Preston Blog is moving to Blog Preston

We're moving, to blogpreston.co.uk

After a very successful first six months of existence, Preston Blog is moving. It’s also changing it’s name, to Blog Preston.

We’ve bought a domain name. We’ve got a fancy new design. But that’s all that’s changed, expect the same great content but just on blogpreston.co.uk and we’ve added a few little extras – like making it easier to contribute, integrating our twitter feed and also we’ll be starting a weekly email newsletter, so get yourself signed up.

There may be a few hiccups as transfer over to the new site, but rest assured we’ll be working as hard as we can to make sure there’s still great content.

Thanks for all your support, reading, commenting and kind words during the last six months. We hope you’ll join us for the rest of the journey at blogpreston.co.uk

Preston Tweetup II – how do we support the arts in Preston?

Preston Tweetup brings together people to discuss a particular topic and generate new ideas

We’re pleased to announce that the second Preston Tweetup has been confirmed. We’ll be back at the New Continental and this time we’re part of the Preston Tringe Festival that’s taking place in late July, showcasing theatre, music, comedy and much more across the city.

The topic for the next Preston Tweetup is ‘How do we support the arts in Preston?’. There’s already a lot happening with the New Continental’s events and the Tringe Festival but what more could we do? How can we get this city buzzing with a great arts community?

The event is on Monday 27th July 2009 from 8 PM in the Snug area of the pub. Please register to attend (we’re working on another drinks offer for those who register), so charge up those laptops and mobiles, and get your thinking caps on. It’s going to be a great event. Only 40 places available.

It’s free, fun and creative. If you’re unsure of what all this Tweetup business is, take a look at what happened at the last one.

Preston Blog on BBC Radio Lancashire

Ed Walker, founder of Preston Blog, was on BBC Radio Lancashire today with John Gillmore talking about the blog, how it started and also about the Preston Bloggers Meetup.

Thanks to BBC Radio Lancashire for the opportunity, and I hope people enjoyed the interview. Apparently John (Gilly) might be setting up a twitter account, so we’ll keep you posted.

You can now listen to Ed on BBC Radio Lancashire thanks to Rick Seymour who managed to record the clip. Ed Walker (Preston Blog) on BBC Radio Lancashire.

BBC London mentions Preston Blog

There’s an article on the BBC London site called ‘Me and My Blog‘ about blogging and particularly hyper-local blogging and it mentions Preston Blog.

It’s always nice to be noticed. If you don’t know what hyper-local blogging is (and a few years ago I wouldn’t have known), the article states:

Hyper-local bloggers – who blog about one street, borough or town – have served to replace aspects of the dying local paper, nourishing community life and reporting on anything from council meetings to new restaurant openings.

Thanks for the mention Clarissa, and let’s keep it going.

The first three months of Preston Blog

Preston Blog has now been running for just over three months. I thought I’d take a moment to take stock and reflect on my personal blog about how I set up a community journalism blog for where I live.

I also thought our readers might be interested to see a ‘Preston Blog in numbers’ and get behind the content and see some of the figures.

To date Preston Blog has had 9,477 visitors. The busiest day was Sunday 15th March 2009 when over 300 people came and viewed the blog. We’ve had 74 posts, in 24 categories and we’ve tagged our posts with 437 tags.

Top five search terms for people finding the blog through Google etc are: preston blog, moonlight walk 2009, dr preston blog, preston twitter, prestonblog. According to my Google search we are now #2 if you search for ‘preston blog’. We’re only being beaten by Robert Peston’s BBC blog. Pesky doom merchant.

Our most viewed content has been about the charity Moonlight Walk, an abandoned local mental asylum, a local group for geeks, a tweetup about Preston Guild 2012 and legislation that could force music venues to fit noise limiters.

That’s just a flavour. There’s loads of great stuff to read on here, plenty of ways to get involved and we’ve got plenty more to come in the future.

Thanks for reading the blog, thanks for your support.

Preston Blog takes on music, film and entertainments correspondent

Kirsty Higginson will be Preston Blog's music, film and entertainments correspondent

Preston Blog is branching out a little bit and as the site has been growing in popularity over the last few weeks I’ve decided to hire an eager journalism student from UCLan as the Preston Blog music, film and entertainments correspondent. Kirsty Higginson will be starting as of Friday and covering the beat.

She’s keen, wants to write about the local music, film and entertainments scene. So if you’re in a local band, a local director, actor, producer or work in the entertainments industry get in touch with prestonblogs@googlemail.com and we’ll hook you up.

Kirsty already has her own blog – The Blunt Side of the World – and she’s on twitter @Kirstyhigginson – so feel free to go and follow her, she won’t mind.

Her first project is going to be to create a directory (a bit like the Twitter one we’ve got going on) of bands in Preston and the local area.