Blogs - Hosted by head office, editable by remote chapters?

I have a general understanding of blogs, and it seems like a great way to resolve a situation I have with my organization. I just need some guidance on whether this would be workable.

My national organization will soon move to hosting its own web site. We offer a page to each of our chapters here they can post local information, meeting notices, work day information, etc. Problem is, they need to send their information to me, then I modify their page accordingly. I'd like to offload this so that a designated chapter rep can log into the site - limiting access to just their page - make their changes, and post them up.

It sounds like blogging would be agreat solution for this, but do services sugn as Blogger allow for integration into an existing web site (I'd like to adapt our current site's look and feel) and the remote access I referred to?

Any thoughts, advice etc. would be appreciated.

Michael Monita
Trout Unlimited Canada
www.tucanada.org

You could have each chapter set up their own blog, and then have it hosted in a directory for each one on your server.

That should work the way you are describing pretty well, since you can change the Blog template as you would like it.

Blogger allows for complete renovation and customization of their templates...I've seen some pretty fancy blogs using their infrastructure. However, to achieve this takes a ton of coding and knowledge etc. too complicated for most users.

The customization of blogger templates may be enough? I use them for many sites that need employees to post info...less expensive, less training and the org can get on with its mission.

Michael,

This guy has created a breakdown of blog software based on what it does how it works etc.

Blog Software

Might be right up your alley.

If you want to integrate blogs into your existing website you could either implement one of these solutions on your server, or use a web based RSS feed reader to pull RSS entries from various blogs.
There are a bunch on this site in PHP, Javascript etc.
RSS Readers

Cheers,
Russ

Hey Michael,

Blogging software would be a good way of achieving what you're looking for. We do that with our regions for our sector intranet.

I wouldn't recommend Blogger though. Having numerous people involved in production through Blogger is certainly more difficult than with other services which provide a similar service. For blog management (especially with multiple authors and pages) I don't think you can beat wordpress.

Looking at your site I see that it isn't driven by a database, so the solution you choose will have to depend on the technologies you have available. Not every host supports the php/mySQL combination necessary to run most Content Management or Blog Systems. Which is where you might get stuck having to use blogger or movable type.

Best of luck,
CW
Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants

I think Drupal might also be an excellent choice for you. It certainly allows for the kind of implementation you are talking about. It's not trivial to set-up though.

-webb

I second the recommendation against Blogger, both for dealing with multiple authors, etc., plus reliability (I've heard, not experienced). Typepad is a hosted Moveable Type blog setup which can be customized with your own stylesheets; that would allow for simple blog hosting that you could pull into your site via the RSS feed.

Good luck!

There are many blogging choices, but I don't share the feelings of the group regarding Blogger.com. I've had blogs for almost 3 years, and use Blogger as the staging tool. I've found it easy to use, reliable, and I like the new features they add. I added an RSS feed to some with a minimum of effort. (see: http://wccniuesl.blogspot.com or http://constitutionaelc.blogspot.com )

I also use blogger for our internal departmental communication. ( http://aelc.blogspot.com) Unless there is a personal or sensitve issue, I have literally stopped sending (and more importantly, receiving) staff email. The advantages to using a blog include: information is easily read and doesn't get lost in an email inbox, posts are archived and searchable, and posts can be read from anywhere in the world where a web browser is accessible.

Comments can be added to posts, and additional tools like Blogarithm (to give you email notification when the blog changes) and Site Meter which gives a count of 'hits' to the site are nice. Pictures can be added in seconds using Hello. I've tried a lot of the new blog hosts as well, and some are very good. I guess the best tool is the one that works for you. Almost all are easy to use and view, and give a reliable source of information to readers. No mstter what tool you use, blogging is a great idea and far supasses email for communication.

The weekly podcast Simply Digital has just released their 5th episode which is all about the basics of blogging. You can find the episode at this link.

The target audience for Simply Digital is the non-geek, so if you think the topic is too basic rememember that it's for all those people that ask YOU for help. :)

In the interest of full disclosure, I am the host of Simply Digital. Hopefully this won't be seen as a SPAM comment. I just wanted to share free information to the blogging community.