Every blogger should read this eBook by Hunter Nuttall, The Zen of Blogging (PDF).  Whether you’re just getting started or you are an experienced blogger looking for a new perspective to kick-start your motivation, I think you’ll enjoy this thoroughly.

Via:  ProBlogger

I’ve completed upgrading Communiteer.com to WordPress 2.5 and I think I have everything working correctly again.  I also took the opportunity to clean up a few template  issues when the site is viewed under FireFox.  There’s still plenty of work to do on the overall template, but at least the clipped text is gone now.

If you have a WordPress-based blog, you should definitely check out the new version.  One-click plugin updates alone make the upgrade worthwhile!

Picking the technology to back your online community is critical.  With the wrong content (or community) management system (CMS), you could be limiting yourself in terms of features, support, expandability, and performance.  Alternatively, you don’t want to pick something ultra-complex when a simple blog is all you need (as I like to say, never buy a battleship kit when all you need to build is a rowboat).

So how do you make the right choice?  Here are a few tips I’ve discovered:

1.  Start with a plan - Know what features you’re really after and prioritize them.  For example, if you think a blog+forums site is all you’re really after, then anything other features such as polls, articles, user-uploaded content (galleries, file shares), might be overkill. 

2. Ask around - At the bottom of many sites, you’ll see something like “powered by MegaEngine 4.6″.  Don’t be afraid to ping the webmasters to ask their honest opinion of the system.  You may or may not get a response, but it’s worth a try.  Also, there are communities for most of the major systems too, so you’re apt to find forums, self-help troubleshooting information, and a wealth of other useful information by browsing their websites.

3. Compare CMS - the CMS Matrix is a great place to start to compare features of major platforms.  Just pick the ones you’re interested, click the Compare button, and learn more than you probably wanted to know about how they fare against each other.  CMS matrix shows details such as relative startup cost, technology requirements, security features, ease of use, etc. 

4. Keep an eye on the exit - If you roll out your community on one platform and in the end decide it’s just not going to work out, chances are good you can still migrate your data to a new platform.  Normally, this will require a good developer with strong database chops as well as experience with multiple coding languages, but it’s not impossible.  For some simple blogging engines, you can even find automated migration tools written by community members.  For example, users of Wordpress 2.2 and higher can import their blogs from a Blogger site.

What else do you consider when looking for a community platform?  Do you have any other useful tools like CMS Matrix to suggest?

(CMS Matrix link via DuctTapeMarketing.com)

I’ve installed Alex King’s WordPress Mobile Edition plugin to enable our content to be viewed on mobile browsers.  To test it out, I viewed the site from my Samsung Blackjack phone, andit works great!  Mobile browsers are gaining more and more market share every day, so this plugin is an easy way to reach users on the go.

Link:  WordPress Plugins | alexking.org

What I love about the web is no matter how well established you think a site is, and how well you think it has filled a particular need, there’s always something new and innovative just around the corner.

In the world of blogging, we all know the heavyweights:  Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, Community Server, etc.  Enter Blogonize - the brainchild of a brainy 16 year old with something to prove.  At first glance, Blogonize may appear like Yet Another Blogging Site, but with even a quick peak into its features, this new contender definitely seems ready to put up a serious fight in the blogging market.

Blogonize, currently in "beta 0.7" bills itself as "Finally - an easy to use innovative blog host!"  The statement rings true.  Signing up is free and took all of 30 seconds (no e-mail validation required!).  Like the other engines, Blogonize features multiple templates for quick and dirty site design.  Of course, you can roll your own by editing the CSS templates to your heart’s desire.

Going beyond the conventional features, Blogonize has a cool "text to podcast" feature that turns your posts into audio podcasts for your readers to listen to.  This is similar to Talkr, which is available for other blogging engines, but the integration into the Blogonize control panel is very convenient.  Next up, Blogonize gives you reports of daily, weekly, or monthly traffic to your blog.  Again, this is available with tools like Feedburner, but the integration is very nice.  For larger blogs, you can have multiple editors and writers who have permission to create and modify content on the site. 

Blogonize helps its members promote their site by featuring a page with the latest "hot posts" across the site.  So, if you come up with a particularly popular post on your blog, it might rise to the top of this page and be seen by thousands of other readers looking for interesting stories.

Finally, the slick WYSIWYG HTML editor shows you exactly what your post will look like online before you push it.  It uses AJAX to make the experience even slicker by eliminating page reloads.  Every little bit helps!

I’ve created a Communiteer blog on Blogonize to further test it out.  As I explore, I’ll keep you all updated with any interesting news bits, tips, or tricks to help you make your Blogonize community site as great as it can be.  I’m not planning to switch away from WordPress just yet, but if Blogonize keeps the features coming, I’ll definitely consider it!

Link:  Blogonize - Finally, an easy to use innovative blog host!

For the code-saavy of you out there, ZAP is a very handly tool for generating a basic ASP.NET website including all sorts of abstraction layers, database tables, and behind-the-scenes goo that makes the magic work.

The tool doesn’t yet build out site features such as forums or blogs, but it will still save you immense amounts of time over coding these types of features completely by hand. I’m looking forward to giving it a more thorough trial soon for some of my upcoming projects.

Link: Introducing ZAP: a Tool for Generating ASP.NET Websites Automatically (Via ASP.net)

Community Server is perhaps the ultimate pre-packaged online community platform. I’ve used CS 2.1 on other sites and have found it to be very stable, extremely flexible, and easy to tweak. And now it’s getting even better. The good folks over CS has just released the beta of their upcoming Community Server 2007. The new version builds on the success of previous versions and includes new features such as a shared membership model so you can easily link together multiple communities.

You can find a demo of the beta version here, but don’t use it in production - it is set to expire on May 15th, 2007.

Just 7 hours ago, Wordpress v2.1, nicknamed “Ella” was released to the world.  The new version contains a whole slew of new features, performance improvements, and some 550 bugfixes! 

Looks like I’ll be spending some late nights this week pouring over the new features to see what all is included.  I also got smart and set up a test environment for The Communiteer blog so I can make sure our upgrade to 2.1 goes better than the previous upgrade attemps have gone.

Shortly after completing our upgrade to Wordpress 2.0.6, version 2.0.7 has been released!  We completed our upgrade to this new version tonight and have restored the original site theme.  So as far as we know, we’re back in business!  Thanks for your patience through the technical turmoil.

If you’re running a Wordpress blog and haven’t upgraded to v2.0.7 yet, better get on it.  In addition to some bug fixes, it includes important security updates as well.  You can read more details at the Wordpress blog. 

We upgraded to the latest version of WordPress last week but had some glitches in retaining the previous site template & customizations.  Rest assured, we’ll have this fixed as soon as possible.  Thanks for your patience!