This is not the final logo for Steemhost.com but instead consider this a toast to our future successes.
Steem Host: What Is It?
Since joining the Steem community and posting and following people, there have been a few frustrations as well as opportunities that I have seen. While I am interested in the posts that the entire community offers, there are some specific people who I follow (so have bookmarked them individually) but also want to promote (so have resteemed them on occasion). Additionally there are specific posts I have read or created and wanted to bookmark for future reference.
How does a visitor access a hosted site?
If one wants to visit a hosted site, it is simply a question of entering www.steemhost.com/@dwarrilow2002 (substituting my ID with the host of your choice). Currently there are only a couple of hosts configured ... but as time progress more hosts will be available. You can visit the site with your ID and will see your posts but will not have the hosting functions available.
Basic Menu Options
The basic menu options are Host, Contributor. These options will appear or change depending upon the host profile. As we increase the functionality of the site additional options will appear. The labels are controlled by the Host. For instance my preferences are a follows:
resulting in these options:
Visitor Menu Options
Visitors to a hosted page initially will not see options available to them. To access these options there is a message that allows the user to authenticate via steemconnect. * * * This does not have any special meaning for the STEEM environment * * * All this will do is to say that this is a STEEMIAN (hopefully encouraging people to join) and give them access to activities and reports that we will generate on our site. Once a visitor is authenticated it adds these options:
one again the "host" may alter the appearance of these options
Bookmarks
Bookmarks allows a visitor to select posts for future review. To add a bookmark just click on the star to the right of the post. To review select the bookmark option and find the post. To remove it from your list - just uncheck it.
Favourite Hosts
The favourite hosts is an option to bookmark several hosts. People group themselves together and identify themselves by using one of the tags (eg. teamcanada, teamaustralia etc). Hosting will allow groups to come together and promote themselves on a single platform. A visitor might have several groups (represented by a single host) they are interested in. The Favourite hosts allows the visitor to add and remove hosts from their list.
which allows the user to select between hosts on their menu bar.
Redirect Site
The purpose of SteemHost is not to take away from steemit.com or busy.org. It purpose is to add to it. While steemhost shows a listing of recent posts, it does not have the options of vote, resteem etc. We want people to engage with the complete content of the posts on either of those sites.
Once the visitor selects their preferred site (default steemit ... sorry busy bodies) when a link is pressed, it opens into the post on the preferred site. From there visitor may vote, resteem etc.
More of what steemhost has: The Search
Over the last few months I have posted over 1000 posts (1421 so far). During that time my posts have had many pearls of wisdom (I can hear people falling off of their chairs ... is that laughter from disbelief?). However when I am on steemit.com and do a search ... I can never find what I have posted. The search function on steemhost.com constrains the returns to those of the posts to the host or contributors (or bookmarked).
What's to come
We follow the principle of continuous improvement. Everyday I can think of new features and improvements. If one waits until everything is complete ... it will never launch.
- Cosmetics: I never wear it myself but I suppose it is important on a website
- New pages:
Our existing pages satisfy two types of people:
1 - A person who is only interested in promoting their own blog, steemhost can be constrained to the My Blog page.
2 - Those wanting to promote their friends can turn on the contributors page and select the users that you want to promote.
A third set of people may want to create an online magazine selecting specific posts from multiple users. - A method to increase your earning potential
We are currently working on a method to increase the earning potential for the hosts as well as the visitors to the site. I am very excited by the potential benefit to the steem community ... Stay tuned!!!