Feature

This Old House Expands into Blogging

Posted by aaron on May 24, 2006 11:45 AM

We've got the scoop on several new blogs coming from the producers of This Old House... including their first houseblog!

While they haven't been announced formally on the This Old House website yet, the new blogs are being hosted at Typepad.com and are up and running now.

Three are written by TOH editors, while the fourth is an actual 'houseblog' being written by the owners of the Boston renovation that will be the centerpiece of the TV show's next season.

The new TOH blogs are:

  • Shelter Life - A general blog on home living written by editor Alex Bandon, the blog is tagged as 'one woman's obsession with the architecture, design, and renovation of houses.'
  • Hardware Aisle - A group-blog that will address "what's new in tools and home products from the editors at TOH magazine.'
  • Old House My House - The most interesting blog of the bunch, Old House My House will provide a first-person journal from the family featured in the upcoming East Boston TOH television project. There are currently five entries posted, and it definitely has the flavor of a typical houseblog.
  • Secret Sources - Similar to Hardware Aisle, Secret Sources is a product focused blog being authored by several of the TOH editors.

The blogs use a generic Typepad template and seem to be fairly distinct from the rest of the TOH websites, so it comes across as something they might be isolating as an experiment for now. The degree of integration (or distance) may become more clear when they decide to formally launch the blogs via the main This Old House website.

At first glance, the blogs look interesting and are a definite improvement over their first attempt at blogging. The posts seem pretty personal, the posts are frequent, and the comments are turned on. As their first substantial foray into blogging, it will be interesting to see how they choose to interact with their readers and others bloggers, as well as that they will be linking to.

Update: It looks like TOH has launched the blogs...you can now link to each individual blog under the Today's Spotlight section at the top of their home page...

They're also available as a in the sidebar on the left hand side of the site.

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Posted by aaron on May 24, 2006 11:45 AM | Filed under Headlines: Announcements

 

Comments

Are you going to subscribe to their RSS Atom so we can follow more easily? Primarily with Old House My House?

Posted by: Greg at May 24, 2006 12:56 PM

Good question. Our policy right now is that we only add RSS/Atom feeds to houseblogs.net if a website registers with our site.

The reason is that we're very concerned that every site clearly approve of us re-publishing their content, even if it's only just the first sentence or two.

So, we're going to email TOH and ask them if they'd be willing to add Old House My House to the houseblogs.net directory...hopefully they'll agree so that houseblog fans can easily keep up on their latest entries. We'll see what they think about the idea...

Posted by: Aaron at May 24, 2006 11:07 PM