Join the 9rules Network
Update: You might want to know that the latest version of 9rules is built with WordPress and bbPress. That’s pretty amazing considering all the features this community offers.
Does your website have have quality content? Get recognized by one of the most popular web communities, 9rules.
What is 9rules?
Here’s a little background info first. 9rules started in 2003 with, well, nine rules:
- Love what you do.
- Never stop learning.
- Form works with function.
- Simple is beautiful.
- Work hard, play hard.
- You get what you pay for.
- When you talk, we listen.
- Must constantly improve.
- Respect your inspiration.
It soon evolved into a community that you can’t quite categorize: a mix of a forum, a blog aggregator, a Digg clone (even if 9rules came before Digg!), and a social network. After several redesigns and revisions, the 9rules of today is a website that features content from its member blogs.
How do you join 9rules?
So how do you become a member? Over the years 9rules has announced submission rounds. As 9rules relaunched this April 30th this year, aspiring bloggers can submit their URLs on the following dates:
- May 7, 2008
- August 6, 2008
- November 5, 2008
Rounds open at midnight eastern standard time of said dates and run for 24 hours each. The first submission round is just 2 days away! Keep your eyes on the 9rules blog for more detailed instructions on submitting your blog.
If you don’t make it to 9rules, or don’t think exclusivity is your thing, try Chawlk, where you can discuss and post links freely.
Latest Version of bbPress Integrates with WordPress 2.5
Aside from WordPress, the creators of Automattic have several other software products you might be interested in. I mentioned social network platform BuddyPress a few days ago; now let’s talk about bbPress.
bbPress is forum software (like phpBB, SMF, et cetera). It’s still relatively younger and less popular than its blogging counterpart, WordPress, so it’s a good idea to finally develop compatibility between the two. Blogging may be a community in itself, but some people just can’t help hanging out in the forums, and would seem like a great feature for blog-based websites. And if I may be even bolder, the Internet was practically built on bulletin boards!
But I personally don’t like that forums tend to look completely different from their parent websites. It sort of alienates your visitors. An even more important issue is that if you require your users to register on the main site, chances are they have to register again in the forums. With bbPress, you can:
- Use your WordPress user data in the forum
- Customize the look and feel of the forum practically the same you would with WordPress themes
- Pretty permalinks! (Need I say more?)
- Spam protection from Akismet, pretty much the most effective spam fighting system out there
And knowing Automattic, the future of bbPress should be looking bright, so expect even more droolworthy features along the road.
Now my question is, since we’re not using bbPress here at the WordPress Philippines Forum, do you think we should make the switch? Since WordPress 2.5 is out, there’s not really an excuse left, right? What do you think?
Check out some of the newest features of bbPress, download the software, and read how you can integrate bbPress with WordPress.
