Remember to subscribe to giuk.net’s RSS feed for the latest from our fellow Sabahan bloggers!

A couple of days ago, giuk.net registered its 100th member into its aggregator database of personal blogs made by Sabahans. Congratulations, Vincent a.k.a. Ekimkee! (nah, ngam-ngam you got your link back like what you requested )

Since its re-inception in April 2009, it has modestly re-grown slowly and steadily. I’m not sure what the numbers were before, when it first went live to its temporary closure; mrBadak would know more about that, as he is the original owner and think-tank of this unique crawler.

Giuk.net is a service that’s close to my heart, because just with one RSS feed, I was able to keep in touch with all Sabahans in the virtual world. It helped me discover other great Sabahans in the blogosphere that I am proud to have met in real life. Many of their posts are amazing, humourous, and mind-opening. It makes you realize that Sabahans are a cool bunch of people

So when it went down for a while, I felt as if a part of my online life was empty. So weird. And when mrBadak needed someone to take over the management, I was estatic and immediately took the chance! And, yeah, it took me only hours to set it up, actually. The hard part was figuring out what plugins and themes, among the thousands freely available in WordPress.org, I should use to build it back, which explains the 2-day delay. If you want to learn how to make your very own blog aggregator, head on to Blogging Fu and read the tutorial on how you can set one up.

Aesthetically and functionally, giuk.net 2.0 is different from giuk.net 1.0 in a number of ways. One obvious difference is that there is no Popular Posts section in the site. I noticed that this service is easily gamed (i.e. manipulated) with a certain type of posts often being highlighted, so I decided to make do without it for now. I’m also a bit more strict on the content that I choose to add in the blog, to ensure that the aggregator content upholds the spirit of giuk.net (oh so spiritual).

Nevertheless, I hope giuk.net has served what it was originally intended to do — showcasing Sabahans’ talent in blogging. I humbly hope that the functions I’ve put up in this revamped version can live up to the reputation it first garnered when it was under mrBadak.

By the way, yeah mrBadak still owns the domain name and the whole idea of giuk.net; I just help host it and manage it. Monetizing-wise, there are exactly three spots — one in the header, and two on the sidebar. And, no, it doesn’t convert well (I saved the header space for mrBadak, I hope that one does better, though, or at least enough to cover his domain name costs). Me? I haven’t earned a cent since I got it up and running.

But I don’t mind, really. WP Webhost, a subsidiary of Exabytes, was kind enough to host this for me, free of charge (weehee! jealous???). Therefore, no investment whatsoever apart from my time, which I gladly offer.

So, to you giuk-ers out there, thank you for your support all this time, and I hope you’ll continue to blog with us in many years to come. Remember to subscribe to giuk.net’s RSS feed for the latest from our fellow Sabahan bloggers!

No related posts.

I’ve started a series on how to create a blog aggregator using WordPress at Blogging Fu (I finally got around to doing my first post, whoopee!). As the self-appointed administrator to the first Sabah blog aggregator Giuk.net (OK, not really self-appointed but I got the approval from its domain owner, mrBadak, to be one), one of my responsibilities is to verify each and every application that got through the registration form.

I verify the following manually before adding it to the blog aggregator:

1. A working blog feed: I don’t really care whether it’s a full or summary feed, as long as it’s a legible and well-formatted feed according to the popular standards such as ATOM and RSS.
2. A link back to Giuk.net using the exact HTML codes and keyword link.
3. Some form of content that could indicate to me that the blog owner is definitely a Sabahan.

Matter #3 above drives me crazy. I do a lot of blind-guessing on this one, because:

1. The blog owner may blatantly declare that (s)he is a Sabahan, which I can accept at face value, regardless of the fact that it may be a big, fat lie; or,
2. The blog contains posts with that certain Sabahan flair (e.g. dialect, Sabahan slangs, expressions of the word bah strewn about), which would also convince me, although that can be easily faked; or,
3. The blog owner is someone whom I’ve personally met or know, which rarely happens and is my safest bet in ensuring (s)he qualifies for the aggregator (and which, BTW, would be a good reason for you to turn up for the upcoming Sabah Bloggers Gathering this Hallow’s Eve).

Help me, peoples! What would be a good way to verify that the blog owner claims who (s)he claims (s)he is? Gimme your bright ideas, I beg of you!

No related posts.

This short post is a heads-up to mrBadak’s announcement on his blog concerning the logo competition. Please hop over to his blog for more details.

We currently do not have any prize in mind, other than a permalink from giuk.net to your site. Do you? Add your comment here or at mrBadak’s site, and we’ll see what we can do.

No related posts.