The Reader Appreciation Project

Hi there.

Bes Zain here. I am very happy to announce what you may have already found out in a recent RA Project post: I am back and have taken over RA Project. Read more…

As most of you are aware, the posts on RAP have died down over the last several months. The reason? I decided to take a long break from blogging, reassess my priorities and interests, and rejuvenate myself mentally and physically.

I’ve made some decisions, and one of those is to rid myself of prior obligations so that I can work on other projects. That’s the reason I’m no longer developing/supporting my WordPress plugins; they are too time consuming with very little ROI.

New Owner

Bes Zain, one of the original RAP founders, recently got back in touch with me. We were talking, and he asked, “What are you planning to do with raproject?” I couldn’t give him a good answer.

I then asked him, “Would you like to take it over?” He enthusiastically agreed.

So here’s my announcement: Bes is back and he’s now in charge of the future of raproject.

What’s in store? I have no idea, but I’m sure Bes will fill you all in. If you are subscribed, please hang in there and see what Bes can do.

I’ll still be around, but my priorities are elsewhere right now.

Thank you all for supporting me at this project. Take care.

Most of the biggest things in life started by being small.

This is not a saying of who-knows-what-smart-personality from the past. This comes straight from my personal wisdom well, and it was issued with the occasion of getting tired to submit stories to Digg to see if I can make it to the front page. After Digg, there was Sphinn: another enigma, another trial. Here I noticed from the start that I cannot find an appropriate category for my submissions. There’s no wonder that very few members actually cared to vote for those stories, although some of them were not bad at all.

After two years of being a submitter, I decided to become the one who receives submissions. No, I haven’t got hired by Digg, nor by Sphinn. I’ve just launched my own social networking website, BlogLancer.net, a place where there is no specialization: there are lots of categories, so all readers would find a suitable place to submit their work. If they can’t find it, I’ll create it for them.

On BlogLancer.net, all members are equal and all stories are accepted. Who cares if you choose to publish them on a Squidoo lens, or on a HubPages hub, or on a free Blogger blog? If you thought it to be good for publishing, then I think it is good for reading. All you need to get promoted on the front page are 5 votes from the other members. There is also a WordPress plugin, for those of you who may want to include the “vote” button in their articles.

As the site is only four days old (or maybe I should say four days young), it is small and ignored by search engines. But Digg and all others must have looked the same in their first week of existence: small and ignored.

So, if you have stories craving for attention, I invite you to submit them to BlogLancer, so we can all read and comment them together.

I’m happy to announce the first public release of Ajax Edit Comments (for WordPress 2.5 only). Please keep in mind this is a Release Candidate. In other words, it’s stable, but may not be stable enough for a live blog.

If this RC goes well, you’ll see an official release in about a week.

Please leave any feedback in the comments section, or fill out our support form. I will allow test comments here, but please be aware that they will periodically be removed.

Download Link

Please see the official Ajax Edit Comments for the latest plugin information. I will update that page as I have time and the official release nears.

For now, here’s a direct link to Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC1.

Features?

Rather than repeat myself, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments page for a full break-out of features.

I Need Feedback

Specific areas I could use some feedback on are:

• Theme issues.
• Character issues.
• Defensio: I still have not confirmed 100% that this feature works.
• Style issues. If so, what browser and OS?
• Behavior issues. Does something not work as expected?
• Usability issues. Can a rock use it?

Any bug reports should be as detailed as possible with steps to reproduce the error. Screenshots help a lot as well.

If you’re not having issues and want to lay down praise, I’ll accept that too. All feedback is appreciated.

Conclusion

Once again, this is an RC, so please use caution if testing it on a live blog. If there are any issues, please de-activate the plugin immediately.

I just spent an amazing two hours listening to Jeffr0 and Lorelle talk about WordPress on WordPress Weekly.

If you are able (and have a few hours of spare time), please listen to the podcast below:

It’s with great sadness that I announce that Peeve Week 3 has been called off.

It’s a busy time of year for everyone, and it has affected quite a few other group writing projects. Peeve Week 3 was no exception to this.

It’s a few days before the deadline and almost half the contributor slots are filled. It’s been difficult on how to weigh sponsors, prizes, and incentives for the filled slots. As a result, Simonne and I have decided to call Peeve Week 3 off. If you are a sponsor, your contribution will be refunded.

The decision was difficult, as some have already completed their posts. If that is the case, I will still gladly post what you have on RAP. I will also work with you individually to compensate you for your time and effort.

I’m sorry this didn’t work out. When I began to launch Peeve Week 3, I told myself, “There’s a possibility this will fail.” However, I’m glad I did try, rather than just wonder.

A big “thank you” to all who helped out with Peeve Week 3, and also a big “thank you” to all you readers out there. There’s still big things ahead of us.

You probably know by now that you’re going to assist very soon at the launch of the Reader In-appreciation Project. I thought Ronald’s idea was good, and it could be extended. We are currently seeking for guest writers, but the acceptance conditions are drastic, and you have to comply with all of them in order to have the honour of in-appreciating our readers.

1. All guest writers need to know nothing about the topics they write about. The less you know, the better you’ll in-appreciate your readers and they will thank you for that.

2. All guest writers should have a cool slogan, something like “The King Of Free Traffic”, or “The GoneSense Queen”, or “The Niche Princess”. Just be hot and trendy, and don’t think that you actually have no clue.

3. All guest writers should write in bullets, think in bullets, and even speak in bullets. Bullets, like in lists, not like in guns.

4. All guest writers should have an exaggerated self-esteem and show it off like every two paragraphs or so. Your readers need to be reminded how good you are, how nice your feet smell and how fast is your latest car paid for with their money.

If you cannot do these, don’t think to apply for a position. We want to hit 1000 feed subscribers over the first three weeks from launch, so we cannot afford even the smallest mistake here.

We shall also have a 5-times-a-day newsletter, which will point to highly useful ebooks and courses about chasing the wind around while making mayonnaise, and we promise you they won’t cost more than $7 per piece, and they will be very easy to read and digest.

So, let the guest authors list begin to build up. You are invited to pitch for one of the 3 positions in the comments box below.

Well, I’m about to start my journey in a few hours and be on my way to WordCamp Dallas. It’s rather exciting that I’ll be able to meet several readers here in person, as well as meet some WordPress bigwigs. I looked at the attendees list and only recognize a few names, but I’m still sure it’ll be a blast. If you happen to go, please be sure to say hello.

The brand-new Reader Appreciation Project design has been launched. There’s still some bugs to work out, but it’s more-or-less done.

If you have a moment, please check it out and let me know what you think. The new design is based off the Mimbo Pro theme.

I’d like to especially thank Vivien from InspirationBit. She helped out tremendously with the typography, the color scheme, layout, and even the beautiful strawberry image in the footer.

As Ronald already told you, today we have an anniversary here. Isn’t it funny how time passes by so quickly?

Less than one year ago, I bumped into an event called Reader Appreciation Week. At that time, I was looking to participate in group projects, because I was amused of how many people one can meet during such events. I didn’t quite understand what we were supposed to do, and I soon forgot about it completely.

How It All Started For Me

Not long after that, I received a message from Vivien, who was asking me if I wouldn’t like to write for Reader Appreciation Project, because the authors liked my style of writing. I was amazed by that, as I was mostly writing for people coming from the search engines, who were supposed not to find anything interesting on my site and move away by clicking my ads.

It is true that in that period I was just discovering that blogs have loyal readers, that there were about 14-16 people who were subscribed to my feed (it felt good, although I had no idea what that was). Discovering I have readers and not only traffic, I sometimes was trying to catch them, so I changed the direction of my blog. Although I liked what I was writing, readers were not at all flooding my blog, so I started to compare my articles with others on famous blogs.

My conclusion was that I wrote better than many of them, and I started to wonder why readers were not coming to me as they came to those famous blogs.

This was the moment when I got this inquiry from Ronald to write on Reader Appreciation Project. I’m still smiling when I remember: he meant that they wanted me to write one single guest post, but I didn’t get it right and I answered that I cannot write more than 4 articles a week

A Little Bit Of Posting History

I stayed, and I discovered another kind of audience and another kind of writing.

I was pleased to see that being no 1 was not everybody’s goal, I was amused to discover what fishing has to to with blogging, and I couldn’t believe my eyes seeing how a very short post can lead to a huge line of controversial comments.

What You Should Not Expect From Us

I can understand why we don’t see a big wave of audience over us, and I doubt we shall ever see it. For that to become real, we would need to change the style, to stop thinking and to stop asking readers to think. Well, this is not going to happen.

• You should not expect to see here endless lists of what you should know in order to get smart without reading books and without thinking. I’m going nuts when I see14-15 years old kids reading and actually believing those things. Do you want to write better? Go read some dozens of books, think about their content, and come back in a few years: I’m sure you’ll  have a much better writing style.
• We shall never publish guides or courses trying to teach you things that we just came across one-two months ago, thinking that we know everything about them and even something more, and even worse, charge you a fee to share our wisdom with you.
• We won’t give you free things with hidden strings attached, hoping that we are going to make money on your back while you don’t even notice that.
• We won’t make a strategy out of using you, the readers, nor we are going to intentionally offend you in any way.
• We won’t lower our standards only to get followers, so if anybody expects this to happen, please go away, as this place may not be for you.

One more thing: to us, all readers are equal. There are no readers more equal than others. We respond to every commenter, and if sometimes we skip somebody, please accept advance apologies, as we won’t have been doing it on purpose. I know you all do that, but believe me there are lots of bloggers who don’t.
What’s next? Just wait and see. There will be a lot of surprises for you.