Love Blog users - replace your blog or start to learn blog SW maintenance yourself - there is no justified hope for any support or improvements needed.

In recent years it was apparent that love_blog is a potentially fine blog software but many really exciting and progressive features were missing and still are missing despite numerous promises over the past years and months.

The blog software changes needed where known more than a year ago:

1. Stop the near eternally expanding calendar module - start date first post, end date today. Result without the calendar module: Some 20-35 % less traffic
2. Create a separate meta description tag - the identical title and description meta tag makes the tag much too long and results in penalty leading to another 20-35% loss in traffic
3. Create a language meta tag for multilingual web publishers. We are in a time of global communication, global reconciliation and hence a software absolutely needs to cater to multilingual web publishers able to address several major language sectors of the global community.
4. Create multilingual separate RSS feeds according to individual language tag of each post. Multilingual sites are in and a must nowadays to be successful. RSS feeds replace the spam filter sensitive newsletters. RSS feeds need to be separated by language to achieve the highest acceptance among RSS feed readers.

The missing above 1 and 2 now after Google's recent algorithm changes leads NOW as of these past weeks to a annual LOSS of at least some 200'000 to 400'000 visitors and subsequently also to a loss in advertisement revenue of at the very least some 2000-3000 US$ per year.

$ I need to successfully continue most efficient webpublishing of the Cyberspace Ashram and more importantly to remain available for those in need of spiritual help as well as for the ever increasing charity projects. The last 2 or so days some 600 US$ left my pockets for various needies - hence a loss cause by lack of support for a piece of publishing software in the range as caused now by love blog is absolutely unacceptable.

If you ever considered using love_blog - forget it and chose something that is fully active and maintained by true and performing professionals - free of for $ is of no importance. Open Source however is important else you are in a position like I find myself with a totally messed up licensed forum software and no one around to care for. There again the recent change in Google's algorithm has caused a substantial loss in traffic in all 5 forums, making it impossible and uninteresting to use. There again the missing individual title meta and description meta as well as language meta tags are the key factor in addition to one of the worst invalid HTML codes in the entire coder industry.

What to do and how to act in future ?

Never ever chose a software with young developers below age 40 or so. Chose professional packages fully and actively maintained on a website existing since years, a web project home managed by a single chief developper.

If you current blog articles on love_blog or any variation thereof is low, consider exporting all posts into a fully maintained modern software OR consider learning to maintain your current software on your own.

For a professional PHP coder, all necessary modifications and upgrades would be a matter of hours or a very few days - the fact than NONE of the love_blog, easymoblog or comoblog sites is really active, shows that these projects simply lack a truly devoted and dedicated developper willing to serve the global community and/or willing to be successful above all.

In today's age of mobile messaging and even more the newer mobile iReport from CNN show that there is a huge market and need for mobile oriented blogging. Blogging as a new and high end version of mobile reporting, mobile journalism on a high professional level. A truly and fully supported professional SW such as the love_blog / easymoblog / comoblog once was intended - would open professional career opportunities for freelance but fully earning reporters able to shoot pictures or video clips and instantly eMail the reports to his own website. A truly professional news system available from direct on site private and uncensored sources available for free to all world within seconds or minutes. It would be a unique revenue resource for many single mothers / fathers or people from remote "3rd world" countries being enabled to earn a solid living from hard currency oriented market sources.

Hence as a final conclusion - chose software or publishing methods that you can manage, change, upgrade, modify all on your own if needed an old fashioned, much slower, much more inefficient but easy to maintain flat file HTML system. Never depend on software supported by outside sources unless you find a piece of SW that is a huge project maintained by true professionals making a living from being coder / software developper.

Myself I have far too many articles posted in love_blog to export all data to a new system. Hence I may opt for learning the PHP basics myself next year and do the long overdue changes myself. It's an old project and many among you may be in a similar situation - others may be lucky to have just started and still being able to completely convert to a live project before annual damage grows into 4 digits like in my case.

God bless

hans