Certain circumstances, however, forced the rather abrupt closure of IndieBloggers. I vaguely remember leaving a comment on Stacy‘s blog (Stacy is the incredible woman who ran IndieBloggers, by the way) asking her why the IB domain name had been parked. All Stacy told me was that she had “high hopes for this [i.e. IB]” but that “it was time”.

I thought IB would be gone forever.

I thought wrong.

IndieBloggers is back and better than ever—and it’s sporting a new name. Please heartily welcome onto the great big stage called the Interwho, IndieInk!

IndieInk (abbreviated to II) carries on the spirit of IndieBloggers, from the distinctive design to the no-nonsense logo. Entries will no longer be called “posts” but instead “essays”. Also, IndieInk will accept submissions not only from writers, but visual artists as well. (Yes, that means you, talented, undiscovered photographers, painters, and brilliant Photoshoppers!)

IndieInk will go live on Monday, September 21, 2009.

Since IndieInk is just starting out, Stacy needs fresh, brilliant content coming in from writers and artists all over the world, so if you have an old essay lying around (or feel like writing one right now), please submit your work here (for essays) or here (for photos). Remember, IndieInk is all about writing—Technorati rankings and Google PR mean nothing to us. So when you submit your work, please don’t do so if all you want is popularity and fame. Do so because you love to write.

Go ahead, submit—you know you want to!

IndieInk will also gladly accept contributions of the monetary kind. To the best of my knowledge, Stacy shoulders all the costs of maintaining the site, from maintenance to site design, so please help her keep IndieInk alive if you can.

Please send any and all donations to payment@swankwebstyle.com with “DONATION – IndieInk” in the subject or message line. Emily, II’s amazing designer and general Chief of Site Guts will apply your donation directly to the balance due for installation and etc. Because there are no ads on the site there is no revenue coming in, so without your help everything has to come out of Stacy’s pocket. Thank you so much in advance.

I absolutely cannot wait for IndieInk to start spreading the writing fever. I hope you can join us over there—it’s bound to be loads of fun.

Viva IndieInk!

©2010 Deantastic!. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Deantastic!. All Rights Reserved.

Until Plurk came along.

Yes, Plurk. It’s taking the Interwebs by storm and becoming a serious alternative to Twitter. How can it not be, what with its name (Plurk! Plurk! Plurk! I could say it all day), the funny headless pig cartoon, and the cool features that come with it. Many Plurkers (I guess that’s what we’re called) have been asking the questions: Is Plurk a viable alternative to Twitter and are you going back to Twitter or leaving it for good? In this post, I’ll explore the answers to those questions, so follow along!

What the hell is Plurk?

Plurk, my dear friend, is a microblogging service similar to the ubiquitous Twitter we’ve all heard of. I say “similar” and not “identical” because Plurk is so many things that Twitter isn’t.

Twitter presents updates in this fashion—boring, bland, plain. Sure, there’s a timestamp, but aside from that there’s really not that much to enjoy. Plurk is a different story altogether. There’s a timeline showing your updates as well as your friends’, people can reply to plurks (and replies are listed in a message board-like thread fashion), and there are smilies! There are smilies! You also have the ability to italicize your text as well as make it bold, and you can hyperlink your text. What else? There is a point system, called “Karma”, which allows you to obtain more smiley styles as well as other features. Twitter is schooled.

Is Plurk a viable alternative to Twitter?

In my personal view, no. It’s a superior alternative to Twitter. (That’s right, loyal Twitterers, bite me.) As I pointed out, it has so many features Twitter doesn’t offer, and it’s more interactive. I think its integrity has been tested already, seeing as how the site must have had a sudden influx of visitors craving for a better version of Twitter and still no downtime.

Although I want to outright say that Plurk is better than Twitter in that it doesn’t suffer from Twitter’s still-present downtime (IM still disabled, although pagination’s back for me), we really don’t know how the next few days are going to turn out. Maybe Plurk’s going to crash, but hopefully it won’t. For the time being, yes, Plurk’s better than Twitter.

Are you leaving Twitter?

It’s hard to say at this point. Aside from the old mantra “old habits are hard to break”, Plurk may reveal its darker side when the dust settles. Since Plurk is fairly new, its users are yet to discover the downsides of the service (CSS glitches, database crashes maybe). Only when Plurk is totally proven bulletproof can the gavel be slammed.

As for me, I haven’t left Twitter. Yet. I’ll tell you, though, that I’ve only tweeted once today, but plurked more times than I can remember. A slow transition, then? Perhaps. Let’s just say that there are two tiles—one for Twitter, and one for Plurk—and one of my feet is firmly on Twitter, while my other foot is slowly inching towards Plurk. That foot is testing whether Plurk can take the wrath of my plurking combined with tens of thousands of other plurkers, and tens of thousands more to come.

Conclusion

Otherwise vigorous Twitterers are invariably disappointed by the fiasco Twitter is going through right now, and I guess that’s why Plurk has appealed to them, or should I say us. Plurk, being fairly new, isn’t fully unmasked yet. Once we see its downside, we’ll be able to compare it with Twitter, and then we can make our final decision.

For the meantime, I suggest keeping your Twitter account. You probably have lots of Twitter followers who still check in on poor ol’ Twitter from time to time, and if you’re a blogger or have something to promote, getting your word out through as many media as possible is critical.

However, don’t forget to keep on plurking. (If you haven’t registered yet, do so now! It’s fun, fun, fun.) I’m curious to know what your thoughts on Plurk are. Let’s hear it in the comments section.

©2010 Deantastic!. All Rights Reserved.

I changed a few of the theme’s elements. You’ll notice that my blog’s name and description does not appear above the image header. I removed that from the header.php file. No biggie. I also edited the notfound.php (404 page) a bit. Just a few lines of text, no biggie as well.

The credits due Sadish are maintained in the footer. This really is a fine theme, and I encourage you guys to at least try it out. Sadish’s blog can be found here: http://wprocks.com/.

Good night!

©2010 Deantastic!. All Rights Reserved.