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Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1
Written by Colin Devroe on January 15, 2006
I’ve been asked, more than a few times, to jot down the details of how I built 9rules.com. To do this properly, I’m forced to split this series up into a few “episodes”, so bear with me over the next few weeks while I go back in time, and start at the beginning.
The quick and dirty
Only a few short days after joining the 9rules team, Paul asked how we should consider taking submissions for our first round. After a short discussion, we all figured that doing a 24-hour “open-house” submission round would not only build buzz, but would give people some time to prepare their sites for our perusal.
But where do I put all of these submissions? We thought we’d net about 50 sites, so I really didn’t want to build something from scratch for such a small response. So, I quickly installed WordPress, and using a few puffs of smoke, and a mirror or two, I created a form that actually submitted itself to the comments of a hidden post. That’s right, the first round of the 9rules Network submissions were literally comments on a blog post. The main reason I did it this way was purely time, I was able to set that up in a matter of moments, and I didn’t have to build anything from scratch for what was supposed to be a mediocre response.
As many of you know, our first round of submissions caught us totally off guard when we received around 130 sites. When your expectations are blown away by more than double, it comes as a pleasant surprise.
Handling our first round members
So, at this point the challenge was handling the sites that we wanted to allow into the Network. Should I build an entire database for handling our members? Again, WordPress came to the rescue. What I ended up doing, was using WordPress to manage our member sites as blog posts. This allows Paul and Mike to add, edit, and delete members without needing to learn a new system. It also saves my own time by saving me from building an admin just for our members.
So how do I store our members in WordPress as blog posts? Pretty easily actually. WordPress inherently is an extensible data management system. Remove your blog from the equation, and really all WordPress is doing is storing data. So, what I did was setup a category, with many sub-categories in our WordPress installation that we keep our members categorized in. Then, on our blog, I simply block that major category from appearing.
I probably totally confused you. So here is a quick run down of how we handle things, from the perspective of TheUberGeeks.net. TUG falls under a few different categories (remember this was pre-keywords and pre-communities). So, under our top level category, we have several sub-categories. TUG, at the time, fell under Personal and Technology. This allowed for categorization prior to our new keyword system.
To tell our company blog not to display the categories we were using to store our members in, I simply added this code to our main index.php file $cat='1,3,4,15';. This tells WordPress to only load posts within those categories for our company blog.
For the first few months, our entire site was running off of WordPress-only, using the categorical structure within to categorize our member’s sites. This actually worked out very well for us in the long run, and I’m still using this system down to this day, with a few modifications, which I’ll get into on the next Episode.
Next Episode: Using WordPress’ custom fields to build an empire. Episode 2 is now available.
January 15th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
[...] 1 By Colin D. Devroe with no reader comments For you WordPress, PHP geek types: Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 is up and running. Leave feedback [...]
January 15th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Great to see you sharing the experience of building something like 9rules with the rest of humanity.
I am really looking forward to reading the other ‘episodes’ as they come out.
January 15th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
[...] cesses while building the 9rules Network. I’ve begun my journey towards that goal. Episode 1 is up for your reading enjoyment.
[...]
January 15th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Are you planning on turning this into a booklet?
You could read it to up and coming designers as a bed time story
once upon a time – in a magical server – far, far away. There was a little network called 9rules!
January 15th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Dave: I will be packaging them into a PDF when I’m done.
January 15th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Guess that’s why you’re the WordPress Jedi
January 15th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Hey, great stuff and good ideas to get more out of WP. Thanks for sharing!
January 15th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
You’ve got me! I have no idea what you’re talking about but I’m sure it’s fascinating! I’ll bookmark it and save it for later reading.
January 15th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
[...] ok for adsense targeting the more advanced publishers – can’t wait Eric9rules.com is posting a series on how their network was built – pretty interesting stuffAaron Wall is [...]
January 15th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
[...] ok for adsense targeting the more advanced publishers – can’t wait Eric9rules.com is posting a series on how their network was built – pretty interesting stuffAaron Wall is [...]
January 15th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
The idea of using WordPress as a database is not a new one for me. My “Chronicles of the American Civil War” is my database for news articles and diary entries from the the time of the war. Each day in 2005, I posted material for the corresponding day in 1861. In 2006, I am working on 1862. The database currently has over 4350 records (posts). I anticipate that there will be well over 16,000 by the time I get to the end of the war. Between now and then, I’ll figure out what I’m going to do with the database.
January 15th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Mike: Wow. What an incredibly interesting project. I’ll be keeping track of what you’re doing there for sure, but let me say that you’re definitely thinking outside the box. Kudos.
January 15th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
9rules Network – The Making
It’s big, it’s black (or at least used to be), it’s got an organic type logo, it’s The Making of the9rules Network. After a few nudges by some fans, Colin starts to tell us the tale of how 9rules was…
January 16th, 2006 at 2:21 am
Okay I kinda get it. I am also impressed. It’s kinda of like back then when we tried to archive all of our back issues for the school paper.
Our servers didn’t support any server side scripts so we considered using blogger as a method of archiving old issues without the use of PDFs. We were going to use blogger’s FTP publish option to publish content to our somewhat crippled servers. It’s too bad blogger doesn’t support catagories.
Using a blog allows you to index your data property and makes it possible for others to search your archives.
January 16th, 2006 at 7:07 am
Thanks Colin for sharing with us some of the background to 9rules. Looking forward to the next episode. The use of “Custome Fields” really make WordPress extremely flexible, I’ve been using them a lot, too. Not sure to what extent you’ve customize some of the WordPress core code – but major customization obviously breaks a clean upgrade path. I’m somewhat facing this dilemma right now – as I’d like to upgrade to 2.0…major work ahead…
January 16th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Oliver: I’m all about non-destructive code. That is one of the reasons I used WordPress instead of any other platform. It had the right balance of plugin-in hooks to allow me to do what I wanted to do, without harming the core.
On any project I’ve ever done with WordPress, I’ve never “hacked it”. Ever. I can upgrade to any version I would like to, without any of my stuff breaking.
January 16th, 2006 at 9:45 am
That’s my personal learning curve
Like you mentioned the use of plugins, I’ve started converting the additional functionality incorporated into plugins; a tedious process, but eventually it’ll pay off. Needless to say “hacking” the code may look like a quick win, but at the end isn’t…Good luck with 9rules in 2006! Love the concept!
January 16th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Oliver: To make the transition less tedious, you could simply convert your hacks to open functions, and not plugins. Until you have the time to literally “plug” them in. This would make upgrading much easier for you, in the short-term.
January 16th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Nice hack scrivs
January 16th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Thanks Tom, but “scrivs” didn’t do any of this.
January 16th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
[...] Colin Devroe, one of the founders of 9rules.com, talks about their experiences on how they started one of the best things that happened on the web. The 9rules Netw [...]
January 17th, 2006 at 12:14 am
This is awesome.
I can’t wait for the next episode!
January 17th, 2006 at 4:50 am
[...] tead of redeveloping the wheel… For those interrested in hacking wordpress checkout: Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1. This entry was posted [...]
January 17th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Great read… WordPress is a pretty extensive CMS if you know what to do and what not to do with it. It’s nice to have someone that can finally explain some of the areas
I can’t wait to see what the next ‘episode’ has to bring to the table.
January 17th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Just want to see if I’m clear on one point: you’re not using this single instance of WordPress to publish all the 9Rules blogs but only to publish the main/company blog plus track all the members and their blogs. Is this correct?
January 17th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Bill: Correct. Due to the fact that persons outside the company do have access to the other blogs, we’ve installed WordPress for those. Helps keep things separated too.
So yes, we use one instance of WP to control this blog, and manage our members.
January 18th, 2006 at 9:22 am
[...] ng the 9rules Network: Episode 2
by Colin Devroe comment below
The response from the last episode was overwhelming. Thanks to everyone that commented, emailed, instant [...]
January 18th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
[...] ing Things Done with PHP (tags: gtd web-prog) Autism Diva (tags: autism_spectrum blog) Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 (tags: wordpress howto) The Teachings of Jon (t [...]
January 18th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
[...] mado mi atención dos artÃculos recientemente publicados en el blog de la red 9 rules: Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 Building the 9rules Network: Episode 2 Explic [...]
January 18th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
[...] be des Netzwerks werfen kann. Kaum zu glauben, was die Jungs so aus WordPress herausholen: Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1, Buildi [...]
January 19th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
[...] on how they built 9Rules using WordPress. Worth the read if you are a web developer. Link: Building the 9Rules Network: Episode 1 Link: Building the 9Rules Network: Episode 2 [...]
January 19th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
[...] 8217;t find the right one to suit all of your needs, perhaps these articles can help you. Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 Building the 9rules Network: Episode 2 I know th [...]
January 22nd, 2006 at 10:50 am
Wow! I never thought wordpress is so powerful. I was thinking using it for my new site as an addional blog. Looking at this article, I think I can run the entire site with wordpress.
Thanks for sharing the info.
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:06 pm
The Truth about Trackbacks – How they Work
Since I’ve had requests for examples to Illustrate how trackbacks works, here’s a shot at it.
Please look at each item as presented before moving on to the second item. I promise this will give you better results than just reading it through.
Ite…
January 25th, 2006 at 10:54 am
[...] Megaservices No More Feeds for WordPress? » Building 9rules Building the 9rules network (using WordPress). Some very interested ways of stretching W [...]
January 27th, 2006 at 12:22 am
[...] Archives
2006 1 2005 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 2004 11 12
Asides
9rules Network » Building the 9rules Network: Episode 1 — 9Rules reveals how they buil [...]
February 25th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
[...] orts of others to push, pull,and tweak WordPress to new limits to develop their own sites. 9Rules’ Building 9Rules post explains what they d [...]
March 1st, 2006 at 8:47 pm
[...] Colin’s three part series on how he created 9rules the backend for 9rules can be found: Building 9rules – Part 1 Building 9rules – Part 2 [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
[...] nnen! Dus om zo’n avontuur in WordPress te beginnen… Toen wees Marco me op een aantal artikelen op het 9Rules-netwerk. Het 9Rules-netwerk, voor degenen die dat nog nie [...]
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:18 pm
[...] g http://allforces.com and reading some things (http://allforces.com/category/wordpress/) and then (http://9rules.com/blog/2006/01/building-9rules-episode1/) I was convinced I had to get [m]ixel’s shit together. This e [...]
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