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_remarks

Thanks!

• 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! 

This is a rule that I don’t follow all the time, and it adds a lot of stress having to find a host from week to week.

The Carnival of Personal Finance has come to ask for hosts quarterly. He asks for hosts about a month in advance, then decides over the next couple of weeks who to have. The schedule is then ready to go for three months, and it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there.

My Carnival of Debt Reduction isn’t quite so big yet but here’s what I did the last time:

• I asked for hosts in a forum that is read by a lot of the bloggers in my niche. I received a number of requiests to host just from one post in the Money Blog Network Forums.
• After I assembled a bunch of interested hosts, I sent an e-mail (bcc to all of them) with a tentative schedule that took all of their requests into account.
• As people respond back to me, the hosting schedule takes form.

If your blog carnival has been around for a while then it makes sense to streamline how you set up your hosting schedule.

Managing a blog carnival can be really easy if you have great hosts.  Great hosts write inventive posts for the carnivals and help to promote the carnival.  It’s their edition of the carnival, so a good reflection on them is a good reflection on you.

My Carnival of Debt Reduction is no exception.  I have great hosts.  I’m not the most organized person in the world, and they keep me in line and make sure the carnival’s covered if I fall behind a little bit.  It’s a great position to be in to have that kind of support from your hosts.

I hope that part of this support stems from me basically letting them do what they want.  I try very hard not to micromanage and to empower them to put together their carnivals however they see fit.  Some of the hosts are pretty liberal with the topics of posts accepted into the carnivals, and others really want the posts to be closely tied to the carnival’s theme, which is on debt reduction resources and stories.  Most things are fine with me.  Why?

• It’s my carnival, but it’s their blogs.  Bloggers absolutely have to have control on what goes up on their blogs.  If I demand which posts should be included, then I take that freedom away from them.
• It removes any barriers that I might impose.  If hosts have to seek approval from me, it slows them down, and things don’t go as smoothly.
• They have different opinions than I do on the topic.  It’s this diversity of viewpoints that keeps the carnival fresh.
• I don’t like remembering a lot of rules.  This is a personality trait of mine, but a lot of rules give me hives.

Empowering your hosts means trusting them to put together a good carnival and to ask when there’s a question.  The carnivals are wins for everyone, and most hosts already know this, so it’s easy for me to just let them do what they want, and let everyone reap the benefits.