Howdy, judges!

When I helped get the Rules Tip Blog ( http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/ ) off the ground, I knew it was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of content that judges would want to blog about. Over the last 2 years, we've piled quite a bit of content into the blog network, and we're well overdue for an easy way to see what your fellow judges are blogging about.

While it's true that we've been working on - and are STILL working on - some bigger stuff with the blogs, it's long overdue that I share a list of all the active blogs, which you can view here (along with links to their most recent posts):

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/blogs/

Additionally, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to request a judge blog for yourself, your community, or a project you lead. Blogging is a fun and easy way to share your thoughts and information with the rest of the world. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, please complete the following form to open up a discussion with me about the possibility: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/help/request-a-site/

I'd like to thank Joel Krebs and David de la Iglesia for their help with all the blogs, and also extend a thanks to all those who've contributed content to one or more of our blogs.

Cheers

- Lems

I've put together a report summarizing 2013 on the Judge blog network which may be of interest to some:

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/lems/2014/01/24/judge-blogs-a-2013-year-in-review/

In this article:
- traffic and other stats
- traffic source information
- brief future plans
- some thanks to those who've helped make 2013 a great year for judge blogs

Hello, Judge Friends!

Today, we’ve released another set of features to the Judge Blogs network - and I’m very excited to share them with you.

First, we now have an actual central Judge Blog, where we’ll be posting some of the major announcements that impact the global Judge Program. You can view the Judge Blog at http://blogs.magicjudges.org/

The blog includes a Contact page, which should hopefully help most readers’ common questions about who to contact when they need help. ( http://blogs.magicjudges.org/contact/ ) It also includes a convenient way for players and organizers to get in touch with their Regional Coordinators, rather than fumbling through Judge Center or creating a JudgeApps account just to send an email: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/contact/contact-a-regional-coordinator/

The popular ‘What’s New on Judge Blogs’ page has been updated and moved, and is now available at http://blogs.magicjudges.org/blog-portal/complete-blog-index/ . This page displays the latest activity from the Judge Blogs, sorted to put the most recent news for you at the very top.

Another feature we’ve introduced is an RSS feed for new posts from across the entire Judge Blog network. If you enjoy using RSS, this one feed will you give all the updates as soon as they come out: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/feed/rss2-network

If you want finer control over your RSS feeds, there’s even a Custom RSS Feed Builder available at http://blogs.magicjudges.org/network-feed/ . Here, you can choose which categories of sites, or which specific sites, you’d like included in a custom RSS feed.

And last but not least, you’ll probably notice the new navigation bar appearing across the top of all the Judge Blogs, providing readers easy access to some of our most popular services. This same bar is already present on the chat pages, and will likely be making its way to the Judge Wiki and JudgeApps in the near future.

These features and improvements would not have been possible without the hard work of a couple of outstanding judges. First and foremost, I’d like to thank Joel Krebs for his amazing work. At the World Magic Cup 2013, he approached me to ask if he could help out with the blog network, even though he didn’t have experience with this software before. Just six months later, he’s delivered a slew of features, released code publicly, and has quickly become one of my favorite developers to collaborate with.

I’d also like to thank David de la Iglesia for his assistance - and his passion - in helping get this off the ground, James Bennett for his continued excellence at managing the server, and Steffen Baumgart for more of his awesome graphics work.

And, of course, thanks to all our lovely bloggers :)

Cheers!

- Lems