Helpful Talk

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

http://phpbb3portal.com/

http://board3.de/

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.

Blogging, CMS & Wikis, Web Development Forums, phpBB, Social Media, WordPress

Use these links to find WordPress themes.

Please leave a comment with links to themes that you used, liked, and liked and used

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Blogging, Free Stuff WordPress Themes

This is the seventh article in a series I called “Blog Profit”. These articles outline strategies that every blogger looking at making cash from their blogs must know. These articles are a good starting point. While I wont grab your hand and walk you down the path of making money online, a good foundation is crucial. Here, I try to help you lay down your own foundation.

In this article I will point out plug-ins that will make it possible to be paid online. You may wonder, get paid for what? Well, just get paid by appreciative readers. If you ask for donations you may get some. If you provide useful content or services (like software, e-books, website themes or plug-ins) for free you will get a few donations. Below you will see the PayPal donations plug-ins for WordPress

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Blogging, Make Money Online, eBay & PayPal Get Donations

This is the sixth article in a series of articles called Blog Profit. These articles outline crucial information that every person who is seriously looking at generating income from their blogs must know. These articles are a good starting point but definitely not the answer to all questions.

In this article I will point out plugins that will make it possible to sell products or services off your blog. Below you will see the Shopping Cart plug-ins that exist for Word Press.

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Blogging, Make Money Online Blog Profit, Selling Online, Store Shopping Cart, WordPress Plug-In

Sometimes I spent 3 hours writing and researching for a blog article. The least time it takes me to write an article is 20 minutes, and I probably have gone 3+ hours on some articles. How much time do you spend? Wouldn’t it be a shame to not have anyone read your article because they didn’t know it existed?

Regardless of what you wrote or how long it took you. Unless you are a famous website I’m betting you were holding your breath and waiting for readers anxiously. As a blogger it may be worth it to make it a habit to spend a few minutes after your article is published to gain a few links to your article.

The secret to gaining these back links is to utilize social bookmarking web sites. My previous article explains what social bookmarking is and links you to the top 30 social bookmarking sites, if you haven’t had a chance to read it why not take a look now.

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Blogging, Online Marketing Blogging, Publicize Your Blog, Social Bookmarking

As we all know, online bookmarking services allow you to store, organize and bookmark your favorite website and easily access them from anywhere. Social bookmarking opens up your favorite links to the public, now you and everyone else can see these links, in essence you share your bookmarks with others.

Social bookmarking allows you and others to view your bookmarks chronologically, by category or by tags; it also allows search engines to see and index these bookmarks.

Social bookmarking websites rely heavily on user defined tags, and in some cases generate tag clouds. Many social bookmarking websites also provide feeds of their bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows readers to spot new bookmarks very quickly, right after they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.

The future of social bookmarking is promising. Now, most social bookmarking sites offer extra features such as comments, ratings, avatars, and browser integration.

It makes a lot of sense that you subscribe to these social bookmarking services and submit your blog articles to them for others to find.

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Blogging, Online Marketing Blogging, Publicize Your Blog, Social Bookmarking

Before you can generate any income from your blog, you have to know who your readers are. In order to get an idea of who your readers are you must track your blog’s hits or web traffic. Google Analytics (http://analytics.google.com) is a free service that will get you website statistics and enable you to drill down and find much more than how many hits your blog received, but also how people are finding your blog, where they are coming from, what keywords they used and even what browser they are using.

This is the fifth article in a series of articles called Blog Profit. Integrating Google Analytics into any website is easy. Usually, I just get the Google Analytics JavaScript code and toss it in the footer template in whatever theme I use. This is very simple to do, but can get annoying if you keep switching themes. If you find yourself changing  your your blog’s theme, having a plug-in that separates the Google Analytics JavaScript code from your theme may save you a few minutes.

I’ve since used a few WordPress Plug-ins to save the Google Analytics code once and for all so I don’t have to re-add it to the footer every time I changed themes.

Some of these Plug-ins promise to add more control over tracking your readers with a simple user interface via the WordPress Admin pages. Knowledge is power, and knowing who your readers are will enable you yo profit from your blog. Below is a list of the most promising Google Analytics Word Press plug-ins:

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Blogging, Make Money Online, Web Development Blog Profit, Google Analytics, Making Money Online

The wordpress codex has a very good article for new bloggers with advice on how to write articles. This article is titled “Writing Posts“; it explains the available options on the Write Article page and goes on giving valuable tips on How to Write or in other words how to be a good bloggers. I found the advice on how be a successful blogger invaluable and I think it deserved highlighting.

Below I have a list of the most important tips for newbie bloggers on how to become successful, seasoned bloggers could also benefit from the list, use it as a quick refresher.

 

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Blogging Blogging

Sitting in your underpants writing about something you enjoy (blogging) and making money from your website visitors is certainly an attractive thought.

Inevitably, the possibility of making money online is achievable, but it does require an ungodly amount of effort on your part, the blogger.

While anyone has the potential to make lots of money blogging, the majority of us never will. Blogging is like a business, most blogs don’t last beyond their first year.

Blogging is much more than just writing an article and waiting for people to read and click on your ads. You have to be a sales person and market your blog; you will have to publicize your blog and yourself. You also need to keep your blog Technically up to date.. There’s a lot more to having a cash-generating blog than most new bloggers know.

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Blogging, Make Money Online Making Money Online