It’s been a long weekend of data recovery and data recovery failure. Thankfully I made a full system back up the night before our server crashed.

The hard drive was fried and no information could be taken off it.

However I did miss three of my personal websites but I was so tired I said I’ll get it in the morning and my server crashed before I could get there.

The crash was not expected what so ever. It’s safe to say all the most popular and active websites have been saved and will see restored over the next 24 – 48 hours.

Because I didn’t get any data from the hard drive I requested a refund from Godaddy seeing I paid 150 USD for then to add the old drive on a USB Enclosure.

I’m happy to announce Blog Engage is back up and hopefully for good!

Thanks for your patience and welcome back.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

The deal is pretty easy. I’m approaching over 1900 followers on twitter. If you add the Blog Engage word press plugin I will always retweet your blog article.

This is no joke but I do however have minimum expectations to be followed if you plan on joining this train ride. This really is an amazing opportunity for us all.

I also have many friends that follow me and retweet what I tweet. So by helping our community you would also be helping yourself.

The Blog Engage Button and Tweetmeme button must be right beside each other. This is so when I retweet other bloggers will also see the blog engage plugin ad perhaps visit our community to vote on your article.

You can find the blog engage plugin on our profile and promo pages.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

The question should be asked! With blog engage closing registrations should we start allowing anonymous voting?

This decision is actually pretty big… …

You might be asking your self why would we have to right? Well truth be told not many people will request an Invite to simply vote on an article.

So we will only have our members votes. We have a lot of people voting as you can clearly tell but to get even more votes for some other struggling bloggers this could be a great idea.

The major issue is cheating. I heard users can use proxies and vote for their selves over and over. This might in fact cause a large amount of spam to happen. Especially when only 10 votes is needed to reach the front page.

As always I would fully moderate the website ensuring to cheat like activity is occurring.

None the less this is your choice.

Please let me know below what your thoughts are and what you would prefer.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

This is an official announcement that blog engage our social community will be closing registrations and going to an invitation community only.

The system is pretty basic but I do however need a few volunteers to help me out. Registration will now be completed by using an invitation registration system.

Current members will see the “Invite Friends’ link on the main page. This will allow you to send e-mail invitations to anyone you trust that requests one.

Please I ask our members to spread the word and share our news. Write a blog article about us announcing our closure of registrations and make sure the blogosphre knows you can invite people.

I’m willing to bet this could create some buzz and great search engine traffic. People will be Googling for blogengage invitation trust me.

This means in order to join us and submit your blog article you will have to get an invitation. We have two ways you can get invited into our community of bloggers.

• Join our Blog Forums and request an invitation by posting.

• Know a friend on the inside. All members have the opportunity to send you an invitation.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

This weeks word challenge should be pretty easy for the majority of our members.

I’m sure we have something to write about or regarding for the thousands of wordpress plugins. We also have a secondary word and it’s a wild card. “Blog About Whatever”

So if you don’t blog about or regarding wordpress plugins this weeks word challenge has a spacial card allowing our members to blog about whatever they want and submit it.

I think I will start doing the wild card once a month from now on to promote submissions.

How do you submit your article?

Simply leave a reply in the article with your url or state your submission is in your comment luv.

Why participate

Because all articles submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our word challenge linking directly to your word challenge post. This also includes retweets from myself with over 1800 followers. Also other members will be joining us in conversations on your blog. This is a great way to find new readers and get comments.

Previous weeks submissions

Jan 29

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

There’s no better way to help our members here within the community then by writing a post about the top essentials needed to benefit the most from our social community.

Something our members enjoy doing is engaging and voting for other bloggers within their niche. In order for our members to do this successfully and most efficiently is to ensure you have the follow five Blog Engage essentials.

The First Essential

The Blog Engage Word Press Plugin. This allows members that are visiting your website to either submit your content and or vote on an existing article. It also lets the user know you will in return engage with their blog article.

The Tweetmeme Button. Our members all love twitter and if you add the tweet meme button to your blog our members will re tweet if they like the content. So make sure you add the button you will 100 percent see an increase in your tweets.

You can make it look nice by adding this to your tweetmeme settings.

float: left; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 10px;

(Change from left to right depending on your placement)

Sexy Bookmarks. This plugin is really beneficial and also have the blog engage submissions button to. Make sure to download and add it to your blog. I would suggest adding the main sites and not using them all. Please include blogengage as your first option. Look at the ones I have added here on my blog and copy it. These are the main sites our members currently use.

Subscribe to my blog

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

As our community grows larger so does the participation within our weekly word challenge. I must remind everyone the true purpose of the challenge is to go out and engage in intellectual conversations on the blogs that have been submitted.

This weeks word was actually split into two seeing we have a tie. So the articles being submitted are based on Blog Maintenance and Blogging Tips.

So over the weekend and including today please join us and comments on all the articles I mention within this weekly word challenge wrap up.

Don’t be shy we don’t judge. Simply make sure you read the article and post an interesting comment.

This weeks participants are,

Blogging Tips – Starting a New Blog

DoFollow On Your WordPress Blog

Blogging Tips To Start A Proper Blog Like A Pro

Blogging Tips – Wordpress Backup DB Plug-in

Need to Find Blogs to Read and Comment On? Try Blog Engage

Create the perfect search engine environment

How do you submit your article?

Simply leave a reply in Monday’s word challenge article with your url or state your submission is in your comment luv.

Why participate

Because all articles submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our word challenge linking directly to your word challenge post. This also includes retweets from myself with over 1800 followers. Also other members will be joining us in conversations on your blog. This is a great way to find new readers and get comments.

Be sure to add me as a friend on blog engage, bbrian017

Vote for next weeks words.

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

I’m sorry to announce that a specific (pligg) module that allows me to send our members announcements has been hacked. Over 15,000 e-mails were sent out and received by our members. I have managed to delete the remainder of spam e-mails. No more spam e-mails will be sent.

Please disregard the e-mail and it’s contents. I’m sorry for any issues this may have caused. The module has been removed and cannot be used any longer.

Again I’m sorry about the e-mails please disregard and go on with your day.

Thanks,

Brian

Seeing the weekly word challenge ended in a tie 33.3% for both options I thought what a better way to get more people active and to allow two different options. So this week not only do we have one word to pick from but two.

Also take note yous till only have to submit one article. You don’t have to complete an article for each word.

Blog Maintenance

Blogging Tips

How do you submit your article?

Simply leave a reply in the article with your url or state your submission is in your comment luv.

Why participate

Because all articles submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our word challenge linking directly to your word challenge post. This also includes retweets from myself with over 1800 followers. Also other members will be joining us in conversations on your blog. This is a great way to find new readers and get comments.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Important announcement from Brian

The Word Challenge is Dying help us Revive it!

You can vote for next weeks word at the link above let’s see what Brian wants to do for this weeks word as the poll didn’t post correctly in last weeks challenge.  I think it might be good if we can get some others posting about the challege to help promote it!

 Prior Word Challenges

Weekly Word Challenge Wrap Up Jan 01
Weekly Word Challenge Wrap Up Jan 08
 Weekly Word Challenge Wrap Up Jan 16 – Helping Others

 This weeks Entries –

 Ms. Ileane’s (Guest Post on Blazing Minds) – WordPress Plugin Video Tutorial

 Kissie – George Bush Kanye West Mike Myers

 Alison Moore Smith – Delta Touch Activate Kitchen Faucet?
(Not sure if I get this one but sounded like your entry from comments or did I miss something?)

 SEO MKT – Favorite Blogs of 2010

 The Money Cult – Best Blogging Sites

Why participate

Because all articles submitted to the challenge will be promoted on by me here on our social linking directly to your word challenge post. This also includes retweets from myself and Brian with over 5000 followers. Also other member will be joining us in conversations on your blog. This is a great way to find new readers and get comments.

The challenge

I challenge all the members here in our community to write an article about or regarding the weekly word “Helping Others”.  The article doesn’t have to be of any special length simply write about the topics and submit your article to the Blog Engage.  Please remember to comment below with your blog post and link if it not in the comment luv link. 

Also do me a favor and post about the word challenge as I would like for more to enter.