7YK Blog

Today Chrissy Scivicque from OfficeArrow.com shares her story of building up her blog, selling it and then being hired to keep developing it - many bloggers dream.

There’s no denying it: blogging is now considered a legitimate way to launch the career of your dreams. The opportunities for bloggers are numerous and they only continue to grow. Take it from me: that blog you’re building may lead you in directions you never would have imagined possible.

My story is pretty cool, actually. There I was, a 28 year old Executive Assistant, struggling to find my way in what many view as a thankless career. I started my blog, The Executive Assistant’s Toolbox, in August of 2007 as a way to meet other office professionals and share my experiences in a helpful way. It didn’t hurt that I loved to write and secretly always dreamed of doing it for a living.

Now, less than a year later, my blog has been purchased by a start-up company (at a price tag many would be shocked by) and I’ve been hired by them to manage their entire content strategy and yes, write full-time. Bye bye same old, same old. Hello, career of my dreams!

The Opportunities

My story could have gone in a couple of different directions. I always treated my blog as a business. I had high hopes from the beginning, though I wasn’t quite sure of my ultimate goal. As I saw it, bloggers had the following opportunities:

Become a ProBlogger

In this scenario, I imagined working from home and making a full-time income from my blog (perhaps a few different blogs). I quickly monetized my blog with Google Adsense and Amazon Affiliate marketing and I was making a nice side income within about 4 months. But this route was going to be a long and difficult road for a non-techie like me.

Use the Blog to Promote Services

Bloggers have a huge opportunity to use their platform to promote their personal services such as coaching, consulting or freelance writing. I was considering becoming a Virtual Assistant and Career Coach – services that would have been easily promotable to my audience.

Build Blog, Sell Blog, Repeat

This has been a popular option in the recent past. With sites being auctioned off each day (some for astronomical figures!), this became an interesting possibility for me. The only problem seemed to be the time involved. Building a popular blog isn’t easy – as most of you know. I couldn’t imagine doing it many times over again. And on top of that, I couldn’t bear the thought of selling my baby. I had poured my heart and soul into this thing. The price tag would have to be pretty high…

The option I never really considered is the one that happened: “The Package Deal”

So, yes, blog sales happen all the time these days. Occasionally, the founder stays on for a while through the transition. But typically, the blog becomes under the full control of the new owner within a few months. However, in some instances, the purchaser may have a long-term need for the founder’s expertise. In my case, I had experience as an actual “member” of the target market, credibility with the audience and I loved writing. But I had little technical know-how and close to zero dollars to invest in building the site myself.

It was a match made in heaven: OfficeArrow purchased my site, merged it with theirs, and brought me on to help guide the growing business. A win-win for all. And with a hefty sum of future stock units included in that deal, I don’t feel as if I’ve completely given up my ownership interest.

Of course, I still had a touch of emotional separation anxiety as I watched my baby become a part of another family. It was exciting and scary all at once. Now I’m watching my baby grow up, living the life she always deserved. And thankfully, since I’m a part of her new family, I still get a say in her upbringing! “The Package Deal” offers the best of all worlds.

These are just some of the opportunities available for bloggers. To take advantage of any of these however, your blog needs to be something special. There are several strategies you can employ to stand out from the crowd. Tomorrow, in Part 2 of this article, I’ll share some of the things I did and why they helped me achieve “The Package Deal”.

Chrissy Scivicque is the Senior Content Manager at OfficeArrow.com – the world’s first online community created for office professionals, by office professionals. She writes a wide variety of articles to help people do their jobs more effectively and with less frustration. You can follow her journey by joining the OfficeArrow Community today - membership is free!

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Over the last week I’ve run some Crazy Egg heat map tracking on two posts on Digital Photography School (both of which got to the front page of Digg and got a lot of traffic) that both highlight to me a very simple method of increasing the number of pages that people view when they visit your blog.

Let me illustrate with a screen capture of the heat map from my post - How to Avoid Camera Shake:

What you’re looking at above is the ‘hottest’ zone on the post. It is the most clicked upon part of the page. This section of the page was clicked on just under 2000 times over the duration of this test. The full page had just under 6000 clicks.

What stands out for me is that the section of the page you’re viewing above is a long way from the top of the post. While the general rule is that people click more on links at the tops of posts - this section of the page is only viewable once you’ve hit ‘page down’ 7 times!

The first two links in the section are links to my subscription page and a byline link to the author of the post - but the other five are all internal links to other articles on the blog. This means 1800 or so of the visitors to this page viewed at least one other page on the blog.

The ‘Further Reading on Camera Shake’ links were ones that I manually added to the post and the ‘Read more posts like ‘How to….’ links were automated links generated with a WP Plugin.

Lets look at another example

In this test (on a post on ‘Jowling‘) I’m showing you the same section of the page. This time I had to hit ‘page down’ 5 times to get to it. Again it’s low on the page and again I’ve got the automated links as well as two others in the ‘A Couple of other things….’ section.

Once again - this is the hottest part of the page in terms of clicks with around 1600 clicks (all internal) out of 6500 clicks on the full page.

Why do readers click links so far down the page?

It might seem a little odd that links so far down a page would be clicked on at such a high rate - but the reason that it happens is quite logical. These points on the page are what I call ‘pause points’. They are parts of a page where readers pause and make a decision on what to do next.

These sections are all at the end of articles - a point where readers end one activity and look to do another one. Many readers simply hit ‘back’ at this point or head to Google to search for something else - however when you give them something else to do or read you have a decent chance of convincing them to stay on your site.

Other Things to Do at Pause Points

There are of course other things that you can do in these ‘pause points’ on a blog including:

• Advertising - this is a ‘hot zone’ in terms of CPC ads
• Affiliate Programs - I don’t find they convert as well as CPC ads here but they can work
• Social Bookmarking - many bloggers run social bookmark buttons in this spot to encourage readers to vote for the post
• Subscription Invitations - this is a great place to get conversions from first time readers to subscribe to your blog

Really any key conversion goals that you want to achieve can work in a ‘Pause Point’ - although when you put too many options in that point for readers you probably dilute the conversion rate. What else do you put in ‘pause points’?

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Over the last two weeks I’ve been running a 10 part series here at ProBlogger on 10 ways that you can let your blog go and what you should do about them. The series is now complete with the following 10 methods to let your blog go.

1. Lack of Posting
2. Getting Off Topic
3. Becoming a Self Centered Blogger
4. Great Content… Bad Titles
5. Letting Comment Spam Take Over Your Blog
6. Excuse Posts
7. Becoming a Negative Blogger
8. Having a Lack of Original Content
9. Becoming Obsessed with Any One Aspect of Your Blog
10. Stretching Yourself Too Thinly

So now that the series is over I’d be interested in hear your feedback.

1. what else would you add to the list?
2. which ones don’t you agree with?
3. which ones do you struggle with the most? How do you overcome them?

PS: I’m now back from my paternity leave and am looking forward to getting back into some more blogging in the coming weeks. I am currently working on some posts on ‘finding readers for your blog’ for the coming week. Stay tuned.

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Normally, I would not do movie reviews on this site. I would generally use aaronbrazell.com which is much more of a personal site than this. However, there are quite a lot of lessons and hidden agenda items (good and bad) in Wall*E that I think are applicable.

If you’re afraid of spoilers, you might not want to read further, however I will do my best not to offer spoilers, per se and instead talk about the principles behind the messages because that is where I feel the importance is.

From the get go, it was apparent to me that Wall*E was an environmentally oriented flick. We’re introduced to a desolate earth that struck me as very much similar to the one we saw in I am Legend. Bonus points to the astute viewers that catch the I am Legend hat tip in the movie.

To me, it was apparent that the desolation of earth was a result of human irresponsibility and that Al Gore probably was lurking somewhere ready to hand out carbon credits. While that message certainly existed, it was the message of personal responsibility that struck me much more direct between the eyeballs.

In the movie, we get the sense that a pseudo-governmental organization has morphed humanity into a dependent culture that is given everything. It is pampered, fed, smothered and by and large turned into a welfare culture where the human race has lost the ability to care for itself or even see any problem with their state. They have been turned into automatons, beholden to the whims of the BnL Corporation.

The heroics of the movie revolve around, among other things, the ability of the human race to take responsibilities for their own actions and rise above the societal norms inbred into them, challenging the status quo and ultimately their race.

Without getting too political, the metaphor I saw was comparative, in many ways, to current western culture that is increasingly liberalized, and increasingly fed the doctrine of government dependence. Rely on government-subsidized social security. We need to pass a law that does blah. The Constitution is a living document requiring federal judges to tell us what it means for us today. Get my riff?

Another strong metaphor I saw, is applicable for those of us in social media - and really any kind of new media, whether it’s politics, science or sports. Those that follow the dotted lines are doomed to exist in a narrow and unproductive world that never changes!

Throughout the movie, robots followed the dictates of lines painted on the ground. They never left those lines because those lines provided guidance. Those lines provides meaning. Those lines provided safety.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have more rambos that challenged the status quo, said what they meant and meant what they said? They didn’t follow the dictates of Techmeme or those perceived as A-listers? I mentioned yesterday that confidence is a sexy attribute and stepping outside the lines demonstrates confidence that will take you somewhere.

As a sidenote, yet related issue, this mommy blogger needs to quit worrying about a so-called A-list blogger and be confident in herself. Those that are considered A-list, including myself, often are not (also including myself). No one can do your job better than you. Own it and forget about the rest.

I highly encourage people to see this movie. Besides the fact that Pixar always makes great movies, it’s a wonderful movie for kids and adults alike and if you go with an open mind, you’re going to be challenged.

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Normally, I would not do movie reviews on this site. I would generally use aaronbrazell.com which is much more of a personal site than this. However, there are quite a lot of lessons and hidden agenda items (good and bad) in Wall*E that I think are applicable.

If you’re afraid of spoilers, you might not want to read further, however I will do my best not to offer spoilers, per se and instead talk about the principles behind the messages because that is where I feel the importance is.

From the get go, it was apparent to me that Wall*E was an environmentally oriented flick. We’re introduced to a desolate earth that struck me as very much similar to the one we saw in I am Legend. Bonus points to the astute viewers that catch the I am Legend hat tip in the movie.

To me, it was apparent that the desolation of earth was a result of human irresponsibility and that Al Gore probably was lurking somewhere ready to hand out carbon credits. While that message certainly existed, it was the message of personal responsibility that struck me much more direct between the eyeballs.

In the movie, we get the sense that a pseudo-governmental organization has morphed humanity into a dependent culture that is given everything. It is pampered, fed, smothered and by and large turned into a welfare culture where the human race has lost the ability to care for itself or even see any problem with their state. They have been turned into automatons, beholden to the whims of the BnL Corporation.

The heroics of the movie revolve around, among other things, the ability of the human race to take responsibilities for their own actions and rise above the societal norms inbred into them, challenging the status quo and ultimately their race.

Without getting too political, the metaphor I saw was comparative, in many ways, to current western culture that is increasingly liberalized, and increasingly fed the doctrine of government dependence. Rely on government-subsidized social security. We need to pass a law that does blah. The Constitution is a living document requiring federal judges to tell us what it means for us today. Get my riff?

Another strong metaphor I saw, is applicable for those of us in social media - and really any kind of new media, whether it’s politics, science or sports. Those that follow the dotted lines are doomed to exist in a narrow and unproductive world that never changes!

Throughout the movie, robots followed the dictates of lines painted on the ground. They never left those lines because those lines provided guidance. Those lines provides meaning. Those lines provided safety.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have more rambos that challenged the status quo, said what they meant and meant what they said? They didn’t follow the dictates of Techmeme or those perceived as A-listers? I mentioned yesterday that confidence is a sexy attribute and stepping outside the lines demonstrates confidence that will take you somewhere.

As a sidenote, yet related issue, this mommy blogger needs to quit worrying about a so-called A-list blogger and be confident in herself. Those that are considered A-list, including myself, often are not (also including myself). No one can do your job better than you. Own it and forget about the rest.

I highly encourage people to see this movie. Besides the fact that Pixar always makes great movies, it’s a wonderful movie for kids and adults alike and if you go with an open mind, you’re going to be challenged.

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I would say that my husband and I are about as educated as parents can be regarding how to keep our children safe online. We don’t allow them to surf the Web, they can only go to sites that we have approved and bookmarked for them. Of course, once they are on a Web page, they could type just about anything into the browser and go anywhere, but they also know that we are going to be walking by their computers at any time to see what they are doing. And, if necessary, we will use Remote Desktop Management software to allow us to “take over” their computer and see what they are viewing.

It’s scary, isn’t it? I know it is possible to keep kids off the Internet entirely, but my husband works in PC Support and I’m a blogger, which means the Internet is a big part of our lives. I’d much rather teach my children how to be safe while they are online, and not only HOW, but WHY. It’s hard for them to understand that someone who sounds like a kid asking to be their friend on Xbox Live could actually be an adult. They want to watch videos and play games, but I don’t want them seeing porn. So what is a parent to do? Well, Michael Cafarelli founded GuardChild.

GuardChild was founded by a team of parents concerned by the explosion of news reports about child predators frequenting Internet Chat Rooms and exploiting children. We realized a need for a ‘one stop’ website where parents could gather to share their knowledge and experiences, educate themselves about Internet security, and review and purchase the latest child-monitoring software.

The GuardChild Knowledge Center provides FREE resources including toll-free phone numbers for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, links to similar child safety sites like CyberAngels and NetSmartz, articles, safety tips, and recommended reading. The Knowledge Center also explains how to choose Child Protection Software, which is the next part of the site that I want to explain to you.

GuardChild also sells monitoring software for your home computer, with prices starting at just $39.95. Whether you want to simply see what your children view online, chat protection that sends you an email if your child is chatting about a topic that you have set as off-limits, the ability to schedule which times your child can be online, even monitor entire IM conversations, GuardChild has software you can purchase. Should you monitor your child’s “private” IM chats? In my opinion, YES.

The issue of trust revolves around both parents and children understanding what is and isn’t allowed. Monitoring your child’s online activity to make sure they aren’t getting into situations they shouldn’t be in is not spying, it’s PARENTING. Wouldn’t you want to know if your child was discussing drug use, or viewing porn, or even just using inappropriate language in their chats? The Internet has lots of great uses, from educational sites to sites that are fun, but children are not adults and don’t need to be in adult situations, either. Letting your child know that you are paying attention to what they do online lets them know that if they do get into an uncomfortable situation, you’ll be able to step in and be the “bad guy” and get them out of it.

While there are free resources available on GuardChild, there is also a community that costs a very reasonable $19.95 a year to join. With paid membership in the GuardChild Community, you are entitled to:
* Hundreds of websites (with access to thousands more embedded in our sites and new sites added monthly) for family-friendly websites, online safety resources, parent resources, educational websites, and much more (GuardChild has done this research for you, so you don’t have to spend hours online searching for relevant information)
* Articles about online child safety and family Internet use
* GuardChild Community Blog: interact with other parents who share your concerns, learn from online safety experts, and contribute your own articles, advice, and questions
* Discounts on the best web-filtering software and child-monitoring software available.
* Access to a searchable State-by-State Sex Offender Registry
* An Instant Messaging/Chat/Text Messaging/Emoticon Glossary
* Email alerts of new Feature Blog postings and product updates

If you are interested in learning more about how to keep your kids safe while they are online, please visit the GuardChild website.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fmomreviews.net%2F2008%2F06%2F29%2Fprotect-your-kids-when-they-are-online-with-guardchild%2F'; addthis_title = 'Protect+your+kids+when+they+are+online+with+GuardChild'; addthis_pub = ''; Comments (No responses yet)

I would say that my husband and I are about as educated as parents can be regarding how to keep our children safe online. We don’t allow them to surf the Web, they can only go to sites that we have approved and bookmarked for them. Of course, once they are on a Web page, they could type just about anything into the browser and go anywhere, but they also know that we are going to be walking by their computers at any time to see what they are doing. And, if necessary, we will use Remote Desktop Management software to allow us to “take over” their computer and see what they are viewing.

It’s scary, isn’t it? I know it is possible to keep kids off the Internet entirely, but my husband works in PC Support and I’m a blogger, which means the Internet is a big part of our lives. I’d much rather teach my children how to be safe while they are online, and not only HOW, but WHY. It’s hard for them to understand that someone who sounds like a kid asking to be their friend on Xbox Live could actually be an adult. They want to watch videos and play games, but I don’t want them seeing porn. So what is a parent to do? Well, Michael Cafarelli founded GuardChild.

GuardChild was founded by a team of parents concerned by the explosion of news reports about child predators frequenting Internet Chat Rooms and exploiting children. We realized a need for a ‘one stop’ website where parents could gather to share their knowledge and experiences, educate themselves about Internet security, and review and purchase the latest child-monitoring software.

The GuardChild Knowledge Center provides FREE resources including toll-free phone numbers for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, links to similar child safety sites like CyberAngels and NetSmartz, articles, safety tips, and recommended reading. The Knowledge Center also explains how to choose Child Protection Software, which is the next part of the site that I want to explain to you.

GuardChild also sells monitoring software for your home computer, with prices starting at just $39.95. Whether you want to simply see what your children view online, chat protection that sends you an email if your child is chatting about a topic that you have set as off-limits, the ability to schedule which times your child can be online, even monitor entire IM conversations, GuardChild has software you can purchase. Should you monitor your child’s “private” IM chats? In my opinion, YES.

The issue of trust revolves around both parents and children understanding what is and isn’t allowed. Monitoring your child’s online activity to make sure they aren’t getting into situations they shouldn’t be in is not spying, it’s PARENTING. Wouldn’t you want to know if your child was discussing drug use, or viewing porn, or even just using inappropriate language in their chats? The Internet has lots of great uses, from educational sites to sites that are fun, but children are not adults and don’t need to be in adult situations, either. Letting your child know that you are paying attention to what they do online lets them know that if they do get into an uncomfortable situation, you’ll be able to step in and be the “bad guy” and get them out of it.

While there are free resources available on GuardChild, there is also a community that costs a very reasonable $19.95 a year to join. With paid membership in the GuardChild Community, you are entitled to:
* Hundreds of websites (with access to thousands more embedded in our sites and new sites added monthly) for family-friendly websites, online safety resources, parent resources, educational websites, and much more (GuardChild has done this research for you, so you don’t have to spend hours online searching for relevant information)
* Articles about online child safety and family Internet use
* GuardChild Community Blog: interact with other parents who share your concerns, learn from online safety experts, and contribute your own articles, advice, and questions
* Discounts on the best web-filtering software and child-monitoring software available.
* Access to a searchable State-by-State Sex Offender Registry
* An Instant Messaging/Chat/Text Messaging/Emoticon Glossary
* Email alerts of new Feature Blog postings and product updates

If you are interested in learning more about how to keep your kids safe while they are online, please visit the GuardChild website.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fmomreviews.net%2F2008%2F06%2F29%2Fprotect-your-kids-when-they-are-online-with-guardchild%2F'; addthis_title = 'Protect+your+kids+when+they+are+online+with+GuardChild'; addthis_pub = ''; Comments (No responses yet)

A couple of weeks ago I had an email from Terry Ng from Kineda (a great fashion site) telling me about how they’d been using WordPress and bbPress together to create an innovative site. I asked Terry if she’d tell us what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. Here is her guest post on using bbPress and WordPress together.

Kineda is a blog where young trendsetters come to read about the latest in fashion and lifestyle. It’s a very large and fast paced niche that is constantly changing, and keeping up with all the various trends is virtually impossible. Like many bloggers, I’d often receive letters from readers asking if I had seen such and such. The answer was usually no. After a flurry of such e-mails one afternoon, I figured why not harness the knowledge of my readership. After all, a million eyes are better than two right?

The idea of the Kineda Lookbook was born. The Lookbook would be a way for readers to share the trends they discovered and bought into without having to go through me to do so. The big question was how to make this as simple for a large group of non-tech savvy readers. My initial thought was, “Why not allow everyone contributer access to my WordPress install?” Readers could submit their ideas directly, and all I would need to do is hit the lovely approve and publish button. I gave this idea a trial run for a week, and soon discovered that my WordPress dashboard became an unmanageable nightmare. WordPress just wasn’t built with a half million contributers in mind.

Back to the drawing board I went. A few years ago, Kineda was run solely as a forum. It was a great community and an easy way for readers to share ideas, but lacked direction because of the range of topics anyone could create. It was because of this lack of direction, that I moved Kineda to it’s current blog format where I could provide the focus the site needed. Now if I could guide the forum topics created by readers, I’d be half way to finding a solution to power the Lookbook.

I set out to find compatible forums for WordPress that I could modify for this project. The three criteria were:

1. Lightweight but extensible
2. Built with CSS (I’m a stickler for web standards)
3. Seamless integration with WordPress

The two big forum guns, vBulletin and phpBB were definitely out of the question since they’re way too bloated and built primarily with tables. I then looked at open source solution Vanilla which seemed like a winner, but unfortunately failed on integration with WordPress. A completely different code base and database schema meant management would be difficult during version changes. Vanilla does offer a plugin to share logins between the two systems, but it’s very fickle with the which version of Wordpress it works with. The other drawback is the plugin only works with new users, forcing existing users to re-regiser. Unacceptable in my mind.

The logical choice was bbPress, made by the same great folks that bring us WordPress. bbPress is extremely lightweight with a focus on integration, speed, and web standards while keeping the package as small as possible. And although bbPress is lean and mean, it does offer an extensive plugin system like WordPress to extend it’s capabilities.

The pairing of the two softwares would create the basis for Kineda’s Blog and community powered Lookbook combo.

Other examples of highly customized bbPress and WordPress pairings are 9Rules Notes (now called Chawlk) and Technorati’s Support Forums. These unique communities are based on bbPress’s flexbility to be extended with almost any functionality imaginable. Think Wordpress plugins on roids!

The first and most important step to your new bbPress and WordPress community should be seamless integration. Users will be frustrated and discouraged if they have to login once to your blog and then again to your forum. An easy guide on how to integrate bbPress and WordPress can be found on Kineda.

Once you’ve integrated the two, you’ll need to theme your bbPress install to match your WordPress blog. Themes work exactly the same as they do in WordPress.

Next, you’ll need to customize your bbPress install. There are hundreds of plugins for bbPress, but I’ve highlighted an important few that will help you get started on building your new online community. Many are similar to the ones used to power Kineda’s lookbook.

• bb-avatars - Allows users to define their own Gravatar or avatar
• Private Messaging - Allows users to send messages to each other
• bbPRess Polls - Allows users to add polls to topics
• Private Forums - Show forums only to users with appropriate roles
• Memberlist - Display all active members
• Allow Images - Users may include images in their posts

I hope this has been helpful in looking beyond WordPress to enhance your blog and the community around it.

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A couple of weeks ago I had an email from Terry Ng from Kineda (a great fashion site) telling me about how they’d been using WordPress and bbPress together to create an innovative site. I asked Terry if she’d tell us what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. Here is her guest post on using bbPress and WordPress together.

Kineda is a blog where young trendsetters come to read about the latest in fashion and lifestyle. It’s a very large and fast paced niche that is constantly changing, and keeping up with all the various trends is virtually impossible. Like many bloggers, I’d often receive letters from readers asking if I had seen such and such. The answer was usually no. After a flurry of such e-mails one afternoon, I figured why not harness the knowledge of my readership. After all, a million eyes are better than two right?

The idea of the Kineda Lookbook was born. The Lookbook would be a way for readers to share the trends they discovered and bought into without having to go through me to do so. The big question was how to make this as simple for a large group of non-tech savvy readers. My initial thought was, “Why not allow everyone contributer access to my WordPress install?” Readers could submit their ideas directly, and all I would need to do is hit the lovely approve and publish button. I gave this idea a trial run for a week, and soon discovered that my WordPress dashboard became an unmanageable nightmare. WordPress just wasn’t built with a half million contributers in mind.

Back to the drawing board I went. A few years ago, Kineda was run solely as a forum. It was a great community and an easy way for readers to share ideas, but lacked direction because of the range of topics anyone could create. It was because of this lack of direction, that I moved Kineda to it’s current blog format where I could provide the focus the site needed. Now if I could guide the forum topics created by readers, I’d be half way to finding a solution to power the Lookbook.

I set out to find compatible forums for WordPress that I could modify for this project. The three criteria were:

1. Lightweight but extensible
2. Built with CSS (I’m a stickler for web standards)
3. Seamless integration with WordPress

The two big forum guns, vBulletin and phpBB were definitely out of the question since they’re way too bloated and built primarily with tables. I then looked at open source solution Vanilla which seemed like a winner, but unfortunately failed on integration with WordPress. A completely different code base and database schema meant management would be difficult during version changes. Vanilla does offer a plugin to share logins between the two systems, but it’s very fickle with the which version of Wordpress it works with. The other drawback is the plugin only works with new users, forcing existing users to re-regiser. Unacceptable in my mind.

The logical choice was bbPress, made by the same great folks that bring us WordPress. bbPress is extremely lightweight with a focus on integration, speed, and web standards while keeping the package as small as possible. And although bbPress is lean and mean, it does offer an extensive plugin system like WordPress to extend it’s capabilities.

The pairing of the two softwares would create the basis for Kineda’s Blog and community powered Lookbook combo.

Other examples of highly customized bbPress and WordPress pairings are 9Rules Notes (now called Chawlk) and Technorati’s Support Forums. These unique communities are based on bbPress’s flexbility to be extended with almost any functionality imaginable. Think Wordpress plugins on roids!

The first and most important step to your new bbPress and WordPress community should be seamless integration. Users will be frustrated and discouraged if they have to login once to your blog and then again to your forum. An easy guide on how to integrate bbPress and WordPress can be found on Kineda.

Once you’ve integrated the two, you’ll need to theme your bbPress install to match your WordPress blog. Themes work exactly the same as they do in WordPress.

Next, you’ll need to customize your bbPress install. There are hundreds of plugins for bbPress, but I’ve highlighted an important few that will help you get started on building your new online community. Many are similar to the ones used to power Kineda’s lookbook.

• bb-avatars - Allows users to define their own Gravatar or avatar
• Private Messaging - Allows users to send messages to each other
• bbPRess Polls - Allows users to add polls to topics
• Private Forums - Show forums only to users with appropriate roles
• Memberlist - Display all active members
• Allow Images - Users may include images in their posts

I hope this has been helpful in looking beyond WordPress to enhance your blog and the community around it.

Share This

Comments (No responses yet)

Speaking in an interview with the Financial Times recently, Verizon Chief Ivan Seidenberg revealed that he would like to see Verizon take full control of Verizon Wireless, which at the moment is a joint venture between Verizon Wireless who hold 55 percent and Vodafone.

Despite saying Vodafone” has been a great partner,” and given that Verizon is “doing 100 percent of the work,” the general tone of the conversation points to relations between Verizon Wireless and Vodafone are somewhat strained to say the least. Furthermore, Seidenberg believes that once top honcho Arun Sarin hands over the Verizon reigns to Vittorio Colao next month, that “maybe he’ll want to do something different.”

Seidenberg said: “You know, “different” as in “sell off $60 billion worth of Verizon Wireless to Verizon Communications.”

Seems Seidenberg was quite talkative as he went on that Sarin wanted Verizon to purchase Alltel last year, however Verizon Communications backed off fearing a bidding war with Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sach’s private equity unit. But it seems all’s well that ends well because Verizon Wireless agreed to purchase Alltel a couple of weeks ago for $28.1 billion.

So with all this frankness coming from Seidenberg, does it mean that we will be seeing a split between Verizon Wireless and Vodafone sometime in the future? We’ll just have to stand by and wait to see what happens.

Source – engadgetmobile

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