Seems like things are starting to move forward, based on an announcement made in the bbPress.org forum today:

Hi everyone, bbPress 1.0 is moving beyond Alpha stage and skipping Beta to go straight into a series of Release Candidates towards a final 1.0 release. The first RC is now available for download.

We’ve made this decision to push towards 1.0 final as the scope of what was going to be included in 1.0 has been whittled back and we have had some serious real world trials through TalkPress.

I’ve been playing with bbPress for the still-in-progress URLuscious.com, so plan to try out the new upgrade in the next few days and will keep you posted when I have a live version available for folks to check out.

For more on bbPress, visit the site at bbPress.org.  Justin Tadlock has also recently posted the first in his series of bbPress-related tutorials on his site.

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The mission statement:

Make it easy for anyone to quickly and easily have a website or blog that looks great and is easy to maintain – regardless of your creativity, technical knowledge or experience.*

*translation: Websites so easy, even your mother can do it!

Blog-in-a-box
URLuscious’s flagship product is Blog-in-a-box, a service that includes installation, configuration, hosting and user training for a WordPress blog.

Having a blog has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I’ve talked to so many people who would like to have a blog or website of their own, but don’t have the time or technical comfort level to get one started. Others want the benefits of a self-hosted WordPress blog, but feel locked into their current system or don’t know how to make the switch.

My goal is to remove these intimidating and/or frustrating barriers so that anyone can have the rewarding experience I’ve enjoyed.

Sneak Peak and Gift Certificates

The site’s not quite ready (right now “alpha-ish” might be a better description!) – its launch will be in early April. I’m still cleaning up some broken links and adding functionality.

In the meantime, I’m offering a $25 Gift Certificate to the site in exchange for your feedback. If you’re interested, please take a moment fill out this survey after visiting the site.

I’ll be posting news about the launch and offering special “Fearless Blogger discounts” here. You can also follow @URLuscious on Twitter or enter your email below to join the mailing list:

Of course, your feedback is also welcome in the comments!

(URLuscious is powered by Apple and WordPress, and energized by equal parts Justin Timberlake, Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.)

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 63 Essential WordPress Hacks, Tutorials, Help Files and Cheats

thanks to @mayhemstudios & @minervity for posting the link

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Happy Birthday, Tamar!

To celebrate her birthday, Tamar Weinberg has gathered the mother of all lists of internet marketing posts for 2008. It’s a list you don’t want to miss – it’s one you’ll want to bookmark and save with your very most special and favorite-est bookmarks. Click over to that list immediately and see for yourself.

Be sure to wish Tamar a happy birthday while you’re there!

Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet marketing and blogs for numerous online publications, most notably Real Simple Magazine, Lateral Action, Search Engine Roundtable, and Mashable. She is also a former Lifehacker contributor.

From Tamar's About Page

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Why I chose Jacob’s blog

First, to celebrate his blog’s first birthday, Jacob recently put together a contest to raise money for the Blog Action Day Poverty Fund. You can enter the contest two ways, by writing an article about design and/or making a donation to the fund. Sixty six winners will be selected at random to each win one of $11,000 worth of prizes. The contest raised over $400 for the charity within its first week. Visit the blog for specifics on how to enter. (note: I’m not writing this to be included in the contest. I’ve donated and plan to submit a future article as my entry)

Second, Jacob’s blog was among the first blogs I discovered when I was trying to learn about graphic design and freelancing. , Jacob’s candid posts about blogging planted the early seeds in my mind about having my own blog one day. As an aspiring freelancer, Jacob’s article “Why Logo Design Does Not Cost $5″ proved an excellent reference as I was trying to get my arms around what my time and services are worth.

this is Jacob

Third, Just Creative Design covers a nice medley of topics; I think most people will find something of interest to make this blog a worthwhile vist. Topics include graphic design resources, social media, blogging, creativity boosters, and being a freelancer. One thing I think Jacob does especially well is provide insight to the design process itself; some of my favorite posts are the ones in which he walks us through how he designed a particular logo, poster, package or corporate identity.

Finally, Just Creative Design is not only Jacob’s blog, in a sense it’s his storefront. Anyone interested in hiring a graphic designer can take a peek at Jacob’s portfolio or contact him via the site as well.

Jacob on Jacob

another one of Jacob's favorite expressions

Favorite Websites
Work
Just Creative Design I love the feedback from the community, it really helps me as a designer (plus brings in work)!
Play
I mainly read design blogs and have no favourite!

Favorite Social Media Tool
Stumble Upon for the ease of use

Favorite Expression
“You only get out what you put in.”

Favorite blogging snack
Energy drinks & chips ‘n dip.

Night Owl or Early Bird
Definitely night owl.

Jacob on Just Creative Design

In three words
Design, Creative, Inspiration.

In three sentences
Just Creative Design was launched in November 2007 as my design business and also as a graphic design blog. The blog focuses on all areas of design and creativity, ranging from but not limited to; graphic design, logo design, web design, advertising, branding, typography, life, other graphic designers, blogging in general, resourceful material, my work at university, photography, colour, marketing and more.  Quite varied I’ll say, however the underlying focus is design!

First three entries for first time visitors to read
My featured articles page.

Jacob on Blogging

Logo Design for Influential Blogger, by Jacob Cass

What made you decide to create a blog?
David Airey actually inspired me to start blogging.

What were your initial goals/objectives for having a blog?
To learn as a designer and get an income.

How have those goals/objectives changed?
They haven’t, it is working perfectly!

What is the average amount of time you spend on your blog each day?
Not every day, but usually a few hours.

What is the average amount of time you spend online each day?
Way too long.

What has been your most gratifying blog experience?
Learning about hosting issues.

What was your most peculiar blog experience?
Being hacked (weird popups were installed on the site).

Jacob on Social Media

save the earth (illustration by Jacob Cass)

How much of your work would you estimate is generated as a result of your Social Media networking?
That is a really hard thing to track but most people usually say they find me through Google or Stumble Upon. Twitter and Facebook are more keep-in-touch networking tools.

Do you maintain separate professional & social networks? Is what we see at “Just Creative Design” the same Jacob everyone sees?
I have two facebook accounts, a business and a personal account as I do lead two different lives so to speak…business and personal lives are two totally separate things. I do however post photos from my trips away on my blog at times.

(You can find links to Jacob’s social network profiles here.)

Fearless Blogger BONUS Exclusive

Random Jacob Fact

My father is a famous magician here in Australia.

A big THANK YOU to Jacob for being generous with his time and answering my questions!  I strongly encourage you to spend a few minutes visiting and/or subscribing to Just Creative Design soon.

The $11,000 Prize Giveaway contest ends on November 22nd:
Be sure to make a donation this week to enter!

this is a spotlight post

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I'm a Chris Brogan Rockstar

First, if you have never checked out Chris Brogan’s blog and you’re interested in blogging, social media and/or personal branding, stop reading this and head over there now .

I mean it. Go! I’ll be writing more about Chris in a future “spotlight” post on must-read blogs. But to make it easy for you in the meantime, I’ll even give you some links to start with:

Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online Part 1
100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media
25 Ways to Build Your Community

Still reading? Then you already know about Chris, so while we’re waiting for the other’s to catch up, talk amongst yourselves. Need a topic? “The Industrial Revolution was neither Industrial, nor was it a revolution”. Discuss!

OK. They’re back. Now we can continue.

Chris Brogan has recently added a section to his site called Rockstars:

Rockstars is YOUR chance to promote YOUR OWN work. If you’re part of [chrisbrogan.com], then you should be on this page. I don’t go out and find you. It’s do-it-yourself, the way the web should be.

Last night I responded to Chris’s tweet to “artsy types” looking for badges to give to his rockstars to post on their sites with a few designs of my own:

embed code (copy & paste): <a href=”http://www.chrisbrogan.com”><img src=”http://fearlessblogger.com/images/cbrs2.jpg” alt=”Chris Brogan says I’m a Rockstar!”></a>
Chris posted more rockstar badges on his site today. I’ve posted my other badge designs (as well as get html versions) here.

If you have any other designs you’d like to see, or would like a badge for your site, contact me. Better yet, leave a comment below!

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Just another rebel.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe that rules are made to be broken.  I’m just also of the school of thought that one should learn, understand, and possibly master the rules before going ahead and breaking them.

The deal is, although I’ve been a long time observer, my participation in the blog-o-sphere has been limited to a plethora of RSS feed subscriptions, neglected tumble blogs and random tweets, peppered with the infrequent comment.

I’ve read the “how to’s” and “10 best ways to”  and know better than to launch a blog without a cache of posts ready for publishing, a well thought-out “about” section, or – at a minimum – being able to clearly articulate what my blog’s objective is.  And don’t leave out my education by numerous blogs emphasizing the importance of a consistent color scheme, clean CSS, SEO-friendly theme, font selection and everything that goes into a proper web design.

If that’s not bad enough, on top of being, let’s call it an “aspiring blogger” suffering a bad case of “paralysis by analysis” (not to mention a predisposition to the liberal use of quotation marks) which has left me on the proverbial sidelines; I’m also the owner of this domain.  Yup.  You read it right.  “The Fearless Blogger”. But I’ve been too much of a coward to do anything with it – haven’t quite felt worthy.  I’ve spent my entire life concerning myself with what other people think – so not exactly what I consider fearless.

Just between us.

I just kind of liked the name.  I collect domain names the way Imelda Marcos collected shoes.  Just thought it had a nice ring to it and that it might have good resale value to be honest.  It hadn’t occurred to me to actually use it for myself.  If anything, I could maybe use it to – this is rich – let other people (the truly fearless) host their brave blogs on a “fearless blogger” subdomain.

To be fair, at least, being female, I have an excuse for my increasingly evident lack of – ahem – “cajones”.

So what happened?  Why now?  Why do all the homework then throw caution into the wind and launch my blog without dotting my i’s, crossing my t’s?  With no SEO-friendly wordpress theme.  Without making sure my plug ins are working.  Running off half-cocked before I have my ducks in a row,  mixing all sorts of metaphors which basically are euphemisms for doing this “half-assed”?

Blog Action Day 2008.  That’s why!

I had hopes. I had dreams.

As Blog Action Day was approaching, I found myself wishing I had “my blog” up and running so I could participate somehow.

And then the Aussies got a jump start on it and started posting about all sorts of online goodness going on.

Ooooh.  I could comment.   I could be the bestest and mostest commenter.  And NEXT year, I could have a blog.  And then I could participate.  In Blog Action Day 2009.

Meh.

OR. I could be a wee bit fearless and follow the advice of the esteemed goddess Nike and just do it.

Yeah. I know.

say it ain't so

Blog action day was over a week ago.

I missed it.

But you know what I say to that?

I say:

“So what?  I am The Fearless Blogger.  That’s just how I roll.”

Some may say I’m quite a few days late for Blog Action Day 2008.  I say I am MANY days early for Blog Action Day 2009.

If you want to know what a Fearless Blogger blogs about, I guess that’s what I’ll need to figure out next.  I’m going to do my best to live up to the title!

But enough about me.

Let’s talk about Blog Action Day

Blog Action Day 2009 is less than 350 days away!

For those of you who don’t know what Blog Action Day is:

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. It’s aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

You can read the FAQ here.

This year over 12,000 bloggers “banded together to discuss a single issue – poverty“.  More than awareness was raised – there was fundraising as well.  Some bloggers donated a portion of their blog’s earnings that day; others a set amount per comment or new subscriber.

For those who didn’t have an opportunity to contribute (or want to contribute more), you can do it here:

KIVA | CHANGE.ORG

I’m also posting some links and videos related to poverty.  From the true Fearless Bloggers.   May they inspire you the way they inspire me:

READ | WATCH

Yours truly,
Faryl, aka The Fearless Blogger
Because it’s better late than never!

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