Rice Blogger

WordPress is a great piece of script, I have used tones of paid and free scripts to develop different kinds of website and I will always try to use WordPress if it is possible. Recently I found out that it is posssible to have forum plugin using wordpress as a CMS. Simple Press is simply a WordPress Plugin but it is filled with all the basic function needed to run a forum. I have not seen it used much, but I started installing it on one of my website and it will be launch soon.

Simple Press have all the needed function to run a proper forum, there is different user groups, filtration of words, simley, avatar, moderators,  and even the layout looks exactly like a forum. So far, it is great and it only lacks some function but they are not important for me.

There are few layout that comes with the plugin, it may not be sufficient for all users, but I am using one of the default wordpress forum layout.

Wordpress Forum Plugin

Yup, you see it right, I am relaunching my NewlyWebsite and it will include forum. This is a glimse of the site, but it is yet to launch. NewlyWebsite is basically a website for New Websites to promote their fresh idea, for the first traffic, and a review. This is because we believe that all websites have to start somewhere. With this forum we could allow discussion and share our knowledge for a better World Wide Web.

Take a look at SimplePress.

I would never though that Google will be affected, especially for this round of recession, but it is a fact now. Only yesterday Google announce that it will stop development of Jaiku and leave it to the hands of other developers as the code become available on Google Code under apache license. Jaiku was bought by Google more than one year ago but there was no development at all while all registration to Jaiku is invite only. Jaiku is a great microblogging platform but was never developed and promoted well enough to capture the market that it should gets.

Even sadder for Dodgeball users because Google will shut down the service permanantly. It is a a mobile social networking service that lets you share your location with friends via text message. It is only available in United States, even that, it has not conquered all states.

Other service that will probably go down is Google Video and Google Search Catalog. And Google Notebook will also be left with no further development.

With so many people dependable on Google service for their daily life to working task, we are sure that popular services will not go away and will be supported by Google Adwords. Hopefully Google will learn from their lesson and not simply buy a company then stop it from developing.

I have mentioned Group Blogging last week and the advantage of them but you will also need to watch out for the disadvantage or the blog will go down easily. This is now my second blog that I have started with a group of friends. My first had like 7 people and we were all quite new to blogging. We were very excited about the start and have posting scheduled for few days. But as time goes by, one by one started to give up and it demotivates the rest to continue the blog.

Here is some of the things you will have to clearly discuss before starting a blog with friends:-

• Commitment – Ensure that each people will at least contribute equally and consistently. Notify them that you will be looking for at least 2 post from each person a week. This is easily measured quantitatively.
• Income – If you plan to have advertisements, sponsors, or affiliate income from your blog. Be sure that you clearly define how will the income be divided before you guys start making some good money.
• Maintainance – The blog will definitely need to be hosted somewhere or having a domain (unless you guys are using blogspot or other free blogging platform). For example, currently I am hosting my blogs together with this group blog, but when resources goes high, I will expect that the income will at least cover the hosting fee.
• Evaluation – Be sure to evaluate each other in terms of your goals for the blog from time to time to ensure that you are going the same direction. A brake off in mindset could cause a blog to be aimeless and having no purpose. Currently I am doing this to ensure we are heading the right direction and to accept feedback about our blogging technique.

Hope that this does not scare you away from Group Blogging because it does have its advantage as long it is executed correctly.

I have recently venture into a new blog with my friends, it is a automotive blog. The main reason why I did this is because I do not have enough time to write all by myself (with my newborn baby and a new job). I believe group blogging or blogs having multiple author is a good thing because you could save time and there is more people promoting a certain blog making it more credible for the reader.

There is many reason why someone would want to form a group blog:-

• Time – This is the reason because writing a good blog with great post requires time and research, with few blogs at hand, time is really a limit to having to write a good blog.
• Expertise in that particular subject – Have you encounter times where you may share great interest in a subject but do not have enough knowledge to write post in a consistent manner.
• Variety – There will be different writing styles and coverage of a certain topic, therefore reader will find it more interesting.
• Marketing – 2 or more mouths is always better than one. Even if they are just spreading the word to their friends. They cold be just announcing it at their Facebook or MSN profile.
• Ideas – There will be different ideas on promoting the blog, writing style, or critics each other to becomes a better blogger.

Happy new year to all our visitor!

Another great finishing as Google updates its Pagerank as a belated Christmas Gift or as a 2009 gift.

This website still maintains its PR3 for one year. I am quite happy because a lot of people are having a drop instead of an increase. I actually felt that it is easier for someone new to create a website and gain a decent pagerank of 3 rather than trying to ask reconsideration from Google to get back your pagerank even though one of my website have not been selling text link and only one paid post is written (and it is removed). Even my personal blog adiwong.com that contains only 4 post had Pagerank of 2 that was not really looking forward for.

Anyhow, it is a pretty good year and hopefully 2009 will be better.

For those who are new pagerank is not that important even if you are making a website that the traffic is very much dependent on the search engine traffic as long as there is sufficient good information for people to search for your website.