Forum

This past week, I’ve been working my tail off on the WordPress Tavern forum. What an experience it’s been in just seven days. When I first decided that I wanted to attach a forum to the WPTavern website, I was inundated with suggestions from users on which forum software I should use. Everything from PHPBB3, to SimplePress to SMF was thrown my way. In the beginning, I decided to give PHPBB3 another shot. Unfortunately, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the installation process to recognize my Database credentials. After spending a half hour trying to fix it, I gave up and went with a WordPress plugin called SimplePress.

SimplePress is a forum wrapped up in a tidy WordPress plugin. It’s still impressive to me that a forum with a bunch of standard features can be bundled into a plugin but after ripping the default theme apart for 8 hours in a row to make the theme match the WPTavern main website, I decided that if I am truly going to build a community and not have to worry about converting to something else down the road, that spending money on VBulletin would be the way to go. I’ve always wanted an owned license anyways and on top of that, I found a forum style which matched for the most part, the design of the WPTavern website. Instead of hacking the theme for 8 hours, the VBulletin style only needed a half hour of my time.

Once I had the forum installed and the theme taking cared of, I had to go through the mundane process of creating forums, usergroups, permissions, guidelines, installing modifications, etc. Managing a forum is fun, but building it is boring.

What I wanted to share with you today is the lessons I’ve learned so far in my quest to build a community around my new project.

• Get a core group of people ready: One of the best things to happen for me even before the actual launch of the forum is that there are a core group of 10-30 people who visit the forum on a regular basis. Many of those are already replying to forum threads or creating new ones. This means that when I go through the actual launch process, their will already be a considerable amount of content for new users to browse and interact with.

• Staff members that are as passionate as you: While this one is tough, they don’t necessarily have to have the same passion as you just as long as they are interested in seeing the community thrive and succeed just as much as you are. Luckily for me, I’ve had 4-5 individuals which have stepped up to volunteer their time to help make WPTavern a thriving community. These people have already been instrumental in getting the forum going and it’s been great.

• Be prepared for an exponential amount of work: This past week, my sleeping schedule has been non existent as I’ve spent 8-12 hours at a time working on this forum. On top of that, once the forum was accepting users, that is when I had to hammer out bugs, styling issues, user permissions, etc. I knew this coming in that running a forum would be a ton of hard work and so far, it has been. But if you have those core staff members, things sure do go much more smoothly.

• Forums are addicting: At this stage of the game, there is already a good bit of content on the forum. So much so, that a new post or new thread seems to be happening a few times an hour or at least, a few times a day. When you have a group of people constantly adding new content to the forum, it can be really addicting to just sit on the forum and wait for the next post to be published so you can be the first one their to respond. However, at some point you’ll have to realize that you don’t have a ton of luxury time and that you must move on to get other things done.

Conclusion

So there you have it. What I’ve learned in the past seven days as it relates to building and preparing a forum for launch. At this time, I’d like to thank Patrick O’ Keefe for writing the Managing Online Forums book because it has become my forum bible. What a great resource of information to have on hand. Also a great resource is his downloadable templates which I used on my forum for the Staff Guidelines, and the general forum rules. These saved me a ton of time.

As I move on and continue with the WPTavern project, I’ll report back on what I’ve learned as I share my experiences with you.

How many of you have thought about protecting the content you create on your blog? Besides copyrighting your material, you may want to look into using one of the various Creative Commons licenses that are available.

Using the Creative Commons licensing program, you can actively decide on which grounds your content can and can not be used on the web. For instance, content creators may want to completely lock down their content while others would like to block their content from being used in non-commercial environments but would allow the use of the content under certain conditions. The Creative Commons licensing structure provides a flexible means of defining the use of your content which is one of the reasons why Creative Commons is so popular.

I encourage you to consider reading into the different licenses that are available by clicking this link http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses After you decide on which license you would like to pursue head to this page http://creativecommons.org/license/ and select the appropriate options that fit your needs. Then, after hitting the SELECT A LICENSE button, you’ll be able to choose which image you’d like to display on your site along with a block of HTML code that you’ll need to copy and paste into your blog..

Now if anyone has any doubts as to using your works, they can click on the image displayed on your site. This will load a web page which clearly spells out what the user can and can’t do with the content based on the choices you made when you created the license.

Conclusion:

Do you already use some form of Creative Commons on your own blog? Do you feel like the Creative Commons licenses are enforceable? What are your thoughts on these types of licenses?

Today is a great day. Chris Pearson gave me the chance to pick his brain.

As one of the most sought-after (and most elusive) WordPress theme designers out there, this was a major coup for Performancing! Enjoy. And if you’re looking for a great theme for your next blogging project, make sure to check out Chris Pearson’s latest theme Thesis.

1. In my early days as a blogger, I had some sites that completely flopped because I used a really bad WordPress theme (it looked good, but it had terrible code). What’s your biggest piece of advice for the average blogger when selecting a great theme?

Most people simply don’t know which criteria to look for when selecting a theme. Typically, the average blogger seeks out a new “design,” but in truth, she ought to be looking for functionality. I’ve seen countless themes that offer much in the way of eye candy, but at the same time, they have code that is so poorly optimized that SEO was obviously never even a consideration during development.

Once upon a time, the design purist in me thought this was okay, but let’s be honest here. Search is what drives the Internet, and if your site isn’t optimized for search, it’s going to get left in the digital dust. Nobody likes a half-assed job, and a theme that is heavy on design but light on SEO is, well… half-assed.

On top of all this, well-written code is probably one of the most underrated aspects of theme development. Organized, intelligent, and sensible code is not only easier to understand, but also easier to modify. If you’re the least bit interested in customizing your theme, you’ll find your job much, much, much easier if you can start with a solid code base.

Also, I don’t want anyone to read this and think that I’m not concerned with the design and “look” of a theme. Design is important, but I think that a lot of people don’t understand which elements of design truly matter. When it comes to blogs, two particular elements reign supreme—typography and whitespace (note that “fancy graphics” did not make the list). When people visit your site, their primary directive is to read your articles. If your template features poorly constructed typography and inadequate leading (the vertical whitespace between lines of text), your visitors will be far less likely to read through an entire post. The bottom line is that good design solves specific problems, and with blogs, readability and clarity are the two main obstacles separating you from your readers.

Finally – and this is often the deal-breaker for many folks – you should opt for a theme that is well-supported by both its designer and its community. There will come a time when you’ll need help making a modification or tweak, and without a responsible theme architect or robust community, you’ll be out of luck and very frustrated. Please don’t make the mistake of using a theme that has no backing—it will cost you in the long run, even if it’s a free theme.

2. With each new theme that you release, I know that you like to improve as a designer. With Thesis, what are a few things that you perfected in relation to previous themes?

For me, Thesis is an exercise in detail and perfectionism. Compared to my previous themes, Thesis features superior typography, a more effective 3-column layout with content on the left, tighter SEO, and em-based styling that results in a fully elastic layout. Perhaps most important, though, is the fact that Thesis is far more customizable than anything else I’ve produced. I am constantly baking new features into the theme based on feedback from users, and as a result, Thesis becomes more user-friendly and accommodating by the day. Want to use an auto-generated navigation menu? There’s an option for that. Want to change your background but don’t know how to do it? No worries—there’s a free, downloadable package for that. Having trouble implementing a plugin? More than likely, someone in the forums has already crossed that bridge.

Ultimately, Thesis is a user-centric theme, and more specifically, it’s centered on helping users improve their sites to help them become more successful bloggers and Webmasters.

3. I learned an important lesson from you a while back having to do with setting prices and being selective about the type of clients that you work with. What’s the best advice you can give for less established blog designers who feel like they are overworked and underpaid?

Pricing will always be a hot topic for freelancers, and after more than two years of doing client work, I’ve only finally started to get the hang of it myself. It’s all about how much you know, and more important, it’s all about how precisely and effectively you can leverage your skillset to build a killer site.

For instance, you can build a Website that will do just about anything from the following components:

• HTML
• CSS
• a server-side scripting language like PHP, Ruby, Python, etc.
• JavaScript
• database software (mySQL)
• a graphics program such as Photoshop or GIMP

In addition, I don’t think a designer’s skillset is complete unless he has a firm grasp of other net-centric concepts like:

• SEO
• Microformats
• Usability
• Accessibility
• Web standards

If you’re able to build a custom front end (design) and back end (code) solution that makes proficient, effective use of different Web technologies, then you’re worth a lot. If you want to increase your worth, then you need to learn more. Extend your skillset. Improve your proficiency. Find out how to build better, smarter, more flexible solutions.

The bottom line is that good answers are extremely valuable because they are so rare. The better your solutions are, the higher the price you’ll be able to command for them.

And hey, if you’re good and you know it, set your prices high! Nothing weeds out the serious folks from the wannabes like a high price tag 🙂

4. A lot of people ask me “What’s Pearson up to these days?” and normally I just say something like “Building his annual theme”. But I happen to know that you are doing some local work in Louisville. Can you explain your attraction to working with local clients?

This question is particularly interesting because I honestly didn’t care about locality when I began work on ForgeLouisville. Initially, I was attracted to the project because of the charisma of its founder, Matt Winn, who is a local venture capitalist. Matt had clearly-defined goals for both the site and his brainchild, and I really appreciated his vision and determination to make the site happen. He wanted it to be awesome, and I am insatiably attracted to the idea of building awesome sites.

I hate to burst any feel-good bubbles, but locality is of little importance to me. Passion is what I look for, and Matt was nothing if not passionate about this project.

5. A few years ago, you mentioned that with each new client you like to “up the ante” by doing projects that will build your professional profile. Do you think that all professionals should use this as an operating principle?

This one’s a no-brainer. If you’re not improving, what are you doing? Why do you get up in the morning? What do you want out of life? Success is a product of self-examination, and I’ve yet to meet a successful person who doesn’t want to improve themselves, regardless of their individual situation.

6. A lot of us got addicted to the free Chris Pearson themes. Can you explain your decision to go with a paid license model?

I decided to release a paid theme because I finally got real with myself. For two years, I was almost convinced that theme design was a corrupted market that had become a “freeconomy.” I figured that people would likely have extremely negative reactions to a premium theme simply because there are so many free alternatives available.

The truth, however, is that no matter what kind of product you provide, there is always a market for quality. Also, I firmly believe that a great product combined with great support will sell in spite of just about any circumstances, and this certainly holds true in the premium theme marketplace.

7. Do you think that PopCrunch needs a redesign?

Nah, it just needs better post titles 😀

Last month, I wrote about various timeline tools and how they’re a great way to present temporally-based information. I’ve been using SIMILE Timeline and MyTimeline for a number of projects. (MyTimeline is built on SIMILE Timeline.) Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to embed videos into the timeline events in SIMILE Timeline.

Now there’s TimeTube from Dipity [via NewTeeVee], which is all about presenting videos on a timeline. Enter in keywords, click the Build TubeLine button, and you’ll get back an interactive timeline, aka a TubeLine, of YouTube videos tagged with your keywords.

TimeTube TubeLines have a very interesting presentation, which you can embed on a page, but there’s no refined control over it. For example, here’s a TubeLine for Saturday Night Live videos on YouTube:

You can actually link to specific events in the timeline – something you can’t do with SIMILE Timeline. However, what I’m really looking to do is to present a timeline of all the SNL cast members since 1975, with a select video – if available – of each member. So for getting finer control, I’m sticking with SIMILE Timeline. I just wish I could figure out how to embed videos in its events.

I’ve been working online long enough to have learned a few lessons.

Lesson Numero Uno: Girls, on average, are much better working partners than guys.

It’s as good as a scientific law. I’ve worked with enough people (hundreds) to feel confident in my conclusion.

Now this doesn’t mean that there aren’t some good guys out there. My friends Chris, Raj and Ahmed are three of the best people you could imagine working with. But for every Chris, there are nine lazy-ass guys sitting around trying to suck away your money. It’s a fact. A law of nature.

So here are three reasons I like working with girls better than guys:

1. Girls are more dependable.

Ask a female for a favor (no, not that kind sickos), and if she says yes, it gets done, done well, and earlier than you expect. Not so with most guys. Just an observation. But I bet you know what I’m talking about.

2. Girls do it more thoroughly

Aside from the rare perfectionist beast like Chris Pearson, I’ve found that most girls just do the job more completely. I get a more polished product from the average girl, then I do from the average guy. Just an observation. No need to flame me.

3. Girls are more willing to take suggestions

Whether it’s because they don’t have egos the size of Texas, or because they just want to do the best job possible, I’ve never had a girl act offended or defensible from a suggestion. And revisions…they do them with joy.

Most guys I’ve worked with…drag their feet, and mumble some incoherent nonsense when asked for improvements. Just an observation. A fact, that’s as good as a law of nature.