Thank you for starting 9rules. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for being you.

Happy Birthday Scrivs!

When I say twice as much as Round 6 I mean it and Round 6 was a large number. With that out of the way enjoy your weekend.

Now get back to writing.

If you have been here before you know the routine. If you haven’t well you have 24 hours to submit your site and the form is pretty easy. You don’t have to jump through hoops. Submit, go to sleep, think about going to work, then just go back to sleep because that is what bloggers really do.

After you submit don’t stress about when we will announce the sites. We have a good routine and handle it fairly quickly. Just subscribe to our feed to keep up to date and life will be good. Focus on making your blog the best it can be and we will focus on making 9rules the best it can be.

Submit away!

Good luck to all of you whale sharks.

1. The round starts on Wednesday August 6th at midnight EST and ends at 11:59pm EST.
2. You do not have to be the owner of the site to submit it (the owner can have someone submit their site for them).
3. We only accept sites that have at least six months of consistent writing. Usually after six months a new blogger has a feel for their writing style, how often they want to update their site and have more surety in the topic they wish to write about. It is not uncommon for someone to start a blog and in two months move on to something else or stop writing completely.
4. The next round will be November 5th, 2008.
5. What do we look for? There are a bunch of site tips that help explain what we look for.
6. If your site was not accepted in a previous round you can submit your site for this round (particularly if your site was not accepted last round if you emailed me, I responded as to why the site was not accepted).

If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask. You can send me an email at tyme@9rules.com if you’d like.

Ok, on to the tip….

It is not unusual for site owners to change domains, content management systems or make changes to the site that cause the RSS feed for the site to change. In order to insure that no readers are lost the site owner needs to set up a redirect from the old URL to the new URL. I’m going to give you a live example (until the site fixes it of course lol).

A Socialite’s Life feed is in my feed reader. I have quite a few RSS feeds in the feed reader and although I noticed the feed reader was unable to access their feed, I forgot about it. It was weeks later that I decided to check out why the error was still there after so much time. Their site changed (I have no idea about all the changes that happened) but the feed URL changed from this to this. They redirected their old URL to the new one and redirected old URLs of articles to the new URLs but didn’t touch the feed URL I used. The last update I received in my RSS reader was June 12, 2008.

Now here’s the problem to the site owner and why to avoid this as much as possible: I still feel “informed” even without their content in my feed reader. I have nothing against the site and they do have original content but for weeks I did fine without them, why should I edit the URL in my feed reader? The odds are that most readers in my position would remove the RSS over checking to see why it no longer works and taking the extra step to edit it. A reader will if they “missed” the updates or felt uninformed on the topic. Keep in mind with “news” it is all about who covers it first sometimes (unless there is unique commentary). I remember there were times when Socialite’s Life covered it first and I clicked to their site and browsed around or someone else covered it - the news balanced out. Perhaps I am getting the same news an hour or two later (or whatever) but I’m not feeling unformed. I still haven’t edited the feed’s URL and that is the key for a site owner: updating the bad URLs before the reader removes them.

As many times as I’ve changed domains and flip-flopped between content management systems I know exactly what this is like. I care more about interaction than traffic (stats) but I do check the error logs periodically and that is how you can find if people are attempting to access something and receiving and error.

Check your error logs people! You might be shocked to see what you find.

I look forward to reviewing your site Round 7. If you have any questions, let me know.

My question: Do you read those entries?

Personally, I don’t read them. I asked about 15 people I see online if they read them - they don’t. I don’t read them because they have zero value to me. I’d more likely click on an ad than pay attention to the “thank you” articles. Why? Because they usually aren’t tailored to be of any benefit to the reader. They are tailored more to fulfill an obligation to the advertiser.

As a blog owner, if you do that…why? Wouldn’t it be a win/win situation if the reader paid attention to content and clicked on it? Wouldn’t that make the blog/site more appealing to seek advertising in the future? Wouldn’t that give the site/blog an edge over others?

So tell me, do you read the thank you to our sponsor entries, particularly if they appear in your feed reader?

For site improvements, be sure to checkout the great tip articles Tyme has been writing even if you aren’t interested in joining 9rules. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask in the comments and we look forward to meeting some new faces.

I woke up today morning to find that my site feed wasn’t validating and the XMLRPC was not responding when I tried to update MarsEdit. Upon doing a quick “View Source” I found a foreign code lodged on top of my site’s header. I knew instantly that it shouldn’t be there and that something is wrong.

Brajeshwar uses his own theme so he knew that code didn’t belong there. For the average WordPress user viewing the source code would be like trying to understand a language he or she does not speak. An example: for those that drive how many people can fix the car they drive if it breaks? Mechanics can but most people have to take the car in to be repaired. Same with a blog; many people use blogging tools but if something goes wrong are unable to diagnose and repair/resolve the issue.

Brajeshwar gives an easy to follow guide on the steps he used to secure his site, even sharing the code for an .htaccess file that prevents comment spam by denying access to no-referrer requests. Take a moment and read the article. You might learn something.

This article isn’t about WordPress being unsafe because honestly, all scripts will have vulnerabilities from time to time. Pay more attention to how quickly the company patches the security issues and informs their user base. When a patch is released, update your scripts as soon as possible.

This article is about paying more attention to your site than just posting entries. This is a situation the average user wouldn’t notice without looking for it. Just like a lawn has to be cared for in order to maintain it, your blog needs attention if your content is to remain safe, no matter what content management system you are using.

I know, you’re thinking that you don’t write reviews and this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to you. What about when you have a bad experience with a company and you blog about it? What if that company contacted you and wanted to sue? Honestly, you don’t hear companies going off when they are written about in a positive light. You have a lousy flight experience, you write about your experience and a week or two later the airline is threatening you. What do you do?

That’s something to research. What are the laws in your area? Do you want to fight for your rights or do you not care and you’ll just remove the article? What are the goals of your site and how do the answers to those questions fit in with your future plans?

Many people get online and write without really thinking through the possible repercussions of what they do; until it is too late (action has already been taken against you). The longer one writes online the more experienced one becomes in these areas. Some people decide to fight it tooth and nail. Others remove the article in question (or does whatever it takes not to go to court) to resolve the issue quickly. One response isn’t “better” than the other – it depends on your goals for you site. So, to get the ball rolling:

If you received a request to remove an article where you expressed your opinion or experience about a company or service, would you fight it or would you remove the article? The sad point in situations like this, the law might be on the writer’s side but the writer would have to spend resources to have the law recognized in their favor. Some people or companies have to learn that negative criticism will come…learn from it.

I was talking to someone online and I mentioned this situation. Their response was that they didn’t use AP articles so there was no need for concern. It didn’t cross their mind that Yahoo articles might be an AP article. One of the DMCA requests was for this article syndicated via Yahoo. This could cause a blurred sense of perception. A writer or blogger could be thinking “Yahoo is safe” when that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it? It’s not Yahoo’s content, it’s AP’s.

The bottom line is that there seems to be a disconnect on what is considered fair use. Content creators have different requirements on how their content should be used. Some writers do not mind if their articles are redistributed in full and on the flip side, others prefer permission be granted for any use but cannot get around fair use.

There are quite a few people talking about this. One cannot deny it does bring up the question, as writers, how our content should be used and just as important: how much outside content should be used on our sites.

Do you have clear policies in place on your site that lets people know how your content can be used?

I’m sure it’s completely no surprise to anyone that Tyme has been doing an unbelievable amount of work here the past few months and our latest membership round would have been dead-on-arrival without her managing the whole thing.  She’s always been on top of our membership rounds but this latest one was something special for us, and she did a marvelous job. If you want to know why going through all of the sites went exponentially smoother than it has in previous rounds, you can simply look to Tyme. She did a great job.

9rules and our new sites would not be the same unless she was here working her butt off on them.

I don’t know how she manages to do it, but every year I’ve known her she happens to turn 29 over and over.  Now that’s a feat I’m jealous of.

Happy Birthday!

We talked about how 9rules began, the changes we’ve made to the site, answered the question “Are you still using WordPress as the backend?” (hint: funny story behind that one), how we see the internet evolving - fun stuff.

You can download/listen to the interview here. It’s 52:05 minutes long.

Thanks James!

I also responded to all of the “why wasn’t my site accepted” emails I received. If you didn’t receive my response let me know and I’ll resend it. I enjoyed interacting with all of you.

That’s it. Have a great week everyone!

Update May 29, 2008 6:49pm EST: All the emails have been sent out. If you did not receive it let me know (along with your domain name).

Update June 3, 2008 4:32pm EST: I’ve added all the new members that I received a response from. If you haven’t received my email with instructions to get your site set up or responded and haven’t heard from me, let me know.

http://vocino.com/: This is the one where I said I look forward to watching him grow as a blogger. I like the innocent (enthusiastic) perspective he has towards some of his entries. So often we are filled with the “expert” authoritative perspective, which is fine, but it’s not the “only” perspective.

http://happysoda.com: This was the site I was looking at when my eyes popped. We had a cryptic conversation about anime.

http://desktopvibes.com/: When I said, “Wow, he’s all grown up!” I was talking about Glenn. He was 14 when he first started with 9rules.

That’s all that I can recall of the stream where I could spark your memory. So, without further ado - the members that were accepted in the stream and a couple I got confirmation information from:

http://bignanime.wordpress.com
http://desktopvibes.com/
http://educatedeviate.wordpress.com/
http://www.happysoda.com
http://omaemo.dasaku.net/
http://shapeshed.com/journal
http://vocino.com/

I may have a couple of others. As I said, I sent emails out with questions prior to announcing the list. Didn’t want to keep anyone waiting!

The sites we did not accept basically fell into several broad categories:

• The site was new: We require at least six months of consistent posting. We received submissions for some awesome sites that were too new to accept. Please resubmit your site in August so the guys and I can drool over them again. I cannot stress enough to resubmit. If you want to know if your site falls into this category please do not hesitate to contact me at tyme@9rules.com.
• Content was a mashup of another entry: I talked about this in a previous article. An example: “Scrivs wrote about People Differentiation on 3by9. It’s a cool topic, check it out!” We aren’t looking for those types of entries. However, it is wonderful to be inspired by an article and add your own twist and original content. We did not accept blogs that mashup content from other sites.
• Bad navigation: If you watched the stream where we went through sites you saw an example of us clicking through sites trying to find archives, a contact page or just navigate through the site. A reader will not take that much time trying to find what they are looking for. They’ll go to the next site.
• No focus: The author of the blog used their blog to randomly dump information. Every blogger has their own style but our readers are looking for more focused content where the blog has a clear direction on the content being published.

Those are the main reasons. If you have any questions about your blog, let me know. For the sites we had questions on, I’ve already sent out the emails. I will be contacting the new members next week to get your sites set up.

Here is the list of accepted sites before you guys kill me. Congrats!

Round 6 Accepted Sites

http://www.aliedwards.typepad.com/
http://anime.osiristeam.net
http://armenthomassian.com/
http://badassideas.com/blog/
http://basugasubakuhatsu.com/blog/
http://blinkdagger.com/
http://blog.littlerockjams.com/
http://brajeshwar.com/
http://cameraporn.net/
http://cypherhackz.net/
http://deepesthealth.com
http://deliciousasianfood.com
http://designchronicle.com/memento/
http://designingthenews.com
http://dietriffic.com/
http://dotconnector.wordpress.com
http://elitebydesign.com
http://escapefromcubiclenation.com/
http://evomend.net
http://f1fanatic.co.uk
http://frozentoothpaste.com/
http://hellyeahdude.com
http://higevsotaku.com
http://intheknowtraveler.com
http://joshsanimeblog.com/
http://justenough.wordpress.com
http://kitchenparade.com/
http://lessoninlife.com
http://liewcf.com
http://marcandangel.com
http://marketingpilgrim.com/
http://maximummotorsport.co.uk
http://moetron.com/
http://msadventuresinitaly.com/blog/
http://myfla.ws
http://nothingbutgreenlights.net/
http://organizeit.co.uk/
http://panelsofawesome.com/
http://pr-squared.com
http://quickonlinetips.com
http://shamefulotakusecret.com/
http://shapeshed.com/journal
http://slowleadership.org
http://srichinmoybio.co.uk/blog/
http://sushiday.com/
http://that.animeblogger.net
http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/
http://thenext45years.com
http://twonotesahead.wordpress.com/
http://webmaster-source.com
http://whisperingcraneinstitute.wordpress.com/
http://wyblog.us/

Also as of now we will not tell you the number of submissions because people get caught up in the number and no matter how many sites we let in we are either too exclusive or not exclusive enough, which takes away from the great sites that get accepted.

At 3pm.

EST.

Yeah. See you there!