So my first step in “getting serious” has taken place. I have moved one of my more pet like projects to a separate host and installed a blog. The site has always been a forum, and for the last couple of years it has been a vbulletin forum, and of course I had to use Wordpress for the blog. I tried Vblogetinw when it was active, and I just can’t seem to justify the cash to go with VB Blog, and then on top of all of that I KNOW Wordpress.

So anyway, I had to find a way to integrate WP and VB nicely, and this is where the Bridge comes in. It is a plugin I found over at VB.org and it works great. I had a couple of problems getting it to work on my production site (I tested it with new installations first) but if I wasn’t so cocky after my tests I would have read the FAQ and realized the problems.

I am having one more problem with it, but I am not sure if it is going to be an issue. I had to manually give myself, my forum self, access to the dashboard. When I looked at the MySQL it seemed that there was something amiss with the way the plugin maps the roles. But it is only a small thing and I will be doing more of this backend stuff after I upgrade to vb3.7.

The next issue was to get a decent theme on there. I decided to go with Sandpress, it is a nice theme and I think it will work out great until I decide to start one from scratch using the Sandbox theme as a jumping point. I am still not that great at CSS so it took me a bit to get the right logo on there. I still have a bit of work to get everything looking right but I have to get more content on there and then traffic. THEN I will worry about the sidebars

The only thing that I have done that is interesting is that I have added Gravatar support using the WP-Gravatar plugin. So far it is working great, I just need to add a “cooler” avatar for myself.

If you want to see for yourself what it looks like now, check out HoserNews

I had vBlogetin installed on one of my forums for a long time. I bought a license when it first came out and then got very disenfranchised with it since there seemed to be 0 development for the longest time.

Then the guys/gals at vBulletin came out with their own, official product. And then started to get really freaked….

Anyway it seems that the team at vBlogetin smartened up and have started development and they are finially in RC1.

So anyway, I am in the process of redeveloping the site and going to re-install the product. Maybe I can get some new members since they will have their own blog.

I know I just said that I was going to stop developing new stuff, but I consider this maintenance. I make some nice money from the site as it is right now, but I think that it would be great if I could create a community that people would simply want to visit. I am working on some apps that can be used on Facebook, and then I hope to get as many people as I can to use it. Maybe I can get some indirect traffic from it.

There is a site that I have been nursing along for a very long time, however I have now decided that it is time to either get it bake to life, or kill it.

I am thinking that I am going to revive the site, and document everything that I do to make this happen here.

Currently the stats for the site include .25 registrations a day and 2 new threads a day.
So today we start back at zero. I am going to be doing a couple of things to make the site the place to be.

First I am going to make a minimum of 10 posts a day, with a minimum of 5 new threads.
Second, start working on automated post exchanges
Third, redesign the logo and get some online marketing materials made
And fourth, I am going to start working on contest ideas, something that will generate interest in the site.

I will report back in a week to let you know how it is going. Every month for the next year I will post the average number of posts, new threads and registrations per day.

If anyone has any advice, please post it here. I would be very interested in hearing what you have have done in the past to revive a currently dead forum.

Last night I started to realize that I don’t have a dedicated credit card for my business transactions.  Sure I have enough cash to cover just about everything and I do 90% of my online business through PayPal, but I have been finding more and more that I think that having a CC to buy that offline stuff that it takes to run an online business would be great.  Especially since I do all of my business stuff through my own name so that I don’t have to register a business number and all of the headaches that takes.  I simply claim all of my earnings on my tax return, however for the last couple of years it wasn’t a big deal since I was able to claim expenses and have the business be revenue neutral.

This year however I don’t think that I am going to have that luxury.  I have not had as much time to do investing in online properties so I have been accumulating cash, which is not a bad thing, it just means that I am going to be taxed on it at the end of the year.

Last night I had a pleasant surprise, my new bike was home.  I have a friend building me a new bike since I wrecked my old one.  I have been without for about 2 weeks, and it has been tough.  I don’t think that it is “finished” but it is more than done to get me around before the snow starts to fly.  And then I can get all of the bells and whistles finished.

As for my CakePHP project, I haven’t had a lot of time to spend on it.  I am starting to think that it would be much faster to drop the MCV, but maybe that is simply because I am not sure what I am doing yet.  I am going to work on it as is until the new year,  I think that I should have a good BETA online by then.  In the meantime I am going to start to work on a front end.  This is going to be a ready made CMS, probably Drupal since that is what I know, however since Mambo is going Cake I may decide to look at that for this site, since I am going to have a cake install anyway.

I have been thinking that I am going to re-start TPL-Canada.  It has been a VERY long while since I have done anything on this site, so I am going to give it 8 months of time to see if I can get it to critical mass and then have it running for itself.

One of my ideas is contests.  The first contest is going to be blogging reviews.  I am going to offer a decent prize, maybe a Ipod Nano, or video to the winner.  The winner would be a simple draw, and an individual registered member can enter as many times as they want depending on the number of blogs they have.  There will be stipulations including, must be registered on The Party Live and must have 5 posts.  The blog posts must also include a link to a list of pages (one link).

The reason I haven’t started the contest is that I am not sure how to market it.  I am thinking of just starting a post and then post in a number of different forums, blogs, etc and then Adsense.  I do have a budget for this so that is going to be important.

If this goes well I will have a posting contest directly afterward and then a maybe mini monthly-posting contests for advertising space, if the winner doesn’t have something that they want to advertise then I will offer a list of charities that they can use instead.

If anyone has any ideas on other ways that I can drive this site to the Canadian public let me know.

Jeff