In the 10 years I’ve been online, I’ve used a lot of software, some of it good, some not so good. Every now and again I come across a system that seems to be offering something totally different from its original focus - and I ask, “it used to do this, didn’t it?” Straying from your original focus is a dangerous thing to do - you lose touch with the people who were interested in you in the first place.
All systems have their benefits and drawbacks, along with their conventions and quirks. Some of these systems are extremely complex, but they do pretty much everything you could ever want. From being in the business for so long, the providers of these products know their stuff, right?
But then there are people who start asking for more and more from a system, and the software vendor gets worried. If they don’t give the customers what they want, will they move to another system? So they add more and more features, not daring to say “no” if something doesn’t fit with the product.
The product slowly becomes more and more bloated, it might be more prone to issues, and the vendor starts to lose sight of who they are focusing on. Who is their target audience? For instance, if you want a decent message board, are you really going to start with a blogging system? Maybe it’s good for existing users of that system, but one system can’t do everything. That’s why other systems exist!
Would you blog about every topic under the sun?
Think about how you run your blog. If you’re an authority in your niche, chances are you’ve established yourself as a writer of a particular type of content. It’s hard enough to get your blog noticed without trying to write about anything and everything, right?
So when a system comes along that has a clear focus right from the start and doesn’t plan to make a sudden shift away from that focus, is it fair to say that system has a good chance of delivering something really special?
Bend it, break it
WordPress is a very popular choice for blogging, and I don’t doubt it’s a great blogging platform. The problems occur when you try to bend it to do what it wasn’t originally intended for. Sites with a complex hierarchy of content, a photo gallery or a forum can all be created with WordPress, but how easy is it to do?
Technically speaking, WordPress is a content management system, but it was created with the blogger in mind. That’s OK. Simple blogs are not going to run into major difficulties here. If you want a more complex site, that’s when I believe there’s a case for Injader - an open source content management system that I’ve been working on for three years.
Less of the jargon
I maintain a “blogging tips” blog but instead of littering my posts with endless jargon, I take a moment to explain what all the jargon means.Actually, I try to do the same in Injader - it’s the system from the technical guy who tries to write without a lot of jargon. Bit of a mouthful, but it’s quite a unique selling point.
My website also contains my music, my photos, along with some tutorials and a carefully organised Blogging Guide to help beginners get started in the blogging world. Trying to shoehorn those into WordPress is probably doable, but I’m not convinced the solution would be particularly elegant. With Injader, I can do all of this with ease.
Sure, some WordPress plugins are great, but the other day my wife installed a plugin for someone just to change the “reply address” on the contact form. That’s ridiculous. One plugin for that? No offence to the plugin author, at least people have the option to do this now, but this is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be a plugin at all.
Who is Injader aimed at?
Anyone who wants to do more with their blog but doesn’t want to install loads of plugins for basic functionality. Anyone who’s sick of having problems with their themes when they upgrade. Anyone who wants to upgrade their site with ease. You may still have to upload files via FTP, but it’s faster and easier to upgrade Injader than it is to upgrade WordPress.
One thing to remember
No system is perfect. If there’s something you don’t like about Injader, or there’s something it doesn’t do yet, please take a moment to let me know. There’s a contact form at Injader.com where you can send your feedback. I do listen to all feedback, and the vast majority of upcoming changes are based on comments from existing users, rather than my own personal wants and needs.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see some more people trying out Injader!
Footnote by Sueblimely - Thanks for agreeing to this guest post Ben. I wish now I had used Injader instead of constantly breaking Wordpress in my attempts to use it as a more advanced CMS system than my almost non-existent PHP coding skills allow for.
The true identity(ies) of John Cow have been revealed . I am not sure why this was of so much interest to me. Perhaps it is because I was keen to know the past experience of those involved in managing to continue/rejuvenate the success of JohnCow.com after they took over from the original John Cow, Bob Jones. I am not surprised to learn that there is considerable experience between the three men who play the cow (not in the pantomine sense) : the front end of the cow is Jason Katzenback (i.e. the voice of John Cow for the past 3 months) and, at the rear-end, Jason Potash and Marc Quarles. All three are owners of the company Archon Media based in Texas.
They are jointly or singly responsible for:
trafficKahuna - A set of Online Marketing and Promotion Tools - a snip at around $150 a month although you do seem to get advice and help too.
Video Post Robot - a tool for posting videos to multiple video sites
Orwell Pro a content finder and publishing tool - grabs content from content article directories etc.
Content Rover - searches for content from content article directories etc
PortalFeeder - a “suite Of Proven Web Business Building Software, Site Promotion Tools, Training, Mastermind Think-Tanks, Article Syndication & Link Exchange Networks, 71+ 648 Blog Network, And The Insider Secrets” with a brashy clashy sensationalist “Grab Your Seat And Join The Most Sought After, Elusive, Under The Radar, Group Of Web Marketing Superstars…” website.
I would say they are very qualified in teaching us how to make mooney online - as the ‘cow jumps over the mooney the little dog laughs all the way to the bank”
They are again sharing their wealth by holding a competition with prizes ranging from a 26” LCD TV/Monitor to a 1970s Disco Party Mac Daddy Pimp Costume - yes you read right. The only requirement to enter for the draw is to register to download a free ebook. JohnCow.com and Garry Conn had a contest of their own recently where they each launched a brand new domain and competed to see who could build a blog and sell it on sitepoint.com for the most money, all within 30 days. The “Cows” shared their strategy and gave us tips as they went along. The ebook is a compilation of this - a full start to finish case study.
The Aussie Bloggers Forums and blog have been running for over 6 months now and are going from strength to strength. Todays stats are showing 32810 Posts in 2465 Topics by 687 Members!
Out of all the ‘extra curricula’ blogging activities I have participated in, being active in these forums has been the most satisfying and rewarding. It is a true community, where I feel right at home. I know I will always get an answer to any questions I may have because of the wide range of experience and knowledge of the members and their friendly, helpful attitude. This has been a pleasant surprise to me after searches for information have taken me to so many forum messages over the years that have no answers or responses that are downright rude and unhelpful.
Because it is not all serious blogging talk there is an avenue to get to know others better. The general chat forums are always buzzing, the Random Thoughts and How Was Your Day threads being particularly lively. Out of the blogging specific forums Blogging in General, Wordpress and Promote Your Blog have attracted the most responses.
A new feature on the Aussie Bloggers site announced today is the “Lazy Bloggers Post Generator” - give it a try when you are short of ideas or need to explain why you have not been posting:-)
I occasionally divert from the topic of blogging and take advantage of the power of blogging to spread the word about important causes. This one is especially dear to my heart as my third child, a son, is fully affected by Fragile X Syndrome. I am a carrier and had a 50/50 chance of passing carrier status or the full mutation on to each of my children, although I did not know this before he was born. I have not been able to trace any other instances of it in my family although I know my mother was a carrier too and either her mother or father passed this on to her.
I have written a post over at the Aussie Bloggers blog which gives more specific details on the Syndrome and will add links for more information at the end of the post so I will talk here more in terms of my experiences.
When my third son was born, I knew there was a problem almost right from the start. Although I was told that I should not compare his progress to that of my other children, who tended to be early in their milestones, my little Fraggle was behind in everything. On top of this he was allergic to so many foods, threw up constantly, had recurring ear infections, had problems with a turn in his eye and had the strange but endearing habits of flapping his hands when excited. He did not seem to have a lot of physical strength but could get into positions that would make a contortionist proud. At age 18 he is still so flexible that he chooses to sit watching TV with is chin propped up by his foot! We seemed to spend half our life visiting doctors when he was young. I know now that all of his symptoms added up to Fragile X Syndrome. He has an intellectual disability, autistic and ADD (attention deficit disorder) symptoms and sensory defensiveness particularly to smell and sound. Recently anxiety has become a problem. He loves the footy but cannot attend matches because of the crowd noise.
He was not diagnosed until he was nearly 4 because at that stage even pediatricians had not heard of it. Since then it has become more widely known thanks to the efforts of those involved in Fragile X groups and organizations around the world but there is still a way to go.
You may ask why you need to know about Fragile X if you do not have a family member or a friend’s family affected by it.
For a start you may know someone who is affected but this person does not have an intellectual disability. Affected girls may be average learners at school with a weakness in maths. They may be shy, have difficulty with eye contact and suffer from anxiety. Up to 6% of children diagnosed with Autism have Fragile X Syndrome. If a child has developmental and learning problems with autistic symptoms but not enough to be diagnosed with Autism it could well be Fragile X. Although there is no cure for Fragile X, as yet, the therapies and medications used to treat it can be very effective in reducing many of the problems associated with it. Diagnosis is very important.
You or someone you know may be a carrier, with none of the symptoms that characterise someone with the full mutation of the gene. The Fragile X gene seems to work overtime to compensate in carriers whereas the protein it produces is absent or in short supply in those affected.
Female carriers can have problems with irregular, infrequent menstrual cycles and early menopause and they have a greater chance of having twins. They have a higher tendency to suffer from anxiety, depression and shyness. As a carrier I am familiar with all of these, as was my mother. One in 256 women are carriers! Being aware of the reasons for it all, being treated appropriately and making some lifestyle changes made a huge difference to me. I read last week about a study showing that Fragile X can result in sleep problems because of a lack of a Circadian Rhythm. I am not sure if this applies to carriers too but it has always been the case with me. Working from home allows me to not have to worry about not having a sleep pattern. It comes in very useful when building web pages for overseas clients and I can converse with them during their working hours
Older male carriers have a high incidence of a condition called FXTAS (Fragile X Associated Tremors). If they are unaware that they are carriers this is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease.
I have started a Fragile X group on YouTube to gather together Fragile X videos made by professionals and families of people with Fragile X Syndrome. Here is one of my favorites:
There are quite a number of parents of children with Fragile X blogging - you can find some of them via the Fragile X Webring and on the blogrolls of these sites.
I would not normally ask this but please consider informing as many people as you can either about this post (or a Fragile X Site) to help this awareness day is be successful.
Entrecard has just joined forces with SezWho. “SezWhat?” you may be saying - I will explain what it is later in the post but firstly want to talk about Entrecard itself and why this partnership may be very useful to bloggers.
Entrecard has been a great way of bringing visitors to blogs and creating a means for members to get known but it has fallen short in producing significantly extra comments and expanding individual blog’s reader communities. Entrecard has always had higher aims, with goals of bringing not only traffic but also audiences, readership and community participation. I agree with Graeme, the mastermind behind Entrecard, when he says that “Commenting is the second most important thing for you to do after writing quality posts. It was due to his aim to use “The same credits that power our culture responsible for millions of blogger-to-blogger visits each week … to help power a culture that comments on posts as well” that has resulted in the partnership with SezWho.
SezWho is a commenting/comment rating tool, which calls itself a profiling service and engagement platform. It creates a ‘profile’ for your commenters; hovering over their profile image or “check me out” link brings up a box which shows you the latest comments they have made and their SezWho ratings. It allows you to rate posts and the the comments and follow comments via RSS. If you are not registered or logged in when rating then the rating will be processed as anonymous but this has much less impact on member reputation scores. You do not have to have your own site to register with SezWho.
Its use is aimed at giving highly rated members “web-wide recognition for their insights and expertise”, “thought leadership”, and an increase in traffic. The theory is that the number and quality of comments on your blog will grow.
The Entrecard connection is that credits are awarded to members who comment on SezWho enabled sites. The amount of credits given is based on how highly the comment is rated by those who vote on it - ranging from 1 to 10 Entrecard credits. The idea is that quality comments gain the most, quick meaningless comments left merely for backlinks and spam comments will luck out.
will give SezWho users who receive ratings of 4 stars or more with credits to advertise on its network of blogs. This is an interesting approach, as it connects reputation with a direct reward.
How to integrate SezWho with your site (currently supported platforms are WordPress versions up to 2.6 (2.6 is beta still), Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and phpBB):
Wordpress - download and intall the SezWho plugin by upload to your plugin folder, activate it. Then enter the blog id sent to you with your registration confirmation email in the SezWho plugin’s setup.
Blogger - add the provided code to a HTML/Javascript page element.
You can view your own profile on your SezWho page:
Colin must lead thoughts to better places than I do
As I have only just installed the plugin I do not have any ratings, I do have ‘Star Power’ of 2.5 as this “community ranking” is not purely based on ratings?
Advantages
If this new system takes off and more Entrecarders do comment, rather than merely dropping on you, your blogs bounce rate will improve.
SezWho does not host any site content. All published and user-supplied content remains on - and is controlled by - the original site. It does not make off with your comments like some similar programs do.
Backlinks are created for yourself and commenters.
If you are an extraordinary commenter, a thought leader among bloggers, then your reputation will spread far and wide. If you are average then it may not make any difference to you, although I am sure the word will get round if particular blogs have generous comment ratings. I am open to that word :-). In my case I am sure I will not want to favor one regular commenter over another so will rate them all well, just because I am pleased to see them here. If you are new then I should imagine that I will vary my ratings although I love my comments so much that no doubt I will be generous - it will most likely depend on the mood I am in and if you are using a name that includes such words as casino. (my jury is still out with regards to the keyword luv plugin but I will save that for another post)
Disadvantages
Receiving low ratings could lead you to have less confidence in your writing, even though it may be that your particular commenters do not want to use the system.
It could be looked upon as bribing people to comment *
If you write quality posts you are going to get plenty of comments anyway (I do not believe this always to be the case as it depends on your type of blog and readership)
Adding to your workload by commenting on blogs just for your ratings is yet another way to divert you from writing and concentrating on your own readers.
* Entrecard + SezWho = Meh on Monkey Fables and Tales which talks less favorably about SezWho and not wanting to “bribe” people to comment. The 50+ comments on the post show agreement with this view.
Congratulations to Jon Pfeffer and his father Steve on the completion of their mammoth bike ride, starting in Brisbane 4th May and finishing today in Broome. The Journey from east to west Coast Australia was over 5,000km so this is no mean achievement! Training and planning the event began back in October 2006. Jon’s stepbrother-in-law, Nick, joined them for the first 1,000km of the journey.
Steve and Jon have been riding to raise awareness for BeyondBlue and and awareness and funds for Plan Australia, which respectively work to fight depression and child poverty. They have been blogging about their preparation and journey on their Brisbane to Broome Charity Bike Ride site.
Romance was in the outback air when Jon proposed to his girlfriend Emelie, when he met her at Mt Isa airport on 30th May. The sign on the ground says “Will you marry me?”. Many congratulations Emelie and Jon.
If you want to offer your congratulations you could do so via the Brisbane to Broome Facebook Group. Donations to show your appreciation of the effort and dedication of these intrepid travellers and to support the work of Plan can be made on the Brisbane to Broome Everyday Hero Page.
I have spent considerable time researching the best sites to find online free images/stock images, along with their copyright/ Creative Commons licences. Some of these sites will probably already be familiar to you but others new, as they were to me. I hope you find this of use, as it makes the time spent all worthwhile. Sites are listed in alphabetical order.
Free Images
BurningWell - a repository for public domain (free for any use) images. Donations welcomed - anyone have any Melbourne images they could upload, Melbourne is not represented there at all!
Freerange Stock free stock photos - Freerange is an advertising revenue supported photographic community - photographers get paid when users click on the ads that appear next to their submissions. Usage: commercial and personal.
Image*After a free online photo and texture collection. You can download and use any image or texture from the site Categories covered: architecture, art, food, nature, industry, humanoids, human parts, landscapes, objects, vehicles. (pretty much everything) - Usage: commercial or personal but no redistribution.
morgueFile - free high resolution stock photos. Usage: commercial personal.
Openphoto is a wiki-based photography site. All images on the site are marked with Creative Commons attribution. Anyone can register and upload images. Users can browse or search by tags to find photos they are interested in.
StockVault - stock photo sharing website. Over 100,000 images. Usage: Free for personal and non-commercial purposes.
Stock.XCHNG - over 350.000 free user submitted images - terms of use vary but are displayed on each image page.
Smaller Free Image Sites
FreeImages.co.uk - over 2,500 free stock images. Usage: Only a link to site required. *
Specialist Free Image sites
There are so many of these that I cannot mention them all here but I would appreciate it if anyone can recommend any that are worthwhile checking out.
These sites contain images relating to specific topics or genres, those that have been designated as public domain, creative commons or are of an age where copyright has expired.
Gimp Savvy Photo Archive - images come from three main sources: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Usage: copyright free, some restrictions with regards to privacy for commercial usage.
Old Book Illustrations includes galleries of animals, plants, landscapes, characters, scenes, buildings and monuments, science and technology and miscellaneous illustrations scanned from old books.
Wikipedia:Public domain image resources includes links to sites of historical images, 2,600 realist painters (many in the public domain), copyright expired visual artworks, scanned images from old books, logos, stamps, US government sites as well as general collections.
Personal sites where images are offered for download free of charge:
PD photo.org contains public domain photos taken by the site’s owner, Jon Sullivan who also has a blog, aptly titled, Jon Sullivan
John reminds us that if an image is in the public domain then it must stay there. You cannot claim it as your own nor add any extra restrictions on its use. He also advises that it is wise to assume that no model release has been given for commercial use; unless stated otherwise or indicated by its Creative Commons Licence.
Future posts in this series will include image search engines, directories of free image sites, where to find low cost images, useful image tools and Firefox image tools. I know because most of them are written already
* New sites added since original post. Last update: 17 July 08
I have recently been trying out PhotoCrank, a kind of annotation/comment system for web images, and have had some fun browsing blogs that have installed this feature.
PhotoCrank allows the addition of word bubbles, graphics, comments and tags to any photo on any website. Those who have installed the browser extension can use the feature on any photo of any website.. In addition to the actual cranks, comments can made relating to those cranks.
If you add the Photocrank engine to your blog then any reader can use the feature on the images you have enabled for its use. You retain control over the comments and can delete those you do not think suitable. You can of course add your own annotations too. A widget is available for websites which shows the Cranks you have created yourself. PhotoCrank has been out for a while but a new version has recently been implemented with extra features.
An example is probably the best way to explain the concept: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, by the fake Steve Jobs, uses Photocrank and I think his blog is a prime example of good usage. Some of the comments are hilarious. You can see an example of the PhotoCrank widget in his sidebar too: Here is an example from his post entitled:
Total Diatribe is running regular “photo caption contests” using PhotoCrank
There are hundreds of images and blank bubbles to chose from. When you find those you like you can add them to favorites to find them again easily. Here is an example from one page of my favorites library:
The “Cranked” photos are displayed on the PhotoCrank website and your crank’d photos get syndicated throughout the PhotoCrank network of blogs, providing some extra link love for your site. Members can “follow” others I can see some blogs would find this a useful plugin to create a conversation around their published images in general or as a feature to use on designated posts only. Personal bloggers could write posts specifically for publishing images to be cranked. One blog I think would be ideal for the plugin is MagnetoBoldToo - little to her knowledge I have added cranks to a couple of her recent posts.
(For anyone already using PhotoCrank on their blogs, a new method of disabling cranks on individual images has just been implemented. In the PhotoCrank Options Menu on published photos (the gray button on the bottom right of the photo) click on Adminstration and uncheck the Allow Image To Be Cranked option)
PS - This is for Kelly who was keen to find out what PhotoCranks I had left on her blog images. The first is on the Mosh post and the second on the Be afwaid. Be vewy afwaid Sweet Potato image. Very corny I know.
Profilactic social media aggregator - you can now post content to 14 services from within Profilactic - currently supported are: Bebo, Blogger, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter and Xanga.
If you work from home you may be interested in the WhyDoWork network. A new feature that has been introduced by the site is the ability to add links to your blog, website or affiiate activities to their directory. Reviewing other member’s sites is a factor in determining how high your own links are in the directory.The more reviews, the higher you get. WhyDoWork includes forums, an add friends feature, your own blog page and a work at home job search engine. I have joined up but have not signed up for the blog review feature as yet. I want to check out the others who were doing reviews before I decide on whether it is a suitable feature for this blog.
Blogger
Blogger in Draft has introduced new features including the long awaited comments embedded in post pages rather than those annoying popusp.
I am using my blogspot blog to answer the specific questions relating to Blogger so if you have a problem or wish to learn something please drop me a line via comments or my contact form at Sueblimely Blogspot I also keep its blogroll up to date with any good blogger template sites or blogger help sites I come across.
Wordpress.com enables the use of Google Gears, a powerful browser add in to speed up access times when your PC is communicating with your Wordpres dashboard. If you do not already have Gears installed and enabled on your PC click on the “Turbo” link at the top right of your dashboard . This will take you to the Gears download site. After you install and enable Gears most of WordPress’ images, scripts, and CSS files will be stored locally on your computer. This is not so useful if you use more than one PC or use a public computer while blogging. More info:
Wordpress 6 is around the corner, hot on the heels of the much maligned version 5. Technosailer gives us a sneek preview of 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 which includes Google Gears and what looks like a nifty post/snip from any website directly to your blog feature.
Search Engine News
4050 Search Engines - Phil Bradley maintains a list of Country Based Search Engines - 4000 to date. Don’t panic at the amount, they are categorized by country :-). If you are interested in more specific topics then Laura Milligan at College@Home provides 100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of As I tend to concentrate on blogging and general search myself I had not heard of many of them, but bloggers on other topics may find this list very useful.
I am setting myself a target of one news post per week, otherwise I will no longer be able to call it news!
You can probably tell by the length of this list that I have not been posting this, what is meant to be a weekly news feature, weekly. For someone who advises on blogging I sometimes do not adhere to my own advice. I have been having fun and a few headaches coding and designing a CMS site, using Wordpress, for the newly amalgamated National Fragile X Association of Australia. I am not ready to give you the link to it yet as it is still full of Lorem ipsums. Even if you could read the Latin it is tedious and repetitive
To save you from eye strain and the possibility of losing concentration from a long long post, I am splitting my news into two this week. In any case you may find something of interest in the links, follow them, and not come back here to read the rest.
News
Influential Blogger is running a writing project which aims to identify The Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2008, blogs that started after 1st July 2007. Entering the project requires that you write a post with your choice 10 (or less) of emerging influential blogs. The Cut-off date and time for submission of entries is July 30, Wednesday, 5:00 pm. More details and lists of previous weeks submissions can be seen on the Influencial Blogger site. Even if you do not enter it is always interesting to find new quality blogs.
Blog Catalog is conducting broadcasts at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/blogcatalog every other Monday night. The first two broadcasts were “Twitter for Beginners” and how to increase your blog’s traffic using social media tools. The next broadcast, 30th June explores the World of Online Streaming Video. I am rather late publishing this aren’t I!
Have you heard about blogger Vlad being sued by eperks for comments that were made on a paid review he did? (the comments would you believe!) Andy Beard and others have been supporting Vlad through his ordeal.
Andy’s post also gives us a good way to search for up to date posts and the latest news about a particular subject - simply by doing a search on Friendfeed. Here is an example using the query “eperks”
100 Awesome Webmaster Blogs by and for Women I came across this one via a twitter message. I will leave it to you to decide if the blogs are awesome - I cannot be objective as I am included in the list
How to Create a Rock-Solid Tagline That Truly Works - Copyblogger gives us some useful tips on creating taglines or slogans that capture the essence of your site. This is something I have always struggled to do.
Twingly Blog Search - promises to be a spam free blog search engine. Twingly search excludes spam by working “outwards from selected high quality blogs, discovering and including only those that are linked directly or indirectly to the quality “seeded blogs.”
Tomorrow I will post the other regular Blogosphere News sections:
Social Networking News
Search Engine News
Blogger and Wordpress News
It is part of my dastardly plot to get you to come back and visit me, as I miss your comments when I do not post as frequently as I should. (my Technorati ratings have been slipping too - you really have to keep grinding away to retain those ratings don’t you? There is often no rhyme or reason to them at times? I have however gone up in Alexa’s eyes and am now no 6 in the Top 100 Australian Women’s Bloggers list (the list is now being hosted by crazy meezer) but have slipped down 3 to no 25 in the Top 100 Australian Blog index. Google Analytics reckons I was getting between 3-4000 unique hits a day in early June and now it is less than 200. (A Google Gaff I think as I do not believe the 1000’s and do not want to believe the low 100’s).
Blogging Sueblimely
The true identity(ies) of John Cow have been 
