A Professional Writer
April 11th, 2009
Does A Discussion Forums Website Need A Front Page?
February 26th, 2009
I’ve built a couple discussion forums websites in the past few years, they were plain installations of phpBB (phpbb2 and phpbb3), which is a great software by the way.
You basically go to the website, and there you see a list of all the discussion forums; simple and straight to the point.
I am about to create a new discussion website, and I was thinking how nice it would be to have a front page. But what should a front page to a discussion website be? Does it take away from the nature of the site, which is purely a discussion website?
Could the front page attract more readers in hopes of turning them into contributors?
I investigated using wordpress, to simply install word press on the root directory and then install the discussion forums under a directory like /forums/
Using worpress as the front page seemed appealing because I like wordpress. However, after further investigation I found that it may be hard to make the front page dynamic.
There is something to be said for simplicity here..
Let’s stop here and ask the question, why. Why do I want a front page? Here’s a list of the features I want to add by using a front page:
- Show the latest posts
- Show most active posts
- Show a user list
- Show a website announcement or two.
- Show rss feeds from other sources
- Show links to other websites
- Be neat and clean
- Show Ads or suggested products for sale
- Directs people to the forums often
Getting wordpress to interact with phpBB was an effort I was not willing to take, let alone managing software upgrades.
Luckily, as I expected, someone else had thought of having a front page for a discussion forum and it turns out a few have been built.
These are the best 5 front page modifications for a phpbb discussion forum:
http://damysterious.xs4all.nl/portalxl/portal.php?style=30&style=1
http://www.phpbbireland.com/phpBB3/portal.php
http://alphaportal.net/index.php
Some are more sofisticated, some are slower loading. I will investigate these and probably use one of them on my forums website.
If you have any experience with any of these please let me know.
Sell Your Books (or other stuff) Online Easily & For Free
February 21st, 2009
I have had a couple online stores in the last three years. I built both using an open source software called OScommerce. Back then OScommerce was the best mySql/Php open source solution.
I am helping a friend build a store and took a quick look around to see what has changed. It seems not much has changed with OScommerece, this is not particularly a good thing. OScommerce remains a solid solution, and there are plenty of plug ins to install. However, Zen Cart seems to be more user friendly, it also seems to have a larger contributing community with quit a few pre-packaged plugins.
I found many Zen Cart users that raved about the easy installation. A couple years ago Zen Cart lacked in themes and plug-ins; this is not the case now.
Most the online stores I found that were small business stores used OScommerce or Zen Cart. My own OScommerce store got about 100 hits a day and sold about $20,000 worth of merchandize and while it didn’t do my job for me, it was still perfect and I was happy with it (but I’m not a demanding person).
As one would expect, both Zen Cart and OScommerce work with paypal, accept text bulk uploads, have categories, themese, order tracking, etc..
I also researched Bid Ware but found a lot of complaints about its limitations and aparent need for a licencing fee.
I will install Zen Cart this evening and report back to you on how the installation goes.
Bottom line, if you would like to sell your own books or any products for that matter, check out both Zen Cart and OScommerce. They are similar and are both free OS online retail store software that anyone could install and use with just a little elbow grease.
Open Source Software Taking Off in NZ Government
February 18th, 2009
Open source software such as Content Management Systems (CMS) were embraced initially by individuals followed by non profit organization and corporations and now government agencies all over the world have joined the Open Source band wagon.
The New Zealand Ministry of Justice is adapting open source strategies. Barry Polley has authored the Ministry of Justice Open Source Discussion Paper which was just released.
“In summary, the adoption of OSS can lead to a more stable, supportable, and cost-effective IT environment, and should be pursued for pragmatic reasons. OSS adoption is not a panacea, and should proceed or not based on a particular package’s merits. Given two equivalent packages, one open and one proprietary, the OSS one would be the preferable choice for reasons of better supportability and lower lifecycle cost.”
Just as governments, schools, NGO’s and even large corporations all use open source CMS software you should also utilizes open source software to help you publish articles, reach your audience, get your name out there and build your platform.
Medical Searches
February 15th, 2009
Learn about health by researching with these search engines. Diseases, insurance, research etc can all be found using these search engines:
Read more…
How Much Will I Make With AdSense?
February 14th, 2009
I can’t give you an exact figure. It’s hard to say, I heard of a few people who made some decent amount, I mean close to $1000 a month, but the majority by far only makes a few bucks a month.
The best way to find out how much you’ll earn is to register, and try out AdSense. Many factors will effect your performance, from the amount of traffic to your ad placement.
On my first year with Adsense I made about $100. On my second year I made $120. My third year was $200, this year I expect $250.
How much have you made with AdSense?
Drupal, Joomla or WordPress as Community CMS Website
February 12th, 2009
I am helping a friend build a website and the topic of which CMS software to use has come up. In previous articles here, posted about a year ago I compared Joomla, Drupal, Xoops, Life Ray, Typo3, Word Press etc as a CMS. Back then I decided that Drupal was the best fit. Find one article I wrote on the topic a year ago here. I went ahead and learned Drupal then built a community website that has 150+ users now. I also built a knowledge base system for my workplace that is being used and is getting very high reviews. It’s needless to say, I quickly became a Drupal fan.
Now, a year later, I decided to take a quick look and see what has changed since the last time I visited other CMS’s.. Also I am reconsidering using Word Press as a CMS for my friend’s project because Word Press continues to impress me, I love that GUI and simple upgrade process.
I am looking at Pligg, Joomla, Drupal and Word Press this time around. I quickly removed Pligg of my list, it just wasn’t mature enough, yet.
So, to start with, here’s a list I created on CMS Matrix, I did update it a little after I found a few errors. What’s interesting is that despite how far Word Press has improved in the last couple years, this list has information from 2007 and WP version 2.2.1 so it is very outdated. Keep in mind that as of the date of this article WP is at version 2.7.1
Protect yourself from identity theft on eBay and PayPal
February 12th, 2009
I have been using eBay and PayPal since the 1999 and have seen my share of spam, spoofs, phishing, as well as credit card fraud..
There are people in this world who apparently have a lot of free time, and they use their time in trying to conn Internet users. It is very important to be aware of how to protect yourself when shopping, buying or selling online.
I’ve compiled this list (partially from PayPal’s and eBay’s staff) on how to protect yourself from identity theft:
Read more…
What Is A Search Engine?
February 11th, 2009
An Internet search engine is an online information retrieval system that assists users in finding information residing on the World Wide Web. Users can generally start a search by typing key words. The results are usually sorted by relevance. Search engines use indexes to conduct searches quickly and efficiently.
Most search engines operate algorithmically or operate using a mixture of algorithmic and human input. Some search engines mine data in newsgroups, databases, or open directories.
Indexers:
Search engines such as AltaVista and Google index the contents of Web pages for free for the benefit of the Internet users who want to find information on the Internet. They send out web crawlers that are robot scripts that automatically crawl the internet, find, and retrieve web pages and add the information to their indexes. They find Web pages from by following links found on other web pages.
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