Blogs/RSS feeds

Many of my members have blogs now, and there are two hacks at .org that allow you to place an rss feed to your blog in the post bit beneath the username.

I'm wondering if this is a wise thing to do? are there any drawbacks? are there any benefits?

opinions?

Hacks mentioned:

Latest Blog Feed in Postbit using Carp RSS (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=91781)

Latest blog in postbit - magpierss (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93457)

Implementation is key. If it's done correctly, it can work well.

However, you are installing a hack that gives free outgoing links. There are a few negetives to that some sites need to consider.

explain when you have time, please?

explain when you have time, please?

I was hoping Joe picked it up. :p

Outbound links can against you in some circumstances, like when you sell advertising. They also can draw members aways from your forum.

In the first case, it can reduce the value of your links. In the second, a you could be advertising for a place that your members leave to.

In some cases the second is not an issue, like a site with 1000 visitors a day. They have their loyalty. But a place with less then 100 visitors a day could see negetive affects perhaps.

ahha I see.

Well... I just came from .org and one of the master coders is working on a blog hack for vB. That will be quite a popular little (big) hack. That would be nice in my case because rather than have them available to every member, they would be available to paid subscribers only ;)

I think it's a great new member draw. Just have the link open in a new window.

Absolutely. No way do I want them to be directed away from the site.

Looking at the two hacks that I referenced in my original post, whew... it looks pretty complicated to install.
I just may wait and see what this (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=115690) guy comes up with.

Have a look at DigitalPoint (http://forums.digitalpoint.com) - Shawn has a blog hack there and I do think it's a great drawing card for bloggers.

thanks darlin, I'll do that tomorrow. I use Wordpress for my own blog and love it. It's really too bad that you can't have multiple blogs in one installation.

g'night

I totally recommend it, and yes the selling can be a downer but it depends on the community you have.

I expect with Feedburner you could aggregate your feeds and promote both.

If its a professional forum (Business, SEO, etc) to me its a huge bonus. One of the hardest parts of Forum Management is retension and I for one tend to go back to forums where there are good blogs a click away. As far as leading people away from your site, if they are lured away that easy by a blog, they most likely aren't going to be there long anyway.

I don't see spammers setting up fake blogs just to insert into their profile, of course that may change once they are mainstream.

The blog hack/add-on for vB will be a great benefit overall.... Under phpBB I ran the Blog Hack and members loved it... so much so that after migrating to vB I had to set phpBB back up on another server with their old blogs so that they could keep them, works out well since the other domain gets all the links.

But a hack for vB & Wordpress is in the works, I've almost got it figured out how to allow members to set up thier own blog using WP in their own subdirectory off the primary domain, my only concern at this point is security, but once I'm able to get the forums moved off a shared host that issue will go away.

Anyone know of a blog hack for SMF?

The blog hack/add-on for vB will be a great benefit overall.... Under phpBB I ran the Blog Hack and members loved it... so much so that after migrating to vB I had to set phpBB back up on another server with their old blogs so that they could keep them, works out well since the other domain gets all the links.

But a hack for vB & Wordpress is in the works, I've almost got it figured out how to allow members to set up thier own blog using WP in their own subdirectory off the primary domain, my only concern at this point is security, but once I'm able to get the forums moved off a shared host that issue will go away.

dakar I have my blog set up on a sub-domain on my site. The link is in my signature.


There's a new post on that thread at .org from a man who says this:

Not sure of it interests anyone here, but the Drupal modification allows you to give users a blog on your site and it uses permissions already. It also works 100% right now as I have it installed on a site I am working on

thanks darlin, I'll do that tomorrow. I use Wordpress for my own blog and love it. It's really too bad that you can't have multiple blogs in one installation.

just to let u know, there are muilty blog script ;) like say u have domain www.blogsite.com users could sign up and have user.blogsite.com user2.blogsite.com etc...
if your interested in this script and don't see it anywhere, I can track one or two down for ya :)

btw, have you checked out the journal hack at vb.org ? u can see an example in my sig :)

just to let u know, there are muilty blog script ;) like say u have domain www.blogsite.com (http://www.blogsite.com) users could sign up and have user.blogsite.com user2.blogsite.com etc...
if your interested in this script and don't see it anywhere, I can track one or two down for ya :)

btw, have you checked out the journal hack at vb.org ? u can see an example in my sig :)

I originally wanted the journal hack, but the author strongly warns against using it if you have php5 or mysql 4.1.. both of which I have. Some users have installed it regardless and have had good luck with it so far, but others have reported corruption in tables and other messes, which he had warned would happen. So I'm not chancing it.
I wish that someone would do an updated version of the journal that can be used on php5 and mysql 4.1

the above is exactly what I want to do... subdomains. At least that's what I think I want to do, unless someone gives me a better idea. I want to be able to offer a blog in our paid subscription packages, and the only way I can think of to do that is using subdomains, such as I did with my own

I tracked a few down for ya.

this looks like what your looking for
www.BlogHoster.net
http://mu.wordpress.org/

thanks Loco..

I REALLY like bloghoster, however $400 puts it completely out of range for me, lol.
I may stay with the multi-user WordPress, since I use the single-user WP now and am pretty familiar with it's workings

Peggy - looks like you are off to a great start... I'm very partical to the simpler looking layouts for WP. (tossed a link to my pitiful attempts in my sig line as well.)

Loco, great find... I'm in the same boat as Peggy, PHP5 and MySQL 4.3 (i think), the MUWP looks like it may just wipe all the work I've done thus far as trying to integrate WP into vB and flush it... go figure anytime I come up with what I think is a solution to my problem and start in on it...someoen else finishes before me :(

Peggy - looks like you are off to a great start... I'm very partial to the simpler looking layouts for WP. (tossed a link to my pitiful attempts in my sig line as well.)

Loco, great find... I'm in the same boat as Peggy, PHP5 and MySQL 4.3 (i think), the MUWP looks like it may just wipe all the work I've done thus far as trying to integrate WP into vB and flush it... go figure anytime I come up with what I think is a solution to my problem and start in on it...someoen else finishes before me :(

I see that you are using yours for tech stuff... mysql, perl, php, seo, etc. Very kewl.
Simple is good, that's what I went with, but I really wish that you had a wider (screen-width) theme. You have so much information there, it looks so busy, therefore (to me) looks squished up. I like space... room... spread out, lol.

But that's just my opinion, and please don't take offense.

Question tho... why do you think the Wordpress MU would flush your work? Perhaps I'm not understanding what you said above. I'm on some medicine that's making my brain goofy today (hush Joe and Noppid)

My blog has been a continual work in progress.... covering all sorts of things... a lot of it is to see what adsense thinks of particular content as I change directions. But now that you mention it is is starting to look cluttered... time to hack on the stylesheet a bit and clean up a few things.

As far as it flushing my WP-vB integration - Just a hunch is all... I haven't even had a chance to look at the codebase for the MU-WP package yet... just figuring it will go like so many other 'brain storms' - spending weeks hammering away on getting something to work only to find someone else did the same thing two weeks ago...

I almost installed the journal then I realized my host has the lastes php and mysql :cool:

A thought if your host has fantasico or some other automated installer with Wordpress, try looking into that. My host has it's own automated installer which will install programs (WP, PHP, Gallery, etc) into any empty directory. From their you could point a subdomain to that directory and you'd be set.

2 things I'd worry about:

Users wanting custom themes. How do you plan on doing that? Giving them FTP access, doing manually yourself?

Patches.. If you plan on having a relitivley large rollout, installing patches on 10 + blogs manually is going to be a major time waster not to mention PITA.

There are a few other multi-blog setups out there, I'll have to look for them. Try googling Geeklog or Nucleus. One of them has the option for multipule blogs.

If you guys and ladies want something really integrated into vB the way vbJournal is, you might want to check this hack (http://www.siradrian.com/forumdisplay.php?f=7). Development is suspended because the author is on a big travel somewhere but it will be picked up in august if I'm not mistaken :p. It will be priced at 50 bucks but feature wise it will be much bigger that vbJournal ever was.

I almost installed the journal then I realized my host has the lastes php and mysql :cool:

A thought if your host has fantasico or some other automated installer with Wordpress, try looking into that. My host has it's own automated installer which will install programs (WP, PHP, Gallery, etc) into any empty directory. From their you could point a subdomain to that directory and you'd be set.

2 things I'd worry about:

Users wanting custom themes. How do you plan on doing that? Giving them FTP access, doing manually yourself?

Patches.. If you plan on having a relitivley large rollout, installing patches on 10 + blogs manually is going to be a major time waster not to mention PITA.

There are a few other multi-blog setups out there, I'll have to look for them. Try googling Geeklog or Nucleus. One of them has the option for multipule blogs.

Danny the blog that you get through your host and fantastico, is for one installation only. It's not a multi-user installation. At least the Wordpress one isn't. But now that I'm looking I do see that there are 3 other blogs in my cPanel scripts.

hmmmmm...

It only installs one at a time but you can do multipule installations on subdirectories. GoDaddy offers a few apps that have the ability to maintain several diffent blogs with one central control panel.

What I'm saying tho, is if you use Wordpress, each blog is a new installation and has to have its own database as well. For hosts who don't offer unlimited db's it's no good. Add to that, the fact that each blog counts towards the site's bandwidth and storage limits.... they can be quickly depleted

Very true, just a note you can have multipule WP installs using the same DB by specifying a different table prefix for each install. My sisters WP and mine share the same DB

hmmmm... now that I didn't know. I got my info from Wordpress support. You'd think they would know about that.

Check out:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_Multiple_Blogs

I only figured it out because I expermented when installing WP.. by default it uses "wp_" as the table prefix. My blog uses dan_ and my sisters uses jen_

At first glance this seems to prove my point:
You'll need a separate MySQL database (http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#MySQL) for each blog you plan to install.

But reading further down, I see what you're talking about. Geeze, I wonder why the silly WP people didn't tell me this.

So, if you're creating say, 3 blogs, you'd add 2 more table prefixes in the config file?
Interesting...

At first glance this seems to prove my point:
You'll need a separate MySQL database (http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#MySQL) for each blog you plan to install.

Hehe, I've come to realize a lot of times the OEM documentation isn't as helpful as talking to users with experince

But reading further down, I see what you're talking about. Geeze, I wonder why the silly WP people didn't tell me this.

So, if you're creating say, 3 blogs, you'd add 2 more table prefixes in the config file?
Interesting...

You almost got the right idea. You would install wordpress 3 times, in three seperate directories. When you create the wp_config file you just specify a different prefix for each installation.

Doing it this way, you could spend all day FTPing files in. Depending on your host if you can ssh in, it's a lot easier just to use a few unix commands.

If you did decide to use multipule installtions on one DB I would limit the number per DB. Hosts tend to have a canary if the mysql server load gets to high. I'm hoping my host doesn't get pissed with all the db based sites I use.

Hehe, I've come to realize a lot of times the OEM documentation is as helpful as talking to users with experince



You almost got the right idea. You would install wordpress 3 times, in three seperate directories. When you create the wp_config file you just specify a different prefix for each installation.

Doing it this way, you could spend all day FTPing files in. Depending on your host if you can ssh in, it's a lot easier just to use a few unix commands.

If you did decide to use multipule installtions on one DB I would limit the number per DB. Hosts tend to have a canary if the mysql server load gets to high. I'm hoping my host doesn't get pissed with all the db based sites I use.

yeah that's what I meant... there's already a place in the config file for one table prefix, so you add two more, correct?

Nope, each config file is seperate.

Let say you had 3 blogs on your site:

blog1
blog2
blog3

Each has their own respective folder.

The config file in the blog1 folder would have blog1_ specified as the table prefix. The config file for blog2 would have blog2_ specified as the table prefix and so on.

Here take a look at my config file
<?php

// ** MySQL settings ** //

define('DB_NAME', 'urdbname'); // The name of the database

define('DB_USER', 'urdbusername'); // Your MySQL username

define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourdbhost'); // ...and password

define('DB_HOST', 'db.xxxdomain.com'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value



// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix

$table_prefix = 'blog1_'; // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!



// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the

// chosen language must be installed to wp-includes/languages.

// For example, install de.mo to wp-includes/languages and set WPLANG to 'de'

// to enable German language support.

define ('WPLANG', '');



/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */



define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__).'/');

require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');

?>

Each config file would be exactly the same accept $table_prefix

so three separate config files, but one database?

I'm interested in this too.. I'll see how u do OHS :)

so three separate config files, but one database?
Yup, each blog needs it's own config file. Each blog doesn't even know that the other exsists.

Peggy, this is the same exact thing as the table prefix in vBulletin that I explained two days ago. There is no difference at all in how WP and vB do it.

One database, multiple apps. Just use table prefixes to segregate which tables go to which app. You can do this with any DB application.

so you're saying that, theoretically, you could have 3 vB installations on one db?

that I didn't know

so you're saying that, theoretically, you could have 3 vB installations on one db?

that I didn't know

That's exactly correct.

However, be aware, doing this could result in performance issues with multiple large databases.

yeah that's why I added the "theoretically" in there, but I'm glad that you posted that warning.
I had no idea, really. I thought that every installation had to have it's own database... regardless of what that installation is.

I love learnin' new stuff! :D

Most times you'll want to use seperate DBs for integrity's sake. But for some things, it's nice to use one DB to do more then one thing.

such as blogs ?

such as blogs ?

You need to qualify that better. But I think what you mean is multiple blogs. Well, look at the weight on one blog installation. Then times that by the number of blogs you expect to host. Then factor in which ones will grow and how much.

A fresh install will give you the base. An existing install could show you the growth from that point that you can corrolate to what the new blogs growth rates may be and thus your possible future DB size for multiple blogs.

Yeah, math. Gotta love it!

ok... such as multiple blogs. But I don't understand a thing ya just said. English please? :p

Basically what noppid is saying is: You don't want to over extend your DB, many hosts put a limit to the number of connections per data base. Blogs for the most part aren't very DB intensive. But if you put 10 blogs on one DB and they're getting multipule hits at the same time you may run into some problems with your host.

I know the base install* of WP is less than 1 MB of database usage.

Base install = a program just installed with no modifactions

Personally I have one DB running: Wordpress (which powers my entire site), coppermine photo gallery, a phpBB board, and my sisters blog.

Granted my homepage doesn't get much traffic so it isn't a problem. I imagine if I was getting a lot a traffic I'd move WP into it's own DB.

ahhaaaaaa

thanks