Friday, August 29, 2008

One Weigh or Another - new site suggestions

Ok, hmmm. I'm thinking at the moment that the new site is going to be blogger based. That's for a couple of reasons
*Firstly, I have lots of blogger experience, and I've already set up the OWOA archives on blogger blogs.
*Secondly, I tried experimenting with the free wordpress blogs, and was having lots of trouble doing things with them.
*Finally, it seems silly to try to find something else, which I don't have experience on, given that I know some of the time are fairly new at the whole blogging thing, so it needs to be something I can explain clearly to other people!
We can always move the site (as blest did with the original site) at a later date if that seems appropriate.

Meet the Team - Someone (I know who said what, but I won't reveal who, for a truly impartial vote ;) ) said that they really liked having the meet the team section, and I agree. I'm not totally sure about how I'd go about creating a page like that on a blogger blog, but I've got some ideas, so I'll have a play with it.
This will need people to email me a few stats about themselves - like starting date and weight, current weight, goal weight. Location (this can be as specific or vague as you like) and maybe a random fact or two. Oh, and maybe preferred exercise type..

Recent comments - I don't know if it's possible to have a recent comments thing on a blogger blog. I'm sure it is, but I will be consulting my internet geek friend to find out just how to go about having that. I've seen things on other people's blogs where they have widgets in the sidebar, so I'm sure there's a way to go about doing it, and I know I found that useful when it was working on the original OWOA.

Hall of Fame - It was suggested that we could have some sort of hall of fame, with pics and stories of people's successes so far. I think this idea needs more developing (and that I need to go back to the email that the person who suggested this sent to me, cos I know she had developed it more, I'm just going from the brief notes I made!)

Recipes - I liked having recipes on the site, personally. I will be going through the OWOA recipe archives and tagging each recipe, so that you'll be able to look on the side bar, click on the word 'chicken' and see all the recipes which contain chicken. This may take me a while, but I'll get there...! Any suggestions on any other useful tags to use (eg what about entree, dessert, etc?) let me know in the comments of this post.

Weigh-ins - Do we want to keep weigh-ins on a Monday? Personally, I like the way that it helps me to stay focused at the weekend (sometimes it does, anyway!), cos I know the results will be shown on Monday. On the other hand, sometimes when people are doing well most of the week, and allow themselves a planned treat at the weekends, it can also show up in the weigh-in and be disappointing (for example, when a person weighs in lower all the rest of the week, but is consistently up slightly on a Monday - does that show a fair representation of their weight? Or is is just disheartening?)
One person suggested keeping weigh-ins on Monday, but having an additional weigh in on a Friday.

Food Friday - seems like people never really took much notice of this unless there was a competition on...

Competitions & Challenges - Do you like them? What sort of focus would you like them to have? Exercise? Healthy eating? Random things - different tasks each week? Points for checking in?

Check-ins - It's good to check in regularly, and I would like to emphasise that although I'm not about to start chucking people off the team if they don't contribute enough, I also want to point out that if you're not engaging and checking in on a fairly regular basis, then it's hard to see what the point of being on the team is! (I hope that's not too harsh, and no one feels condemned).
It's just hard to stay accountable and encourage one another if no one knows exactly where the other people are at. At the same time, I don't want the check-ins to just become the same old same old. We need to have variety.

God stuff - One of the things I liked about OWOA at the beginning was the focus on God. The sharing of our lives, and supporting one another with prayer and thanksgiving. I definitely want to maintain/encourage back that emphasis (I think we lost it a bit as time went on, but again, I'm not trying to blame anyone in particular for that, so please don't feel condemned!) Any thoughts on how we go about doing that?

Post Catagories - On blogger you can catagorise a post by adding tags when you write it. I agree that it's good to arrange posts into catagories, but this may have to be done by me after the post is written if other people are unsure what to tag their post as. I guess we can come up with a list of tags to use, like weigh-ins, check-ins, just life, etc.

That's all I got at the minute. Please weigh in with your thoughts, responses and ideas, please :)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the ideas Debs-

The twice weekly weigh-in sounds great to me. I agree that our focus should be on God. Sometimes I foget to give hom all the credit for my successes.

It all sounds great!!!

Debbie said...

Thanks for putting so much thought into the site, Debs!

I like everything suggested. Re Meet the Team, I was wondering if everyone should also write a POST about themselves as well and include a pic(s). Even though I know most everyone, I still don't have all their faces straight in my mind, esp those without personal blogs.

I like Blogger, and many of us already have Blogger accounts, so we can just link over from our accounts.

I like challenges, but I'm rubbish at coming up with ideas for them. I even tried to look some up online but didn't have much success. Going through some of the OWOA archives, you guys seemed to have had some great challenges. Maybe we could resurect some? It has been a couple of years, right? Or we could even do consistent challenges -- for example, we could do a Healthy Heart challenge every 3 or 4 months, maybe switching up the person in charge of it. I know for me, it's great having the constant accountability, apart from weighing in and saying, "Oh yeah, I really need to exercise more . . . "

And DEFINITELY keeping the God focus. I know we tried the OWOA devotional and it bombed. I was excited to do it, but it just got too much for me to do where I was in life. Maybe we could do a condensed verson -- post a scripture and a few thoughts and ask for others' thoughts. Also, on my site I do Thankful Thursday (even though I haven't done it much this summer), and it's good to have that day specifically to recall the week and things I have to be thankful for and how God has been good. So we could also do something like that, to keep a consistent focus.

Those are just a few thoughts I had off the top of my head. I'll let ya know if anything else comes to mind.

Debs said...

Yes, i was thinking it'd be good to get everyone to do an intro post again. And pics would be great too

Claudia said...

WOW Debs...you are really on top of everything! You're amazing! I love the idea of Meet the Team. I came in towards the end of OWOA and I didn't really get to know everyone. I relied on my sister, Cristina, to guide me through everyone's personal stories, triumphs, and tribulations. I think the Hall of Fame would be really inspirational. I like reading about other people's successes...it helps me in knowing that I too can meet my goal one day. Recipes are a must....especially recipes that are healthy and fast to make...anything to simplify everyday life. Weigh-ins are good on Monday's because it does keep you on your toes throughout the weekend. It's the weekend when most of us want to treat ourselves....although an end-of-the-week weigh in would be good too. It's like our bodies know the weekend is coming and it's like our bodies refuse any type of weight loss over those two days...so it is a bit disconcerting on Monday when you weigh yourself and you're up a few pounds than from where you were on Friday. I think Check-ins are great just to see how everyone is doing! And of course comes the final and most important factor to this new site...GOD! I believe that without prayer, I wouldn't or actually couldn't have made it as far as I have with not only my weight loss, but everyday life as well!!! I don't think you can ever have enough prayer in your life....there's always something to pray about!

Anonymous said...

Here! Here!

Anonymous said...

I like Debbie's ideas about the challenges.
Personally, I prefer Monday weigh-ins, as I've always weighed myself on a Sunday night, all my life, as that seems to be the heaviest time, then any other time might be less (if you get the logic). I suppose whenever the weigh-in day is, I could give you my Sunday night reading. And, yes, weekends are the bad times.
I don't really understand blogger stuff, so I'd appreciate it if I can use it without needing to 'sign up' and be a blogger myself.
Is there some way people's comments can appear with their real name? I was just getting used to who everyone was, now some folks have 'new' names, and others refer to them by a different name. I'm confused :s
Looking forward to seeing the results of your hard work, Debs.

Debs said...

Simple fancies = Tami

Debbie = Debbieboo

I think everyone else is the same..!

Julie, once we're set up I'll come over for a couple of hours and get you sorted with using blogger.

Eric Guel said...

That all looks good. Thanks, Debs!