This is a hard one to post because I'm enjoying using bravenet's journal facility; this blog is coming out high on google ratings and I'm now used to using its tools. But myself and other dedicated bloggers are getting fed-up with how stale and lacking-in-support  bravenet itself can sometimes be. I mentioned this yesterday on Holly's Blog (she has a lot more traffic than me) and she's feeling the same so has taken up the issue.

For instance on the journal home page there's 'featured' and 'popular' journal lists that change every few seconds. It shuffles around the same old, same old sites, some of which haven't been used by their writers for years! There was even one featured journal where the guy last wrote nearly 3 years ago saying he wasn't coming back because he was so fed-up with bravejournal! In the meantime I've (accidentally) found some great, active bravejournals out there that aren't getting a look-in to any promotion by bravenet.

This isn't going to encourage new quality bloggers to the site and doesn't keep those of us who put in the time and energy to stay put. I've now started journalling on other sites to see if they come out better, it will also mean I've got to work hard all over again to get any new site's ratings up.

If you feel the same PLEASE CONTACT BRAVENET, pop into Holly's site for the latest.

 

Examples: 'Featured Journals' - there seem to very few of these that bravejournal rotates. This, supposedly, is what bravejournal wants in it's 'shop window'.

 

http://oneofakindsoldier.bravejournal.com/ excellent and worthy site but not been added to since December 2005

http://reginahill.bravejournal.com/archive.php looks like it has been busy but currently, no entries in the blog

http://itsafrogslife.bravejournal.com/ again. looks like it has been busy but no entries since April 2007

http://healthyliving7.bravejournal.com/ there are currently no entries to this blog

NB: I am not actually LOOKING for these. This is every single FEATURED blog I'm going on!

http://nydreamdragon.bravejournal.com/ has been an excellent site but no entry since January 2006

http://hollie_14.bravejournal.com/ no entry since April 2006 AND she says that she's not ever coming back!

http://savedangel61.bravejournal.com/ no post since December 2005

http://megankim.bravejournal.com/ no post since December 2006

I could go on but I'm bored. more 'featured journals' are out of date than are active. In the meantime 'active members' don't get  the promotion they deserve!

Great post, Hazel, and thanks for linking to the Tree, too. I may get that old blog up and running again; as I said in my post, Bravenet supported it... Visitors, on the other hand, were pretty scarce, which was why I ended up deleting it. It just wasn't doing what I wanted it to do.

As for Bravenet Support, I have to say that in the four years I've been here, I have always had quick, helpful, and friendly assistance from the Support team whenever I've needed it. I can understand that they're super-busy, right now, with preparing for some new features for us, but still. They do need to try to assign a couple of people to do some major cleanup on the Featured and Popular Journals sections.

Hiya Hazel! Well, I've gone and done it. Click my name to see what I did. If you like it, feel free to leave a comment or a tag, and if you really like it, feel free to spread the word about it.

Thanks for updating this post; I'll copy the links and put them on the list when I update it again.

PS: You do know who I am, right?

yea man, it would be nice if the site that hosted our sites / blogs would actually have decent support. i dunno, its just a usefull feature now adays lol....

Good morning, Hazel. Thanks for swingin' by and takin' a look around. It's going to take awhile to get things properly set up - I got rid of all my files when I deleted the first attempt at this - but I hope it's going to be something that helps us and the Bravenet staff. They do the very best that they can - there's no question about that - but I think that we as a community need to start doing things for ourselves and each other a lot more, instead of expecting the staff to do everything for us...

Have a great weekend, sweetie. Catch ya later.