Regular followers of this blog know that I have decided to “move” the Construction Marketing Ideas blog from its blogspot.com site to here over the Christmas break. Of course, I won’t close the old blog — it has too much content and too high a search engine ranking for that — but the focus of my work will move here.
Coinciding with the switchover is the launch of voting for the Best Construction Industry Blog competition.
The holiday break seemed to be the best time for the switch, because I realized that I have quite a learning curve in setting up the pages, redesigning the look of the blog and other stuff. These days are the only ones where otherwise pressing business demands don’t get in the way of the work that needs to be done.
So, this morning, I set out to start work on the process, and discovered (as I feared) this effort will be a challenge, indeed.
Rather than struggle in silence, I’ll invite you into the process — showing you what I’ve learned and done each day. Maybe some readers here will be able to help and guide me along the way. Watch for changes in look, feel, and results, and don’t worry if links and other features fail to work properly — you are watching the site under construction.
By New Years (or at least by January 4), I expect we’ll have a robust site with lots of useful content and easy-to-navigate links and resources.
Now, for the first big problem. Setting up the links and a voting mechanism for the best Construction Industry Blog competition.
We’ve gathered entries on a form built on the wufoo.com engine — a wonderfully effective resource for form building. But now the material needs to be transposed into a format where you can explore the different blogs, and then vote on your favorites.
I count 42 entries right now, but several are duplicates (the same blog could be nominated by more than one nominator.) Probably, however, the final count of entries will be about 40 as some great blogs I know weren’t nominated, and I want people to have a chance to vote on them, as well. (Is that bias? Yes. Is it fair? Well, I still only get one vote for myself, so whether or not I nominate doesn’t really decide who wins in the end.)
Some nominees provided narrative for their favorites, others just listed the blog by its URL. Wufoo allows embedding the URL in the entry (good) but seems at first site to truncate it so you can’t actually read the blog identity (not so good). So I “might” be able to use the Wufoo system to generate a form that I can simply import on a voting page here, but I’m not sure yet.
If anyone wants to help me on this, I can send you the raw data, but right now, here is a listing of the nominees. I’ve cut out the duplicates, but not sorted them except by order of nomination. I’ve manually inserted the hyperlink so you can view the blogs if you wish.
Note: Some listings here may not qualify for the competition. I need to review them individually (and you may have your own opinions, most welcome). If they are clearly for SEO rather than contain original content, they will be deleted and of course the question arises, are they a “blog” or something else?
Somehow, by Jan. 4, all of this must be listed in a cohesive and useful format and the voting mechanism needs to be set up. Wufoo will be good for this, but again, I need to get the forms in order.
Best Construction Industry Blog entries
Note: I’ve removed obvious duplicates, but not screened entries for eligibility. Sorted in order of their nomination date.
http.//blog.tempestcompany.com
http://www.myersconstructs.com
http://www.buildingconfidence-llc.blogspot.com
http://www.andreagoldmanlaw.blogspot.com
http://www.remodelbuddy.com/blog
http://www.constructonomics.com/blog
http://open.salon.com/blog/wjgraves
http://www.ellisdon.com/news/blog/
http://www.helpeverybodyeveryday.com/
http://www.cofebuz.com/
http://www.blog-bizedge.biz/
http://blog.sls-construction.com
http://rubycon.us/blog
http://www.buildingnewbusiness.com
http://www.constructionlawmonitor.com
http://www.constructionlienblog.com
http://www.mdcontractlaw.com.org
http://www.tarpapercrane.com
http://www.halcollums.com
http://constructionlawva.com
http://www.larryarbuckle.wordpress.com
http://www.AKAtlanta.com
http://www.greenbuildinglawupdate.com/
http://excel2bim.com/revitbim/
http://advancedhomeenergy.com
http://www.aecinsight.com
http://www.burginconstructioninc.com/blog
Other notes: I found a way to set up an “Archives” page with a few clicks. The links page will take more work. I couldn’t find a simple template (at least at first viewing) but maybe readers here can help on that one as well.
