A day earlier than planned but glad that this is now out in the open. Cross-posted on Scottish Blogs, with a similar post on BritBlog.
BritBlog and Scottish Blogs Join Forces
Some of you may be familiar with the British Blog Directory, a site similar to Scottish Blogs that focuses on (as the name suggests) British bloggers. Mark, who runs the site, and I have been in discussion for some time and we are both pleased to announce that we will soon be joining forces.The reasoning is simple: combining resources means we can offer our members (and web users at large) more.
Because of the group-focus that the new BritBlog will have, existing members of Scottish Blogs will become part of a similar Scottish Blogs group. With the Scottish Blogs website remaining the focus for that group.
Why join forces?
As BritBlog continues to grow and the number of blogs in Scotland and across Britain rises, the opportunity to offer a better web site and better set of resources increases. There has been a lot of work going on in the background, all aimed at bringing better functionality and more features to the BritBlog web site, so here, for your comments, are our current plans for the future of BritBlog.The main goals are to improve the community feel of the site, to allow special interest groups and communities to form, and to develop more resources for British Bloggers.
New features will include:
- A focus on groups and communities – enhanced features to allow communities of bloggers with similar interests or geography to form and grow.
- RSS feeds galore – allowing you to keep up to date with new blogs and posts from our members. Feeds will be available for specific groups.
- Improved searching and blog classifications – to make it easier to find blogs that may be of interest to you.
- Multiple blogs can be registered per user.
- An open database – developers will be able to integrate BritBlog with their own projects using our web services API.
As you can see, there will be lots going on.
So when is this all going to happen?
Timescales are still to be confirmed, and there’s a lot of planning to do and code to write. We’ll be re-writing the whole site from the ground up, so don’t expect to see too many obvious changes straight away!Needless to say there will be a lot more on this as the idea progresses but we’d appreciate your thoughts, positive and negative, and any other questions that spring to mind.
My reasoning is simple. I don’t have the technical knowledge to take Scottish Blogs forward any further, but I do have a good understanding of blogging and think the new site will be beneficial in connecting people. Interesting times lie ahead and Mark and I would really appreciate your thoughts.
So, leave your questions, thoughts and ideas in the comments. Mark and I will be collating them all from our sites and I’ll post a response/update sometime next week. Remember, this site will only be successful if people use it.