Urban Gardeners, and the Battle of the Blog

Back home I've written about the Birth of the DC Urban Gardeners.  It's the upstart bunch of Master Gardeners who chose to go independent under a new name in order to get something done.  Our Website isn't quite ready for full press-release roll-out, so now's a good time to offer your suggestions.

Naturally there's also a companion News Blog to report on local gardening and environmental news.  Before long won't all groups - nonprofits and for-profits alike - have a blog?  Then maybe sometime this decade the blog-ignorant of the world will stop turning up their noses at what they assume to be personal diaries, the reading of which they declare to be an utter waste of time.  Man, I'm tired of hearing that.

Comments

[firefly]

First of all, congratulations on the startup, and best of luck with all of this.

I don't have any design suggestions per se, but as a regular Internet surfer, I'm never quite sure what to bookmark/visit when there is a home Web site and a concurrent blog. Bookmarking both entry points seems like overkill, especially if the Web site will be mostly static information.

I suggest separate sidebar links on the blog that lead directly to the most important or frequently updated pages at the Web site (like the events list). That way someone can bookmark the blog and "shortcut" to specific areas on the Web page without first going to the home page and clicking around. It reduces the hierarchy of information for us impatient surfers.

It might be kind of a pain to set up in Typepad, but I think users would like it and the cross traffic will increase.

[Susan Harris]

Excellent idea, Firefly. I'll set up a Typelist of links to our site's navigation bar - easy-peasy.

[Ellis Hollow]

One nit: A pet peeve I have is graphic 'buttons' for navigation. You can't tell where you've visited. They have no advantage over linked text.

[Ed Bruske]

The D.C. Urban Gardener news blog is what's being referred to in the news biz these days as "hyper-localism." This is how big newspapers are going to survive, by branching off web operations/blogs that can shine a light into all kinds of local corners that would never find space in the mother publication. And, everything can be updated minute-to-minute. The potential is huge. We can have a great mix of serious news, editorializing and light ranting. And with all the linking and lists and calendars, it can be a on-stop shopping experience for anyone in interested in what happening garden- and enviro-wise in our area. It gives our organization a huge presence in the community, and doubles as a valuable public service. And Susan is the brains behind it. Thanks, Susan.

[Kathy, Washington Gardener]

Let's here it for local blogging! And cheers to a fellow DC gardening information effort!