Hey folks, just working on getting the blog up to spec now. It should be operational shortly. In the meantime let me leave this message here.

About Manic Botanix Blogging

Hi, our aim is to create an open source community for information sharing and learning about all things hydroponic nutrients and additives. We reasoned that a blog would be the best way to handle this.

Why a blog and not a forum?

Several good reasons really. However, in a nutshell, it can be summarized as “quality over quantity”. Firstly, we don’t want great information being lost (buried) in a myriad of topics and posts which often occurs on forums. By creating a blog we can rate articles of significance and structure things is such a way where high-ranking posts remain prominent. Secondly, too much good information tends to become convoluted on forums where shills and trolls can easily bring the quality of the content down. Don’t get me wrong – forums are great repositories of information. However, two things; 1) for every topic there is generally both good and bad information posted (e.g. one question by a newbie gets ten different answers, most of which are contradictory and only serve to confuse) and 2) it has been my experience that too many good people (those who can really help others and impart sound and scientifically based information) move on because of trolls and argumentative posts (I.e. if someone knows their stuff they don’t tend to suffer fools gladly for too long). Due to this, wisdom is lost.

Enter the blog!!

Every comment is moderated before it goes live and the trash goes into the wastebasket where it belongs. The rules are simple. No shilling and no trolls.

Can I blog about any company’s products?

Absolutely! While we are Manic Botanix, no matter what nutrients and additives you use in your grows please feel free to discuss them and share. We want growers to get the best and most up-to-date information they can. I.e. if you think CANNA, Advanced Nutrients, House and Garden, General Hydroponics, Atami, Botanicare, Hesi, or any other line is the greatest thing since sliced bread you are welcome to say so and tell people why. We’d love to see some well documented side-by-side grows etc.

Can I blog about making my own nutrients and additives?

Absolutely! In fact, we strongly encourage this and might even be able to throw a few formulation options your way. If you have formulation knowledge and formulas that you can share please do. If you do share formulas please explain ratios and ppm in solution etc as best you can.

Basic Guidelines to Guest Blogging on Manic Botanix

• Articles must be unique and not published on your site or any other site in original or any modified form. Sorry folks, this is because Google penalizes us (website rankings) for duplicated content and not because we want to singularly host your information on our site alone.
• Articles do not need to be works of literary genius. Quality content is the key. For search engine indexing/ranking purposes we will correct typos and grammar mistakes and then have you okay any changes that we make before posting.
• No link spamming. If your article has important links relevant to it we will post these links no probs. If you have your own site, we will happily link to it.
• The article can be plain text or a word document. Images should be submitted in jpeg or png format. We will format and post up the articles with images when images are submitted. If you are unhappy with our formatting please contact us and we will remedy the situation based on your requirements.
• You are free to promote and link to your article on forums and social media like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Stumbleupon etc. Please just don’t post the article on other forums and sites – again this is because search engines penalize websites for duplicated content.

Articles and posts we won’t accept:

• Self promotional articles for your product / service (with one proviso listed below)
• If you are medically orientated with the consumers’ best interests in mind then we will happily publish your articles and promote your site and services
• Hidden info /Misrepresentation of facts/Factually incorrect information
• Copied and modified articles from any site (Sorry folks! This is related to the search bots who penalize websites for duplicate content)
• Racial and/or religious slurs
• Defamatory content (as defined by law). For instance, ff you want to pay out on a company or a product this needs to be supported by hard facts and done in such a way that it is not legally defamatory.
• Linking out to banned sites / hate sites/ adult sites / redirects
• Copyrighted content

Rules and Regulations

There are only three rules. 1) We only post quality information – if your blog is factually incorrect, or contains factually incorrect information we will contact you and explain why we haven’t posted it and help you to edit/correct it (we don’t anticipate this will occur too often – everyone is entitled to their own thoughts and opinions), 2) you must be 18 years or over to enter our blog section and, 3) shills and trolls will not be tolerated.

Interested?

If you have an article that can help the community grow, contact us. We’d love to hear from you and post your blogs.