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10 Forum Software Links – Btw. PhpBB 3.0 Dead From The Press

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After five years of development PhpBB 3.0 is available.
Already about 500 extensions available.

For some blogs a forum can be an essential add-on!

PhpBB 3.0 ‘Olympus’ comes with many new features and improved security. The new features include UTF8-Support, better treatment of search engines, temporary banning of users, multiple anti-spam features, better log and reporting functions, guidelines for user names and passwords, attachments, speed increases by using multiple caching mechanisms, and loads of other improvements. The number of available translations increased from 50 to 61, including languages written from right to left.

Let’s check the PhpBB 3.0 news and see some other nine solutions…

PhpBB 3.0 Comparison And Feature Set

Very impressive feature list but:

Negative killer argument: PhpBB does NOT support RSS!

If you take a look at the BlogBridge forum which is powered by PunBB you will see that you can subscribe to RSS feeds for every forum category and for every single forum. From my personal experience I know that I don’t follow forums where it is not possible to follow all discussions and complete threads via RSS. PhpBB 3.0 not offering RSS feeds is a very big NoNo!!!

Semi RSS feeds are no answer. I also follow (read: try to follow) the Gregarius feed aggregator forum which is powered by Vanilla 1.1.2 and Vanilla only offers a castrated feed. The RSS feed does not show new discussion items but only the very 1st item. At least you know that something is happening but I definitely don’t want to load each thread in the browser every time somebody posts a ‘me too is having the same problem’ item.

Sorry PhpBB 3.0, a dead horse is a dead horse is a dead horse! Integrate RSS feeds in your forum software and I might look again.

If I have a blog and I want to integrate forum threads then I must have the possibility to update content blocks on my blog via RSS!!!

Linklist: Alternative Forum Software

I did not check all links and I did esp. not test the different forum software but here are some links extracted from the comments in two German Pro-Linux articles: 1st beta of PhpBB 3.0 and PhpBB 3.0 published In ascending alphabetical order:

Bonus: More Forum Software Comparison Pages

Well, as a blogger you should definitely not only look at the feature list. More important are questions of how to integrate a forum into your blog. Somebody willing to write an article? My two word article would be ‘Take Drupal’ (and start from scratch).

Somebody willing to shoot with the social networks canons(s) to promote this little list?

Carnival of Internet Pros #2

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Welcome to edition #2 of the Carnival of Internet Pros (CoIP #2). In the last edition, absolutely no one actually joined the conversation (besides a thank you), so let’s take a different approach to this one. The intention of this carnival is to share our knowledge of working online for a living. I’m going to apply my copyediting and editorial experience and constructively point out one flaw in each post, if any. Essentially, if you were to send these articles to me for publication, these would be my constructive comments. Anyone can feel free to join in and say whether they agree or not.

Critiqued Entries

Keep in mind that I’ve intentionally glanced at these posts superficially and not read thoroughly. This is in fact what editors do for print articles, no matter how unfair it may seem. Only the first 10 items have comments. Articles are listed approximately in order of receipt.

  1. Strategic Internet Marketing & Web Site Optimization by Jason Koeppe of Strategic Internet Marketing. There’s no explanation of where the data actually came from. What service? Or is this from a report? I’m not too inclined to trust this data without a bit more clarity about the source of data. If it’s there, I didn’t see it (no hyperlinks).
  2. Writing with Inspiration by Marc Berry of Techne-eikon.com. A bit too many “I” occurrences. It’s possible to talk about yourself while reducing the use of “I”. Unless you have a large following, it’s very hard to get away with using “I” excessively.
  3. How to Write Posts That People Will Actually Read by Sterling Camden of Geeks are Sexy. Well done. Strong title, great intro, thoughtful scannable formatting.
  4. Get More Traffic with the Right Image Tags by Taylor of Super Blogging. Short and to the point, with a reference if you want to learn more.
  5. 3 Ways to Increase your Blog Stats by Ant of The Beef Jerky Blog. My only superficial complaint is that some “Technorati experiment” is mentioned, but there’s no indication of whether this is or is not WTF (Where’s the Fire). You have to click through to an older article to find it’s a chain-letter type of meme.
  6. How to Assemble a Feedburner Alternative Using WordPress Plugins by Samir of Samir Bharadwaj. The site is attractive, as is the statue icon down the middle, but the fact that it moves while you scroll the page is infinitely irritating, distracting and ultimately unnecessary. I find it difficult to scan your page because of that.
  7. The Truth About the Firefox “Pipelining” Trick by Egon of Egonitron. Being a geek, I like posts like this, though I’m not sure non-techies will know what Pipelining is. In fact, I hadn’t heard that term used for speeding up Firefox. But with technical tutorials, it’s never easy to choose a knowledge level to target. At some point, you just have to hope that interested readers will stick to it and read the entire post. At any rate, this is a well-formatted post, making it easy to scan, to determine whether I might read it later.
  8. Ode To The Google PageRank Obsession by Madeleine Begun Kane of Mad Kane’s Humor Blog. Given that the Google PageRank is supposed to be updated this weekend (not last weekend like many of us thought), this is timely. Only two complaints. Firstly, the limerick’s title should have been in bold, to set it off from the intro paragraphs. Else it looks as if there’s a big weird gap of whitespace for no reason. Secondly, there’s this massively unreadable blob of hyperlinks that follows the post. While it’s topically relevant, the mass of blue links makes me want to run away.
  9. The Ups and Downs of Amateur Blogging by ispf of Grad Money Matters. Almost the right balance of “I”, but maybe a few too many. Otherwise easily formatted for scanning. Consider putting in two headings, one for the “ups” and one for the “downs”. By heading, I mean use the HTML h2 or h3 tags.
  10. Amazon Wish Lists with SimpleXML by Ramiro Gomez of SEO Expert Blog. This post is weakened by starting off with “I recently upgraded my server”. You want to tell both the returning and new visitor why they want to read this post. Unless the reader is technically-inclined, they won’t care about the first two paragraphs, and may not even bother reading further.

Remaining Entries

These are the remaining entries for this edition.

  1. Blog Startup: Choosing a Domain by Ian Fernando of Ian Fernando.
  2. The Key to Online Business: Do Something Small by Praveen of My Simple Trading System.
  3. A Few Writing Tips For Your Internet Business Opportunity by Cade Krueger of Write To Right.
  4. How to Drive Traffic to Your Website or Blog – Part 1 by Edith Yeung of EdithYeung.Com.
  5. 10 Reasons Why I Love Google  by Jimson Lee of Speedendurance.com.
  6. The Right Time To Show Your Blog’s Stats by Ramkarthik of Blogging And Make Money Online.
  7. How to Influence Others by Terry Dean of Integrity Business Blog.
  8. Top 10 Link Building Sites by Jack Humphrey of Blog Marketing.
  9. Free Speech Hosting: 11 Web Hosts That Won’t Dump You at the First Sign of Controversy by Jimmy Atkinson of Dedicated Hosting Guide.
  10. 26 Steps to Blogging Success by Vandelay Design of Vandelay Website Design.
  11. Do You Know Who Your Visitors Are? by Leo Dimilo of Idiot Affilate.
  12. Golden Mantras of Effective Email communication Part 2  by Rajesh Shakya of Rajesh Shakya.
  13. Effectively Get Things Done, Set Business Hours  by James Mitchell of FocusMinded.com.
  14. Blog Monetization: So You Want To Monetize Your Website? by Kevin of NicheSiteDomination.
  15. The Story So Far by Yehuda Berlinger of Blogging Without a Wire.

That’s it for this edition. If you’re not here and you submitted before July 29th, then it’s likely your article does not relate to the topics covered in this carnival, or you’re trying to pimp your services/ products.

Pissed off at my comments? Agree? Disagree? Tell me so. Don’t forget to link back. And if you’ve emailed me to be a future host, rest assured that I’ll try to get back to you shortly. If you don’t hear from me within another week, feel free to send another message.

Remember to submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Internet Pros using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Carnival of Internet Pros #1

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This is the first edition of the Carnival of Internet Pros (aka CoIP). The idea is to promote articles that help us improve our skills for any sort of professional online career. Please see below the list of entries if you are not in this one.

To turn this carnival into the beginnings of a content workshop, in each edition of CoIP, I’ll pick out 2-3 entries and offer some constructive criticism. What I’d like is for anyone here at Perf to also offer constructive criticism – at least about the 2-3 articles singled out. The articles selected in the order they were submitted – no favoritism, and as mentioned before, very few articles will be turned down (see exceptions list at bottom). For this first edition, however, I’ve added brief comments about each post. I am not expecting everyone to agree with me, and whether you do or not, hopefully you’ll add some comments. The objective is to improve our content.

  1. Outsource Your E-Mail Lists Please! by Cade Kreuger of Write To Right.

    Comments: Cade gives an example of good anchor text and deep-linking in this article touting the value of outsourcing your email lists.

  2. 3 Ways to Increase Your Blog Stats by Ant of The Beef Jerky Blog.

    Comments: Short and sweet, easy to follow, and a bit of “meat” (explanation) for each item. However, maybe it’s a fluke, but your page takes a long time to stop loading. My guess is that you have a widget or some other web service that’s hogging time.

  3. 12 Common Mistakes of an Online Business by Kevin of Niche Site Domain.

    Comments: A good example of over-delivering. Kevin said “12” but offers a bonus 5 mistakes. However, I think this woul have had more impact had the extra 5 been in a second “bonus” list. They’d have to have some distinguishing reason to be kept separate, though.

  4. 5 Great Reasons to Create Your Own Products by Craig Andrews of Internet Business Blog.

    Comments: Affiliate marketing is said to be heating up. But instead of joining a program, maybe you have something to sell through your own affiliate program. Craig offers five reasons to do so.

  5. Make Ends Meet, and Then Some by Shawn Edwards of Desty Online.

    Comments: Yes, this post has an Amazon affiliate link (twice), but in this case, it’s worth it. Regardless of your faith, The Richest Man in Bablyon is an excellent book about success, and Shawn gives his interpretation of each of the Five Laws of Gold. In my estimation, this is an example of good affiliate marketing writing.

  6. 10 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Content Creation by Derek Beauchemin of DerekBeau.com.

    Comments: Derek gives a nice example of a mini-bait, with good formatting for easy scanning and information absorption.

  7. How I Became a Professional Blogger by Yehuda of Yehuda.

    Comments: I love this one. Yehuda has given a perfect example of part of what this carnival is about: sharing our pro blogging experiences and knowledge.

  8. Howto: Use Web 2.0 to Get Viral Traffic Your Blog by Andy Boyd of BoydCreative.

    Comment: Andy gives another good example of what this carnival is for – sharing techniques to improve our online professions.

  9. Serving Two Writing Masters by Sharon Hurley Hall of Get Paid to Write Online.

    Comments: Who are you writing for? Do you know? Sharon discusses the two “masters” of your writing, and explains what some of her experiences as a writer have been.

  10. 20 Ways to Add Value to Your Products and Services by Terry Dean of Integrity Business Blog.

    Comments: This carnival isn’t just about blogging. If you sell products or services from your website, read Terry’s tips on adding value.

  11. Do You Stand Out From the Crowd? by Richard Pettinger of Net Writing.

    Comments: Richard offers some wise advice about how to stand out on the Internet, to develop your brand as a blogger. I’d suggest, though, that the article title should have some relevant keyword. Don’t change the URL at this point, but consider tweaking the title.

  12. Google Analytics Tutorial – How to Track Conversion Rates by Adam Taylor of Conversion Matters.

    Comments: Adam deciphers some of the mysteries of Google Analytics, separating logical sections of the article with great descriptive headings.

  13. Before You Begin Blogging: A Few Things You Should Know by Deb Ng at Performancing.

    Comments: Normally, I’d want to go outside of Performancing for carnival entries, but this is a very important article for new bloggers to read (and some of us veterans, too).

  14. The Value of Search in a Product Oriented World by David Krug of College Startup.

    Comments: I’ve been reading College Startup since Ben Bleikamp created it and I’ve always enjoyed the concrete examples presented there. David doesn’t disappoint with an example of how he’s costed out the value of each sale of a door at his door affiliate marketing site, based on search traffic.

  15. Warning! Make Your Graphic Designer Read This Before Creating Your Mini-site! by Stephen Dean of Stephen Dean’s Blog.

    Comments: A short yet informative tip about conversion rates based on whether or not you use a header graphic on your sales pages.

That’s it for this edition of the Carnival of Internet Pros. If your submitted article did not appear in this edition, it’s likely to appear in the next one – unless:

  1. Your entry is not relevant to the carnival.
  2. Your URL produced a 404 error.
  3. Your site has popups/ popunders.
  4. Your article is promoting affiliate programs or other ads.
  5. You’re one of the persons who submitted 4 or even 9 entries all at once. (If you entered two on separate days, I’ll accept that this time.)

Everyone else that submitted an article by Jul 20th and who is not here should appear in the next edition. (After that date, you will also likely appear in the next edition, on Wed Aug 1st.) If you are not in because of one of the above five reasons, you are welcome to submit something else that follows the rules and criteria for the Carnival of Internet Pros.

Please remember: one entry per week (running Saturday to Sunday). Don’t force me to read through all your entries – pick out your best on your own and submit one, maximum, each week. The submission form is at Blog Carnival.

Why Software is More Useful than Books

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As bloggers and site owners we often focus on quality content and providing value to our readers. Unfortunately, our ‘quality’ content is NOT providing maximum value to readers.

They might be loving it, and it may make you a blogging rock star, but are they using your advice? And materially benefiting from it?

Really?

Three years ago I was strapped for cash and in a fit of desperation, turned to the Internet for ways to make money. Through RentACoder I started picking up writing projects, and soon I met a guy who wanted a writer for his email newsletter. He was selling software through his one-page website, and the newsletter was geared to compliment and support the software.

Over the next year and a half, we tested and tracked the responses of two specific types of articles – a how-to article discussing a specific SEO strategy and a how-to article that used the software to demonstrate an SEO strategy.

The software-oriented articles won every single time, hands down.

The takeaway lesson wasn’t that a piece of software is more attention-grabbing than quality content.

The lesson is that if you give your readers a systematic way to do things and show them how to do it, you will get a much better response.

A reusable system that ‘just works’ every single time is a valuable resource that will keep your readers coming back for more and more.

Why is software more useful than books? Because 99% of the time, the software is a blackbox through which you get your regular tasks done. The book, on the other hand, explains how the blackbox works, which makes for fascinating reading but doesn’t really build a blackbox for your readers.

A simple example – the book Getting Things Done is wildy popular because GTD is a system, and the book showcases that system. If Paul Allen had just listed productivity tips, he wouldn’t have had 1/10th of the success he has now.

For books and blogs and writing to be as effective, they have to be usable, day in and day out. Sell ideas like you would sell software – as a system of doing things and thus making it easy for people to use your ideas.

A few tips for making your blogs and blog posts more usable:

  1. Remember that not everything you write will be a ‘system’ – sharing ideas and offering advice is part and parcel of the game.

  2. When offering advice on how to do something, write it up in a series of actionable steps. The step-by-step, handholding approach is popular precisely because that style of instructions is easy to follow.

  3. Keep your ‘tasks’ short and manageable. Don’t cram a crash course in how to do blog SEO in one big article (a report is a different thing) – break it up into segments.

  4. Provide a route for feedback so readers can report their experiences and get help if necessary. Forums are great for this, but comment threads do just fine.

  5. Add tools / services to your blog – you might be surprised at how much more valuable readers find such things as compared to quality content.

  6. Yes, your ‘how-to / system’ posts can be used as resources / tools as well.

Bottom line: if you tell people what to do, chances are that they’ll acclaim you for being wise but not get busy doing anything that you’ve said. On the other hand, if you can show people how to do it, you’ll get a better response.

So what are you aiming for? Building a fan club by impressing people with your knowledge or effectively teaching people how to do what you do?

Update: An excerpt from the first page of Mark Joyner’s book, simple*ology (buy it on Amazon), does a great job of explaining this concept.

Let’s face it: books are old school.

I love to hold a book in my hands. I love the way it looks on my shelf. But if I really want to master something, I need to engage myself in its application.

Reading is one thing. Understanding is another. And proper application is a whole ‘nother thing entirely.

Well said Mr. Joyner.

To apply what you learn, you need a system – whether a how-to, step-by-step guide or a software – that helps you apply what you have read and understood.

SEO’s – don’t neglect your hardware

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We’ve been doing a lot of SEO Tool evaluation around here (it’s that time again) and it started me thinking … while so much attention is paid to the Software, it seems that little is paid to the hardware anymore, right down to a comfortable chair (we SEO’s spend a lot of time at the screen).

Desktop switches are pretty cheap and help off-load long reporting cycles to other machines, you can just switch over and check the status of your reports from time to time and continue to work on other things.

I can’t imagine how anyone can live without at least two monitors these days, I certainly could not. I think our new policy around here will be one per website (our CEO is gonna love that idea … not!). This is why I never recommend laptops for this kind of work. I’ve seen folks working in pretty cramped conditions and I can’t see how they do it. BTW, if this stuff was uncomfortable work for me … then I wouldn’t be doing it … period. I don’t want to digress too much but the other day I found myself explaining to a client that I was his SEO not his Web Designer … while I did the design for him, it takes away from more important SEO things like Keyword Research, Link Building etc. I did it because I enjoy it … it’s just doesn’t feel like work to me. I enjoy the thrill and chaos and the clandestine nature of ‘spying’ on competitors. I never liked the term ‘spying’ tho … more like sizing up the other runners during the race, it’s not like I’m sneaking into their offices late at night to boost trade secrets from the safe behind the Picasso or “the velvet painting with dogs playing poker”. For the most part it seems it’s all out in the open … you just can’t beat experience, good planning, caution and patience if you want to make them bots happy.

Continuing on … I use this Logitech Trackball that I found years ago and haven’t seen one like it in a long while. Funny, most folks who come and sit at my screen can’t seem to get the hang of it, I just pray that it never breaks because I could never go back to a ‘mouse’, I like it because I can control the resistance with my thumb, anyone who has ever had trouble dialing in 455 pixels with a mouse will understand.

Speaking of hardware, I keep my guitar and amp right next to my desk along with my green hurricane lamp … hey, it’s a creative process and I gotta have these things in my space.

Software IS important but truth be told, I could probably run everything with free online tools (naturally, there are some exceptions), in fact I actually use some of the tools on our site (imagine that). There are some really great offerings Today, I’ll save a discussion of them until after we have finished our evals but every one so far has its shortcoming, if the true all in one ‘Swiss army knife’ SEO tool becomes available … we’ll be the first to pull out the checkbook (or click the ‘Buy Now’ button).

So here we are looking at all the software available out there and, of course, I’m thinking of ‘something completely different’, it just drives folks nuts around here. I guess I think this way because my background is engineering
OK, so who the heck am I? I’ll tell you that RELAX was born because a few engineers had nowhere else to go after the engineering crash of the late 90’s. I had done this kind of work before, just to fill in, and I liked it … it was perfect; you get to use cool software, hardware, and help folks. We picked up a banking contract and we were off. Certainly they had choices … Bruce Clay is just down the street from here … but they chose us and we have always been grateful for that start. We have a new website (we just never needed one before) and it would probably interest some to watch our progress … maybe even lend a hand with a quality link or an interview/podcast.

Dave
CE – PSEM – RELAX SEO Services
www.relaxseo.com

Servers moving, expect some turbulence [Update]

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Over the weekend the site and services will be moving hosting provider (the first of two moves), there might well be small pockets of turbulence but downtime will be kept to a minimum. Watch this space ..

Update: Looks like our interim hosting solution is not coping as well as hoped. I am going to begin moving over to (our hopefully long term) new host immediately.

Sorry to anyone who has experienced problems with the service, I am doing my best to keep things working.

Scribefire

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As most of you know, Performancing Firefox, our free blog editor for Firefox, will be rebranded, and relaunched under a new name in 2007.

That name is Scribefire.

With well over 400k downloads on Mozilla alone, Scribefire is an awesome project, and one I take particular pride in, having been privilged to shape it’s development over the last year.

We’re looking for developers and designers to join the new project, so if you think it would interest/benefit you to be involved, please email me at [email protected]

thanks everyone, and happy new year!

Partners Blog Spotlight: Gadgets

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You will notice our Performancing Partners network is continuing to grow nicely so we thought it was time to dive into the list and take a look at the blogs that are available to advertisers. Today, seeing as I am a complete geek, I am going to look at Gadget blogs.

One of the tough things about the more techy blog topics is the need to know a great deal of details about a wide range of product categories, otherwise your blog ends up reading like an endless stream of press-release puffery. Is that keychain really revolutionary or did you just copy and paste some more BS Mr Blogger, hmm?

One way to avoid having to know everything about everything is to focus on a “niche of a niche” as Mobile Mentalism and RIMarkable have done. The main benefit to this is you can completely cover your topic extremely well and become an authority (or *the* authority).

RIMarkable

rim

RIMarkable is about the much loved (and addicting) Blackberry device. You could say RIMarkable is in a niche, of a niche, of a niche! If you want to keep abreast of this gadgets news and rumours then this is place. Talk about blogs that own their niche, if you wanted to link to a Blackberry blog would you point to Engadget or RIMarkable?

While it took a second glance to realise what I thought was navigation were in fact sponsored links the template is crisp and clean and the content light hearted and certainly works for the audience.

Mobile Mentalism

mobile

Phone fans are known for their appetite for both specs and pictures. Mobile phones are now both a serious multimedia / productivity gadget AND a fashion accessory. Mobile Mentalism manages to offer both in spades. The pictures are BIG so the blog will probably appeal to broadband users rather than being read ON a phone but this does mean you get to see every little detail.

Red Ferret Journal

Of course it doesn’t all have to be serious, earnest, hard core tech, the gadget niche is fun too. This is the area covered by the funkily named Red Ferret Journal which reminds me of a gadget-focused BoingBoing. Best of all the Partners ad is displayed well above the fold, heh.

ferret

Fosfor Gadgets

fosfor

As the gadget crowd are almost certainly going to be web savvy (being classic early adopters) design as well as content does matter and you need your RSS button right in your face. The blog needs to work well in Firefox but also probably Safari and obscure PDAs too. I can’t speak for if this works in other browsers and devices but something about Fosfor Gadgets design appeals to me, go take a look.

I particularly like the little box in the top right of the page that tells you what the blog is about. It’s a good little tip for any blog, make sure within seconds your visitor knows where they are, what they can see and why they should stay. As well as the RSS feed link it is sometimes good to link to your top content in an area such as this.

Summary

For anyone with an electronic product to sell Gadget blogs are a perfect place to advertise. The people who read these types of blogs tend to go with their wallets half open. Unlike some niches, it doesn’t matter that they already just bought a gadget, gadget fans are always ready to upgrade. In fact just browsing the blogs today could work out quite expensive for me unless my wife intervenes.

The trick with the gadget category is to not just be a mirror for the “name” gadget blogs and actually produce original or at least uncommon content. This is especially tricky as these blogs thrive on product reviews, doubly hard for those on a budget. It’s good to see Partners gadget blogs managing to inform, entertain, and look good.