Structure of new ‘blog’ posts

[Philip Tschersich]

What is the overall organization of blog posts? Can you keep adding content in subsequent posts? How do they differ from forum threads (it seems that a forum thread is automatically appended to the blog post)? What is the point? Is it that you have a stand-alone article without chatter from other members interspersed? How are they more visible to non members? Do they get categorized into the appropriate forum threads or how do forum users find them other than them showing up randomly in ‘new topics’?

[Philip Tschersich]

I started a Kodiak, AK trip reports thread back in 2013. Since then I have added almost 30 reports, mostly videos, spread throughout 159 response messages over 7 pages. I thought it might make sense to consolidate the reports as blog entries. The discussions surrounding the TRs are nice, but to a non member scrolling through the messages to find the video links would be work. Are embedded Vimeo vids now enabled?

[Ryan Jordan]

Hi Philip, the new Member Trip Report (not blog post) allows you to feature either Vimeo or Youtube videos.

The new Trip Report and Blog style Member Posts will behave very similar to our standard articles in terms of organization and discussion. After you publish it, a moderator will review it, and then the moderator will add a forum thread to your article. The forums threads will be in Campfire > Member Trip Reports and Campfire > Member Blog Posts forums, and also appear at the end of your Blog/Trip Report, just like our regular articles.

[Philip Tschersich]

Don’t the member trip reports just cannibalize the trip reports forum? I was going to consolidate some of my related trip reports in one spot. Each member trip report seems to be a single stand-alone entry though. Like, they would not end up grouped together but each entry would be a separate article. Since a lot of people just link to outside blogs due to the limitations of BPL, this seems like an opportunity to draw in rich content.

[Ryan Jordan]

Good points, Philip. We could leave the old trip reports forum as is and put the new threads associated with the new Member Trip Report articles in a different (new) forum. Would that make more sense?

[Matthew / BPL]

I think Philip is asking for a way to connect trip reports together. I could see that being used in different ways: day 1, day 2, day 3 of a long trip or as in Philip’s examples of returning to Kodiak over the years. Is that what you are getting at, Philip?

[Philip Tschersich]

I’m not seeing the benefit of 2 different places to post trip reports. I would leave the trip report forum mostly the same but make vids and media easier to embed, liberalize the screen real estate and pic pixel width, etc. And ax the “member trip report” article-thingy (probably too late now that some are live) as it’s redundant to (and dilutes at best and cannibalizes at worst) the trip report forum. Plus make the ‘blog’ feature an actual blog: a series of related posts over time by a single user to develop a topic. This could be a user posting a series of entries testing fabrics, a multi-stage myog project, or me with my dozens of regionally-related trip reports. Right now they are just stand-alone articles that lack the organizing principle of falling under a forum topic.

It’s also possible I’m just missing the point of the reorganization and new features and it will make sense to me at some point in the future. But for now I’m scratching my head and will keep adding to the “hiking across Kodiak” megathread.

[Ryan Jordan]

We added the new Member Trip Report feature as a means to give those authors more visibility across our membership. About 5% of our membership participates in the forum, so as terrific as some of those trip reports are, they just don’t get much visibility to the rest of the members. In addition, because we now have a custom and data-structured trip report article type, we are laying the foundation to build an automated mechanism to curate them that’s easily browsable by location, month of trip, etc. You can see the first phase of this in action (see the filters) on the Member Trip Reports gateway page.

This has been one of the most consistently requested features at BPL for many years – the ability to increase visibility of member content so it didn’t get buried in the forums, and the ability to easily curate the discover the content our members create.

[Philip Tschersich]

5 percent?? Wow, I would never have guessed such a low figure. Yeah, some way of reaching those folks makes sense.

Your link didn’t work, but looking at the TR template was instructive: https://backpackinglight.com/create-trip-report/

[Ken Thompson]

5%. Explains so much. Very insightful.

[Author]

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