EHM Blogs

Post by **archibalduk** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 3:41 pm

TBL is very proud to present a brand new site feature: EHM Blogs!

Now you can share the highs and lows of your EHM team with the rest of the community! Not only that, but fellow users can post comments and suggestions about your blog, allowing you to get feedback and suggestions on how to improve your team. Your blog may also be a good way of publicising your EHM projects and for keeping the community up-to-date on how your project is going. This will allow you to get feedback on your projects. Our EHM Blog System can thus be used for a number of different purposes; all we require is that your blog is somehow related to EHM.

The blog is highly customisable, allowing you to add features such as calendar navigation, a custom block of text, displaying your user profile information, contact information, blog mood smilies, and even a shoutbox. There is also the ability to upload images or alternatively embedding images hosted on an image hosting site (such as ImageShack or PhotoBucket) or from your own personal website.

Starting a new blog is simple; just go to the main Blog Index Page. Once you have created your blog, you can access it via the black navigation bar above the site header (the clipboard icon). There is also a button to access your blog settings (the clipboard with the tools icon):

In order to create a blog, you must have first registered on our site.

Further to the introduction of the Blogs System, the Stories and Records Forum has been merged with the General EHM Chat Forum. If you wish to post an EHM story or an EHM record then please use the General EHM Chat Forum. The General EHM Chat Forum is also the place to discuss the EHM blogs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Custom Block
In your Blog Settings you will find a section labelled 'Custom Block'. The custom block is displayed below your avatar on your blog page. You may give your blog a title as well as a main body of text. The custom block may be useful for things such as providing a basic summary of the purpose of your blog.

Posting a new blog entry
The link to post a new blog entry is located just to the left your avatar on you blog page:

Dates
It is possible to set the date of your blog entry to a date other than today. It is not recommended that you set the date to your ingame EHM date because it will cause problems if you choose to blog about another EHM game.

Images
Avoid embedding images wider than 710 pixels in your blog because anything wider will ruin the layout of your blog.

Terms of use
* Please only use your blog for EHM-related topics.
* Do not hotlink to images from other sites. You may however, use images hosted on an image hosting site or from your own website.
* Do not post offensive material. The TBL Admin Team has the final say as to what is and isn't acceptable.

If you have any comments/questions about the Blog System then please let us know via this thread.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:40 pm

Big props to the TBL crew for adding this to the site. This was a big undertaking and it's going to be such a great feature for the site. Thanks guys!

Joe · Post by **Joe** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:22 pm

Great, I could tell you guys were working on a blog sort of thing this morning, and I think its a great add on!

Post by **Minstrel** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 8:30 pm

Big props to Archi on this one

It's one of those things that has been something I thought wold be a great idea for a long time but it's been hard to actually get up and running. We had test versions on Blogger but they Google bought them out and the most convenient functions for our uses were dropped so we had to go back to square one again

We'd liked to have made things more customizable but the code is a real bear to deal with Archi spent many weeks

before getting it sorted finally.

But we've got most of the kinks worked out of it now and we hope everyone will enjoy them.

You can see I've been piecing together in retrospect by Columbus Challenge team's first two seasons with my blog. Once I get caught up to the 2nd Cup run I'll be doing more of a day-to-day kind of thing following by team. It's back dated to give me room so it won't show up on the newest posts but check it out, I'm up to November of my second season

If you want to start from the beginning click on my 'View All Entries' list

Post by **joehelmer** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 7:10 am

Brilliant, I will start with a blog as soon as I can.

Devils88 · Post by **Devils88** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 9:25 am

Awesome Feature.
Great Job TBL.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 4:06 am

I don't know if it's a problem with the blog setup or just something on my end but on the blog index it shows my blog as last updated on Feb 6th when I just added a new post to it today. Does it show up that way for anyone else?

Post by **archibalduk** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:29 am

bruins72 wrote:I don't know if it's a problem with the blog setup or just something on my end but on the blog index it shows my blog as last updated on Feb 6th when I just added a new post to it today. Does it show up that way for anyone else?

Hmmm that is interesting. Have you done anything with your earliest blog entry recently? Perhaps edited or updated it?

Post by **Shadd666** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 1:33 pm

Would it be possible possible to sort the entries from oldest one to newest one (ie reverse order of the actual one)? It should be more easy to read for someone who start to read a blog, as he'll read the story like a book...

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:14 pm

archibalduk wrote:
bruins72 wrote:I don't know if it's a problem with the blog setup or just something on my end but on the blog index it shows my blog as last updated on Feb 6th when I just added a new post to it today. Does it show up that way for anyone else?
Hmmm that is interesting. Have you done anything with your earliest blog entry recently? Perhaps edited or updated it?

Nope. I haven't touched my original entry in I don't know how long. The most recent thing I've done to my blog in general was add that last post. I haven't even changed any settings since then.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:16 pm

Sorry, I couldn't edit but had to add something.

When I go to blogs, it has that Feb 6th date next to my name one the list of everyone's blogs. The odd thing is, the box above that says "Your Blog" shows my last update as Feb 20th, the correct date.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:04 pm

bruins72 wrote:Sorry, I couldn't edit but had to add something.

When I go to blogs, it has that Feb 6th date next to my name one the list of everyone's blogs. The odd thing is, the box above that says "Your Blog" shows my last update as Feb 20th, the correct date.

I also noticed that a few people showed their blog was last updated on like the 1st of February, and a few other early dates that didn't seem possible.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:14 pm

To add to my above post, I went over to the general page, and looked at the latest blog entries and this is what it shows for me. Notice how Wilma's and my blog dates are correct, and then you have Catchup's who is way off.

And then when you go to the blog index, it doesn't even have Catchup listed! Also there are several other blogs that have a last entry with a early date.

Now of course I understand some days may be different for people because of time zones and what not, but some of these dates are way off.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining or anything, I really like these blogs.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 4:29 pm

It's actually possible to back-date your blogs to make it as if you were writing them as time we by in your game. The drawback is that later on if you did another blog, you'd end up with the two kind of mushing together.

Post by **Minstrel** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:32 pm

Yeah, you shouldn't forward-date your blog entries. If you want to use in-game dates you should do so by using them in your title or at the top of each entry.

I also moved some of the "announce" posts from this thread into an announce/updates sticky thread in Game Discussion so if you'd like to announce a new blog or an update to your blog please use that thread or your thread will get locked only long enough for your to cut and paste your post into the proper thread then deleted.

Post by **archibalduk** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:33 pm

To start off with, I just want to mention that I've included two images in this post but they may take a while to download tonight (they are small files; it's just that Image Shack is being slow at the moment!).

bruins72 wrote:When I go to blogs, it has that Feb 6th date next to my name one the list of everyone's blogs. The odd thing is, the box above that says "Your Blog" shows my last update as Feb 20th, the correct date.

Yeah I see what you mean. It's very odd and only seems to be affecting one or two blogs; all of the others have the correct dates listed. I'm going to have to re-write that part of the script. It's a bit of a pain but shouldn't take too long at all. Thanks very much for pointing this out.

Joe:
Catchup's blog is listed in the Blog Index:

Joe wrote:To add to my above post, I went over to the general page, and looked at the latest blog entries and this is what it shows for me. Notice how Wilma's and my blog dates are correct, and then you have Catchup's who is way off.

CatchUp has chosen to back-date his blog entries according to the ingame date. E.g. he has dated an entry as August 2006 to post what happened in his game during August 2006 in the game. I strongly recommend against doing this because if you choose to blog about a different game, your blog entries will become mixed-up.

The list at the top of the General EHM Chat Forum shows the latest three blog entries. CatchUp's entry dated August 2006 was in fact posted this month (as I said he is back-dating blog entries) and so it comes up in the list. The list doesn't take into account what date has been given to the entry but the actual date it was posted. Thus it has the advantage of notifying users of back-dated posts; otherwise users would never be aware of back-dated entries.

If I haven't made sense then let me know and I will try to explain with more clarity (sometimes my explanations can be quite confusing)

Shadd666 wrote:Would it be possible possible to sort the entries from oldest one to newest one (ie reverse order of the actual one)? It should be more easy to read for someone who start to read a blog, as he'll read the story like a book...

The best way to navigate from the earliest entry to the latest entry is by using the navigation buttons and the calendar. These are found in the right hand column of the blogs, a little below the user's avatar:

* The Back/Forward links will navigate you through the pages of the blog.
* The View All Entries link will list all blog entries for that blog.
* The calendar can be used to navigate through blog entries for each month.

To go through the whole list of every blog entry for every user from the start, go to the Latest Blog Entries Page and start at the last page and work your way forwards to the first page.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:43 pm

Thanks for looking into that, Archi! I just wanted to make sure it wasn't just a problem on my end or something I was doing wrong. It's no big deal. People are still reading the blogs when they see them on the latest updates page.

Post by **CatchUp** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 2:14 am

Sorry for confusing everyone with my crazy dating scheme. I'll fix it. Makes more sense your way anywho.

Cheers.

Post by **Shadd666** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 9:27 pm

Updated my blog

Now it'll be month-by-month, and November 2007 is now available for your eyes!

Post by **archibalduk** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:04 pm

bruins72 wrote:Thanks for looking into that, Archi! I just wanted to make sure it wasn't just a problem on my end or something I was doing wrong. It's no big deal. People are still reading the blogs when they see them on the latest updates page.

As promised, I've taken a look into this issue. I simply can't get it to work properly

It's utterly bizarre why it'll work if you sort by ascending newest entries but it won't work if sorted any other way. The code looks good but there has to be something in there that's stopping it working properly. In order to prevent confusion, I've removed the Latest Entries column from the Blog Index

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:32 pm

That is strange. Oh well! At least you tried. Thanks!

Post by **inSTAALed** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:19 am

Great to finally see it finished.

Great work guys.