So we survived our first week! And we are up over 110 members in that short time, which, quite frankly, we're thrilled with. The amazing part is, we know there are still lots of Canadian food blogs out there that haven't signed up yet so this community has the potential to be big!
Big thanks to all of you who forwarded local events to us this past week. Keep them coming and we'll get them up!
Here are points on some of the most common questions and comments we received over the last week.
Membership Directory
We've got a membership directory up now, organized by province. This is a great way for you all to see who's officially joined, as well as get to know some new food blogs or make contacts with people in your area.
We have gone through every single blog that has joined to ensure you're all in Canada and wow... what a lot of great food blogs there are out there! It was a very pleasant way to spend a day!
If you have joined and don't see your blog in the directory, there are three reasons why this may be so:
- we couldn't easily discern from your profile or your blog or your twitter account where you were located. Please drop us a line and let us know and we'll get you up
- you've joined but didn't leave us a blog address and we couldn't easily figure it out from your email address. Again, if that's the case, please, share your blog with us!
- you are a Canadian but currently blog outside of the country. More on that in a minute...
We've posted full names next to blogs where it was apparent that you were comfortable, either from your bio or your twitter account, that you are ok with sharing your full name. If we misjudged, please let us know.
If we had some doubt whether or not you wanted to share, we just used your first name. Let us know if you want us to put your full name up.
If there's no name, it wasn't included with your membership and we couldn't determine it from your blog.
This is the only information we will share in our directory. We will not pass your email address on to any third parties or sponsors without your prior permission.
If you don't see your favourite Canadian food or beverage blog listed, why not encourage them to join up? We'd love to see some more voices from the Atlantic provinces, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the North.
If you're looking for the directory through the main menu, it's listed under Membership.
Canadians Blogging Outside of Canada
Currently, we're not technically opening membership to Canadian blogs written outside of Canada. Not because we don't want you - we surely do! You'll add a great voice to our community and have some wonderful experiences to share from a different point of view.
However, we're just trying to sort out logistics for a few things coming down the pipe first. Once we get those worked out, we'll be setting up a different membership level for ex-pats blogging outside the country. If you've already joined, hang tight, we'll get sorted out in the next month and have your blog up in our directory then.
FBC Blog Badges
Many of you have asked and these are coming! Hopefully by the end of this week we'll have some attractive (we hope!) badges for you to choose from, as well as all the code you'll need to ad them to your sidebar widgets or footers. You're not under any obligation to use them but please feel free to do so if you choose.
Posting Schedules
There's no hard and fast rules and things will change as we grow, but currently the plan is that we'll post The Weekly News every Monday, a resource article on Wednesdays, and our surprise Friday Featured Blogger on Fridays (obviously!).
If you have suggestions for a featured blogger or a resource article, or you'd like to write for us, please let us know about it.
Regional Admins
We've had a few people offer to volunteer as regional admins or forum admins and we've made note of all of you. Currently, we don't have enough work to fill these positions but as soon as that changes, we'll be getting in touch. Thank you all for being so excited to help the FBC out!
Forums
We've had some great questions up in our forums this past week. Please check them out and if you have some expertise you can volunteer, please chime in. And if you have a burning question you want answered, go ahead and post it!
If you've missed it, we have a great Welcome Thread going where everyone is introducing themselves so if you haven't, stop by and say hi! We've also got some people wondering how to get rid of annoying reflections when photographing shiny surfaces so if you have some tips, please share. And if you've always wanted to use Photoshop to edit your photos but didn't like the price tag, one of our members shared a great tip on a free, on-line version put out by Adobe.
And last but not least, if you want to plan a meetup, why not post it in our regional forums. Ontario has already got something in the works so don't be shy - try to start something up with your local food bloggers.
We have lots more on the way but that's it for now. Keep those suggestions and ideas coming. We want to hear from you.
Melissa, Mardi and Ethan
You can unsubscribe any time!
Great work guys! This a great resource and we all know how much work you are doing 🙂 Can’t wait to see the badges!