Ever since I begun blogging and falling in love with every aspect of it, I also wanted to try managing forums. Copyblogger has recently addressed few important reasons why every blogger should have a forum. It took me quite a long time to make my own conclusions.

My previous attempts to implement forums on few of my websites ended up in disaster. One particular forum was left unattended for a few weeks. It grew incredibly big- however 100% of those registered were spammers. Some times we bloggers complain about spam, but to be completely honest I think we have seen nothing in comparison to the owners of the forums. The spam on forums can really deter the owner from moving on.

For the last 3 years, after the last unsuccessful attempt of starting a forum, I have decided to concentrate on blogging. But the more I blogged the more I realized the need for a forum.

While my intention was to launch the forum on January 1st, an urgent reputation management issue stopped me from formally announcing the Go Beyond MLS forum. It did not however stopped few of my friends to join the forum and “take it for an extensive spin”: Matt (aka The Geek LordMatt), Matt Keegan (aka The One and Only Freelance Writer), Dennis Pease (aka Oregon Realtor)- thank you so much for taking a look at the my new forum.

I will be writing few follow up posts about the forum and what I will be trying to accomplish with it in 2009. For now I feel compelled to thank you for testing it so far. The forum is powered by Simple Press Forum Plugin for WordPress- just in case you wonder.

Note: I you have joined the forum but have not yet configured your profile, take a few minutes to do so. At minimum it will be good if you provide your web site’s address.a

Seams like the subject of paid reviews will be around for some time. While I have a unique prospective on paid blogging, I think the proper place to discus the subject will be on Sage Blogger, the blog where I write about affiliate marketing and related subjects of making money online.

I do however need to thank Greg Swann and Chris Johnson for stirring up emotions associated with the subject.

While some may think that such an article may fit better on this blog, the truth is that vast majority of real estate bloggers are not looking to to monetize their blogs. However most of the visitors to my Sage Blogger come to it looking for things that will make you money on the Internet- many are them are bloggers who will consider signing up with one of the paid/sponsored reviews websites.

I will leave the readers of Go Beyond MLS with a following thought. Paid review was the worst mistake I ever made as far as blogging is concerned. If blogging is your long term goal, paid and sponsored reviews maybe prove to be very shortsighted strategy and can sometimes cost you way more in legal fees should things go awry as a result of your review.

If you are using Google Webmaster Tools you are probably aware that, among many things that these tools offer, there is the ability to submit your web site’s sitemap to help Google discover pages on your website. Google Webmasters Tools can also provide some insightful information about your website. Among many different statistics you will see the page containing information about about “crawl statistics”. You will find there a graphic of Googlebot’s activity on your website over the period of last 90 days. Just like the one you see below.

In the past Google did not offer webmasters many options or saying about how ofter they can or will crawl your website. While from time to time, after determining that your website may use a faster crawl rate, they would offer you an option to change this rate. However over the period last few months I was never offered that option in Google Webmaster Tools for my websites. So I have trusted Google, as most of us do, to crawl and discover the websites in their own time, and have completely forgotten about the “crawl rate” settings.

It appears, however, that recently, Google Webmaster Tools have opened the option to set a custom crawl rate for the websites you have listed in your account:

The above option can be found under the main settings in your Google Webmaster Tools account, and it is quiet self-explanatory. Stetting a “slower crawl rate” will reduce Googlebot’s visits to your website. I would recommend not to set a rate slower of what Google is already doing, unless your are experiencing issues with bandwidth. The slower crawl rate will probably result in delay with indexing your latest content. If anything, you may want to experiment with a “faster rate”, if you think it takes too long for your latest content to appear in Google’s index.

For time being I will not customize the crawl rate for this website, as I am pleased with what Google is doing now. I will however experiment with few other websites with intention to report here how can you benefit for this option, if you can benefit at all.

If you are a blogger, chances are that sooner or later you will come across a phenomena called “splogs”. These blogs republish your content without your permission and without giving your a proper credit for your work. Some times they do link back to you but dressing up your links in pink colors of “nofollow” attribute. So how do you deal with them?

I came across an interesting discussion on AgentGenius.com on how to deal with splogs. Tom Royce of Real Estate Bloggers suggested a plugin called RSS footer- this plugin allows you to ad an extra link into your feed with a custom message, which can be used to expose and embarrass the splogger.

There is also another similar solution to the above plugin. I have been using it for quiet sometime without realizing it has a potential to insert additional links each of your RSS feed item- Similar Posts Plugin. This plugin undergone husge transformation since I first began using it, if you have it on your blog an kept with plugin’s updates make sure to look at every set of settings to appreciate more what this plugin can do for your blog. You can specify the links to similar post in RSS feed under “Placement” option in the latests version of the plugin.

Since many of the splogs are automated, the extra links to your website will begin to show up on these splogs. There is one more benefit from using the above described plugin- but revealing it means giving away a simple solution to the “developers” of these splogs.

So to all of you who think splogs are fun I am begging you: please go ahead and scrape my blogs.

Note: Above plugins are for WordPress.org powered websites only.

The other day I wrote about moving moderation of comments to IntenseDebate. The move was completed successfully, you can now find both my profile and this blog’s profile page on IntenseDebate: Vlad Zablotskyy on IntenseDebate and Go Beyond MLS on IntenseDebate.

The move went smoothly and it took about 8-10 minutes for IntenseDebate to move 1200+ comments of this blog.

One of IntenseDebate plugin that caught my eye is that you can still use your WordPress’ native comments interface on your blog while allowing the plugin to sync the comments made on your blog to your blog’s profile on intensedebate.com. This can be useful if you would like to test their service without revealing it on your blog.

One downside that unlike Disqus, IntenseDebate does not offer any integration for video commenting. But this does not really affect this blog as I rarely make any videos myself.

I like the performance of IntenseDebate so far, let see what they have to offer in the future.