You know, we've been so busy lately trying to prepare the core of this system and pulling together stuff in time for the Chicago Pipe Show, that we figured we should probably let you in a little bit about what the PipeTrader is going to be all about.
Hopefully by now, you've gone through the PipeTrader.com splash site and have taken the time to sign up for advance notice of site launch. If not, take a moment and go do that now at the PipeTrader.com
website.
While there, you probably will have seen the short description of some of the features of the PipeTrader community. In fact, you are reading part of it now.
We intend to create a community of blogs (for those of you not in the know, these are essentially websites that act as places for experts to share their ideas with the world much as a columnist does in your favorite magazine or newspaper). This content is not only published in their individual blogs, but will be available for individuals to subscribe to (more on this later). Other members of the community (like yourself for instance) can not only read these opinions online but also comment on them and start a true dialog between community members in a open and secure manner.
As for syndication, each blogger (or columnist if you prefer) can define whether or not they want their articles to be syndicated via RSS/ATOM feeds. They can also decide if their articles are to integrated into the primary site feed as well. If the terms syndicated or RSS/ATOM feeds are greek to you, then think of it as a way to bring these postings (or articles) to you as soon as they are posted. You could think of this as something akin to having a newspaper coming directly to you comprised of articles of interest to you but not having to wait until it is published. Instead it becomes available almost immediately in your favorite feed reader, content aggregators (we'll post instructions on this in subsequent articles) or browsers. You can embed this information into your Google or Yahoo home pages as well if that is your preference.
Initially, we will be opening up blogs to carvers, retailers and other "experts" in the industry. Shortly after that, we'll open up this free service to other members of the PipeTrader.com community.
Our hope is that the .com in PipeTrader.com will become synonymous with community.
My next posting will give more details about the Auction/Classified/Trading portion of our community.
If you have questions or comments on this posting or anthying else about PipeTrader.com, please use the comments form below or send me a private email using the comment form.