Blogging

[WILL]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to discuss the Blogs feature of PGD to see what everyone thought about them. It's been many months since we upgraded to the new vBulletin software and with it came the feature of being able to start your own blog on this site.

I'd like to know if you liked the feature and if you are not using it, are you considering it? Should you not want to use it, why? Is there something that can be improved by it or is there simply another site out there that you'd prefer to blog on or is blogging not your thing?

Please drop a reply and let us know what you think about Blogging on PGD. :)

[Carver413]

Well I tried my hand at the whole blogging thing and it only ended in disaster. I hit the save draft button so I could work on it latter but instead it posted it. this made me less then happy so I deleted it thinking that would end the problem and I could try again later. that didn't really work ether because it was still there it just said deleted. and if you clicked on it you could still see what was written even though it was deleted. I finally had to go in the edit mode to erase what I had written as there was no way to un delete it even though I could edit it. I don't really see me blogging again after all that. at least not on this board.

[WILL]

Hmm yeah I can see how that's frustrating. One of the things that might be a bit unnerving about vBulletin is that much of the content that you have posted and/or deleted will remain for YOU and the admins to see. So even though you can see it, others can't. Except for me and the other staff of course.

I'll agree that saving as a draft isn't the nicest it could be right now. I'm looking forward to their improvements on this in the near future.

Sorry about the frustration. I hope that you would try again perhaps after the blogging has gone through some improvements?

[Carver413]

Yes I would like to try again if things worked as expected.

[chronozphere]

I am planning to start a blog but not on this site. That is because I intend on blogging about very different things (not neccesarily pascal or gamdev) and because I really want to use my own webspace and domain (which are still unused). That would also allow me to pick my favorite layout etc. :) Finally the story above doesn't motivate me to use the PGD blogging facilities at this moment.

[farcodev]

"Thought about using it, but can't think of what to blog. "... and maybe people should post on which topics to blog, a little direction always help ;)

[User137]

I don't really see a difference between a blog and forum thread... I rather make a topic about something when getting new ideas or anything, even if its for tutorials.

[code_glitch]

Guess what option I chose...

Sometimes its nice to post and not worry about cluttering threads etc... Ironically, people do read posts, but hardly ever comment bar a few rarer exceptions ???

[WILL]

"Thought about using it, but can't think of what to blog. "... and maybe people should post on which topics to blog, a little direction always help ;)

Well a lot of people like to show off what they do in their game development. A perfect example is Sascha Willems who shows off some of his great projects and some of the cool stuff he does behind the scenes with it. Michael Pote was another, but his poor old site fell down some time ago. Should anyone ever want to travel over to GameDev.net (http://www.gamedev.net/) and check out their Developer Diaries that their members have posted, you'll see some interesting stuff too.

I think some of the creativity has fallen away from this site. This is probably due to all the changes over the last few years. I think it wouldn't hurt for those of you who still come up with a lot of neat ideas for games and game development to share those here. In a blog or in forum threads. You can even take a look at RedAntGames.com (http://www.redantgames.com/) (my own profile site) and see some of the things I've posted there too. Then there is some of the existing blogs you can read there now and I've had my own blogging account on Blogger.com (http://redantproductions.blogspot.com/) which you can take ideas from too.

Sometimes it's nice to just blog about games and fun ideas that don't go anywhere too. :) ie. What games have been distracting me from programming lately. :D

[WILL]

Yes I would like to try again if things worked as expected.

You know it might not have actually shown it to everyone, just you. Usually when something is not officially posted, if shows a little red notation stating that it's not yet published. Was there a bit of red text to that nature? You might have mistook that it actually posted it publicly when it only showed you the post as it would look when posted. News acts much the same way for us admins and moderators.

[WILL]

Ok I looked into this more and this is how it behaves.

When you type up a blog and don't want to post it right away you hit the 'Save Draft' button. You will see the following view. Don't be alarmed, it did not actually post publicly!

489


This is actually just a preview of your post, not the actual posting of your blog. No error here, just no indication that it's not actually posted. Misleading, maybe, but that's what suggestions for improvement to vBulletin are for. :)

So to come back to it as if you were doing so later on, just click the 'Blogs' button and you'll see this list. Notice this wrench beside your blog title below. 490


491


This indicated that it's a draft and not visible to anyone other than yourself, and of course the admins and moderators.

This behaviour may be different from some of the other blogging sites than what you are used to, but it doesn't mean anything is broken, just a bit different. :)

[WILL]

So is any interest in blogging gone dead on PGD? I know the system isn't perfect, but it's a great place for anyone who likes programming in Pascal to blog away on any of their latest projects. I think the blog section does serve as a great platform for keeping a developer journal, which has been rather successful over at GameDev.net.

Something to consider as I'd rather not waste this great resource we've added to the site. :)

[phibermon]

I struggle to think of coherent patterns to blog about at the moment as the engine is at the stage where I touch upon dozens of areas with each coding session, today I sat down with the intention of finishing the Animation blending and re-targetting so I could start experimenting with my animation data. I ended up adding new widgets to the window manager and then creating Instrument and effect classes for my audio lib. I really don't know why, unless I start working on PHUD again (my music production software, never discussed, multi-track midi capable sequencer), who wants realtime music synthesis taking up CPU cycles when they can just play a pre-rendered waveform? perhaps I could start blogging about my short attention span ;)

[WILL]

Well the blogs don't have to be overly long. ;)

[paul_nicholls]

unless I start working on PHUD again (my music production software, never discussed, multi-track midi capable sequencer), who wants realtime music synthesis taking up CPU cycles when they can just play a pre-rendered waveform?

hmm...that project sounds interesting :)

cheers,
Paul

[code_glitch]

The only problem I have about blogging is this: you get into the zone and your pumping lines of code. You commit to SVN, think I'll just updater the blog real quick because of this new feature or whatever it is you where working on and BAM, you spend 45mins blogging and tweaking etc and then you look at the code and your like WAAH! Did I write that? Its like all alien greek to me (for greek people thats a language you dont understand) and then you're like DAMN.

But I guess thats just me, isn't it...