Additional Blogs (Premium): Request for Documentation

Hosting on Micro.blog
1

Hello. I have lots of questions about the additional blogs I can add to my Premium account.

I will write a couple here, but since I have these questions, I am reluctant to begin using the features until I have a better understanding.

Can I convert an existing Single Page site into a Blog?

I created a brand new Blog- social.micro.blog as a test, and it seems like my new blog is posting to the timeline as my Main Account blog.

https://aeryn.me/categories/moments/feed.json
https://social.micro.blog/feed.json

The hosted site has the Marfa theme which is showing lots of references to my Main Blog.

I understand that I can remove these references etc. But my question is- How independent are these ‘child’ blogs from the account ‘parent’ blog?

Are the ‘child’ blogs able to post to the timeline? (It seems not). Do they have their own user page (micro.blog/social)? (Seems not). So Micro.blog users cannot follow these blogs independently?

I don’t understand the purpose of having a blog that cannot be followed separately. Is the intention that they are not meant to be independent? More like a sub-blog/super-category?

Other questions- Can I delete my test blog and my limit will return to 5? Creating new Blogs is on a different page to creating Single Page sites. And the list of Sites in my account is a bit confusing. Can this be streamlined for clarity?

Would appreciate some clarification, or documentation about this new account structure. I’m finding it very confusing and want to minimise the amount of testing I need to do to understand what’s going on here. Because these new blogs I can create feel a bit restrictive and a lot less useful than I was hoping.

Thanks

2

  1. I don’t think so, but @manton might be able to do it manually if you email help@micro.blog.

  2. A Micro.blog account has two purposes. It’s a blog host account and a social profile/timeline. You can use your account for one or both of those purposes. You can have zero blogs hosted on Micro.blog and just use the social features. Or you could pay for a blog and ignore the social timeline altogether. (If you remove all feeds from the Sources & Cross Posting page, nothing will be posted to the timeline.)
    Creating a second or third blog won’t give you additional social timelines or profiles, but nothing is stopping you from creating additional (free) Micro.blog accounts for each new blog you’re setting up.
    There’s no concept of child blogs or parent blogs; there are just blogs. Your account could have zero, one or many blogs. They are totally separate from each other, but they share some of the same information from your account. For example, the Marfa theme shows your account’s username, @aeryn, and that will be the same for all blogs hosted under that account.

  3. Yes, your social profile’s timeline, @aeryn, is populated by one or more feeds. It’s up to you which feeds you want there: feeds from all your blogs, or just one or a few.
    No, creating a new blog under your Micro.blog account won’t create a new Micro.blog account (user page). But nothing is stopping you from manually creating a new (free) account and hooking up your blog’s feed to its timeline. That way, your new blog could have its own social profile page (micro.blog/social). As long as that username is available, of course.
    Even if you don’t create a separate Micro.blog account for each blog, people can still follow them via RSS, JSON Feed, and the newsletter function (if you decide to use it).

  4. Your premium account allows up to 5 blogs in total. Your test blog (if you have one) and single-page sites do not count. So, you could have 5 blogs, 1 test blog, and 2 single-page sites, for example.

1 Like
3

Ooooh! Ok. Thanks! That’s really helpful. I think I’m getting it. I’ll have a ponder on what all this means. And what I can do.

I think I have trouble understanding what features are at the account level. And what are on the blog level.

Thanks again.

4

Count me in as someone who would like to convert my single page website into a regular blog.
https://meta.numericcitizen.me is the one-page site to convert. cc @manton

5

Thanks @sod! That’s a good description of how this works. We definitely need to document this on dedicated help pages.

The only thing I would add if anyone is worried about upgrading to Premium, creating new blogs, then being stuck on Premium forever… It’s fine to downgrade at any time, even if you have created 5 blogs. You don’t need to delete the extra blogs, and we’ll continue to host them. (There is a bug that lets you post to any blog even when not on Premium, but I’ll be fixing that.)

2 Likes