Of all the new exciting projects that were presented at SteemFest³, ENGRAVE is my personal favorite and easily the most promising solution for people that have niche blogs and for artists of all stripes... So it is only fitting that this post is written using Engrave platform.
I was one of the many unfortunate souls that missed the chance to attend SteemFest this year. So instead, I made it a point to listen to all the presentations that were recorded during the event. I was listening to all the talks while working on my designs, and suddenly one really stood out to me with words like "website", "organized" "SEO". I had to stop my work, rewind the video to see what this was all about, and that's how I discovered Engrave. LINK to Presentation Skip to 3:56:00
So, what is ENGRAVE?
It is Steem powered blogging platform designed by steemians for steemians to emulate a customized personal website and thus make it easier for everyone to organize and find content through better interface. Here is an example of how your content can look once you start using Engrave: https://glodniwiedzy.pl/
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This was the example that really sold it to me. Each article is a post, that is of course shared on steemit as well as part of the Steem blockchain. But if I had to show anyone who doesn't know anything about Steemit what my blogging is all about, Engrave's interface is going to do it better than anything I've seen so far.
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Currently there are three templates that you can pick from - Clean Blog, Magazine and Stellar. My personal pick is Magazine, as I like seeing information packed websites. But I can also envision it filled with art or photography and have a similar appearance to art sites like Behance and Dribble (designers will know what I mean)
OK, so now to the How, part of this apparent "shill" :)
This is the fun part, simply go to https://engrave.website/ and log in using your steemconnect to start playing with all the functions that are available there.
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After you choose what type of domain you want to run, its all playtime from there. For those who are familiar with web builders, this is going to be a piece of cake, and for those who aren't, the site is very intuitive and has tips and explanations to help you find your way around the platform.
Communities
This is really the biggest potential that Engrave has to offer.
After speaking with the developer of Engrave @nicniezgrublem, I learned that part of the inspiration for the project was the need to create a Blog that would serve communities of multiple writers. This is something that is still a work in progress, but is already available for community leaders who want to be the early adopters of this platform. If you have a community project, you can grant access to your Engrave blog to multiple users, and have them make posts that adhere to the community content right on the platform. Community admin can review and approve posts before they get published through their engrave account and this will help make sure that content quality is held to the high standards that communities typically strive towards.
Engrave:
Pros:
- It makes your blog look like a pro website.
- This platform allows you to organize and present your content by subjects, in a way that is easy to browse through.
- If you have multiple interest, you can brake down your content to categories and organize it to your liking on the site.
- It allows you to personalize your content presentation, that is easy for non-Steemit users to understand.
- It has a very convenient markdown options to compose your posts.
- You can edit and rearrange how the the site looks.
- You can create a profile that your readers and followers can view (like a bio page).
Cons:
- Currently, to see post preview you have to toggle the button that allows you to see the your markdown and post side-by-side.
- Unlike Steemit markdown, Engrave's draft doesn't save drafts for a long time, and if you refresh your page in the midst of composing the post make sure you "Save Draft" button.
- Also no spellcheck is available, so I'm pretty sure that everything should glow red now.
- Image drag and drop doesn't work with the current markdown. So my solution was to drag and drop into Steemit markdown and the copy the code into the one on Engrave.
- You can't bring your old posts to be seen through Engrave. So your only options is to just start posting new content to populate your Engrave site. Or re-post some of your old stuff if you want it to appear on the website you're designing (which you might see me do in the near future).
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Closing thoughts:
As with everything Steem related, things are evolving and improving as more users adapt new platforms and contribute with their feedback... and I for one am excited to start using this new platform for posts with specific themes.
I really recommend everyone reading so far to check out Engrave and also all the SteemFest presentations. If you want to see the one about Engrave, check out this video: HERE Skip to 3:56:00
Also read this post, to learn more about Engrave and all aspects that i didn't mention in this POST.
@clayboyn, it works ;)
Thank you for a great feedback. I really appreciate it!
Engrave is a platform for single bloggers but we're working on a version for multiple users which will be more like a CMS rather that blogging platform. As you already know, it works in a different way but we will post more details later. Right now, we're focused on a single author version.
Ultimately, it will be possible to preview article directly on a blog (with a currently configured theme). It's already possible on "Engrave for Teams" and you are in a small group of people who can already test it :)
Well, drafts are more like "working copies" of your articles, prepared for future use. We've implemented autosaving that you won't lost your work after incidentally closing your browser but if I remember correctly it's enabled only for "new post" form. I will try to gather more feedback about this mechanism and change it if necessary.
I personally feel that this is one of the biggest disadvantages of Engrave right now. There is no mechanism to upload images directly to your blog. It's high on our TODO list and needs to be fixed quickly.
There are a few technical reasons why it works in that way. Steemit allows you to post article with syntax not compatible with the markdown standard. And it work for them because they're interpreting it in very own way. But to enable themes mechanism it's necessary to follow that standard.
We will probably introduce the mechanism that will allow bloggers to import previous posts. I will write more specific post if necessary :)
Thank you, I'm hope you will stay with us and you will give us even more constructive feedback :)
Thank you so much for the thorough response @nicniezgrublem!
I'm definitely someone who finds your project very exciting, and i expect a lot more people to be using it soon. Just thinking about all artists that can showcase all their art in this format is already a giving me a vision of the potential the Engrave has.
Regarding the communities, I think my understanding of it is still not fully formed as i haven't had the chance to play with all the settings yet. But just based on the sample site that you showed me, this idea of multy-user access is really what will make all the difference.
Of course this was my first time experiencing how engrave works and i hope i gave it a fair "first impression" review. I will definitely continue using it, I have still a lot more to explore! As a designer, I think that Engrave is one of the most visually pleasing presentation of steem content that I've seen.
So once again, congrats on the awesome initiative!
this shit is cool, made my first blog as well, just scratching the surface
Wow it sounded too good to be true, and then it turned out it was... with the last con point you mentioned:
"You cant bring your old posts to be seen through Engrave. So your only options is to just start posting new content to populate your Engrave site(...)"
Maybe they will figure that one out as time goes on. An awesome project for sure, thanks for sharing <3
thank you for reading! yes, i feel your sentiment... definitely would be nice to see my old stuff through the engrave platform... hopefully they do address this issue.
Just give us a week or two :)
Seems like ENGRAVE is good project . As steem itself is a good platform so giving good opportunities to develope good project like this. The best part which i like about this is post will be look like a site so blogger can give good represent their blog. Good one.
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Does it claim a beneficiary reward?
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15% I've heard on Discord, but better check there with someone from the team. I am kinda not too happy that I cannot find the information anywhere on engrave.website ...
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@improv yes, it does. Beneficiary rewards are set to 85% for bloggers and 15% for @engrave to cover development and maintenance costs.
@void: there is an information just below tiers (subdomain/domain). We've set it right now to 15% as you already wrote and we're trying to figure out a better solution. We're considering lowering it for active users. Or maybe a subscription model or one-time payment. But right now, we've chosen beneficiaries as it's (in our mind) the least interfering and engaging method to monetize that kind of project. Engrave is targeted more to bloggers outside of the Steem network, especially those who don't have crypto-funds to cover fees.
I hope you bring a lot of new folks to the blockchain!
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I must be blind, still can't find it :-)
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