My first ever weblog and a place to pour out the untamed ramblings that rattle around in the spaces between my ears.
Published on April 17, 2008 By misterME In Virtual Communities

So if you're reading this, it's likely you've already stumbled across the Community pane of Impulse and have experienced the exceptionally clean, inviting, and user-friendly interface of ImpulseDriven (the engine behind the blogging feature of Impulse).

There have been some discussions of why some articles posted to JoeUser.com don't show up here on ImpulseDriven. The answer from on high is that, while similar engines, only certain categories are shared between the two, confining ImpulseDriven to more tech/gaming/customization, while JoeUSer is a superset of all (or is it? My articles here don't show up there, so maybe not).

So I'm posing the question: In the spirit of customization, why not give users the option of selecting categories from JoeUser to be available to them on ImpulseDriven? I can tell you that for me, I'd love to use Impulse as my interface for all things blog-related (easy enough since I only blog on JoeUser, and now here). I would agree that the default set of categories needs to stay tech-specific. But certainly the option of using Impulse as an interface gateway to JoeUser couldn't hurt, could it?


Comments
on Apr 17, 2008
I'm reading this from Wincustomize. 

I'm pretty sure all of Stardock's community sites share a database.  They are a mix of this and that that appeal to a specific demographic.  The sites I use on a regular basis are Wincustomize, Stardock, JoeUser, Sins of a Solar Empire, GalCiv, and most recently The Political Machine, Demigod and Impulse.  Every once in a while somethingwill bleed over from one site or another but for the most part each site is unique and targets a community based around ideas.

I happen to like that whole concept.  It works for me.

What I would like to see (and bet I will) is more RSS feed for all of the sites.  So that I can build my own page of things I'm interested in.  And if I want to post something I'd have a fast way to go to that community.

Options would be interesting though.
on Apr 17, 2008

I have to admit that I'm in the dark on the whole RSS thing. I see it as a much-touted feature in the Internet Explorer 8 beta, and there are mentions of it everywhere now, and for awhile, but I don't understand what it is or why it's so important. Even my cell phone has an RSS-feed feature, though again, I don't get it.