Crenk

A friend with a local business came to me with a somewhat unique request.  He wanted to setup a blog that only his employees and certain other people had access to for sharing information, ideas and other business concepts.  I suggested Google Apps for this, but he said not everyone that would be using this would be as tech savvy to fully grasp how that works and he needed more than just a text editor and a spreadsheet.

I set off to search for a plugin that would allow me to accomplish the goal of restricting access to the entire blog, forcing a registration.  After a few minutes I ended up on Viper007Bond’s site.  I’ve used his plugins before, so I knew they’d be top quality.  He wrote a custom plugin called Registered Users Only which, will redirect all users who aren’t logged in to the login form where they are shown a user-friendly message.

Perfect!  Upload the .php to the /plugin directory on your server, activate it and tick one box in the Options screen, you are done.  As admin to the blog, you create user accounts for those people you wish to give access to.  Since it uses the standard WordPress login screen and user database, you can simply add them as a Subscriber and once logged in, can see the entire site.

Total installation time is less than two minutes!

While the idea of putting a blog online is usually done so that someone will read it, this certain situation started to make a lot more sense to me.  WordPress offers so much more than just a blog, it’s turning into a CMS, and a tool to allow, in this case, his business to expand and grow internally.  The more I thought about it the more I realized that a private blog has many other uses to it.

Parents who want to setup a blog for their children, either from day 1 in their life or as they enter the tween stage probably won’t to protect who sees photos of their kids and what activities they do.

This plugin restricts ALL pages of the site, that is the only option.   This fits the goals of my friend and I think many other people.  Be aware, this does not protect your RSS feeds.  I would suggest deleting all RSS feeds from your WordPress install to fully protect your blog, if that is your goal.

Download from WordPress.org

9Rules has just opened their submission window. I have already submitted Crenk to 9Rules, so we can see if we actually get into the fold this time. 9Rules is basically a community of some of the worlds best blogs. It helps readers find information from credible sources and not just any smuck writing a blog. Their submission window is only 24hrs and done every quarter normally. If the 9Rules guys read this post, come on how can you not have Crenk in your network!

This is a simple loophole that is now out in the open. Thanks to JohnChow and Techcrunch for letting everyone know about it. Im not even going to try it out now, cause im sure it will be fixed within 24 hours by Feedburner.

There is famous and there is infamous, and StumbleUpon (SU) can make you both. In a recent event, Darren Rowse of Problogger got a first hand look at what SU did to make him infamous.

Darren has been a big supporter of SU, thus using it very heavily to rate sites across the net. In return for his dedicated support of others sites, a great number of his readership returns the support by stumbling his articles, creating a supportive community. Yesterday, he was notified that StumbleUpon had not just blocked, but banned him for abuse.

This misunderstanding hit the media networks in approximately an hour and a half the entire situation was resolved thanks to dedicated fans, but more importantly a customer friendly, transparent company willing to be open on the errors they make.

While many feel that SU was in the wrong, I find that measuring a business by how it admits and handles its errors is more important than assigning blame. SU did a fantastic and prompt job responding to Darren and Problogger was reestablished.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon, similar to Digg, allows you to vote for sites, increasing the popularity based on user support. Once a site has been stumbled, a chain reaction through the social network is viral, and many sites see an increase in traffic.

A toolbar installs into the browser header once downloaded. This allows them to “stumble” a site, a basic “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” If you “thumbs up” a site, you are allowed to provide a brief description of the site and your rating. If a site has already been stumbled then you’ve simply boosted the sites rating, which affects the frequency in the rotation of random sites that SU will display. StumbleUpon is heavily monitored for abuse to provide a level playing field for all sites involved.

I for one enjoy and fully support StumbleUpon, and encourage you to explore the application and while ranking sites is always enjoyable, clicking the “stumble” button can take you to sites you may never have found otherwise.

Photo Credit, tris

How many times have you been to an event, conference or convention and wanted to be able to cover all sides of the story? Often times these events will break up into different sessions and obviously you alone can’t be there to report on what’s happening. If you could, you’d be spending perhaps hours recording and then writing blog posts about what happened in session 1, then you probably missed a good part of session 2 because you weren’t paying attention while writing up something about the opening session and so on and so forth.

You could allow other people to help you report on what’s going on in these events. And that’s a novel idea, but if you went the conventional way and went through your blog, then you’d have dozens, if not close to hundreds of blog posts where the size of these entries could be summed up in one or two lines - and chances are they could too. That’s where live blogging comes in…and there are a couple of web applications that come to mind, perhaps more prominent is Scribble Live.

Scribble Live is basically a community of live bloggers that can keep track on what’s going on with different events. Take this month’s WWDC event in San Francisco. Scribble Live became Twitter blogging and in short bursts, multiple authors were able to post their observations and thoughts to the same area. While live blogging seems simple enough, Scribble Live has made it even more easier by allowing you to use either your Microsoft Live, OpenSocial, or Facebook ID as your login. So you don’t even have to worry about having yet another login that you’ll probably forget the username and password to in a few months when you’re not using the thing.

Okay, so it can get boring after a while to just continually typing short (or long) bursts of copy into this simple interface. You can actually do much more than that. It’s a mini-version of WordPress, I would say except you don’t have to install it onto your server. Everything is hosted on the Scribble Live servers and you can share images from your camera, computer, etc. and also video.

However, for large conferences that you might go to, whether it’s South by Southwest (SXSW), WWDC, Ad:Tech, LeWeb3, or any big name conference and you want to share with the world, try out Scribble Live and keep the world posted. It’s free use but the pain in the ass, but obviously understood, is that the developers embed Google Ads into your live blog so every few entries or so, you’ll see an ad that looks kind of out of place. You’ll see what I mean. Another issue that I’m worried about is allowing people to post to live blogs seemlessly via text or SMS messaging. I believe right now they only allow you to go through the web interface. I’m sure that it’s fine for those with the Apple iPhones but for folks like me with a Blackberry, I’m not able to access Scribble Live.

So get your “account” on Scribble Live now and start live blogging. Don’t worry, I don’t think you’ll be giving up your Twitter account anytime soon, but it’ll be good to have live blogging at any of your next big events. It’ll help keep people informed on what they’re missing. Be the first to catch up on the good stuff.

It seems like blog directories are becoming rather numerous. I just recently did a review of BlogCatalog here, and now I am taking a look at Blogged.com.

Registration was easy, but not instantaneous, someone actually reviewed my site and then decided whether I should be added which is what I prefer. After placing some code on my site I was official, and in the first day my site was listed I received traffic. Google Analytics does a great job breaking down where I receive my traffic and I was shocked that Blogged.com worked so quickly. Definitely a place I recommend bloggers list their site. No promises that the same will happen, but what have you got to lose?

What struck me the most about blogged.com is the immediate breakdown of the sites in the directory on the front page. Users are provided well labeled categories to label their own site, but also to find others similar to it. As a registered user you can click on your profile and aside from seeing your site, you are also listed sites that blogged.com recommends you to view. A great way to network and find others like yourself.

Ranking was the most interesting to me. I don’t necessarily find their method to be accurate of a sites worth, but it’s a nice way to see if a site is active or has been dormant for some time. What blogged.com apparently looks at the frequency of the updates on your site and ranks it with a number. The higher the number the more active the site is, but the question becomes is the information worth my time? Is it relevant and well put together. I have friends that update their site three or four times a day, but their efforts are nothing more than to keep a diary of their day, not necessarily hard hitting information so to speak. Just my opinion though.

Users are allowed to write reviews and over time, as reviews are written and enough people have given their thoughts, a new rating is given to replace blogged.com’s rating. Seems a bit arbitrary, but I’ve not been with blogged.com long enough to really see this through. I’m curious to see how others rate my own site and furthermore, what the final outcome will be in terms of a ranking.

A social aspect of blogged.com is present, but does not differ than any of the other offerings from competitors. You are able to invite friends to your circle of favorites, share information through the site, and build a community around your own site.

The underlying factor in all this is simply to drive traffic to your site. Blogged.com does a great job of this, as noted in my own personal experience. Even if you are registered with other categories, it does not hurt to join this community. You might even find yourself enjoying the offerings of this well put together site for quite some time.

By: Luis Sandoval

RSS, seems like that is the new mainstream on how everyone gets their information. You can have RSS feeds go to your email, your blog, you mobile devices, and even use an aggregater to capture all your feeds. With sites like Reddit and Digg , one would have to question if there is more you can do with feeds…the answer is yes.

Now honestly at first glance RSSMeme does not stand out, as a matter of fact it looks boring and not as easy to understand. But the question becomes, did you come for information or did you come to see something pretty? We all know that answer. Like Reddit and Digg, RSSMeme offers a ton of news bits lined up in the order they were voted upon and posted. You get everything you need without all the extra frills, and you get functionality that I found to be very useful.

For starters you get the article, who it was posted by, from what site it was posted on, and the time it was posted. All standard fare, but below it is where you get the extra metrics you don’t get from other sites. You get a list of everyone who is sharing it, what other communities have tagged along with how many times. Definitely worthwhile if you want to know whether a post is worth reading or not, and just how popular it is on the internet.

The selections above for “now” posts, “daily” posts, “this week” posts, and “all time” posts is a very nice addition to break up the articles into sizable chunks that are digestible for the reader. Your ability to customize and personalize the feeds is the best feature for this site. I can pick and choose which feeds make it through to the site, kinda like filtering your email, making sure only the most important and interesting rise to the top. The ability to have your feeds and your community’s feeds added to your Friendfeed is another awesome addition.

RSSMeme seems much more versatile then either Reddit and Digg. Though they may have “prettier” interfaces, and their communities are larger, I say give RSSMeme a try and play around with the customization, it seems like it has a lot to offer for those that stick around and explore!

Picapp is a new product that allows bloggers and website owners to use some of the worlds best stock images on their sites for free. Simply use their search tool to find the images that you are looking for, then select the image and click embed, then you will be able to embed the images straight into your blog. Very simple yet very effective.

Picapp has only been in the marketplace for the last few months and every month it seems to be really rising in traffic according to compete. Picapp is a free service that is definitely worth a try!

This is brilliant and just had to share it.

For the last few months or so I have been using Google Ad Manager to control the advertising on Crenk. Currently the service is in private beta and you have to be invited to join. Up until a few days ago I was using the service, but since have dropped it and I just thought I would write a short article and let every know why.

The user interface within this very simple to use ad server is great. It is very easy to use and even easier to understand. Google Ad Manager has some great targeting tools which you would expect from Google. That all being said the one thing that is completely useless with the service is when it comes to implementing the ad tags into your site. Currently, the only ad tags they offer are in html code, so you need to add the code straight into your websites code and cannot add to another third party ad server. Thus, making it completely useless for the majority of people to use. I know the majority of small sites are able embed code straight into their site, but once a site gets quite large, you normally have several third party networks running. Thus, needing to control these networks with a high end ad server like Doubleclick or Atlas. This option is just not there with Google Ad Manager. I would definitely recommend it to small websites, but if you are either a large website, ad network, network of sites and anything else but a small single publisher, then Ad Manager is not for you!