BlogCadre - BlogCadre

BlogCadre has a Meshly channel

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 23:24:49 -0500

I wanted to let you guys know about a community oriented link sharing site I've been working on. You can check it out at www.meshly.com, but here's the quick 411:

It's the fastest way to share links - you just send instant messages to an IM bot
You can tag all your links, and also add them to channels. Tags are for topics, channels are for communities.
Voting/promotion is based on the size of a channel. So small channels are welcome

Anyway, BlogCadre has a Meshly channel now, so come join the fun and post a quick link whenever you find something cool.

Think of it as BlogCadre turbo. We'll be tossing links on there throughout the day and then giving the best ones the proper editorial treatment for the BlogCadre main site.

I'm working at this full force and want to make it the best way for friends to share links. As always with the super-beta stuff, your opinions and ideas are welcome and appreciated.

BlogCadre Surpasses 1000 Users

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 13:41:09 -0600

Our BlogCadre community has surpassed 1000 users! What started out as a community of less than 10 over a year ago, BlogCadre has become a community of over 1000 faithful contributors or readers.

A special thanks goes out to rlarson, michelleyg, starnami, jessi and Danny for commenting, posting and/or keeping interesting material moving to the frontpage with your voting. You guys help keep our readers coming back! Thank you!

Be part of the next 1000 and create your personal BlogCadre account today!

A BlogCadre Review:
Welcome to BlogCadre
BlogCadre is stepping it up a notch!
BlogCadre - Elite Adless Edition and Other News
Yo BlogCadre Raps!
Happy Birthday BlogCadre!
DDR Induced Labor - first BlogCadre post ever

New BC Feature: One-Click Voting

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:06:49 -0600

If you haven't been following the comments, Ryan made a good suggestion yesterday regarding voter participation on BlogCadre. His theory is that we are all really lazy and don't want to click on every post and then click again to vote.

I think he's right.

So now we have one-click voting on BlogCadre. On the home page, the new posts area, and on your blog pages, you should now see a vote button for each post in its preview form. If you haven't voted for a post, this area will display with a blue background, so it shouldn't be hard to miss.

I hope this improves the site experience and the speed to which your awesome posts hit the home page. Please let me know what you think!

- Jason

BlogCadre wants you!

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:56:22 -0600

Michelleyg voted for 1 post. Thanks Michelle!

Is anyone else out there? :(

There are like 5 posts right now that I thought were pretty cool and would have normally promoted manually, but none have been voted for. Please, vote for any posts that you think are good enough to live on the front page, not only your favorites. Just click on the "recent posts" to the left and give 'em a thumbs up if you like 'em. It's a little effort, but it helps keep spam of the home page and it lets everyone decide on the kind of content they want to see on BlogCadre.

We can go back to having me promote them manually if that's what you all like (please comment, if so). I just figured you guys would rather have a say in things than me playing evil dictator. Though that does have a nice ring to it...

Vote for your favorite posts!

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 10:46:03 -0600

Remember to login or register in order to vote for your favorite new posts on BlogCadre. If the post gets enough votes it will be bumped to the frontpage and deemed another cool thing to read about.

I'm afraid if you don't vote for your favorite posts they will be hidden in the archives of BlogCadre goodness forever.

Know of any cool links or have suggestions on how we can improve our site? Send us some feedback!

Upgrading to Media Temple's Grid Servers

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:46:54 -0600

BlogCadre just made the upgrade from Media Temple's shared server platform to their new "Grid Server" system.

New GS Features
Instead of a shared server, the GS system places all your data on an NFS server. There are apparantly several load-balanced front end web servers that then access this data from the common data location. Ben over at cuddletech has some more details on the Grid Server set up.

Read on for more info about the transition, including migration notes and my skepticism as to whether or not this service is even a good move. If you want the 5 second version: the transition is frightening with no staging process or backout plan, and the "upgrade" leaves us with half the bandwidth and the real potential for expensive new mystery charges.

BlogCadre Firefox Search Plugin

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:16:12 -0500

I have a tendency to create search plugins every blog that I read that doesn't already have one. So here, my fellow BC readers/bloggers, is my BlogCadre search plugin for Firefox:

Mycroft page for plugin

BlogCadre is stepping it up a notch!

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:02:13 -0500

Here's the skinny

The BlogCadre crew has decided to step it up a notch. We will begin posting 5 to 10 brand-spanking new posts per day and will only promote 3 of those posts to the frontpage.

This is where YOU come in.

If you think our other non-promoted posts are so awesome that they deserve to be on the frontpage do your part: create an account and vote for your favorite posts. OR, if you think our posts just plain suck, write-up your own posts that you think the 'Cadre community will enjoy and let us decide if you're worthy enough to be on the frontpage.

Check out the blogs of our most active users:

jessi | a person | samccone | noogz | robogeek | tubajon | Stella | Jason Striegel | justin | Mel | Mike T | washtub_bass

All shapes and sizes are welcome at BlogCadre and we strongly encourage our users to participate in discussions, blogging and voting.

Create your 'Cadre account and vote today! You can view new posts (unmoderated) here.

Want to know more about BlogCadre? Click here.

BlogCadre - Elite Adless Edition and Other News

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:46:14 -0500

So much has happened and not happened around here at BlogCadre central in the last month or two, I wanted to take a moment to recognise the big stuff.

BlogCadre vacation - "thank you"
While I was busy ignoring my responsibilities and relaxing in the Philippines, heinsite really took the site under his wing and kept things moving. rlarson also managed the thankless task of taking over editorial control and stomping spam for us. To top it off, you guys all did your part and voted for worthy articles. Thank you all for your help!

Server issues and overagressive spam filters
We had a bit of downtime at the start of the month when our router went down hard and needed replacing. Sorry about that. Also, as a few of you have noticed, we've been having problems with the spam detection system. We get so much spam now that the filter went ballistic. I think I've resolved the issue and registered users should no longer have any problems. All anonymous comments will need to be manually approved, but I'm doing what I can to keep that feature and not force people to sign up if they don't wish to.

Elite Adless Edition
If you are logged in and reading this, then you probably already noticed the absolute awesomeness of an adless BlogCadre! So that the anonymous folks don't feel left out, you guys are now getting fresh BC content with 25% less fat as well. I completely pulled our least performing ad unit for everyone's enjoyment and since the majority of our traffic comes from organic search, I think removing ads for logged-in users will still allow us to pay for hosting and bandwidth, while offering all our members a much improved experience.

So to sum things up: thanks again everyone for making BlogCadre rock and for doing your part to push great things down the internet tubes! ;)

Bump Evangeline Lilly Contest Results

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 21:15:51 -0500

You guys tried, but we have no winners. Miss Lilly was just too much for you sissies to handle ;) On the bright side, since this is our first stab at a contest like this, everyone who participated gets a prize.

Here are the summary numbers for the eligible bloggers:
noogz 746 reads - 1 comment
rlarson 465 reads - 3 comments
samccone 319 reads - 1 comment
tubajon 190 reads - 1 comment

4 bloggers, 11 posts and $100 on the line: 1720 reads
Single picture of Evangeline Lilly in her underpants: 3479 reads

Now I know for sure that Eva really is _that_ hot, but I'm left pondering a few tough questions... what happened with this contest? how can i make it better? would you participate again? why do you suppose nobody new posted? and where did robogeek go?

Happy Birthday BlogCadre!

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:38:20 -0500

A year ago today the first post was added to BlogCadre. I wanted to take a moment to thank all the contributors and readers that have made this little site a special part of the web.

You guys are the best cadre I've ever been a part of. Here's to another good year!

- Jason

Spam filter is catching legitimate comments

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 14:14:31 -0500

Our spam filter is catching most of our user and guest comments. A ridiculous amount of spam comes through the site each day so please bare with us while we train the system. Please know that all legitimate comments will go through once approved by an administrator--you only need to submit your comments once.

Thank you for your patience and keep on posting!

Bump Evangeline Lilly Contest

Tue, 16 May 2006 13:06:49 -0500

She's been the daily top post for well over a month or two, she's the driving force behind a huge influx in celebrity related spam attempts, and she did all of this in her underpants.

Our friend, Miss Lilly, has taken over our humble site and it's time to put a stop to it.

So without further ado, I'm announcing the first ever BlogCadre post contest. The winner will be the person who successfully bumps the Evangeline Lilly post from the top ranking.

Here are the rules:

No porny or celebrity posts. You can post celebrity gossip if you want, but it wont count toward the prize.
Posts should fit the general assortment of topics on the site. We like geek/techy stuff. We like humor. We like anything with a high awesomeness factor. Use your best judgement.
If nobody bumps Eva, or if multiple people bump her, the winner will be determined by writing quality, style, post frequency, and whatever other factors that the judges' feel like at the time of judging. Bribes, flattery, etc. are welcome.
Judging will be weighted toward participants who post a high volume of quality posts, rather than a single big entry.
Bonus points are given to people who promote their posts across the internets.
Extra bonus points to people who promote other people's posts.
Stella and I will be the final judges and are not eligible for the contest.
If you are suspected of cheating or artificially inflating your post count, you will be disqualified.
No prize will be given if nobody gives this any serious effort.

I have yet to determine the award(s) and timeframe. I have a modest budget of roughly $100 for this. Please comment on this post if you have any good ideas for prizes, duration, or rule ammendments. I will take all reasonable comments into consideration.

The contest begins now. I'm tentatively setting a deadline for June 16, but I'll let you know the final decision in the next couple days after I've had a chance to review your comments.

What are you waiting for? Go bump Evangeline Lilly!

Update: The Bump Evangeline Lilly contest if officially over. (June 16, 2006)

New Year Resolutions

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 17:05:29 -0600

When I started BlogCadre back in June, I really had the vaguest of goals for the site. Primarily, I just wanted a place where we could write and have a good time doing it. For me, a large readership is a major factor in the "good time" equation. Call it egotistical, call it what you want, but I'm not satisfied writing for writing's sake. I want to be read and I want everyone who writes here to be read too. That's what makes it fun.

Here we are, a little over a half year later, starting a new year, and we're cruising right along. Our Google PageRank is up to 5. All the major search engines are sending us regular traffic. There are over 100 registered users, and about 10% of us aren't in hiding! :)

Thousands of anonymous people visit the site every day and there's never been a better time to get your content read. The spammers know it - they post hundreds of lame-o trackbacks and comments a week, just hoping to scrape some reads.

The Resolution

So here's the BlogCadre new year's resolution: 20% growth per month. If we give it a little effort, this will be easily possible, and it will make this an even better environment for writers and readers alike. We've moved to a new server to improve the site's performance in anticipation of this growth, and we'll be introducing a few new things over the year to make this an even better platform.

Platform and server are really only a small portion of the success equation, though. As always, the Cadre is what makes this site tick. Here are some things you can do to help:

Top 5 Ways You Can Improve BlogCadre

Continue posting great original content
Post links to your favorite reads on the net
Participate in the moderation system (add a vote for posts you like)
Use sites like digg.com and del.icio.us to bookmark your favorite BlogCadre posts
Get your friends on BlogCadre

State Of The Cadre

I'm going to start posting a monthly state of the Cadre, including some stats on users, page views, referrers, and top blogs to recognize the folks who make this happen.

Let's get started. Here is the end of 2005 in review.

Fear and Loathing BlogCast: Importance of the Rail

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 10:04:14 -0500

I spent the day hanging out with Justin Foell, Vince Veneziani and Phillip Torrone yesterday.

Something strange happened, though. Somehow all of our conversations seemed to relate to a common theme: the rail.

Listen in as Phil reflects on the importance of the rail, Justin describes his own first-hand encounter, and Vince demonstrates that sometimes it's best to just take a few steps back from the edge and respect the rail from a modest distance.