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Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of our friends. I have uploaded a new theme for our members called TBE-BootDev. This theme is for more advanced/professional members, but I hope you will like it. As usual, this theme is only for our blog forum members. Membership is free though and you only need 25 posts to download some great WordPress Themes!

I know our US friends are only a percentage of our readers but I would like to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving!

Holidays give us a great excuse to add a little fun and personality into our blogs. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays as it’s just so much fun! One of our members, Sam Woodfin, created these awesome halloween survival tips for her site which I loved. So, I commissioned her to make something for TBE and she came up with what you see here today! Nice job Sam!

Are you doing anything for Halloween? If so, show me!

When I started this site, I wanted it to be a community of bloggers who came together to help and inspire each other to grow their blogs. After 3 months, I think TBE is on the right path to achieving that goal.

I am a big believer in community and growing through others. One man can’t do alone what a group of men can do. Our community is extremely varied and is definitely a global one. We have people from all walks of life and various blogging backgrounds here. Some, I would consider professional bloggers, and others are just getting there feet wet. All are welcome here and even the most seasoned blogger, will gain a great deal from joining the community.

One way I had hoped to help our community grow is to offer unique WordPress themes and unique plugins to our members for free. I will add more themes as time goes on but for now, here are the themes available to the TBE members. Please note that in order to maintain the uniqueness of each theme, downloads of the themes are limited to members with 25 posts or more in the blog forum. Click on a thumbnail to view more details about the theme and to see it in action, or head on over to our WordPress Themes page to see them all there.

Let me know which ones you like! If there are certain colors or styles you would like to see added, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

People may wonder why I don’t just give the themes away to everyone without requiring the membership and the 25 posts, and my reason goes back to building and growing the community. I know if I released a theme to the general public, traffic would spike, inbound links would spike, all and all it would be a great marketing move…and it’s something I am considering. But, the first bunch of themes I would like to see available to those members who really contribute here and give so much of themselves to so many, without asking anything in return. This is one way to say thank you. I wish I knew how to code themes for other platforms, but for now, it’s limited to WordPress.

If you aren’t a member yet, you can register now. It’s quick and painless, and best of all, it’s FREE! I would love to know your thoughts on releasing the themes to everyone or just keeping them for registered members. Is there a happy medium?

The Blog Forum launched almost two weeks ago and is doing just awesome I think! We’ve got over 80 members now and well over 1000 posts. We are proving, as bloggers, we have a lot to say!

I want to keep the conversation going so I’d like to announce our first contest!

What’s the deal? The contest is I will give a prize to the person who STARTS the most threads in the Blogging Basics forum.

Requirements? Just being a member in good standing! If you haven’t joined yet, Join Now!

Contest Rules

• You must start the threads. Replies to threads will not count towards your total.
• The threads must be started in the Blogging Basics forum which includes the sub-forums:
  • Blogging 101
  • Blog Content
  • Blog Development
  • Grow Your Blog
  • Monetize your Blog
  • Blog Critiques
• The threads MUST be related to the topic you started them in.
• The start of this contest is Tuesday, 31 July 2007, 1700 (5:00 PM), GMT.
• The end of the contest is Monday, 5 August 2007, 0700 GMT! (that’s when I’ll be at the computer by :))

So, of course you want to know what you win! How about a spiffy new t-shirt? We don’t have our own Schwag yet but maybe someday! For now, I’ll offer you one of these t-shirts:

or for the ladies

I’ll send it to you no matter where in the world you are. If I have to send it to myself first (based on where they ship) and then send it to you, I will do that. Let me know if you have any questions.

Some of you may not know, but there will soon be a lot more to The Blog Experiment than just an awesome Blog Forum! Obviously, we now have this blog which will talk about all things related to blogging and the Blog Experiment. Some of the things in development are:

• Blog Directory - List your blog, have it rated, even have it featured by TBE!
• Blog Resources - Good Resources for bloggers.
• Member Feeds - view the latest forum posts of our members

The site is being built with future growth in mind so if you have any recommendations, we’d love to hear them! Thanks for all of your support thus far and please make any recommendations!

Welcome to The Blog Experiment…well….Blog! So, what’s this site all about anyway and what’s with the experiment bit? I suppose I will start at the beginning.

I’m Sara, and I like to blog. No, I don’t make a living blogging…not even close. I can’t tell you how to make a living doing it. What I wanted was a place where people who enjoyed blogging, like me, could come together and share their knowledge and learn from each other. An experiment of sorts. We try different things out and we share what works and what doesn’t.

So, what qualifies me to run a blogging community? Well, I like to blog. I currently blog 5 places; a few of them are known. I blog for both personal pleasure and I also hope to make an income from blogging, indirectly, someday. I blog about life and about professional topics. I know a lot of what goes into making a blog work and making it successful, but I have so much to learn. This is where YOU come in. I want to talk to other bloggers and share ideas on how to grow our blogs, write better posts, generate revenue, use our blog to help our businesses, etc.

Get your goggles, your tongs, and your test tubes and get ready! Let’s see how many explosions we can make together!