I have been working to set up a Blogging System on the website, initially for use by club officials and website administration, but it could easily be expanded to include other uses. For those not familiar with what a Blog is, the word BLOG is a combination of the words WEB and LOG. There are similarities between the Forum format, such as what you are reading here, and the Blog, but there are differences as well. You can read a more thorough description here.

The similarities are that the Blog Author can create a Blog Entry, just like a Forum Topic, and others can leave comments, just like hitting the Reply button in a Forum thread. The similarities pretty much end there.

The Blog is different in that a UNIQUE BLOG is created for each BLOG AUTHOR and only the BLOG AUTHOR can create a new entry in that blog, unlike a Forum where ANY authorized user can create a New Topic or Post. The author/owner of the blog may or may not allow others to leave comments on an individual entry and can also make the entry visible or hidden. They might want to hide the entry if they are interrupted while writing it and need to come back later to finish, at which time they would make it visible. On a more global scale, ALL blog entries could be made visible to ONLY registered members of the website. but that option would apply to ALL blogs, not to an individual blog or blog entry. There are a number of other differences that make blogs unique from the Forum format, particularly with regard to Social Networking, but these are the primary distinctions that would most likely concern us and our usage.

A couple of examples of where we might utilize the blog format:

• Club Officials Blogs - as mentioned above, a place for RSCS Officials to discuss meeting agendas, times etc. These blogs would be visible only to club officials.
• Weekly Race Recap - written by Bryan Hulbert, if he's interested, or another race fan that regularly attends RSCS events and would like to participate. We could even have more than one if there is enough interest, just to give different perspectives.
• Drivers Blogs - A separate blog page for each driver, linked from the Drivers Profile page. The link would appear only for those drivers that want to participate and the Drivers Blog would list only entries made by that particular driver.

These blogs, if implemented, would not replace the Forum, as there still needs to be a way for registered members of the site to leave comments or discuss various topics in the open atmosphere a Forum provides. It would not be practical to create a blog for every registered member, but one for each RSCS Driver might be worth considering.

Let me know your thoughts and suggestions. This new website design is much more flexible and expandable (the geek term is "extensible" I think) than the previous one and I'd like to explore any ideas or suggestions you, the users of the site, might have.

Ed