About
Q. What is this contraption?
A. Short answer: TampaBLAB is a blog aggregator for the greater Tampa Bay area.
Q. A blog… aggregator? Huh?
A. Let’s go through this together:
Blog: Short for Weblog, it’s a place for a person or persons to place their thoughts, musings, or ideas on whatever strikes their fancy on the Internet, where everyone can read them. Find out more at Wikipedia.
Aggregator: Taken from the verb aggregate, which means To gather into a mass, sum, or whole. In this case, an aggregator is a person or thing which facilitates this gathering. In other words, it collects blog posts so you don’t have to. Find out more at Wikipedia.
Q. Gotcha. So who are you, and why would you want to do such a thing?
A. My name is Tommy Duncan, and I have been blogging at Sticks of Fire since early 2004. Over the years, I have seen the Tampa Bay blogging community grow in size as well as quality. I thought that having a one-stop-shop for local blogs seemed like a great way to raise awareness for the blogging community.
The hope is that this could eventually be home to a place for bloggers and their fans to meet and mingle in the interest of further building the community. We’ll see about this, though, won’t we?
Q. So, how much does it cost to join your little club?
A. Nothing. Communities are not fostered by sign up fees and membership dues, they just help you feel more elite than anyone else. This is not about being better than the next guy, this is about getting together and getting to know your neighbors a little bit better, even if that neighbor lives in another county.
Q. Ok, I’m sold. Sign me up!
A. Great! Just pay a quick visit to the official “submit your blog to TampaBLAB” page, fill out the form, and we’ll check you out. Assuming you pass the strict criteria we have chosen, you will be automatically added. Submit your blog to TampaBLAB.
Q. Strict criteria?!?!
A. Just kidding. Actually, there are only two criteria required to join. First, if you regularly publish anything one would consider offensive to minors (like por nog raphy or graphic violence) on your main page, you may not make it. I’m not a prude, so you’ve gotta be pretty offensive in order to not pass. Cursing is not really an issue, but if you’re regularly posting por n pictures or the dregs of places like Rotten.com (not linked on purpose, I’m not about to send traffic there), this site is not for you. Secondly, you either must live in, or blog about, the Greater Tampa Bay Area. Since one usually goes in hand with the other, you might think this is redundant, but exceptions do exist. And my idea of the Greater Tampa Bay Area is pretty large, so if you even remotely think you might qualify, please feel free to drop me a line.
Q. What’s with the spaces through por n?
A. They are not typos. Through the simple use of spaces, I can get my point across to you – a human – while preventing search engine crawlers – robots – from attaching the site to adult site references.
Q. Hey! I joined your site, but that’s not when I submitted those posts! What gives?
A. Could be several things. TampaBLAB, being Tampa-centric, is set in Eastern Standard Time. The time on your webserver/blog software may not be correct. Or (more likely) your feed does not store your post times. If this is the case, you might look into updating your feed. In any case, once you’ve been added to the list, any of your subsequent posts should appear within an hour, and thereafter. If after a full day you don’t find your posts, give us a shout.
Q. Why do some of these posts have a bunch of other posts tied to them? And why can’t I see the excerpts on those?
A. BLAB is designed to show the last 30 posts at a time. But we don’t want any one blog to dominate the front page. Whenever a blog author has several posts within a 12 hour timespan, it shows the full excerpt from the latest post, and the titles of the rest. This way, visitors to TampaBLAB will get to see a great cross-section of the Tampa Bay Local Area Bloggers, and those with multiple posts can read further on what a specific site has to offer.
Q. Does TampaBLAB mean anything?
A. Indeedely-do! TampaBLAB is an acronym for Tampa Bay Local Area Bloggers.
Q. What’s with the Skyway Bridge icon showing up next to most posts?
A. Well, that graphic is a gravatar. Some people have gravatars and some don’t. If you’d like to find out more information about Gravatars, visit the official web site. If you’d like to find out more information on gravatar usage here at TampaBLAB, check out this post.
Q. What else?
A. Take a look around. If you like what you see, please bookmark the site and come back often. If you have a blog, we’ll ask for three things. #1 Please submit your blog to TampaBLAB. #2 Please consider writing a post about TampaBLAB on your blog. #3 Please consider linking to TampaBLAB in your sidebar or blogroll – perhaps using a nifty banner.
Q. Got any nifty banners?
A. Oh yeah. We’ve got banners for you with the appropriate code to repost them on your own site just underneath! Check ‘em out:
135 x 75 – Size is everything…
<a href="http://www.tampablab.com"><img src=
"http://tampablab.com/wp-content/
uploads/2008/05/blab135x75.gif"
width="135" height="75" border="0"/></a> 
100 x 25 – …Sometimes not.
<a href="http://www.tampablab.com"><img src=
"http://tampablab.com/wp-content/
uploads/2008/05/blab100x25.gif"
width="100" height="25" border="0"/></a>
One of those fancy pixel button things. Perfect when you like your links lost in the crowd.
<a href="http://www.tampablab.com">
<img src="http://tampablab.com/wp-content/
uploads/2008/05/blabpixel.png"
border="0" width="80" height="15" /></a>TampaBLAB
Just a Text Link:
<a href="http://www.tampablab.com">
TampaBLAB</a>Q. Can I contribute to this site directly?
A. Although we incorporate some advertising on the site, it is hugely a labor of love, and any help you can give would be appreciated. Contact TampaBLAB if you would like to share your skillz.
Editor’s note: This “About” page was directly ripped off from the original TampaBLAB FAQ page, written by Brett Glisson.
