If you keep a Tarot blog, could you pop in here...

[swedishfish612]

and give me a bit of advice? I'm thinking of starting one, just to keep my daily draws and whatnot all in one place. Two things that I'm wanting advice on:

1. Posting pics of Tarot cards- Is this okay? I've tried doing a search on here, and I've read everything from "You must get permission from the company/artist" to "It's okay so long as you're posting just a daily draw or a few cards in a spread, not okay to post scans of the entire deck." I'm not trying to get sued or even step on any toes, so I figured I'd better ask!

2. Anyone want to recommend what they use- Blogger, Word Press, etc? I notice a LOT of blogs won't even let me look unless I have a Google email, which I don't have, so I think I'll avoid that. I want anyone to be able to see it, if they have a Google email or not. But I'm new to blogging and just don't know what to use. I want something free, of course, lol.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

 

[ravynangel]

deleted

 

[seedcake]

I have blog on Google but I think I'm going to abandon it. I really don't like how it looks etc. I just started tumblr but still under construction. I enjoy how this works, layouts etc. And I found pretty nice Tarot resources (not saying you can't find it on blogger 'cause I have there few blogs which I'm checking regularly). See what will work better for you - blogger, tumblr or wordpress. I'd recommend checking all anyway. I prefer at the moment tumblr, but maybe again move but to wordpress... Tough choices

 

[Belinda]

I'm still researching the whole copyright issue myself for the new blog I'm setting up so I cannot help you with that but I can comment on the blog itself.

I've used Blogger for a crafty type blog I have for a few years now and I like the ease of use and how much control I have over being able to shift the template as I choose, have access to the html portion for more in-depth control as well on top of being able to add Ads if I so choose. Blogger is part of google so you will need a account but that account will let you go across all google services like analytics, picasa and ad-sense to name a few.

Know that there is a difference between wordpress.com and .org. I set up a wordpress.com blog at first thinking I'd try something new but I do not like the restrictions on it and that you can only choose from a few themes, all the really cool ones either have to be paid for or are free on the .org version which will require purchase of the domain since its self hosted. For the free templates on .com you will not be able to alter the color scheme (unless you pay) or even change the font (unless you pay) which seems small but I'm an artsy person so I just like having that kind of control.

So now I have 2 sites for the same blog concept, I'm going to keep fiddling with both and then choose once they are both built up a little bit more but I am really leaning back towards Blogger.

 

[BodhiSeed]

I originally started with LiveJournal, but all the bugs in it drove me crazy. I've been at Blogger now for several years, and find it fairly bug-free and somewhat easy to use.

I use one card from a tarot deck and one from an oracle deck each day, and change the decks each week. Less cards lessens the chance that someone can create the whole deck from scans. I've also figured out how to disable the right click feature on it from this article:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/blogger-insert-photo-blog-post-right-protect-30492.html
When I begin my week with my decks, I always state the name of the deck, its creators and publishers. I always make sure to mention the name of the deck in use so anyone interested will know how to find and buy it.
Decks that are independently self-published, I try to link back to the creator's website. This gives them a little advertising which they don't get enough of since they don't have a publisher behind them.

 

[Harperhaven]

I too use Blogger. Its simple to use and I can make it private so I can post all the weird things I wouldn't particularly want anyone else to see!

 

[AJ]

what Harper said...just make it private and you can use anything you want on it

 

[happyfish]

I use Wordpress. It's pretty intuitive and easy to use.

As for images, in the US the ORIGINAL Rider Waite images are in the public domain - but anything that has been recolored, reissued, etc is still under copyright. It also seems that even the original 1909 RWS is not public domain in many other countries, because there are different laws all over the place. Yeah, image copyright is a hairy beast of an issue.

At any rate, I use the images from the original 1909 deck on my site (you can find them on Wikipedia).

If you're using decks from US Games, here are the 'official' guidelines. http://www.usgamesinc.com/info/TarotReproductionPolicies.pdf

Okay, the rest of what I'm about to say is purely my opinion and observations. I don't think deck publishers give two hoots about people posting images of cards on their blogs in most cases. The only way I think they'd ever really go after anyone is if you have very clear, detailed scans of cards - scans that were so good that people could easily print them instead of buying the deck. Many people - myself included - snap bazillions of pictures of our daily draws and post them to Instagram. I don't think this is a concern to deck publishers because the picture quality would not allow anyone to rip the images off to create a makeshift deck, if you see what I'm saying. But of course, this last paragraph is just my two cents, the earlier stuff is the official word of the law.

ETA: If you are still really concerned with copyright stuff, I'd also suggest looking into using images from an indie deck. For example, I got permission from Seven Stars to use images from her Deck of the Bastard on my site. Much simpler than dealing with a corporation.

 

[Cenozoic]

I think posting photos are fine, as long as they are low resolution (low to medium quality copies that are smaller in size). If you post high resolution photos on your blog, one thing is that other people can save those photos and print the cards out themselves (that's bad for businesses). The other thing is that high resolution photos will take a long time to load, and will slow down your blog. I think that as long as you're not planning to sell copies of the original cards, businesses won't sue you for copyright. Actually using and advertising the cards is actually helpful to businesses in a way.

I've used blogger, and there's an option in the settings to set it Public or not. It is free, and you can track page views and things like that. It's easy to use overall, and you can create multiple blogs from one account.

 

[swedishfish612]

All great info! Thanks, everyone!