Also, regardless of this post being specific to Lego sites or any topic in the world, this was an insanely well-written and quite thorough post about overall Blog Etiquette. Well done. Great job and great site you have here overall.

If you check out one of my blogs, I’ve got a fairly comprehensive listing of community sites, broken out by general, theme-based and nationality based. Many of the theme-based sites also have general LEGO sections. Most of the nationality-based sites are in languages other than English, but some of them do have English language sections. Others may disagree, depending on their personal preference in themes, but I’d suggest you check out Classic-Castle, Classic-Space, FBTB, Lugnet and Eurobricks as places to start. These all have a lot of activity and good interaction–probably EB and FBTB skew a little younger, CC more balanced, and CS and Lugnet run a little older in readership.

One thing I really want to learn more about the Lego community is the forums. Seems like there are many different forums out there but I’m having a hard time deciding which one to join (as I don’t want to join a whole bunch and spread out my time/commitment). I wonder if BB can dedicate one article to highlight the difference and “character” of some of the most successful lego forums out there.

Content creation and related thoughts:
Dosh-Dosh
Seth Godin
Skelliewag

Writing:
Copyblogger
Write to done

Blogging in general:
Problogger

A good read for most people, with a lot of information applicable to LEGO blogging. Remember to read the sites with a critical eye (as you always should anyway).

Good article. It’s pretty obvious, I suppose, how I feel about the specialized blog vs general blog issue, since I’ve had two very specific blogs for a long time now. As much as I love BB, and it’s always one of my first stops, I do miss the more specific Dunechaser’s Blocklog and even more so Pan-Pacific Bricks. It gets a little redundant when the same things show up on multiple different blogs. I definitely agree with your encouragement for people to pick a niche and own that area. There are tons of spaces out there to fill. Brick Town Talk is a great example of someone coming up with a new area and really covering it well. There are also a lot of themes that had blogs, but they’ve gone dark (see my inactive blog list), where someone could make a real impact.

On the “via” issue, I always go back and forth. When I truly first see something on another blog, I always try to link it. More often, though, I’m just behind. I look at Brickshelf, Flickr and other community sites every day and note MOCs to blog, but it takes me a while to get around to it. Many times by the time I do so, it’s already been featured on BB and Klocki, and sometimes elsewhere. In those cases I usually don’t post a “via” link.

Dan raises some good points. I try to keep everything directly on my blog kid friendly – my personal rule is “will I get in trouble with my sisters if my nephews and nieces read this?” However, I do link all over the place, including areas that are less kid friendly. So it’s a little mixed. I would encourage you, Dan, to check out other community sites if you’re having problems with Lugnet. Classic-Castle is my main home and we would welcome you to join us there.

My first consideration is the audience. Most LEGO blogs are, understandably, intended for other regular LEGO fans. I know I’m not the only “general audience” blog covering LEGO out there, but AFAIK, LMOTD is the only all-ages, LEGO-specific, general audience LEGO blog.

Giving the builders proper credit is a top priority for me and a big reason why I often put posts up much later than anyone would expect – sometimes I find the perfect model for the day and have a hard time tracking down the proper links for the model and the model’s creator.

My habit of not giving other blogs credit is intentional, but I’m looking into changing it. Because most LEGO blogs are aimed at adult LEGO fans, things like language, sexual content, violence, and other things that I don’t want to link to (mostly so I don’t get complaints from parents) aren’t really a consideration for many of the blogs I get links from. Of course, your blog is your blog and it’s none of my business how you decide what to cover and how to cover it (and this applies to all other blogs), so you’re welcome to include stuff that I don’t want to link to on your site – but be aware that I’ll avoid linking to blogs that post that sort of material. This content problem also keeps me from highlighting some models that I really enjoy – such as misterzumbi’s Road Zombie, which was excellent but included some scantily-clad woman decals.

I am interested in assembling a “union” of sort of LEGO blogs that are kid-friendly (clean content, moderated comments, etc) and easily accessible (clean formatting and terminology that non-AFOLs can understand) and using that as a blogroll. I know of several niche sites that would belong there, and I intend to ask other blog writers about their stances on sex/violence/language, LEGO terminology, and comment moderation soon. The main reason that I have not taken the initiative here yet is that my time for blogging is often cut short by other priorities.

Additionally, I often stash away links on a to-do list – my blog does often use recent content, but it’s not as much of a news and recent MOCs source as The Brothers Brick is. I try to include a variety of content and avoid doing too much of anything at a time. It’s not unusual for me to receive word about a builder who’s entire gallery is worth featuring, but I try to only do one model at a time and get to different models in the meantime. I also feature models from sets (which are covered widely when they’re first released but not blogged about often afterwards). I often lose track of just where I found out about things because of the backlog that a site like LMOTD has to have in order to keep a good variety of models on the front page – I generally post Aquazone models within a day or two of finding them, but I have long lists of train cars and spaceships that I can only chip away at slowly.

I agree with your next few points. I try to only discuss issues on my end when it means interruptions in the flow of models. Sometimes I’m not too knowledgeable about a particular builder and can’t really point out all the links worth citing related to him/her/it, but I make sure that I have at least one link for each builder I feature.

Sadly, I’m not too big of a fan of the AFOL community. I’ve always gotten strange error messages when trying to sign up for LUGNET (and I’ve been lurking there since it started). After the first few times, I complained on RTL and e-mailed a few people involved with running LUGNET to see if anything could be done about the issues with the sign-up process, but I never got a response from anyone who could do anything about the situation. I’m probably fairly representative of builders my age and younger – I was born in ’87, and I had access to the internet for a significant portion of my LEGO-filed childhood. I was doing serious projects and getting ideas off of the internet when I was 10 years old. In spite of the fact that I’ve been a fairly skilled builder for most of my life, I’ve had to deal with watching LUG groups form in my area and not being allowed to join because of age restrictions. It’s almost like I’ve been punished for not having had “dark ages”. I have relocated a few times over the years, and I am now a happy member of NCLUG (which is a great group that is very open – regularly doing shows that are open to the public and allowing talented young builders to join in for meetings and layouts). As much as I love what I see online and appreciate how expensive/time-consuming these things to be, I want to keep the hobby open for people who aren’t in it – which is a big part of why I’ve tried to make my blog kid-safe and short on AFOL lingo.

Do you watch the Technorati search feed for LEGO too? Many of the models that I’ve found through there haven’t been widely featured on other LEGO-specific blogs.

The splog issue bothers me a little bit. I know my blog and a few of the other blogs out there are clearly run by people who are interested in making some money, but I think the content speaks for itself – regardless of the amount of ads featured. The format I’ve chosen for LMOTD means that I get to show off my knowledge of LEGO techniques, but I don’t often showcase my own models (in fact, none of MOCs have shown up on LMOTD yet). I have a second blog (projectsbydan.blogspot.com) that I intend to use for my own projects, and that one’s not updates as often as it should be either. It does solve the “It’s not about you (unless it is)” problem, though.

Keeping at it is really the difficult part. I try to be true to my no-repeating-themes-within-a-few-days rule, and I occasionally make exceptions as it is. It’s not easy to keep a variety of models on the front page! When I came up with the idea, I figured it would be a 15-minutes-a-day thing, but it’s really never fit into my schedule as well as I’d hoped (as of this writing, I’m behind three days and halfway-through writing about a Sean Kenney sculpture from 2006).

Thanks for bringing this up – it’s good to have a place to discuss these issues. I think that the linking-to-other-blogs issue is one of the biggest problems that I need to solve, but it will probably take some time to establish a list of other blogs that are kid-ready.

Dez, YSAB is a blog run by teenage boys in their spare time- what did you expect? Maybe we’ll get some consistency going this summer.

There are tons of free resources on the internet which will teach you how to write proper English (something I struggle at), tell stories, use headlines, market yourself and oh so much more. As a content creator, you need to create the best content you can.

Daily Blog Tips, Blogger & Podcaster, iTunes U, American Writers Podcast, and so many more will help. Use them.