personal.flurf.net

Here are some as-yet-unasked Frequently Asked Questions, with answers.

What does it cost to get a blog on personal.flurf.net?

Nothing. It costs me a pittance, and I’ve already budgeted for it. In the unlikely event that your blog becomes so popular that it starts affecting my bottom line, I’ll talk to you about it. Probably we’ll stick Google Ads on the popular pages and let it pay for itself. But that will never happen.

Why use this instead of WordPress.org, LiveJournal, MySpace, etc?

Two reasons: findability and trust. Findability means that people who come looking for either baronial officers or friends of mine will find them here, without further fiddling. This is presumably a good thing or you wouldn’t be asking. Trust just means that you know me, and you can be reasonably confident that I’m not going to shut your blog down for mentioning breasts or democracy or copyright or some other terrorist-supporting hotword. After recent egregious misbehaviour by the Powers That Blog at LiveJournal, this must be a Good Thing.

But you can use other providers if you like. Doesn’t bother me. It’s all the same internet.

What do I need to do to sign up?

Email me at bat@flurf.net. Tell me your preferred user name and email address, and the name and title for your blog. Also tell me if you want to have it listed on the front page. I’ll create a user account for you and set up a blog. You’ll receive an email with your password, and you can get going on blogging immediately.

As an example, suppose you’re the baronial chicken-frightener. You’ll probably pick a name like “cluck” and a title of “Baronial Chicken-Frightener’s Blog”. I’ll set you up so that http://personal.flurf.net/cluck is your playground, ready to go. You’ll just need to click on the Site Admin link on the right hand sidebar and choose Write from the menu, and off you go. To delete the example entry, the Manage menu is your friend. To delete or rearrange comments, the Comments menu is unsurprisingly the first stop. There’s nothing tricky there.

Do I need to be a geek to do this?

You don’t need to know HTML or any other ETLAs (Extended Three Letter Acronyms) if that’s what you’re asking. WordPress has a nice editor that works just like a word processor. Even I use it, and I am a geek. Type your entry, click Publish, and there it is.

What can I use this for?

If you’re a baronial officer and I’ve given you a baronial officer’s blog, write about things of relevance to your office. Consider your audience to be primarily the Seneschal and the Baron & Baroness, but also your fellow officers and the members of the barony. Keep it professional, and be aware that when you quit your office, your successor will take over the blog, should they so desire. You can still get a personal blog here if the bug has bitten you by then, but the officer’s blog is the property of the office.

If you’re a friend of mine, write what you like. I don’t mind, provided you don’t do anything to eat my bandwidth or get me arrested.

What if I say something you don’t like?

I’m a big boy; I’ll cope. If I (or the Seneschal or B&B in the case of officers’ blogs) believe that your entry is inappropriate for any reason, the steps will be as follows:

1. I’ll make the entry private, visible to nobody but you and me.
2. I’ll contact you with my (or their) concerns, and ask you to fix the problem.
3. If we can’t come to an agreement, I’ll give you a complete copy of your entire blog’s contents, including comments, then delete the originals from personal.flurf.net and ask you to go away and not come back.

At no time will I ever edit your words. My only editorial input is the hide and delete operations. To put it succinctly: you own your words, but I own their presence on my site. I will never do any of this without trying very hard to reach a better compromise.

More later, as people ask questions and as the system gets tested.