In discussions with people considering using the 21Publish as their
group blogging service of choice, common questions that come up include
how to integrate existing, non-21Publish blogs into a 21Publish
community. Several ways come to the top of my mind:
1) Integrate non-21Publish blogs as
"external blogs" - If one looks at Marc Freedman's new blog community for the DallasBlue Business Network
(just started so pardon the dust!), one can see both in the upper
left-hand column a pull-down list of blogs (entitled "Blog List") that
are both a mix of 21Publish and non-21Publish blogs. Additionally,
along the upper right-hand side, one can see a list of "Recent Posts".
These are recent blog entries made by all blogs that have been
integrated into the community as an external blog.
2) Integrate non-21Publish blogs as "favorite links" or as "favorite
RSS feeds" - If you look along the right hand side of my 21Publish user blog
you should see some links under "Non-Profit Blogs and "Favorite RSS
Feeds". These types of functionality are provided out-of-the-box with
the 21Publish service.
3) Integrate a 21Publish blog as an add-on to an existing blog or website
- Here's a example of a TypePad blog at Recruiting.com blog that has seamlessly added on a 21Publish recruiting blog community portal onto its site with user blogs to go along
with it. Also a good example that I like to cite, is how Amnesty
International added on to their corporate umbrella and website a blog community of regional group blogs.
There are other options that I see as well (e.g., for layering
stacked 21Publish communities on top of one another). I don't have a
good example of this one yet, but one can imagine loosely coupled
communities. The concept here could be likened to that of
university-level alumni relations versus regional alumni groups. These
types of communities can be implemented different ways using 21Publish
(and group features of the platform), but I could see some benefits to
implementing the communities as separate portals in their own right.
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