Hey, fellow shouters. Today I wanted to take a break from the news and discuss getting some better features for your blog section of the site. Despite numerous suggestions and drafting of ideas admins have for the site, it means nothing if you guys don't want it or if there is something else you'd like.
So please give your feedback and massively shout this up if these are improvements you'd like to see.
Potential Features for Our Community's Blog SectionVisual EditorWhen we first founded ShoutWire in the long, long ago, not many editors knew much about coding basic html. In fact, that somewhat still holds true.
Why? It's because most Word-processing systems use what's called a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) visual editor. It makes things easy. Folks don't know how to do html because it's tedious and there is a faster way of making your articles look top notch.
WYSIWYG is what you work with when opening programs like Word and I've also heard rumors that with the right hacks, you can get this functionality on Macs (probably just no good propaganda).
So to see a visual editor in action,
test out the one we'd like built into ShoutWire here. It'd make writing entries 100 times easier, allows you to switch between HTML and Visual and could also let you embed ShoutWire pictures you upload into your blog posts. Sounds good to me.
Entry OrganizationWhat good is writing a post if you can't keep track of it? Half the pride of writing an article is seeing how many people have read it, how many responses it is getting and being able to easily find all of your writing in one list.
As of now, folks who write blog entries for ShoutWire have to hunt through the masses of articles just to check on the status of their blog posts. I've received many heated emails from frustrated users who had thought their posts deleted, when in fact it had just filtered to another section of 'upcoming blogs'.
What to do? For starters, everyone should have a simple list in their profile that says 'My Blogs'. It would track...blog entries! Wow.
In addition to that, I think it'd be cool to give everyone's personal profile a few more robust features, but that's a discussion for another time.
Write An Article ResponseSometimes you read something on this site, and you think "Oh you #$#$ bastard" and need to own someone with such furious flame-age that the comment section will not suffice. Sometimes you just may have something to add to what you read, or have a similar idea. You need an article.
With this feature every Editorial and Blog on ShoutWire would simply have a little icon (maybe a pissed off looking Shout dude) and a link 'Write an Article Response".
You click said link and it would open the nice Visual editor. You write your entry and boom, you've just created a new post.
The kicker feature would be that the top 5 (determined by views/comments) response articles will be listed on the ORIGINAL editorial or blog. This will give you more views and put your writing on the site front and center.
Getting some KickbackAfter writing a masterful piece, you decide to play it smart and hit the "Stumbleupon" or "Facebook it" button that follows every article. It turns out folks love what you wrote and your article gains thousands of views. Cool deal.
I personally think that every one of those views (unique) should be a credit to your overall XP. For every
X number of views your writing generates, you get
X amount of XP to go toward prize drawings we'll have coming up.
So those are a few of the things we'd like to get into your blog system for you. To make it happen, however, we need your feedback. I look forward to feedback and please leave comments/suggestions in what you want. Thanks.
Doc