Why you should join the BC Huddle...

Let’s BC Huddle! For those who don’t know or missed out on this, BC Huddle is your Chelsea community. It is many things in one. Most importantly, this is about a Chelsea forum and a Chelsea community. As a Chelsea forum, it has all the features of a forum and more. As a Chelsea community, it has all the features that you lot have always wanted to have here at BlueChampions. Let’s look at what this BC Huddle is all about.

Chelsea Forum

I hope you know how a forum works. It’s just a discussion board. A blog is all about the latest article. It could be on a certain topic. In the world of football, there are always about a dozen live topics to discuss. It is quite difficult for a blog to keep up with all the happenings in the world of football.

Primarily because that’s not what a blog is all about. The post in a blog is always about someone’s views or opinions about one or a few things and the idea is not to talk about everything that happens in football. There could always be various things that you want to talk about but would look out of topic to discuss that under a certain blog post. Also, the updation and its frequency of a blog is with the individual who runs the blog. I might not update the blog one day because I felt too sleepy. That should not be a deterrent for discuss football matters here with your bunch.

This is where a forum fits in beautifully. BC Huddle has multiple categories such as Chelsea matches, non-Chelsea matches, football debates, news and rumours, fantasy league, football games etc. This makes it very easy for you to be able to discuss multiple football matters at the same time.

In a blog, you have a certain people with two horns and only they get to post articles while the rest can only comment on/under the articles. In a discussion board, you all can grow two horns. Anyone can create a topic or thread or an article. Everyone is a writer as well as a contributor in a discussion board. Among other things, you can also create polls under the threads you create. Also, you could be creating threads in some categories while responding to other threads in some other categories. As you’d have figured out, forums can be very dynamic.

The other important thing about BC Huddle is that it is a Chelsea community. When I say it’s a community, what I mean is there are various tools and features that can maintain this group as a very organised community. First up, there is a profile page for each and every fan there. Once you sign up, in your profile page you can pretty much write your own autobiography with some key details that any fellow fan would like to know about you.

Also, just like in Orkut and other such networking sites, in BC Huddle you can create your own groups and have people join these groups. No surprise to you—I have created a group called "All hail the special one", which is a group for all Jose Mourinho fans. Similarly, you can create your own groups where you can share messages, pictures and stuff.

There is also a member list which has the full list of all BC Huddle members along with their post count. From there too, you can click the member name and see his/her complete profile that includes detailed information such as the list of all threads and posts made the member. Also, you can add members to your contact list. You can also add them to your friends list after mutual acceptance through friend requests. You can send private messages to those who are added as friends in your contact list.

Did I tell you about the albums and galleries? Each one of you can have your own albums where you can add images which may or may not be viewed by the rest of the members. Isn’t this something some of you always wanted to see here? Gives me an opportunity to put all my Stamford Bridge images!

We will have multiple moderators in the forum. Some of you could be the moderators. When I say moderation, it does not mean what you post will be held. All threads and posts will be published as soon as you hit submit. What the moderators would do is, check the published stuff to see if there are anything objectionable. If there are, they would give you a "yellow card" that would carry a certain ban on viewing or posting or both and a "red card" if there is a need. Only moderators will be able to see the yellow/red card under each member’s name.

Each member also has a "user title", which is a result/indication of how many posts has s/he made. Every member starts with the title "Chelsea fan". After 50 posts, you’d become a "Chelsea supporter". After 250 posts, you’d join the "Chelsea academy". After 1000 posts, you move to the "Chelsea reserves". You need to do 2000 posts to make it to the "Chelsea bench". And then once you hit 5000 posts, you’ll finally get a chance to be a "Chelsea player". To be "Chelsea starter", you gotta hit 7500 posts. Once you complete a milestone of 10000 posts, you’re the "Chelsea captain". But it’s not over yet. When you cross 15000, you truly become a "Chelsea icon". Once you touch 25000 posts, man, you’re a "Chelsea legend" and you stay that way for the rest of your BC Huddle life!

That’s about the user title. There is also something called the user reputation. The reputation does not have anything with the number of threads or posts. It’s just like the karma thingy we had earlier. If someone liked your post they add some reputation points to you. If you hurt someone or abuse, your reputation might take a hit.

What about the bread and butter? Yes, you create threads like nobody’s business. You can create threads based on some news item, some rumour, some observation you made, some piece of opinion or some something or the other. You can also subscribe to certain threads that you find interesting and are keen to follow. That shows up in your control panel. Check out all the links on the top in the navigation bar and also on the side bar. Anything that you want to change about yourself as a member is done from ‘your control panel’ that you see on the sidebar.

There is a calendar as well on the top navigation bar. I intend to update the calendar with Chelsea fixtures and other events that could be of interest to us. There is a fantastic "search" function as well. If you want read all the thread and/or posts with the term "penalty", you could just do that. The "new posts" link just lists down those posts that were published since your last visit and now.

Back to the sidebar. I’ve put a list of key links to some of the most common websites that we might use on a daily basis as a Chelsea fan and a football fan. As of now, it has almost all the links that you might want. I will pdate it with some more in due course. If you get any doubt about any of the features, just hit the FAQ button under the header logo. There is a very comprehensive and neat list of all possible questions that you might have. The link of BC Huddle in this blog is right under the header and navigation bar. I intend to leave it there that way, if you were struggle for the link.

So that’s pretty much your lot. I could have missed a few things in this post. If you start using BC Huddle, you’ll realise that there are a lot of stuff in there that is more fun as long as we have more people using it. This, I think, is the first step in creating that BlueChampions community. Get in & enjoy!

Related posts:

1. ‘BlueChampions’ completes 3 years | Join BC Huddle! Let’s BC Huddle! For those who don’t know or missed...
2. Alex All Set To Join | Lampard Out For Few Weeks? Let’s BC Huddle! For those who don’t know or missed...
3. Daniel Alves Dying To Join The ‘Happy Family’ Let’s BC Huddle! For those who don’t know or missed...