Blogging is one of the ways in which we can build up our community. With a little organization between the contributors we could substantially increase Isis' reach.

Where to blog

There are plenty of free blogging platforms, such as:

I'll be using danhaywood.com, which is an alias to danhaywood.wordpress.com (howto: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/)

If you don't have your own blog, you could also can get an account at http://blogs.apache.org. (For myself, I intend to cross post announcements there).

What to blog

In terms of content, I think the best approach is to choose a theme and then post a series of blog posts on that theme. Hopefully by the time you've exhausted that theme, then you'll have had an idea for another series.

Some random ideas:

  • tips-n-tricks taken from applications working on
  • eg Robert's PlanChaser, or Kevin's various apps
  • copy-n-paste some of the content (eg sidebars) from the Richard/Robert's original Naked Objects book
  • probably only Robert can do this, since he has the copyright
  • work through some of the applib conventions, eg how to do choices for a property
  • was thinking of doing this myself
  • work through how to configure a component
  • eg SQL authenticator
  • show how to write different sorts of fixtures.

How to blog

Suggestions for how to:

  • keep it short, something that won't take more than 2 or 3 minutes to read
  • if the blog is longer than that, then split it into two, and leave the second part for a subsequent post
  • publicise blog posts in twitter using #apache #isis hashtags
  • publicise blog posts via [dzone.com|http://dzone.com)
  • and any other places you might choose
  • publicise blog posts via isis-dev mailing list, and ask others to up-vote in dzone).
  • if significant, then cross-post blog posts to blogs.apache.org (which will hit some other aggregators)
  • if writing the blog is a chore, then sit down for an hour and write 2 or 3 posts at a time. Then publish them only according to a schedule

When to blog

I'd like for there to be at least one new blog post on Isis each week

One idea is that Rob, Kevin and I take it in turns to publish a blog post such that there is at least one new blog post every week

If others are interested in joining the rota, then they can just sign-up via isis-dev.

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