A quick roll-your-own carnival submission form
Managing November 2nd, 2008
BlogCarnival.com has become an integral part of many blog carnivals. They were down for about a week with database maintenance. I know that this was probably quite hectic for them as well as for all of the carnival managers that depend on the features it brings to the table.
A reasonable backup plan to handle submissions is to post an e-mail address to send the submissions to, and ask for blog name, blog URL, post name, post URL, blogger name or screen name, and any remarks about the post. That covers most of the important things a host would need to put their carnival together.
This will work, but it can suffer from being a little bit too free-form. A better solution is to set up a submission form on the website with specific fields and with form validation. This requires a bit of scripting to pull off, but I found a great WordPress form generator that let me roll my own submission form for the Carnival of Debt Reduction. It’s the Secure PHP Form Mailer Script by Dagon Design.
Here’s what I did to put together the form you see here:
- I downloaded the script, unpacked it, uploaded it to my wp-content/plugins directory, and activated it. Standard plugin installation.
- I signed up for a Recaptcha account for my spam retarder. This gave me the two keys I needed for the plugin. I selected the Recaptcha option and entered the two keys in the Plugins -> DFFM-Main section in the Settings tab of my WordPress admin section.
- I edited the submit page and added the code <!– ddfm1 –> to that page where I wanted the form to appear.
- I clicked on the DFFM1 tab to customize the form. For what you see on that form, this is what I put in the Form Structure portion:
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Your Name|fieldname=fm_name|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Email|fieldname=fm_email|max=100|req=true|ver=email
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Blog Name|fieldname=fm_blog_name|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Blog URL|fieldname=fm_blog_url|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Post Title|fieldname=fm_post_title|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Post Permalink|fieldname=fm_permalink|max=100|req=true
type=text|class=fmtext|label=Post Trackback|fieldname=fm_trackback|max=100|req=false
type=verify|class=fmverify|label=Verify
type=textarea|class=fmtextarea|label=Remarks|fieldname=fm_remarks|max=1000|rows=6|req=false
- And here’s what I put into the Message Structure portion:
Someone has submitted a post to the Carnival of Debt Reduction!
Email: fm_email
Blog Name: fm_blog_name
Blog URL: fm_blog_url
Name/Nickname: fm_name
Post Title: fm_post_title
Post Permalink: fm_permalink
Post Trackback: fm_trackback
Remarks: fm_remarksThanks!
- Those two points above are what define it as a carnival submission form. I think the rest of the options on the form customization page are self-explanatory and they’re best learned just by playing with them.
- One slightly-tricky thing I did was to change the text in the button to “Submit” rather than the default. The fix is to change one of the identifiers in the lang/English.php file:
define(‘DDFM_SUBMITBUTTON’, ‘Submit’);
And that’s mostly it. This is a decent way to get a carnival submission form up and running on WordPress. Hope this helps you manage your carnival better!
An unfortunate reality of hosting a blog carnival
Commentary, Hosting September 6th, 2008
The larger benefit goes to the people who submit to the carnivals rather than to the people who put forth all of the effort to host them.
A number of bloggers I respect have figured this out already, and they’re fairly reluctant to host a carnival anymore.
They understand the benefit of regular submission to blog carnivals: free backlinks.
The host gets a few things out of the carnival, mainly a little bit of traffic over the course of the week that they host the carnival, and a bit of exposure for their blog. The people who submit to the carnival get a permanent benefit of a backlink that usually means an incremental amount of SEO benefit. If their post is really good, they may get additional traffic if the host makes that post an editor’s pick, but that is small compared to the long-term benefit of the backlink.
I see hosting as becoming more of a small blog’s game, and this is unfortunate. My main blog is reasonably old by personal finance blog standards, but I’ve gotten on board to host a number of carnivals over the next three months or so. Some of my colleagues who have gotten a bit bigger than myself (currently at 3,000 subscribers) seem content to submit to several carnivals, sometimes with posts from several of their blogs, and rarely host any on their main blogs anymore. And, frankly, I don’t blame them! That’s the smart way to game the blog carnival system.
Some carnivals strongly encourage backlinks to the carnival from participating blogs; others require it. I applaud those who require backlinks as a contingency for participation in future carnivals, mainly for the reason that it keeps the hosts from feeling like they’re being used too badly.
I still have some interest from people who want to host the Carnival of Debt Reduction but for some reason it seems to be a little bit harder to get people to step forward than it used to be. Maybe folks who host the carnivals see the diminishing return for the effort they put out.
This seems to be an issue that carnival managers need to take on. Some managers have implemented a "terms and conditions" clause in submitting to their carnival in order to establish some accountability for linking back. For managers reliant on BlogCarnival.com like myself, the best we can do at the moment is to add a clause in the submission instructions.
A key ingredient of blog carnivals is the hosts, and convincing potential hosts of a carnival of the benefits of hosting is getting more difficult. It’s necessary to put measures in place to keep people from taking advantage of the hosts too badly.
Easy themes your blog carnival
Hosting August 22nd, 2008
Adding a theme to your carnival doesn’t have to be difficult. It can be as easy as looking around you and searching Wikipedia.
Interspersing a few interesting facts about a timely topic, regardless of whether that topic is closely tied to the particular blog carnival, dresses it up substantially. It’s way better than a bare list of links.
Here’s how I’ve done it:
- Choose the topic. Around this past Independence Day I did an American Flag themed Carnival of Personal Finance.
- Go to Wikipedia. This is often a great place to get general-interest information on a particular topic. This topic was no exception.
- Read the entry and pick out four or five somewhat connected pieces of information. Write a few sentences on each piece of information. (Don’t just cut and paste from the article!)
- If there are images available, great! If they’re public domain, even better. That’s how the flags were. I uploaded them to my server.
- Break up the posts with the themed pieces. This makes the carnival read a bit more like a story, for a fraction of the effort that it would take to write the entire carnival in story format.
- As an added touch, tie in the theme of the carnival to the e-mail you send to the participating blogs.
Themeing your carnival this way is a low-cost way to get a fair bit more buzz.
Carnivalize yourself once in a while
Commentary December 31st, 2008
Blog carnivals are meant to be a collection of posts from other blogs on a specific topic, but what about a Carnival of You? What about putting together a bunch of your favorite links from your own blog, and slapping a Carnival moniker on it?
Why not?
Clever Dude has done this as a way of rounding out the year and for highlighting his best work. Today saw the 2008 Carnival of Clever Dude, with all of the best and most clever things on the topic of, well, Clever Dude.
This is a cool idea to do once in a whle. Once a year certainly isn’t too much. Maybe even once every six months. Much more often that and you risk appearing like an egotist. Strangely, though, it seems like bloggers can get away with reviewing their best work more often if it’s billed as “digging into the vaults” or “one year ago today.” Other bloggers do this to good effect. But there’s something about spotlighting yourself in a Carnival that is a bit over the top, and gets old if done too often.
Anyway, consider whether it’s worth your while highlighting a Carnival of You. It could be fun!