8th.us - A Blog Community

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DRE

DRE

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About

8th.us is a blog site and private forum where verified members copyright, collaborate and share critiques of their creative works. Ever joined a blog site and wondered why most blog entries didn't get any comments, likes or followers? 8th.us solves this problem by using the best forum software around as its base. Forum threads are used as a form of reverse psychology to generate blog content. More Info: http://8th.us/info/8th-us.16/

Software

I'm using 71 addons. My main addons are Better Blogs by @Rigel Kentaurus for blogs, XenGallery by @sonnb for albums, XenMedio Pro by @Jaxel for media and Showcase by @Bob B for site news, tips and tutorials. I donated to @Daniel Hood for the development of Promoted Content for blogs to promote my members blogs but he said he's too busy to finish it so I asked Rigel if he could create a Promoted Blogs type feature and he said he will next year. I also donated to Daniel for the development of a thread to blogs importer which I'm currently using. I use my private forum to generate most of my site's blog entries. Just noticed I have more of @Chris Deeming addons installed than any other.

Hosting

Couple months ago I was unable to create a test forum on shared hosting because I was getting slammed by Baidu Search Engine bots. @Slavik suggested that I get a managed VPS so I created a Paid Request thread. While investigating different server setups, I asked people about Apache with Nginx Reverse Proxy and out of all that I asked @MattW showed the most experience in this kind of setup so I paid him to move me over to KnownHost Managed VPS SSD. He has done an excellent job! I trust his knowledge and expertise more than my own host. You can read more about his services here

History

My site was originally a public forum whose main subforum was private but I could not get google adsense ads working on my previous domain 8thos. 8thos original name was The8thLegion then I changed to BlackGamer. Adsense did not approve of certain threads so I decided to go the blogs route but use Xenforo / Better Blogs instead of Wordpress and just keep my forum private. 8th is mostly just a haven for forumers whose original board closed. The number 8 comes from 8th Commandment: "The Shalt Not Steal" because 8th originally began on 8/07/2010 as The 8th Legion, which was an entertainment and media law forum whose purpose was to share copyright tutorials for music, art, photography, manuscripts and logos.

Design

I've designed 4 styles for the site: Ivory, Ebony, Blue and Pink.

Ivory.webp
Ebony.webp
Blue.webp
Pink.webp
 
Last edited:
Anpanman said:
Which SSD package are you on with Knownhost?
Click to expand...
Click the link in the first post that talks about KnownHost.

----

I added an image zoom to my site's notice on the main page. Check it out. I think it zooms kind of weird. Wish there was a better way but it will have to do for now. I tried following directions in this thread but it didn't make any sense to me so I googled a guide instead.
 
DRE your site is very nice. Did you release the Ebony style to everyone or you keeping just for your site?
 
fords8 said:
That resource is unsupported as of 7/15/2012.
Click to expand...
Most of my skins are very basic in nature. There are no template edits really needed with them as well. Shouldn't be a problem adding it to your site. Would probably need to make a change or two to fit your site but that's it.
 
Might as well post an update on my site. My current project is to add thread prefix for nearly every kind of subject you can think of because I learned that thread prefixes are good for SEO. I've also decided to remove subject-oriented subforums and create 4 kinds instead. Paid, Verified, Members' Only and Public. I haven't opened the "Public" section yet because I'm still waiting for my Adsense account to be approved and I am sorting out the type of threads and thread prefixes that will be considered as "Family Friendly" by Google. My other project is to add tags to everything in my gallery. All this will probably take a couple months to do.
 
My site's public now and I've gotten ads to work. Not really earning any money from it but that's ok, at least it works. I pmd @Will and @dwdmadmac on my site to help mod or admin, whatever they are comfortable with since they are the only active members from there who know Xenforo. Because my site has low traffic and a very small community I have simplified it as much as I can by reducing the amount of forums and addons. They all seem to be okay with it.

Here's whats running (actively enabled addons available in the resource manager)

AlexT Profile BB Code (Requested in The Past)
AndyB Member Search (Requested in The Past)
BL Profile Pokes (Paid)
BL Profile Ratings (Paid) (Requested)
BL Profile Visitors (Paid) (Requested)
BL User Smilies (Paid) (Requested)
Borbole Current Thread Viewers (Paid) (Requested)
******* Change Post Owner (Requested)
Ceribik Mandatory Location (Requested)
Chris Control "nofollow"
Chris Email Change Log
Chris Hide Member Cards (Requested)
Chris Live Update
Chris Quick Reply Preview (Requested)
Chris XenMediaGallery (Paid) (Requested)
Claerhout BBM
Claerhout Go To Top
Claerhout ToggleMe
Daniel BD Widgets (Donated)
DigitalPoint Better Analytics
Dismounted XenMoods
ExtraLicense First Post Moderated (Paid)
Fuhrmann Prefix Forum Listing
Jaxel XenPorta
Jeremy Clickable Rows (Donated)
JoshyPHP Media Pack
JulianD Thread Rating (Requested)
Kevin XF Arcade
LiquidPro Simple Forms (Paid)
Luke Post Ratings (Paid)
Nobita Messages Per Page (Requested)
Nobita Thread Author Profile Tab (Requested)
Ragtek Create Threads
Rigel Better Blogs (Paid)
sonnb Contact Us
sonnb Double Post
sonnb Profanity Filter (Donated)
Syndol Conversation Essentials (Paid)
Syndol User Essentials Enhanced (Paid)
TAC AnyApi (Paid)
TAC CustomImgCaptcha
TAC FacebookRegCaptcha
TAC FoolbotHoneyPot
TAC StopCountrySpam
TAC StopHumanSpam
Waindigo Thread Navigation (Requested)
Waindigo User Criteria
WDB Popular Content
XenPlaza Who Has Read A Thread
xFrocks Alerts (Paid)
xFrocks Attachment Image Optimization
xFrocks Attachment Store (Paid)
xFrocks Image
xFrocks Widget Framework

Paid = Addons I had to purchase through Paypal.
Requested = Addons I've requested in the past that eventually got made.
Donated = Addons I had to donate towards its development to get made.

This list of names is how I actually renamed them in my addon list. I also renamed and reorganized the addons options order in AdminCP/Options because alot of addon authors have their options mixed in with the order of the default board options which makes finding stuff a pain. I'd rather their addons be below the list of default functions.
 
DRE said:
@MattW suggested that I get the $40 plan.
Click to expand...
I suggested the $40 plan because HHVM takes up quite a bit if memory. That in itself on my 512mb VPS is taking up over 50% memory and it's only running my test site with 1 add on and 1 theme installed. It regularly runs out of memory trying to update the addon installed.
 
MattW said:
I suggested the $40 plan because HHVM takes up quite a bit if memory. That in itself on my 512mb VPS is taking up over 50% memory and it's only running my test site with 1 add on and 1 theme installed. It regularly runs out of memory trying to update the addon installed.
Click to expand...
That doesn't sound too good.
 
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