1. PLU is a kooky acronym - what does it stand for anyway?
PLU stands for People Like Us, and is a term in Asian society to denote gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual (GLBT) individuals. It is also common innuendo amongst GLBT (especially straight-acting ones) when identifying themselves with each other.
2. So what is plublogs.com?
PLU Blogs, or plublogs.com as we sometimes like to call ourselves, is a free bloglisting service and user community for GLBT blogs. It is a place for you to find similar sites as well as raise your blog's popularity ranking. Recently, we are also encouraging the sharing of opinions and experiences through article publishing, as well as interaction amongst members.
3. I want to contribute articles and write stuff on PLU Blogs. How do i do that?
Thanks in advance for your enthusiasm. You can find the link to sign up as an author on our main page, or directly here. Registration is instantaneous and you can start publishing immediately, though articles will be sujected to admin approval within 24 hours before appearing on the main page. This is a precautionary measure to prevent unscrupulous third parties from abusing the article system. In certain cases, we might not approve your article. Don't take it personally. As a general rule, our site is about informative articles and breaking news, so articles like stories, promotional and jokes are likely to get rejected. 4. So PLU Blogs has a bloglisting feature, but what's the difference between the Top Blogs and Photo Blogs listings?
In PLU Blogs, we used to have only one main listing, but over time, we made the decision to have two blog listings instead from user feedback. The main reason being that quite a lot of blogs post mainly photos and while the photos are very good and the sites are popular (too popular, in fact), this causes an huge discrepancy in the ranking stats. When this happens, the other blogs don't even stand a chance versus a photo/porn blog that receives thousands of hits per day. From user feedback we have also noticed discontent towards the fact that photo blogs only have to post pictures and they get an unprecedented amount of hits, while serious bloggers write whole articles but don't get far, and so we have had requests to level the playing field by introducing two sections, which is how the Photo Blogs section is born.
If you are a blog owner, and you wish to be listed on PLU Blogs, please take a moment to consider which category your blog content would fall into. As a general rule of thumb, your blog would be in Photo Blogs if:
- Majority of blog posts feature multiple photos and have text of less than 200 words.
- Majority of blog posts feature celebrities, models, and fashion trends.
- Photos posted contains partial or full nudity, or figures in suggestive poses.
- Photos posted are sexually explicit. (a.k.a porn)
- Your posts are made up of videos with sexual content. (a.k.a still porn)
In circumstances when we find that a blog has been listed under the wrong section, our editors will have it moved and the owner notified via email.
5. Cool. I want to register my blog in your bloglisting. So how do i get started?
Once you've determined which section your blog belongs under, click on the Register link on site navigation bar, then enter your user and blog information. Select a country/category you want to be listed under. We also recommend you prepare a banner to differentiate yourself from everyone else. You may upload or change a banner anytime you wish. In your control panel, you will get an image code segment - include this in the links section of your blog, or wherever you fancy. This step is necessary else you will find that your hits are not tracked at all. Now you are done!
6. What is the recommended banner image size that i can upload?
Banner images should not exceed 200px x 75px in width and height respectively. Images exceeding this size will be cropped or excluded. You can get your banners hosted on a multitude of sites, and we recommend Photobucket, Imageshack or Flickr. For some reason, Blogger Photos does not allow direct linking, so your photos will not show up on our site if you host it there.
7. Why has my blog suddenly disappeared from the bloglisting? The last time i checked, it was still there!
From time to time, we do some housekeeping on the bloglist and there are a lot of sites that stubbornly refuse to place an image button for us to track their hits. This results in lots of listings with zeroes in all their stats. This does not look nice on the bloglist, and towards the later pages everything starts to look cluttered and much like spam, so we take the initiative to 'hide' these blogs from the list. This is actually a feature in the user control panel and all we do is force the blog to hide themselves. Nothing is deleted, and the user can 'unhide' his blog anytime by returning to our site and do some maintenance of his own. Once again, nothing is deleted except when there is a gross violation of our TOS or the a blog is listed in the wrong section.
8. What are Votes, Out, Hits & Rating? How does ranking work?
Once again, we emphasize that you need the tracking code on your blog. That would prevent your listing from showing zilch stats and falling right to the bottom of the rank ladder.
When the tracking image button is in, everytime someone drops by your site, it sends a "hit" to our system, which then records the visit in your stats. In this way, your ranking is reflected by total unique visitors and overall popularity. To prevent the same sites from dominating the charts, the stats are refreshed each month, so every site has a chance to catch up. The second factor is the ratings you receive from visitors, which is on a scale of 1 to 5. The third factor is the votes you get from guests and visitors as well. Votes are different from Ratings. A less significant factor would be outgoing clicks from your listing. The only thing that is refreshed each month are your monthly hits, so all your votes and ratings will remain and will play a role in your overall position.
To sum things up, this is the weightage for determining blog popularity:
Monthly Hits: 50%
Votes: 20%
Ratings: 20%
Outgoing Clicks: 10%
Visitors can also write comments about your blog, but comments have no effect on your blog ranking.
9. Why is my button different from time to time?
If you are in the Top 20 list, you will notice that your button changes to reflect your listing position, and the image is slightly different from the standard link button. Congrats on making the Top 20!
10. My site is listed as #1 on PLU Blogs, but it shows a #2 ranking on my site button. Why isn't it updating?
Our system uses caching to lighten the strain on server load, and while sites move up and down in real time, the buttons are only updated every 15 minutes or so. In very rare instances, sites tied for the same position will be rounded up or down depending on various factors. Be patient and the rankings will not take long to work themselves out.
Speaking of server load, we would appreciate it if all members can host their images. By default, PLU Blogs has a standard banner for sites with no banners, but occasionally we design a banner or two for random sites and host it on our server. If you are one of those recipients, please save the image so we can help save on bandwidth and costs.
11. What if someone tries to cheat on the ranking system?
PLU Blogs is very strict on the issue and we have controls and security features to ensure that repeated hits from the same source have no effect on the ranking. Hits are also only authorized for the blog which you have registered, so if you stick your code in a dozen pages, it will have no effect. Hits coming in from search engines are also regulated through a gateway page. The gateway page also shows up whenever someone votes, so blog owners can't trick or force their visitors into voting.
12. I want to promote/advertise one of my websites on PLU Blogs, who do i contact?
We would be more than happy to discuss our rates with you, or provide samples of our monthly traffic so you have a good idea of the kind of publicity you will be getting. You can reach us via our contact form or check out our Advertising FAQ first.
13. I have more questions. Who do i contact?
We welcome suggestions and are more than happy to work out your enquiries. Once again, you can reach us using our contact form or via email at webmaster@plublogs.com |
