Blogmeets – when and where for the next one?

After the fun we all had at the Sunday BritBlog blogmeet, I thought it would be good to encourage members to organise their own BritBlogMeets in different parts of the country.

If the thought appeals to anyone then let me know – ideally leave a comment below, or you can drop me an email. If you want to run a BritBlogMeet in your area then we can announce it here and help you publicise it – the only requirement for you (the organiser) will be to pick a suitable date/venue and turn up on the day! Again, if you want to suggest a meetup for your area but want to leave the details open for discussion, then please feel free.

In terms of popular locations (as far as the directory is concerned), somewhere in Wales^* may be good (although this is perhaps a bit vague), or Manchester, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Brighton, or Leeds.

So what do people think? Any takers for organising a BritBlogMeet somewhere?

^*I need to add more sub-regions to Wales – can anyone provide me with the correct regional breakdown?

[tags]blogmeet,britblog[/tags]

First BritBlog blogmeet

The first blogmeet is over, so I’d like to thank everyone that turned up! In order of appearance:

• Me
• Digbeth
• George
• Tom
• Darren
• Godwin

It was a good evening and I enjoyed meeting everyone – looking forward to the next one!

I just hope next time we don’t talk about knitting so much

[tags]britblog,blogmeet,london[/tags]

Blogmeet reminder

Just a reminder for everyone: the blogmeet is this Sunday in London at 4PM! Full details here. Looking forward to seeing you all!

BritBlog 2 Years Old

How time flies! Last year has seen good growth in the directory – we’ve grown from listing 1706 blogs to 4803 blogs – and next year promises to be even better!

The following graph show that the number of spam blogs and other inappropriate blog signups have increased over time. These bad registrations are a bit of a pain, but the new registration process should make this easier to manage.

Regarding our future plans, things are at least moving in the right direction but they’re taking a bit longer than expected. I’ll give a status update soon, but things are looking good!

All that remains is for me to thank all the people that have helped BritBlog grow – especially Nancy for all her hard work reviewing new signups.

BritBlog BlogMeet: The Plan

Well we’ve settled on Sunday, 21st of May for the blogmeet. I’ll try and be at the venue from about 4 PM (unless anyone wants to meet earlier…).

Venue-wise I’m thinking about The Marquess of Anglesey (Google Maps – see flag ‘A’) near Covent Garden. It’s sure to be busy, but so will every other pub in the area! This pub does have some large tables and the beer is rather good. However, if anyone can think of a better venue, please say so soonish!

If you can come

If you think you can make it, please leave a message below. It’ll be useful to get an idea of numbers. Please use a real email address too so that I can drop you an email if needed. Your email won’t be published.

Getting there

The nearest tube station is Covent Garden. It is also quite a short (10 minutes or so) walk from Waterloo station. I can recommend this route as you get some nice views over the river, and it’s not as busy as the tube. Just walk over the bridge, carry on up the hill and you’ll come to it. If anyone has further queries about getting there, either leave a message bellow or contact me.

Open question: Should links to BritBlog be forced?

This is a difficult one and I see no clear answer to it, so I thought I’d put this out there and see what everyone else thinks.

Basically, we get a lot of people join up each day, and a large proportion of them are spam blogs, not written by British people, or just not blogs full stop. I guess when people launch a new site (or want to promote an existing site) they look for as many sources of inbound links as possible, and BritBlog is a great target.

So what is the solution? The approach taken by a lot of similar sites is to get new members to add some special code on their blogs – usually in the form of an image. This allows an automated robot to detect the presence of the code before putting the site up for review for inclusion by the editors.

Personally, I like this approach as it shows people want to be a part of BritBlog rather than just benefit from the links/traffic it may generate. In bound links are important to us as a site, so it shows that members are prepared to give as well as take.

As I go though the process of purging non-blogs/dead blogs from the database, then encouraging existing members to do this will also help.

The flip side to this is that some people may have problems getting the code onto their blog, and this may stand as a barrier to some new members.

So what do you think?

P.S. Don’t forget the Blogmeet!