What makes a good wargaming blog?

[Littlearmies]

I'm not sure I've seen a wargames club blog that has really worked for me - I suspect that what, for me, makes a good wargaming blog is that it's personal. One chap writing about hobby stuff that interests him, dealing with basing issues, discussing rules for potential projects, showing photos of newly painted figures, that kind of stuff. So Giles at Tarleton's Quarter and RogerC at GA PA are perfect examples of what I like.

I used to keep a blog a few years ago and I found that the oddest of topics would get lots of hits. I once did a survey of 15/18mm French artillery pieces comparing their dimensions with the real thing - what I thought was an over obsessive diversion into Nerdland turned out to be one of the most popular pages. In the entry I'd made a throwaway comment that to truly get an accurate gun you would need to mix components from different makers - about 18 months later I was making a rare visit to TMP and some nut-job had actually done it (and credited me for the idea!).

As for helping people who view via a mobile phone when I started the blog that wasn't a "thing" - and I don't think that I would have made any changes to formatting anyway. My blog was more for me than anything else - I didn't much care whether anyone read it or not. I'm pretty certain if someone had said they couldn't read it because it didn't work well with their phone I'd have just thought "read it with something like a pc then" - I had to be nice and considerate to people at work, I felt no obligation to oblige some bloke online. Let's face it, I'm a misanthrope!

[mmcv]

I'm not sure I've seen a wargames club blog that has really worked for me - I suspect that what, for me, makes a good wargaming blog is that it's personal. One chap writing about hobby stuff that interests him, dealing with basing issues, discussing rules for potential projects, showing photos of newly painted figures, that kind of stuff. So Giles at Tarleton's Quarter and RogerC at GA PA are perfect examples of what I like.

I used to keep a blog a few years ago and I found that the oddest of topics would get lots of hits. I once did a survey of 15/18mm French artillery pieces comparing their dimensions with the real thing - what I thought was an over obsessive diversion into Nerdland turned out to be one of the most popular pages. In the entry I'd made a throwaway comment that to truly get an accurate gun you would need to mix components from different makers - about 18 months later I was making a rare visit to TMP and some nut-job had actually done it (and credited me for the idea!).

As for helping people who view via a mobile phone when I started the blog that wasn't a "thing" - and I don't think that I would have made any changes to formatting anyway. My blog was more for me than anything else - I didn't much care whether anyone read it or not. I'm pretty certain if someone had said they couldn't read it because it didn't work well with their phone I'd have just thought "read it with something like a pc then" - I had to be nice and considerate to people at work, I felt no obligation to oblige some bloke online. Let's face it, I'm a misanthrope!

Yeah, you're spot on there, depends on the goal of the blog. I keep mine mostly just for a place to record my progress and games and ramble out thoughts and share it as a means to get feedback and ideas from others on the things I'm doing and thinking about. I've no real desire to build and monetise it into anything other than a hobby record. My most popular post (that still gets hit multiple times a week) was a ramble on the difficulties of balancing basing for small play areas and small figures while still presenting a pleasing aesthetic and a fair representation of the troops. I genuinely thought it would be of little interest to anyone and was mostly just a way for me to gather a number of things I'd been thinking about together in one place. My second most popular post of all time is of some generic cardboard and colouring pencil counters and terrain I made on Saturday afternoon as a means to try out rules without appropriate figures. Funny how these things go.

[pixelgeek]

The success of a blog depends on the intention. If all you want a blog for is to capture your hobby process then almost anything will do.

If you want the blog to help promote a club then you need to look at how and what you post from that perspective.

So things that I think good club blogs have are

List of past and upcoming events
Photos from those events
Hobby posts that relate to club activity
Link to member blogs (if any)

I am not entirely certain that blogging software, or at least hosted blogging software, is going to give you what you need since it is rather prescriptive  in what it offers for free.

I am a touch biased in this instance as I used to write CMS software and so I am used to self-hosting and tinkering. YMMV 

So I would suggest looking for other club websites and seeing what you like and then making a list of your goals and seeing what features from those sites will meet those.

[dampfpanzerwagon]

I'd offer two pieces of advice;

! - Regular posts, this does not mean daily posts, but they have to be regular - for example a You Tube-er that I follow has a regular Monday, Wednesday and Friday update. I find myself looking forward  to the updates.

2 - Produce the Blog for yourself if you enjoy it then you can be sure others do. My own Blog is now thirteen years old and I still find things to post about.

Tony
http://dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com/

[BZ]

Look for the "dash" symbol in the tools menu in the "Compose View" of the Blogger editor.  See attached image.

It's placement is crucial.  Ideally, you need an opening paragraph that explains what the post is about, a picture and a teaser, second paragraph that encourages readers to click the read more link.  This way the front page of the blog is both easy to scan and tempting if the reader's interest has been piqued.

Thanks, that was very useful!

Our group does a ton of hobbying, and decided to make a blog for our club just for kicks. What are somethings you look for when visiting hobby-focused blogs? It seems like the biggest factors are reviews, painting guides, after-action reports, , project logs, etc.

Here's the beginnings of our archive and as you can see, we're pretty excited to get started. Would love some feedback as well if anyone has it.

https://drawsteel.blogspot.com/

A really nice blog what You made there!

I also started my blog recently (october of 2020), and I find here many tips very useful!
And not as a blogger, but as a blog reader, I would say that its important to have pictures, the posts shouldnt be too long (TLDR is a real problem), and maybe the most important is regularity (I dont regulary visit such blogs, where I dont expect regular content).
And only one hint, as a blogger: have a lot of post on store, because there can be busy times, and with a buffer its much easier to keep up the regularity.