Unfortunately for the last few days, writer’s block has managed to nestle itself between my ears and so I’ve been a bit short of things to say. That should change a bit as I’ve got a few guest posts lined up for the coming week. Speaking of guest posting, if you want to write a little piece for Blogtrepreneur in exchange for a link then please don’t hesitate to contact me!
Whilst the procrastination lingered I thought it would be more helpful if I did a little bit of maintenance and spring cleaning work (well global warming means its basically spring time here in the UK). As a result I’ve become a member of Commission Junction which deserves a post on its own for the time being. You can see the banner ad in the left sidebar.
On top of this (and as a result of my lingering at YGG) I decided to see if a revamp of the forums could be on the cards. I’d often seen the Vanilla software being put to good use, and I had always liked its clean and easy to understand appearance.
So at the weekend, I decided to download a copy and upload it to the forum directory, deleting phpBB and all the spammified posts along the way. This unfortunately means that any conversations that had been struck up were washed away down the drain, but there weren’t too many to have a song and dance about.
So without further ado, I bring to you: Blogtrepreneur Forums (part 2 - the rebirth).
What I love the most about Vanilla is the use of extensions (a bit like Wordpress really), where everything and anything is downloadable.
As a result, I’ve got a newsletter mailer, different skins, a “digg” extension, Account Pictures and quite a few more which generally enhance the usability of the forum. Also one of the best features is the ability to ban a member from the Admin interface without having to journey into the depths of MySQL which was a big bummer.
Finally, I would like to introduce the first Forum moderator in the form of Nick James who has a lot of experience in racking up huge amounts of posts at YE.com. Hopefully as this forum grows I can get a bit of help from you guys as moderators and make this a community thing!
In the mean time, please take a few seconds to register, and then I will have to manually approve you (yet another cool anti-spam measure) which may take upto 24 hours - but trust me - its worth the wait! Please check it out and get posting once you’re memberified.
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Flee The Cube // Jan 30, 2007 at 7:42 am
I’d never heard of it! Vanilla looks great; good luck with round 2 of the forums.
2 adnan // Jan 30, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Thanks for dropping by Cesar - much appreciated!
3 N-James // Jan 31, 2007 at 2:26 am
Hey adnan,
Thanks for the link to my business blog :). Hopefully i can make a great addition to this forum as well and help you grow into a nice entrepreneur forum offset from your blog.
Speak soon
4 Matt (mithrill) // Jan 31, 2007 at 3:00 am
The new forum looks great…I had actually looked into Vanilla several months ago and it would be one of my top two choices for forum software. The other being PunBB.
Vanilla has some sweet features but I know PunBB can stand a heavy load because of its successful implementation at Godbit by some great web developers. Plus, you can utilize Akismet to aid in the constant spam battle.
Anyway, I hope the re-birth is more successful than the last attempt. It already looks more professional. Good choice!
5 adnan // Jan 31, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Hey Nick - no problem for the link and hope we can find you around the forums loads.
Thanks for dropping by as well Matt - I havn’t spoken to you in ageeees. Hows married life going? Still a no go on the internet at home yet?
Yeah Vanilla really is awesome although there are a few bugs which need squashing. If you’ve got a bit of free time please leave a comment because there’s a few mysterious errors that keep cropping up (including the blogroll in this left sidebar).
Thanks again guys and thanks to Dave Starr, Travis and you Matt for registering!
6 Matt (mithrill) // Feb 1, 2007 at 3:58 am
It has been ageees. That’s what happens when you don’t have Internet access
BTW, I should be getting Internet access soon!!!! We are going to be getting the new house sooner than expected. We’ll still have to paint and move after we finilize the deal bu things are ahead of schedule. I’m happy about that.
It may be around a month or two before we can afford to fork out the money for Broadband, but it’s coming!
That blogroll error in the sidebar is strange. I’ll see if I can dig up the password to your site so I can login and take a look while I’m at the hotel.
7 Matt // Feb 1, 2007 at 4:51 am
It’s me again. I’ve tracked down the problem with your blogroll. It had to do with a backend database change in WP 2.1. According to Cheezykins on the WP support forums, “It would appear that $wpdb->linkcategories is NULL in 2.1, hence breaking any SQL that relies upon it.”
This makes perfect sense for your error. Further reading revealed the proper fix. I went ahead and implement the code change for you and it looks like the blogroll is back to normal
Just as an FYI to other WP users. WP 2.1 had several MySQL database changes on the backend to gain some performance capabilities. These changes may or may not negatively affect a few queries in your existing templates. I’m sure the great Wordpress team has done a wonderful job of ensuring these update doesn’t have too much of a negative effect for existing templates, etc. By the way, you can see the thread where I found the solution on the Wordpress Forum.
8 adnan // Feb 1, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Hey Matt - so glad to hear that you’re gonna be getting the internet soon. I really hope that the house move goes well for you and hassle-free so that you can get up and running as soon as possible.
Thanks sooooo much for fixing that Blogroll error, it took me ages to read about the new Blogroll category in WP 2.1 but I still didn’t manage to figure out the code needed to change it. However the links do appear slightly indented…is there an easy fix to stop the indentation because it looks a bit odd.
Thanks for the research and hopefully when you’re back online you could help me upgrade my blog theme as I’m really looking at a new one!
Hope all is well and thanks again for the help.
Adnan
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