Stories implemented as Blogs

[Evs]

Hey All,

It's obvious that many people loved the story section of Digihitch, and would like to see stories be a part of our new community.

I'm suggesting that we have stories, but that they be implemented through a blogging platform.

So this means that every member, as well as having access to the forums, will have the ability to publish whatever writings they'd like on their own blog.

Every time a member posts to their blog, they'll select a category under which that post will be grouped. So if you publish a poem, story, song lyrics, or a picture, you'll publish it under the corresponding category.

This will make it easy to keep all user created content in one place, and for visitors to find what they're looking for.

What do you guys think?

[benwanderer]

Hmmm. The only thing I would say about this is that blogs read different than stories. Blogs AREN'T stories. Blogs read more like you're sharing travel news. They tend to be less detailed and slimmed down, because nobody wants to read a long blog post. I think that a legitimate chapter format or post format would FEEL better for the blogs. I just feel like it's a completely different experience reading a blog vs. a story. Blogs are like Journals, Stories are, well stories.

That said, perhaps we can do both! We can have a stories section for things that have already been done, such as past Journeys and trips, and for things that are ongoing, we can have a blog section.

I vote both. If I can help in any way with the WORK that needs to be done, I'd love to.

[lightfoot]

Some of the best stories were simply unloaded on the old site by people who never returned to the site. One could almost feel the sigh of relief the writer had when they realized they found a forum where they could drop their story. As a person who enjoys reading hitching stories, I'm not going to wade through a lot of mundane blog posts to find an anecdote where no attempt is made to frame it in story form. The people who blog well might be disappointed there is no story format and the people who don't blog well are just taking up byte space.

[benwanderer]

I think a stories section is of far more value to a travel site, where half the people log on just to read stories for inspiration. If people want a blog, that is what wordpress is for. I have a blog. No one reads it, but I have it. If I want it to be publicized on the new site, I'll create a topic called "Blogs" and post it in there. I just feel that stories, even just calling it stories, inspires people to really go the extra mile for what they are writing. Like writing a book compared to a daily diary.

[thewindandrain]

I agree with you guys. Another benefit to having stories published on digihitch was be the ability to discuss each story in a thread on the forum. And let's not forget the ability to rate each story so that you can search for the higher rated stories. There were some GREAT stories on the old site..and some not so great ones.

[Evs]

Okay, okay, bad idea.

The stories will be implemented as and published in a dedicated story section.

I'm glad to hear that some people are as excited about story section as I am.

Cheers.