Ptsd Blogs - Your Thoughts?

[anthony]

I'm currently working on a blogging platform project for those surrounding PTSD to have their own blog with features that other providers charge for. If you have a wordpress.com account, exactly the same thing, just better because things will be free / as cheap as possible.

The platform uses wordpress, so nice and simple. You create an account and your blog, you become the administrator of that blog. Some restrictions are applied for obvious security reasons, though the idea is to start somewhere small and build as members request things that are attainable without security problems.

Examples:

1. To have your own domain name at wordpress, mapping is $15 and to buy through wp is $20+ per annum. Well, we're not selling domains to start out, and mapping is free. You buy your own domain, NameCheap is a good place, and then you configure it and map it yourself to your PTSDBlog account.
2. You will be able to monetize your blog. The only caveat is that we have a prime position single adsense ad on all your posts. This allows people to make money from their blog, leaving two positions per page for adsense plus affiliate or other sources. Can't do that at wordpress.
3. We are limiting upload space more than Wordpress, however; we're also making the upgrades free of charge upon meeting certain visitor targets. Basically... have good content and you can upgrade freely. If not, you can do so paid. Server storage isn't cheap, and this aspect we must cover the costs.
4. Everyone will have access to woo commerce for those who want to run a store selling something, attached to their blog.
5. We will have per account themes and plugins available, premium builder themes free of charge that allow you to drag and drop build a custom design blog / website.
6. Way too much to even cover at this point... the outcome is that what others charge for, we will give for free where possible.

Would you use it? Do you blog already and there are things you would like added?

 

[Recovery4Me]

Very interested but I would need to further explore as well as research. Any suggestions as to available literature to secure a solid understanding of some of the basics insofar as monetizing, common visitor targets, licenses necessary, some of the laws, hacker risks, ect?

 

[Friday]

1) Will we be allowed to link or quote content from myPTSD? Either publically, or unpublished?

2) Will it be directly linked to our accounts here... So we can access through this site or something we go strictly through WP for?
_____

a) Knowing me, I won't use it in the beginning. I'll wait to see how others are using it, first. Then play around with things & features for awhile / keep things in draft mode, get overwhelmed, back off... Probably a few times... Until I've got things clear in my mind and a framework set up to work in and build around. Then I would use it. Whether that's months or days? No idea.

b) WP is my favorite blogging platform. There are some really exciting possibilites in merging these two worlds... There is so much on the forum that I would like to be able to manipulate; to come back to, collate together, organize for later/ongoing review. There are complicated and fascinating things here that I want to revisit -or just remember- that I lose. Especially the longer I'm here the more daunting that prospect. This has the potential to streamline something I've been fumbling with for awhile. The only real question for me is how skittish I'm going to be about it & how long it will take for me to ramp up.

 

[anthony]

There is no licensing, hacking is out of admins controls, and monetising can be assisted with.

 

[anthony]

It has nothing to do with this site. This sites policies have nothing to do with that site.

 

[Friday]

So it's creating an entirely new sister site?

...Sorry. Feeling a bit thick.

 

[anthony]

Link Removed

Yes... entirely different site.

 

[Recovery4Me]

There is no licensing, hacking is out of admins controls, and monetizing can be assisted with

If there is monetizing can a portion of the income be distributed as donations back to PTSD.com directly. So, just to be clear- security maintenance or web mastering falls under the our responsibility? I have read that the level is over 1000 page views per day, to generate interest. Is this accurate? Would we have ownership of any E-books that we might (do not laugh too hard) elect to write borrowed from our blog or would all content within the blog, be that site's intellectual property?

From a quick read it appears your country rocks in this area of blogging and understanding how to build. Impressive!

 

[Kefira]

I might be interested - I'm a bit like @FridayJones on this one, I normally like to watch how others are using it and then star. But I'm very familiar with WordPress and particularly if there would be the option of monetization with ease to the user that is a strong draw. I'm just not tech savvy enough to do it myself without a headache, or I probably already would have. And I assume having it set up this way would also help some with generating traffic, which can be very difficult on your own, particularly when starting out.

How would rights to content work? Here we sign them over but I would personally see that as more problematic with a blog setting.

 

[anthony]

@Kefira, help will be available for each person to do specific things. I plan on initially rolling it out most likely to MyPTSD members only, then opening it up once it has some roots and use.

Yes, for marketing purposes, the way I have it setup is the most beneficial to each admin. Many who do this will use sub-domains, and whilst that gives you the feel of your own domain, it is and it isn't. The problem with sub-domain is that search engines treat them all uniquely, which means from a search perspective, you all have to go find your own traffic and nobody is leveraging others, i.e. true community. PTSD Blogs is setup to use folders instead of sub-domains, albeit you can drop your own domain over it for free... and that would negate any community search benefit.


Example:

ptsd.ptsdblog.com
mysite.ptsdblog.com
blog.ptsdblog.com

All of these would have to do their own marketing, as each one is treated as their own domain. The same would apply to anyone who maps a domain. You get some benefit of internal listing of content, say homepage random content, but from a search perspective, you're on your own and have to then market your own site.

When you have:

ptsdblog.com/ptsd
ptsdblog.com/mysite
ptsdblog.com/blog

Each one of those are now all considered the same domain, being ptsdblog.com, even though each folder contains a unique wordpress install, that is irrelevant from a search perspective. So a blog who writes a good piece and gets links to it at /ptsd will have residual affect to every other blog on the domain. Vice versa obviously. The setup is based on a community helping one another in every facet, which so happens to occur at levels unbeknownst to most.

As for rights, you are correct in that this system here would not work for something that is individual based. The rights for that site will be something similar to the below statement:

You grant PTSD Blog with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

People must not try and link this site with PTSD Blog, they aren't the same thing. Not even close. What happens here, stays here. This new platform is a wordpress.com style platform. You signup, create your own blog and administer that blog. We can assist you with technical tasks (another thing you don't get on most platforms), we can look at specific plugins / themes / features you require to perform your tasks for installation, so forth.

 

[joeylittle]

People must not try and link this site with PTSD Blog, they aren't the same thing. Not even close. What happens here, stays here. This new platform is a wordpress.com style platform. You signup, create your own blog and administer that blog. We can assist you with technical tasks (another thing you don't get on most platforms), we can look at specific plugins / themes / features you require to perform your tasks for installation, so forth.

So essentially, providing a tool (platform) for PTSD sufferers - those who think they might benefit from sharing their story/process with the internet at large - and they might have resources they want to monetize, original content, etc. - or not, just use the internet as a PTSD blogging space. Is that about right? (I'm assuming the content would end up having some footing in PTSD, given that the blog's name would be tied to ptsdblog)

 

[anthony]

Yup... that about says it. The footing is PTSD... what you write on your blog, is up to you. A therapist who treats PTSD could use it to run their therapy business, losing the PTSD domain by mapping their own domain to their site. A sufferer or supporter may just want their own space... and you can get this in lots of places online already, just not with the flexibility we're giving freely.