their living standards. I am thinking I would like to make it a resource bank of information with essays by me and links to as many other sites with relevant information as possible. The blog would be non-political as such, focusing almost entirely on practical matters and how-to information. I would also like to incorporate comments and contributions from readers and also have a forum section for open discussion, asking and answering questions, submissions of ideas, concepts, recipes, anything relevant. Ultimately, it would be great to have other regular contributors and an encyclopedic type collection of articles, recipes and links which would need to be archived and indexed for easy access.

Here's a banner I roughed up in a few minutes but I like the idea of incorporating the germinating seed. Everything else can and probably will be subject to change of course such as availability of domain names.



I would cover subjects ranging from food production and storage, urban food production, water self-sufficiency, permaculture design, alternative building and housing methods, alternative sustainable energy systems and technological advances that are appropriate for a sustainable future. As I said, much of the focus would be on practical methods at the level of the individual or family. It would be a free site, open and available to anyone and I have nothing to sell except some ideas. I might add a donate by pay-pal to help meet costs and grow the site but that would be totally optional. If I find I have to run ads to meet costs I could perhaps find a way to carry only relevant advertisements to the site?

Here's the thing. I am an online n00b and although it all looks do-able, it would be nice to get some feedback before I jump in, as to the practical side of setting up the site and also the appeal of a site like this. I know this is a game forum but I have noticed that there is some interest in these issues, even here. there is also a bunch of intelligent people with a wide range of skills and knowledge. So let me know what you think, or even if you would ever look for a site like this. It's all relevant.

[imnothere]

first bit of advice i have is "have you looked for a site like this allready?" if there is one already up and running i would be happy to grab your hand and jump on that wagon as well. i can do a bit of digging around to see if there is, and now that you have brought it up will.
because yes i would like to bookmark a site like that and talk with other earthminded people who without political agenda are looking to be responsible with the resources to hand.
second, if no such site exists, or it does but you dont care you want your own. running a site like the one you are talking about would be moderately expensive (for an individual) so you would probably need ads as well as donations. i like the idea of incorporating relevant adds. and i would think that the people you would go to would like that idea as well. target audience and all that.
if you have a place for people to post up their thoughts and ideas, be it forum or bulletin bored you will need to lay out ground rules for doing so and have a collection of people who are in agreement with your ideas and willing to help carry them out to help you monitor the things posted. not as a stiffing of freedom of speech, but as a content flow management, so that information is gathered where it needs to be gathered for efficacious use. (ps i volunteer for the content flow management team)
you will need to decide what kind of tools will be available to your content flow management team as well as to your followers (the people who read blogs are called followers, just in case anyone thinks i'm starting to think of this as a new cult, because i'm not. although....)
depending on how big a following you want you will also want to think about advertising your self in other places, weather or not you want links to Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Skype, MSN, Myspace ect...
people want ease when finding and following something, so your going to want to make it easy to find you, easy to follow you, and easy to carry out the suggestions that will be the content of your page.

contact info, and how its shared would be another thing to think about.

when you've got a rough idea on all of that i'd pop down to the graphics section and ask for some help with your banner if you want, there are some wonderfully talented people there who are helping each other learn about the tools available to them and the different ways to utilize those tools. it is a community i respect and admire for their cohesive encouragement of members. they can definitely help you get the visuals you want.

once you have your data and images gathered then i would go looking for a host for your domain, shop around see what kind of a deal you can get, know what language you want to write your site in because it will effect who can and will host for you. know the structure you want to accomplish within that site, you might even have some of the pages made up a head of time. that way you get the domain and can quickly go from there to published page.


i hope this gob of information has been helpful

[Rodri]

I can find plenty of sites with good information but not one site with all topics and a good archive.

Technicalities. My n00biness might start showing here but what the? I'm thinking that to get my site to do what I would like, I might need 3 sites. A static site for archives, a hosted forum site for discussion and a more fluid blog page for new articles and relevant news items. As far as language goes, I am thinking word press might be the best for my purposes as it seems to allow more plug-in modifications than some others. It's also free, which is also a bonus. I might be digging myself into a hole here as I don't know much about anything yet.

Philosophy. I was thinking an open access site that can generate enough income to meet running costs and grow the site organically. So I would be open to contributions from anyone as long as I can maintain some editorial control. I would hope that a forum community would develop and grow and perhaps even cross over into contributing to the blog site and definitely contribute to the archived library. I'm almost tempted to go with offering advertising space to companies who's online sites contain good information and relevant appropriate products in exchange for allowing to use information and even images from their site. Perhaps they might even be prepared to contribute articles from time to time. My expertise is in horticulture and whilst I have a wide ranging knowledge of a lot of other subjects, it's always good to have people who really know their subject contributing as well.

I know there's much more to this than just a simple blog page but I think it's do-able.

[Ikeni]

I hate to make such a short post, but while I wouldn't be sure of how to execute something like this myself I think it would be a good idea to create the site you've suggested here. Unfortunately I can't really help because my site building skills are poor and my knowledge lies in history more than anything else.

[imnothere]

you wont need three sites. you can do all of that on one site utilizing different pages.

your philosophy is sound in its concept, but when it comes time to contact "sponsors" i'm afraid you'll find it not what your thinking.

it is very do-able. and i think that you could easily get what your after in a simple easy to use, easy to maintain format.

and because i think its doable i encourage you to do the research

[japanpimp]

I am thinking of purchasing a domain and starting a blog-page. My blog would be about alternative solutions for sustainable growth, with a heavy focus on what individuals can do in their own lives to reduce their costs of living and improve their living standards. I am thinking I would like to make it a resource bank of information with essays by me and links to as many other sites with relevant information as possible. The blog would be non-political as such, focusing almost entirely on practical matters and how-to information. I would also like to incorporate comments and contributions from readers and also have a forum section for open discussion, asking and answering questions, submissions of ideas, concepts, recipes, anything relevant. Ultimately, it would be great to have other regular contributors and an encyclopedic type collection of articles, recipes and links which would need to be archived and indexed for easy access.

Here's a banner I roughed up in a few minutes but I like the idea of incorporating the germinating seed. Everything else can and probably will be subject to change of course such as availability of domain names.



I would cover subjects ranging from food production and storage, urban food production, water self-sufficiency, permaculture design, alternative building and housing methods, alternative sustainable energy systems and technological advances that are appropriate for a sustainable future. As I said, much of the focus would be on practical methods at the level of the individual or family. It would be a free site, open and available to anyone and I have nothing to sell except some ideas. I might add a donate by pay-pal to help meet costs and grow the site but that would be totally optional. If I find I have to run ads to meet costs I could perhaps find a way to carry only relevant advertisements to the site?

Here's the thing. I am an online n00b and although it all looks do-able, it would be nice to get some feedback before I jump in, as to the practical side of setting up the site and also the appeal of a site like this. I know this is a game forum but I have noticed that there is some interest in these issues, even here. there is also a bunch of intelligent people with a wide range of skills and knowledge. So let me know what you think, or even if you would ever look for a site like this. It's all relevant.

If you are passionate about it then do it. And do not stop or give up on it.
Now, that being said, remember that the internet is not the end all say all when it comes to getting your voice out there for people to hear. There are other avenues which are just as important. For example, writing up articles for magazines, newspapers, etc... Try to get some of your stuff published in existing magazines and so on that have similar themes to what you are writing about. If you do get something published then that will give you a very good foothold to step up to the next level.

[Rodri]

Thanks JP but it's partly a philosophy thing to do it online. I really do believe that the internet is the media of the future and the beauty of it is the independence it can provide an individual publisher as well as the minimal financial outlay required to get started. It's also free access on most sites and mine would be totally free access and all information would be freely available to anyone.

My greatest worry is that I might end up in a virtual backwater where no-one ever visits but even then, the act of collecting and writing the type of information I plan to would be a great learning experience for me and even a motivator to do more in my own life, even if it never reaches one other person.

[Gnerphk]

If you build it, they will come.

Do it, mate. I have faith in your ability to write... though I would advise you find yourself a textual editor. Grammar is more important than content in the blogsphere -- and spellcheck is NOT the way to go.

Take a quick peek at some of the more popular science blogs - The Intersection, for example, is a perfect instance of this sort of thing.

[Rodri]

I am going to have to find another name. Seeds of Change is already taken but it's just a dotcom site for organic seeds. It's not a bad site for U.S. and Canadian people who are interested in growing food and has some reasonably good information but it's not the all-inclusive site with the range of subjects that I am thinking about.

[jorbaud]

My greatest worry is that I might end up in a virtual backwater where no-one ever visits but even then, the act of collecting and writing the type of information I plan to would be a great learning experience for me and even a motivator to do more in my own life, even if it never reaches one other person.

If you make a site I will read everything you put up.