Top 10 Best Dynamics NAV Blogs 2018

Let me start announcing that the best of the NAV bloggers and blogs here on DUG, in the period April 1^st 2017 to March 31^st 2018 is Luc van Vugt and his blog Van Vugt's dynamiXs.

And which day other than the release of Dynamics 365 Business Central, would be better to announce which of the NAV blogs here on Dynamics User Group, who are the best or most popular? In the words of Microsoft, then the Business Central release is the third generation of Navision. So while we have never before made a “Top 10 Best NAV Blogs” award here on DUG, then it may also be the last time we do it. Next year it may have a different name.

How did we measure it?

There would be many ways to say which blog it is. I could go into Google Analytics see how many views each blog post has in here. Luc’s blog is number one. I could also get the number of views from Telligent Community, our web platform. That number is different, as it also includes view counts via RSS feeds and users who have seen it via their email. Luc’s blog is number one. But we also have to consider how many posts, so that we get views-per-post average. Still it is Luc’s blog.

A good blog is not only how many views a post or blog has. There are other ways to measure quality. Number of users who have manually subscribed to a blog, how many comments and how many likes must also be taken into consideration. It tells us something about how many of our members have interacted with the blog. Is it interesting enough to get users to interact.

But even with the score we now get: Luc’s blog is and stay number one. But I let the numbers do their talking.

The Top 10 Best NAV Blogs on DUG 2018 are:

As you can see on the score, the there is far down to blog number 2. This is the blog by Mark Brummel. When DUG first had the ability to host blogs, then Mark was among one of the first to sign up with one. Mark has a lot of subscribers going back to when DUG was his primary blog. Today his primary blog homepage is at https://markbrummel.blog, but his blog still exits here on DUG as a blog mirror. The same is the case with number 3. “Waldo’s Blog”. One of the first blogs here on DUG, today found http://www.waldo.be/.  Number 4 is my own blog. Kerry Rosvold and her “Dynamics NAV Financials” blog takes the fifth place. Her blog is the only “mirror” which has never been hosted by DUG. My old friend Peik Bech-Andersen’s “Aphorisms about Microsoft Dynamics NAV” and Rashed Amini’s  “Ara3n blog” take number 6 and 7. Number 8 is Alex Chow, also one of “the original blogs” now at http://www.dynamicsnavconsultant.com. Urpo Kotipalo and his Dynamics NAV urpok is number 9. The last on our list number 10 is Kine’s Info, Kamil Sacek, who also started blogging in 2006.

Congratulation to all the bloggers! I’m very happy to see your blogs here on DUG.

Blogs on DUG

There are 40 different NAV blogs here on DUG. Half of them are hosted blogs posted by the blogger directly on DUG. This is a free service to all NAV community blogger we had since 2006, when we started using Telligent Community Server. At that time most of the NAV blogs where hosted by DUG, including Mark Brummel, Waldo, Alex Chow and Jörg Stryk etc. who all started their blogging career here. Later they have moved their blog to their own domain, but still have a mirror here on DUG, together with all their old posts.

For new NAV bloggers this is still the fastest way to get started blogging, without having to worry about website hosting, installation etc. They just have to start blog; the posts will be included in the aggregated blog roll and site maps and be visible in both site and Google search within minutes.

The other half of the blogs are “mirrored” blogs. Blogs where the bloggers host the original blog on a different site. What we see in the posts here on DUG is created via a RSS feed from the original blog. This functionality allows original blogs to be viewed here on DUG as well as other sites like Dynamics Community. Some blogs only publish an excerpt of the post in the feed. The result is that only a few lines is visible here on DUG. The user has to go to the blogs original URL, to read the post.

4 of the top 10 blogs are mirrored blogs, but all share the full content of their posts.

If you have a blog today you like to have shared here, or if you like to start to blog about Microsoft Dynamics (no matter which of the different products) and like DUG to host it for free, then contact me. Send me a message here on DUG. Or write it in the comments (of the original version of this blog post).