blogHarrisburg was launched in 2007 as a means of providing exposure to Central Pennsylvania’s independent bloggers. After a highly successful year in operation, blogHarrisburg is expanding itself in 2008 to include local photographers, videographers, podcasters, ‘net radio broadcasters, and anyone else who self-publishes independent content about the Central PA region. If you create your own content and want to spread your word, give us a shout and let us know who you are!

Who is blogHarrisburg?

blogHarrisburg is an independent blog aggregator based out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Without any corporate ties to support, blogHarrisburg is able to publish news and opinion to a wide audience without worrying about censorship or conflicts of interest. Fully funded and maintained by a local Harrisburg blogger, blogHarrisburg exists solely for the purpose of providing exposure to our local bloggers.

What does blogHarrisburg cover?

There are virtually no topics that are off-limits to blogHarrisburg. We only ask that at least 75% of your content be directly relevant to someone living in Central PA. For example, at any given moment there are approximately 84 trillion blogs covering the upcoming presidential elections; we don’t want any of ‘em. However, we’d love to carry your blog following Harrisburg (or Mechanicsburg, or Camp Hill, or Lower Paxton, or …) city politics. There are, however, a few areas that we want nothing to do with:

• Explicit adult content (we have nothing against it, but not everybody wants to be published alongside it)
• Poor grammar and spelling (nobody’s perfect, but please at least make an effort)
• Pay-per-post blogs, sites with obnoxious advertising (popups!), and sites that engage in link farming

Where does blogHarrisburg cover?

blogHarrisburg isn’t just about Harrisburg. If you lay out a map of Central PA, and put push pins in Halifax, Mechanicsburg, Middletown, and Grantville, then stretched a rubber band around all those pins, you’d have a good idea of what our coverage area is. There is no exact definition, and we’ll happily cover major events in other areas (such as a new coaster opening in Hershey or a major development initiative in York). But we would prefer that the bulk of our content remain mostly focused on the Harrisburg metro area.

What can I do to help?

Spread the word! Tell as many people as you can about blogHarrisburg. Post in our forums. Contribute to our wiki. Help prove to the world that a grass-roots, not-for-profit organization driven by passion (not paychecks) will do more for the community than any corporate blog ever can. If you’d like to help even more, consider becoming a contributor. blogHarrisburg has an urgent need for the following items:

• Community-based news reporting. Tell us about your town or neighborhood! We’d love to publish the stories that are “too small” for your local newspaper or TV station to cover!
• Podcasts. If they meet the locality requirements above, we’d love to link to (or help distribute) your podcast.
• Internet Radio. If you’re running a talk radio station that covers local topics, we’ll be happy to send traffic your way. In a dream world, we’d love to find a local ‘net radio station that provides a combination of local talk radio and music by local bands.
• Know-It-Alls. Think you know everything about Central PA? Prove yourself in the blogHarrisburg wiki! Help us build and share knowledge about our region, and help deflate attacks, spam, and general untruthiness.

Seriously, what’s the catch? Why all this effort for free?

Seriously — no catch. blogHarrisburg is provided free of charge as a service to the community. We’re not here to get rich — in fact, we proudly lose money every month. We employ minimal, unobtrusive advertising as a means of taking the bite out of our monthly hosting and bandwidth costs. The site is entirely funded by one of Harrisburg’s local bloggers. Promotion, organization, and day-to-day content is generously donated by the people listed under “Contributors”. We all do it because we love what we do. That’s it; there’s nothing more to it.

How does blogHarrisburg protect my rights?

Syndicated posts will always be attributed directly to the original author on the original site with no interstitials or redirects. blogHarrisburg neither makes nor implies any claim of ownership or right whatsoever to any of the syndicated content. All content remains the sole property of its original owner, and all questions or concerns regarding said ownership must be directed to the original author. All syndicated content is reproduced with permission, and blogHarrisburg does not accept paid placement of content under any circumstances. blogHarrisburg takes reasonable steps to help ensure that only the lead-in (”summary”) is published on the front page, but does not guarantee such. Users who wish to ensure that their full articles are not syndicated should consult their publishing software’s instructions on how to only syndicate a summary or excerpt in their RSS or Atom feed.

I’d like to become a member!

Thanks, but we really don’t have members. What we do have is contributors. If you’d like us to syndicate your blog / podcast / etc, contact us and say hi — we’d love to hear from you!

I don’t have my own blog / I want to say something anonymously!

Absolutely! If you’ve got a lot to say but don’t know how to set up your own blog, we’d be glad to help. There are a few options available, depending on your level of expertise:

• If you’re completely new to this sort of thing, we’ll help you set up a free blog at Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. It’s the simplest, fastest way to get going, and we’ll hold your hand through every step of the process.
• If you’ve been around the block and know what’s what, and you don’t mind paying for hosting (we recommend Steadcom), we’ll help you download and install Wordpress on your own domain. In the near future, blogHarrisburg will be offering website hosting for local bloggers at very competitive rates.
• If you already have your own established blog but want to post outside of your character or make an off-topic post, we’ll gladly set you up with an account on blogHarrisburg.com. You’ll be able to post to the main page, but we’ll actually hold the content of your post. This might be advantageous in whistle-blower scenarios or situations where you simply don’t want your post associated with your blog (for example, if you have a local sports blog but want to make a few posts on local nightlife without ruining the “flow” of your blog). IMPORTANT NOTE: While blogHarrisburg will make every reasonable effort to protect the privacy of its contributors, we will fully comply with all proper legal requests for information without hesitation, provided that we are served with a valid subpoena through due process.

So what’s this about a wiki?

blogHarrisburg has what might very well be the first and only Central PA wiki. The blogHarrisburg wiki, located at wiki.blogHarrisburg.com, is a collection of factual information on local events, businesses, locations, towns, buildings, employers, services, neighborhoods, and more. It’s not unlike Wikipedia, only it’s specifically focused on Central PA. Think of it as being able to tap into the mind of someone who has lived here all his or her life. The wiki is open for everyone to contribute and edit. Why not take a look right now?