Leafshine: Lust for Flower

New to The Blogroll: Weak and Zen

I've added a couple of new blogs to the ol'blogroll this morning.

Rez the Weak posted one of the most interesting responses to my post on blogging basics. And I just love the interviews Xeonio is doing with fellow raiders. Fascinating reading.

Also new is a Resto Druid (hurrah!) called Zaralin. And she got on there on the strength of this post. The image in there made me laugh out loud.

Both come highly recommended.

The Newest Raven on the Blog

A guildie has just started dipping his toes into WoW blogging. Please go and say "hello" and give him some encouragement. Thanks!

Once Upon A Leafy

Once upon a time, a very long time ago in fact, I was tagged to do a meme. And I thought "ooh, that looks fun. I must dig out a really old screenie and do that". And promptly forgot all about it.

Once upon a much more recent time, Admiral Bob Llianion got around to fulfilling his tag. And I thought "oooh, blimey, I should have done that". And this time I remembered to dig out my old screenie! And there is young Leafshine, in her 16th season, exploring Westfall, and being awestruck both by the sunset, and by how clean her UI was, back in those 1.x days of WoW. 

So, what were my n00bish moments?

Boss Kill Movies Redux

OK. So, as nobody cares about boss kills and they should only be on guild blogs ( :-) ) I've posted my first Wrath boss kill movie over on my guild's blog.

It's not the hardest boss in the world...

I am amazed at how much the quality has gone up since I last did movies like this. Part of that is the HD quality now available on YouTube, part of it a better computer, but the graphics upgrades that have come with Wrath are part of it, too. I'm looking forward to doing more. 

Technical Fault: Comments

Just a quick apology to anyone who has left a comment here recently. There's a technical problem at my blog host's end that means that names on comments are not correctly showing as links through to the commenter's blogs.

I'm assure that Typepad engineers are "working on it", and that the missing URLs will be restored soon.

Apologies about that. 

Leafy's Blogging Bootcamp: the 10 Basics

There's a good rant over on Destructive Reach. It's good both because Saresa is actually posting, and I miss her voice in the WoW Blogosphere, and because the world needs more intelligent, passionate rants like this. But mostly, it's good because I agree with the majority of her points, and what's better than people who agree with us? :-)

In particular, I think Sar nails it with this:

Thing is… [Guides] don’t always get you return visitors or subscribers.  People who look for a guide for something are looking for precisely that – a guide for a specific something.  If you only write guides, people are going to get mighty sick of reading them.  Guides, well… are boring a lot of the time.  I am in the process of unsubscribing from people who write guides and analysis and little else, because, frankly, your work (while I admire the effort, time, and dedication it takes to write all that) is boring as all fuck to me.

(teehee Sar said "fuck" :) )

One of the reasons my blogging has dropped off on here is that I'm finding too much of the WoW blogosphere, well, dull. My feed reader looks more and more like a textbook with the "guide to healing Hogger" and the "five strategies for successfully farming lucky rabbits paws" and the like. Sure guides are useful, but if that's all you're publishing, why the hell are you using a blog? Just build a conventional website, make sure you've got some SEO done and get on with it. Blogs are about conversation, and I don't like chatting with academic textbooks, thank you very much.

Leafy's Dark Secret: The Man Behind The Tree

Here's a not-very-hidden secret. I make my living through blogging (but not by blogging). I'm head of blogging for a large UK publisher, where I help train, support and develop our couple of hundred journalists who are blogging. I've been doing that for three years now, and I've learnt some basic techniques that make the difference between a successful blog and a huge also-ran.

My problem with the recent wave of advice that's coming out of some bloggers is that, while the fundamentals are largely correct for a particular style of blogging, it will create a remarkably one-note blogosphere, of the kind I find boring. All things in moderation, as it were. :-) Instead, I'd like to take things back to first principles, the very basics of blogging that you should get right, if you're to maximise both your enjoyment and your audience.¹

Here goes:

Last Night, In Naxx Camp

In my excitement about having movie recording back, I forgot to mention that we got two new bosses down in Naxxramas last night, and I even have the end of the first kill on video.

Go us.

Leafy Movies Redux

Oh, look. Video recording works on my iMac again. I don't know if it's something Blizz did, something Apple did, or something I did, but now you can have multimedia experiences like this:



Be afraid...