Blogs vs Topics

I am assuming this action is required for 'blogs' verses 'topics'?

I believe I have ended up making most of my postings as topics rather than blogs. One reason I chose to do so is I believe I discovered that the internet picked up the images contained in topics vs blogs.? ,...thus I could search images to find old subjects I had contributed to??

This has assisted me in finding some of my old postings I may have forgotten about?

Did something wrong

Did I miss a step?

I copied and pasted the links, the links show but the name of the blogs do not?

Also how do I get the link the to the index?

Same Thing

I've done this before but I was just trying to copy over a few links to update my index and can't remember how I did it the first time. The links copy but not the titles.

Need to Update Blog Index?

At the end of that video there was a caveat that one must continue to update their blogs on that index. So this doesn't occur automatically as it did previously when one made a new posting to their tread,...or when someone else made a posting to that blog thread??

(sorry, I get a little confused with all these various terms, etc)

If someone has very few blog entries can they just go back and change them to topic threads? ...or would that make any difference??

Well I got mine fixed after

Well I got mine fixed after watching the video. I don't know what I was doing wrong last night when I was trying to update the already created index. Could I get the reply post to my index removed? It was accidental and now just reads "..." as I edited it but it would be nice if it was just gone completely.

So if we currently do not have a Journal/Blog on MRHMAG.com...

...but create one later, we can create an index for it on the New Forum when the time comes, correct?

Ken L

Answers …

We didn’t say do anything for topics, now did we? Blogs/Journals are a special animal so yes, this is a blogs only thing.

Browse to the index page, then copy the link from your browser address bar. Now on the right hand menu, select My Account, edit tab, then scroll down to your signature, type Read my blog in your signature edit box, select the text, then click the chain+ icon in the edit bar to bring up the link dialog box and then paste in the link you copied.

On the new forum if you create a Journal/blog thread, you will have to manually add a link to the thread on your index page for your Journal/blog. If the Journal/blog is brand new, then you will have to start an index page as well.

There is no automatic blog index feature on the new forum (at least not yet).

So the short answer is yes, you can create a new blog and index page on the new forum whenever you want.

Index page

in a hierarchy view, will the Journal entry will be sort of a category, then each blog/journal posting be a topic and the replies be comments below that.

Journals

   My Journal

      Topic/entry (my initial post)

           Comment (other's posts)

Or... is the journal/blog more like a topic and each journal/blog posting be a comment?

Journals

      My Journal

           Comments (all posts)

I am assuming it will be the former, an the index page will be the first post in the category.

Will the journal owner be able to edit, rearrange the links to pages on the index page.  My thinking here is that the chronological postings on a journal might be random topics :

Jan 1 Cars

Jan 7 Operations

Jan 15 Making hills

Feb 1 Bus wiring

Feb 2 Trees

Feb 15 Gondolas

Feb 30 CTC

But on the index page I might want to index it by topic, rearranging the links:

Electrical

   Feb 1 Bus wiring

Operations

  Jan 7 Operations

  Feb 30 CTC

Rolling Stock

  Jan 1 Cars

  Feb 15 Gondolas

Scenery

  Jan 15 Making hills

  Feb 2 Trees

If the links are rearranged it shouldn't affect the performance of the link.  It would be really helpful to readers if the index could be, well, indexed.

Silly question . . .

Is my account on the new forum the same as my MRH account?  I can't seem to log on.

If it's different, will our original accounts be used after the "go live" or will we have to create new ones?  I'm guessing the originals, otherwise how would it know what Blog is ours?

Getting logged into the new forum for the first time

Go to https://forum.mrhmag.com... then follow the steps in the video below.

Your old username and email address will get moved over. But we can't see your password so you will have to establish a new password.

Blog category hierarchy

Neither one.

Journal/blog is just a thread category like all other thread categories -- except that we can grant you some extra powers for managing posts -- you can edit them indefinitely. Regular forum categories limit you to two weeks and then you can't edit the post any longer.

Here's the Journal/blog category hierarchy ...

Journal/blog category

   Thread 1 (by anybody)

      Comments

   Thread 2 (by anybody)

      Comments

   ......

   Thread 9999 (by anybody)

      Comments

That's it. The index is just another blog thread post. The only magic with the blog index is if you link to it in your signature and that you keep it manually updated if you add a new blog thread.

You can organize the index however you like ... make sub-categories, reorder the links -- knock yourself out.

I do like the idea of calling

I do like the idea of calling it a journal much better than a blog. Mine is essentially my layout journal, and I always put my post in the "Personal Journal Editorial and Commentary" category. Thanks for getting rid of the empty post on my index. I'm good to go now.

operator error on my part?

1. I search for my blogs

2. get the list,

3. highlight the list,

4. copy to clipboard,

5. create a new blog

6. switch to plain text editor

7. paste...and all I get is text, they are not links.

what step am I missing, please help.

@Joe

Thanks Joe.  Worked like a charm.  Looking forward to working with the new forum.  

@MannsCreekRR

Just checked your blog index and it looks fine now. Did you finally figure it out?

Also, we edited your blog link in your signature to remove the physical hyperlink and made Read My Blog into a link that goes to your blog index. Looks more clean that way.

Just piling on.....

I converted and/or moved my blogs in prep for the new site. Easy peasy!

Blog posting error

An attempt at creating an index for my blog resulting in one listing, "Southern Mountain".  Trying to figure out why revealed the apparent cause:  All my posts to the blog were erroneously made as replies rather than as new blog entries.  That doesn't seem to be correctable, but confirmation (or help) would be appreciated.

TIA,

journal/blog

Yeah. Lots of confusion here, when everything should just be so simple. I think people are over-complicating what they think all this stuff is...

Even on this existing site there's basically no difference between a "blog" or "topic" post, other then where you start it, and there's a "My Blog" link to all the "blog" threads you started. LITERALLY THE ONLY DIFFERENCE on the new site is the "My Blog" link listing isn't there anymore and all the existing posts will be in the "Layout/Personal Journals" category on the forum.

Of course, that can be a "big" difference if you maintained a link to that index as your "blog".

I don't get all this confusion and talking about how comments work and if you can block them. It doesn't work that way now, does it? So where does that idea come from?

index page organization

Nope. The way I understand this conversation, all the former "blog" posts will just be topics in the "Layout and Personal Journals" category on the form. Yours and everyone else's. 

Your "index" page is just a place where you can keep links to all your posts if you want to link to them from somewhere.

The "first" post in the category on the new forum will be whatever post in the category is most recently updated, or commented on, like any other forum.

Your "index" is just another topic post, which you can go back and edit. Once you do the initial trick described here to create it, it's not dynamic and does not automatically update. You can do whatever you want to the content.

e.g. exactly what you suggested:

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/chris-vanderheides-index-12218256
(vs  https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/get-my-blog-index?uid=cv_acr)

"missing" step

You're not missing a step, I think you have an extra one. Try getting rid of step 6.

Eek.

I must be ridiculously behind. I'm not even signed onto the new site to do any of this. My password here doesn't work there and the password re-send function didn't get the email to me (which is somewhat common for my Hotmail address, it doesn't dump them into any folder for me to look at later, either)….

As I couldn't sign in, I couldn't see if my one blog shows up there or not.

re:Eek

Hi Lee,

I can confirm your one blog is there at  https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/etwnc-stoney-creek-branch-11742205?pid=1326589763  Hopefully the link should let you "peer over the top of the fence" and allay some of your "eek".

Remember - what you are seeing "there" is based on an April upload: "what" is currently "here" will be "there" next weekend.

@donm

Don, yes your megathread blog isn't a best practice. Better would have been to start a new blog entry for new topics.

Now that all said, you can certainly manually build a topic index to your megablog. Let me get you started.

I went through the first 7 pages of your blog megapost (it's 35 pages total) and made this index:

Alco power on the SMR
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108#comment-250721

FM Power on the SMR (part 1)
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108#comment-251295

FM Power on the SMR (part 2)
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=1#comment-251311

FM Power on the Southern Mountain (part 3)
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=1#comment-251756

FM power on the Southern Mountain (part 4)
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=2#comment-252028

Industries
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=2#comment-252434

Impressions, Illusions, & Illustrations
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=3#comment-254769

Impressions, Illusions, & Illustrations (2)
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=4#comment-258115

Impressions, Illusions, & Illustrations (3)
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=4#comment-258912

Impressions, Illusions, & Illustrations (4)
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=5#comment-259344

The Design Journey
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=5#comment-260397

Operations
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=7#comment-274363

Tabs -- Back to the Future
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=7#comment-278315

This took me maybe 10 minutes to do and it's 20% of your megablog. I recommend you continue this process and build out the index for the rest of the 35 pages. Then you will be all set for the move. Should take you no more than an hour to do.

When you see the title of a post that represents and new topic, right click on the title and copy the link. Take note at the top of the browser what page you're on in the URL. It will same something like ... ?page=7

Paste the link you copied into a text file, it will look something like this:
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108#comment-278315

Notice, the page number is missing, so the link won't work (unfortunately) until you add the page to it, like this:
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=7#comment-278315

Now copy the post title using a normal copy. The complete index entry then becomes:

Tabs -- Back to the Future
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/27108?page=7#comment-278315

Just keep working your way through your blog to create an index entry every time you change to a new topic. I don't recommend separate entries for multiple parts unless the posts are separated by a lot of comments and are far apart.

Also going forward, I recommend a new thread for a new blog topic -- and update your index to add an entry for the new thread.

  "Also going forward, I

Can you clarify this a bit? Does this apply to a blog about building a layout? Are you saying each phase or each new layout project  should be a new thread? Seems more logical to me to start at the beginning and post all the construction and progress to the same thread so folks can see what's involved in the layout as a whole? .....DaveB