Blog Nomads

The word is out about Blog Nomads, and even though Efx2 is up and running, people keep registering. This is very cool. It's serving the purpose it intended... To keep the community together. When Efx2 went down, I know that a lot of us wondered if it would be back up. I appreciate everything Keith has done for the community, and I've thanked him on many an occasion. He's only human, and we don't know what the future could bring. Efx2 may not always be around. I hate to think about that, but it's always a small possibility. I am going to keep the Blog Nomads portal open permanently. As long as 21 publish has the service available, the Blog Nomads will have a place to go. A lot of us have returned to the latest incarnation of Efx2, and some of us have moved on to other hosts.

It really doesn't matter. What matters is this... there is something very special about this community that just can't be found anywhere else. Look at how the lot of us have mass migrated together! We've all lost a few friends along the way, but that's just the nature of the internets.

Since things may not be as active as they were when Efx2 is down, I made the decision to let the service put the ads back up. I was paying to keep them off, but I'd rather have that money freed up for further development. The blog host portion of Nomads is pretty limited anyways, and I doubt anyone is using it.  So there is an add up at the top. Big deal! :) That way the portal can just stay here, and it won't be shut down because I forgot about the billing. 

I've good good news for you crazy hepcats, hepkittens, and nomads! Efx2 is coming back soon. Yay! Check it out... 

 http://efx2blogs.com/blog/2007/09/12/welcome-to-the-new-efx2blogs/

 What I will do is keep this portal open indefinitely as a What-If. Let's say that something like this happens again (let's hope it doesn't). You'll have a nice, centralized spot to meet up with everyone. Do you remember doing fire drills at school? The alarm would sound, and everyone would shuffle out of the classroom  and meet in a designated "Safe Area"? Blog Nomads can be our designated meet up area if someone spills nacho cheese sauce inside of the server, and the whole thing implodes with cheesy badness (as opposed to goodness). 

I do have to thank a few people in particular who helped me with putting Blog Nomads together. I'm sure that a lot of you may remember the Modblog Addicts forum that Cynter set up after Modblog crashed. By doing this, she made it possible and easy for all of us blogizens to keep our community together while in exile. I never would have thought to do this if it weren't for her original forum. I'd also like to thank the Ben and Originalism for taking an objective look at it, and giving me their feedback. It really helped a lot! Ben also gave me the idea for the name, for which she deserves the maddest props I've got. :)

So... my nomadic bretheren, this place will be here for as long as it's needed. If you're ever a blog transient again, due to unforseen spamming fiends,  come on by. There's plenty of room!

I've added a few links to some decent blog hosts if you choose to have an offsite blog. I picked a few hosts that I've played around with over the years that are easy to use, or have a little bit of flexiblility when it comes to designing a layout. Typepad & Square Space are the only paid hosts on the list, but if you're willing to pay, they have some great features. Personally, I prefer Wordpress. It's not the easiest to customize, unless your comfortable with CSS. If I can figure it out, anyone can!

If you come across any other ones that are worthwhile, let me know. I'd be glad to add them. If Efx2 comes back online, you can add your blog from there as well, and I will list them as a Recommended Host. I'm not going to bother with that while it's offline, of course.

This is coming together... It's your community. It can become whatever we want it to be.

I thought I'd let you know how the external blog feature works. If you look at the menu that says "Blog List", you'll see one that says "Heidiland@Wordpress". This is where I am going to be doing most of my blogging. When you sign up as a member, it automatically defaults to giving you a portal-hosted blog. For me (and I'm the head admin), there isn't enough space or layout flexibility on the portal-hosted blog. It lists that I have one, but I am not going to be using it. I set up my personal blog on Wordpress because it gives me the tools I need. You can go with whatever service you want.

I listed my external blog name as Heidiland @ Wordpress to diferentiate. You can see under "Recent Posts", my Wordpress posts are listed along with portal-hosted posts. They just look a little bit different.

I also have the RSS feed for the Blog Nomads portal as a link on my Wordpress blog, so that I can keep up with new posts from the community. I don't have a way to do a post alert, but it's the next best thing.

I hope this helps to show you some of the options that you have. :)