I have been spending a lot of time this weekend on the backend of Explore With Me trying to find the best plugins and widgets possible for my soon to be users.

Hosting other peoples blogs is going to be a massive task, not only will I have to provide support, I will also have to make sure that users have access to the best themes, plugins and widgets.

As the hosting will be aimed at travellers wanting to create their own blog, I have to find themes and plugins that appeal to that niche.

A few weeks ago I found and implemented 30 travel themes that I found at a website called WordPress Travel Themes. This was a great find as all I had to do was upload the themes and then activate them all. Anyone who signs up for a blog at Explore With Me can now choose any of the 30 travel themes.

Once I found the themes the next step was to find plugins that would be suitable for a travel site. I have only implemented a few of them at the moment, however below is a list that I would like to offer travel bloggers.

• Flickr Sidebar Widget: This is a sidebar widget to allow bloggers to show their latest Flickr photos from their recent travels.
• Twitter for WordPress: This widget allows you to display your latest tweets on your WordPress blog. This is great for travellers as you can keep everyone up to date with your travels.
• YouTube Widget: Allows your users to show their latest YouTube videos on their sidebar. Great for all that travel footage!
• Travel Map: I have yet to find a Travel Map plugin that I can use for WordPress MU. I’d like to find something that would allow the blogger to plot their travels - something similar to “Where I’ve Been“
• Current Location: Another plugin I have yet to find, though I think it would be good for the bloggers to be able to show their current location on a map.

I think these are the main features I would like the bloggers to be able to use. Smaller plugins such as weather, timezones and travel itinerary would also be a nice touch.

What else do you think a travel blog should have?

If you are anything like me - when you get an idea it is the only thing you think about until it is reality. I am possibly the most impatient person I know. When I get something in my head it has to happen now - and I won’t stop until it happens and I see results.

This can be both good and bad. Good in the way that I throw everything I have into it and work hard to archive the goal, and bad because I want to see results now.

Launching Explore With Me has taught me a lot about blogging, the Internet and patience. We had the idea about two months ago and once we decided on what we wanted to do, it has been non stop since. Every night for the past month I have worked on Explore With Me and there is still a lot of work to do before we launch it - although the site is already live. However in my mind the site is a work in progress and I think anyone who visits it can see that too.

I normally hide my sites away before they are 100% ready to go, however I gave full access to Explore With Me from day one so other people interested in blogging can see it take shape. However as a rule of thumb this probably isn’t the best thing to do.

Content is the biggest factor when launching a new blog. You have to keep it away from the public eye until it has enough content so you can engage the users early on and keep them coming back for more.

I try to have a good variety of content when launching a new blog, and as you can see with Explore With Me we already have some solid content that is performing well in the search engines - even though the site is not yet “officially” live.

Although your patience might get the better of you, try not to rush the development of a blog just so you can have it up and running. Your potential audience will be put off by broken links, pages that don’t have content and scripting errors and you may have lost them before you even begin.

Try to limit the number of revisions to the layout of the blog once it is live. You don’t want to be trying new things every day. Returning users won’t know what the hell is going on if there is a different layout, menu options or graphics every day.

If you have ideas about changing layouts and features of the blog try to hold off until there is enough of a change to make it a worthy site update. Small changes are fine, but constant major updates should be limited.

Make sure any changes you make are tested locally before going live with it. You don’t want to make a big update and test it once it goes live. All testing should be done on your local machine and only upload the changes once you are 100% happy with it.

When you “officially” launch the blog is should be ready to go and 100% complete. For a new site it is important to have some consistency. Users don’t like change, they rather know that when they visit your blog they know how to find their way around and not have to re-learn the layout every few weeks.

After such a great September it was always going to be a challenge to continue growing at that same rate in October. From the first day of the month things began to take a turn for the worse and that trend continued until the last week of October.

Most of my attention over the month was taken away from this blog as I put all my efforts into getting Explore With Me up and running. I would have liked to have blogged more during the month but there simply wasn’t the time.

It wasn’t all bad though. I did manage to blog the 100th post in October and my Google PageRank went from zero to two. It has already dropped to 1 though!

Traffic

Traffic was down all month and we ended October about 50% down on September. It wasn’t the worst month we have had so far - however it was nothing to brag about.

I blogged on average every second day so I am not convinced this is the only contributing factor to the poor traffic. However having said that I am at a complete loss at the why the blog struggled so much last month.

The best performing posts during the month were “Creating a Social Community with WordPres“, “Must Have WordPress Plugins” and “Why Most MMO Blogs Don’t Succeed“.

StumpleUpon and Digg seems to be one of the best traffic sources at the moment. I am still submitting most of my posts to the social communities and it is proving to be a success.  Nearly half of the hits from the month came from StumpleUpon.

Revenue

Not much to report here for October. I have said it before - the more hits you get the more revenue you earn and as hits were down so was revenue.

I am in the process of finalising a private ad deal which would go live this month some time so that will dramatically boost my revenue for November. At the moment it looks as though it is a one time deal however there may be other deals if this first one is successful.

November will be another tough month I think. I am going to be away for 3 weeks of it, so finding the time to blog may be an issue this month.

When the initial idea of Explore With Me was discussed, we wanted to create a travel blog as well as allow other travellers to sign up and create their own travel blog. This is when I discovered WordPress MU. After we figured out we could host other blogs, we then decided we should create an online social community for travellers.

This is when I said “OK, good idea, but how the hell do we do that!?!”

I then turned to my trusty friend - Google. I searched for “WordPress + social community” and to my surprise it actually brought some good results.

This is where I met BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is currently in development. It was created by a guy called Andy Peatling who started the development earlier this year. Since then Andy has landed a job with Automattic - the guys who develop WordPress, WordPress MU and anti comment spam plugin Akismet.

BuddyPress is a plugin designed to work with WordPress MU and allows people like me to turn their WordPress MU blog into a social community with functionalities such as adding Friends and Groups, sending Messages and writing Comments.

At the moment the plugin is still in development. The final version is due out at the end of this year.

I am currently running a beta version of the plugin on Explore With Me. Please feel free to sign up and test it out.

Check out BuddyPress.org for more information and don’t forget to visit Explore With Me!

I have been using WordPress for the past 6 months or so now and up until now haven’t really learnt the way it works. I mean, I know how to post and do everything I need to do from the Dashboard and I know enough PHP to get me by, but it wasn’t until the Explore With Me Project that I really learnt the insides of it.

For me problem solving is the most effective learning method. Some people read guides, others go to classes but for me I learn the most about something when I break it and then try to fix it or if I have a problem with it and need it to do something it doesn’t.

I taught myself HTML at 15 by looking at other websites. Right click > View Source was the best way I learnt how to build a web page and by looking at source code 10 years later I still learn from it. I haven’t had too much experience in PHP but pulling apart a WordPress theme helped me understand the way WordPress uses it for the most basic of functions, and also increased my knowledge in PHP.

I have been working on the new site for the past few weeks and it has been a massive learning curve. This project isn’t a simple WordPress project. It is the combination of a few different ideas that are making it more difficult than it should be.

I am normally one to figure it out on my own before I asked anyone for help - whether it is web development or my real life job. Sometimes I stick with it long enough to get a result and other times when I get stuck I have to concede and ask for help.

This learning method proves far more effective than reading guides, books, powerpoint presentations, blogs and whatever else you want to throw in front of me. I think this is becuase I like to know how things work and I am a very persistant person - just ask my girlfriend!

Everyone is different and what works for me won’t work for you. I am interested to know what works for you. Do you prefer reading books or do you prefer reading code?

After getting Explore With Me up and running a few weeks back I pretty much had to start all over again when I decided I wanted to use WordPress MU instead of the standard version. WordPress MU has the ability to host endless numbers of blogs on the site - the way sites such as WordPress and Edublogs works.

We had the idea to allow our audience to create their own travel blog through Explore With Me. We thought it would be a good idea to host blogs created by other travellers and then later on we will setup a social community type environment so travellers will be able to connect with one another.

In our quest to be the “one stop shop” for everything travel related we thought it would be a good idea to setup a social community specifically for travellers. There are a few sites that do this already, however before Facebook there was MySpace and before MySpace there was Bebo - so if done properly we aim to be better than everyone else offering this type of service.

The configuration of WordPress MU meant that we had to export everything we had already done and then import it back into the WPMU database.Though if we started from a fresh install it would have been much easier to setup and configure. The setup is a little different to the standard WordPress, however anyone with basic knowledge of web hosting and web site configuration should be able to manage.

Not only do we now have to take care of our own blog we have to make sure that our members have the latest and greatest themes, plugins and other WordPress hacks that will enable them to create a professional looking travel blog.

We will also have to create a support forum and a few “How To” guides so our members can learn how to use WordPress and if they come across any problems they can share it in the forums.

The configuration of Explore With Me is nearly done, so now it is working the backend making sure members have themes, plugins and anything else that I can think of.

The social community plugin won’t be available until the end of the year so that will be the next big phase of the site. Though we will aim to launch in a few weeks and then add the social community when it becomes available.

If you would like to help us out and test the site - please sign up as a member and create your own blog. Any suggestions are welcome as I am new to this so I am bound to be missing a thing or two!

There are thousands of WordPress plugins on the Internet and most bloggers will install whatever suits their needs or niche. I have a few WordPress blogs and no matter on the type of blog or the size of it, I always seem to be installing the same plugins on each.

There are a handful of Plugins that are a must have for any blog. I have a hanful that I constantly use when setting up a new blog that are an integral part of how it performs and functions.

My list of must have WordPress plugins:

• Wordpress.com Stats:This is a must have for any WordPress blog. WordPress.com stats allow you to see your traffic in real time and allows you to see your best performing posts, search engine terms and referring links.
• All in one SEO pack: This is another must have if you want to optimise your site for Search Engines.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade: This plugin will let you automatically upgrade the version of WordPress whenever a new version is released. Saves you having to download it every time!
• UBD Block Ad: This plugin will allow you to manage your 125×125 ad blocks on your blog. I use it on my sidebar. You no longer need to edit your HTML files, all you have to do is paste in the code and your ad will be displayed.
• Akismet:This plugin is packaged with WordPress. Akismet will detect any comments that are Spam and not publish them on your blog. As your blog becomes more popular you will notice how handy this plugin actually is. I currently get about 30-40 spam comments each day and it picks up every single one.

Am I missing any? Let me know if you have any plugins you think should be added to the list!

Just a quick progress update on explorewithme.com. We had a productive weekend and nearly finished the design of the site and are continuing the add articles to the site.

Explorewithme.com hits have been very very good considering the site has not even launched yet. I am embarrassed to say, but it received more hits last week than this blog did! We even have users who have added the site to delicious.com and subscribed to the RSS feed.

We added a forum over the weekend to attempt to build a bit of a community among travellers and we have another idea that we hope will take off - though I can’t discuss that with you yet and probably won’t be able to until the end of the year - but it is very exciting.

Before we officially launch we need to add more articles and tidy a few things up. A logo needs to be designed, redesign the forum, fix the contact forms, create an about page and a lot more! Then it is just a matter of getting the word out and drive traffic to the site.

If all goes well we will launch in the next week but definitely by the end of the month!

As most of you know by now my girlfriend Ruth and I are starting a travel website. Things are coming together nicely on the technical side of things so now it is just a matter of writing some content for the “official launch”.

The design aspects of the site will be finished this coming weekend if all goes well, so now it is down to the business end of things and it is time to start blogging. We hope to have some solid content in time for the launch of the site as there is no point in launching a site if there is nothing for the users to do.

We have all heard it before that “content is king” and you’d be a bit silly not to believe it. But it is not enough to just have content anymore, especially since the popularity of the blog has exploded in the past 2 years.

Anyone can write a few paragraphs and call it a “blog”, it doesn’t mean they are a good writer and it doesn’t mean they get hits. Content alone does not mean that your user’s are going to keep on returning.

How many blogs have you visited a blog, read a few posts and never returned again? Some of you are probably doing it right now.

Why didn’t you return?

Most of the time the reason why you don’t return is because the content wasn’t memorable enough for you to go back to the blog, or even remember what the blog was even about for that matter. The post didn’t leave you wanting more.

Your content has to be good content. It has to make your readers want to know more, want to come back tomorrow and most importantly want to keep on coming back.

Before you launch a new blog it is important to have some good solid content to keep users coming back early on in the game. You don’t want to start with one post as you won’t have enough for the user to read and therefore no reason for them to come back.

We plan on going live with explorewithme.com with at least 20 blog posts so we can engage our audience early and leave them wanting more. The more content we launch with, the more the users have to do and the longer they stay.