A new life to Blogger- Muhammad launches a new forum for blogger
|Today I am going to feature Muhammad Mustafa Ahmedzai’s new forum “ASK[dot]mybloggertricks[dot]com” which he has just launched to help Blogger users.
Muhammad Mustafa Ahmedzai is not a new name in the blogging field. I can still remember that when I decided to launch my first ever blog, the very first person who become the inspiration for me was Muhammad.
Like me, Muhammad has become an inspiration for many others too.
Even if I will say that Muhammad is the one who introduced Blogging in the right manner in India and Pakistan then I would not be wrong.
The biggest speciality of Muhammad is that he always come up with something new. That is the reason why he first launched Mybloggertricks(MBT), later he introduced SmartEarningMethods(SEM) and finally he introduced Richincomeways(RIW).
He merged all of his blogs under a network which is the only registered Blogging network in Pakistan “STCnetwork”.
He is also working on several other ideas such as Ucut which is made to help bloggers in shortening their blog URLs.
You can find more about his products and creations on STCnetwork official website.
The new Finding
A few weeks ago I visited Muhammad’s facebook profile. I saw him talking about surprises. First I felt that he is probably leaving Karachi but then my sixth sense clicked at the right time and by the help of few other mates I was able to find his new surprise even before the launch which was ASK[dot]mybloggertricks.
On March 2nd Muhammad officially announced the launch of ASK. Amazingly the forum was able to get more than 1.1K posts and about 147 new topics in just a few days.(I opened a new topic on his forum too.)
Muhammad wants this forum to be the number one resource forum for Blogger. He is determined enough for the success of his new invention that is why he is giving a big amount of time to the forum users.
Yesterday,I tested his replying frequency. I wrote a comment which was actually a reply to one of of the posts Muhammad made on the forum and within four minutes he responded to me which was quite amazing.
That is the reason why I couldn’t stop myself from complementing Muhammad’s quick response service, so I wrote a cheerful reply and post it on the forum.
You can find that piece of chat here
As a blogger I try to be as much trustworthy as I can, this is the reason why I am promoting ASK.MBT.
Believe me if Muhammad has launched it, it will be far more superior from all other forums you have experience till now both in terms of technology and in terms of support too.
And when I say superior I own my words. For now just talk about the technology.
I asked Mustafa personally that how your forum is going to be different from other forums. He gave a descriptive reply but I will just paste the para which was related to the technology, He said:
“Blogger Help Forum” is the first Discussion Forum of its type that is hosted on an extremely fast Cloud Server and uses the latest Discourse Technology which is the 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet. Discourse is the new big name for Forum software just like WordPress is for blogs.. This application is powered by JavaScript, AJAX, HTML5, Ruby on Rails and Ember.js. ; said Mustafa
I believe that I have made my point very clear. Now let us come back to the story. So when I heard about ASK.MBT, I sent a personal message to Muhammad on facebook.
I asked him several questions about his new invention. I did that because I was eager enough to find out more about ASK.MBT after all it was launched by my favourite blogger of all time and to be honest I was actually willing to be the first person who will write the article about Muhammad’s new invention.
I never expected a reply from Muhammad but against my expectations he replied me in just a few hours.(Imagine a popular guy like Muhammad is talking to a man like me, It feels good)
He asked me to send all of my questions to him by a direct message on his forum.
I did the same and he was very generous because he answered all of my questions so descriptively that I could not thank him.
Well, my questions were:
- Question no. 1. Mr. AhmedZai you said in one of your statements that this is the biggest investment ever done by STC Network. So how much did you invest on this new Forum which you claim to be the number 1 forum for blogger users?
- Question no. 2. As a entrepreneur whenever you invest something in a particular field, you expect some results from it. So, what are your expectations from this new forum
- Question no.3 From where did you get the idea to launch such a great looking and cool platform for blogger users which has attracted so many people just after a few days?
- Question no.4 Did you hire a new team to manage the burden of the work which will be now on your shoulders after the launch of A.MBT?
- Question No. 5 How “ASK.MBT” will be different from other forums? And is there any guarantee of satisfactory answers for every single topic or query?
- Question No. 6 Is there anything special which you will like to share with the audience?
In a few hours Mustafa replied and said:
“W.salam dear Husnain,
1) By biggest I mean introducing the latest technology of Forum Software to blogger users which has far more functionality and features than any bulletin board system available online. It uses Ruby on Rails , HTML5 technology and Ember.js to provide an AJAX driven user interface which is both light weight, cloud based and yet interesting exploring it.
We also call it biggest because it is first User Powered Forum where users reserve full copyrights and are the sole onwers of the content they publish and STCnetwork can in no way take a decision without keeping the community in confidence. Users are facilitated with three major features:
The Forum works as a:
- Mailing List!powered by MailChimp
- Discussion Forum!powered by Discourse
- Long-Form Chat Room!You will forget whatsapp!
As far as the monthly expense is concerned, I would appreciate you better find it for yourself fromDiscourse’s official Pricing page. Unlike the yearly hosting costs of Blogger domains or WordPress blogs, Cloud servers charge webmasters monthly apart from service charges so it is in fact a bigger step from us with all praise be to God Almighty Who is helping us in bearing the expenses.
2) I am hopeful to make it the Largest user powered community similar to Stackoverflow which may become the first Blogger Encyclopedia by solving all problems faced by newbie bloggers. Users will receive 24/7 Free help and support from both experienced SEO consultants, web developers and pro bloggers renown in their niche. God willing.
3) I often keep myself updated with latest technology trends and communicate with programmers around the globe for help and sincere advises. As a computer engineer, it is part of my professional career to remain updated with all latest IT developments.
4) My new team will consist of Forum users who will attain a Trust Level 3 by honestly contributing to the community and winning both trust and credibility. We already promoted a user named Sulemanaka Samurai who has been contributing to STCnetwork since its start.
5) “Blogger Help Forum” runs parallel to MBT blog which has a loyal readership of over 90K readers and they have always provided their utmost support and have helped us in growing and enhancing our projects. As long as we have their support, we will continue serving the blogspot community like we have been doing since consecutive 5 years without a gap! =>
Users will surely find useful answers to their questions because the answers are well moderated and are contributed by not just a single user but multiple members. I personally answer each question with 24 hours and make sure the user keeps on asking questions until they are full convinced with the proposed solution.
6) I believe in sharing knowledge than preserving it and never selling it for self benefit. Most of the readers we trained through mbt, did thank us during the earlier days of their career but as soon as they succeed online they forget both their mentors and got fascinated with fame and greed. All we expect from readers who would find help from this forum is to make sure they deliver it back to people who may not be as tech-savvy as they are today and keep sharing love and knowledge and keep dedicating respect to mentors who taught you how to blog and make a living from it. Most importantly remain thankful to God for gifting you with the ability to read and write because without these two powers, surely we would have been deprived of so much blessings in life. Peace and blessing buddies.”
The Turning Point of this post
When I got his reply I felt that I am done with my post but I was wrong because as soon as that thought came in my mind, a new question emerged.
The question was that why Mustafa has invested so much of time on this new forum? Did internet users really need this? Will it help blogger users for which Mustafa has actually launched this new forum?
I could asked that question to Mustafa directly but I didn’t want to irritate him again hence I decided to get the answer on my own.
The Story will tell you that why “ASK” was necessary
To get the answer I stepped backward in the past when I had a blog on Blogger. This is a story of mine when I was 16:
I started my blogging journey after getting inspired by Muhammad, I chose Blogger to start with because I didn’t have any other options. I could not buy a hosting plan for WordPress because it wasn’t easy enough to transfer funds from Pakistan to Paypal since their services aren’t available here.
So, I made my blog on blogger and I posted some good content on it but a big botheration was always hovering on my head and that was my blog design.
My blog wasn’t actually looking good, In-fact it looked horrible. The design was poor, the drop down menus were not there and the popular post widget was the biggest disgrace ever. Thanks to Mr. Google for not providing quality widgets.
I wanted a drop down menu but I couldn’t get one because in the layout section there was no such option. I could only make myself happy from the those old and poor looking navigation bars.
I also wanted a proper sitemap for my blog but I wasn’t able to get one. Thanks to Google again.
Eventually, I jumped over to Blogger official forum to get some help from those guys but the experience was disappointing again because I thought that there will be a team of experienced and professional personnels who will solve my problems but I was amazed when I saw a guy like me who asked me to forget about drop down menus. Hence, the frustration was prevailing minute after minute for me.
In the end I moved over to Google and search for some blogger related keywords. I got a ton of results and every single resource was helpful. I visited a website which I found on the very first page.
It helped me a lot to install the drop down menu in my blogger hosted blog.
But I also wanted to add some images in the menu. I had only one option and that was to ask the author about my query but he didn’t replied for months. I checked the page again and again but he was pretty busy in answering the new comments which he got on his new blog posts. Probably he was focusing more on his new audience and was not checking his old posts.
I found some other resources too but comments were closed there.
I was there again from where I started. In the end I decided to to start my next blog on WordPress.
Ok, wakeup! story has ended.
So what points did you get from my story?
- Blogger Official forum is just a waste of time.
- Blogger Official forum does not have a skilled team.
- If there could be a decent forum for Blogger at that time when I was using it then I would had never purchased a hosting plan for WordPress.
Did you get it? This is the thing which Blogger users were lacking for about a decade “A decent Blogger forum”. It is a must need.
Say thanks to Muhammad Mustafa Ahmedzai who is there again to give a new life to blogger. Now you can just move to his forum, just ask anything there and he will reply you with all of his expertise in his bag.
What we can ask?
You can ask anything which is related to Blogger, Search Engine Optimization and template modification. You can read about the topics which this new forum will focus on by visiting this page.
The Team
He has also hired some of the best people in the field. Who will answer your every single question. You just need to ask.
Sam Saffron, Jeff Atwood and Mohammad himself are the people who will instruct you for whatever thing you will ask.
Mr. Suleman is working as a moderator for the forum, so you better first read the Terms of Services of ASK.MBT to make sure that you don’t do a violation of “ASK’s TOS”.
I wish if there could be a forum like this on internet when I was a blogger user. Well, perhaps it was my destiny to join WordPress community. I still believe that WordPress is a thousand time better than blogger but if you don’t have enough budget, just stay with blogger and if you are stuck some where then just it on Muhammad’s forum.
So what are you waiting for? Just head over to the forum and ask whatever thing which is in your mind. I am pretty sure that with the support of Muhammad and his great team you guys will be able to launch the next PRO blog on Blogger. Who knows you can be the next influencer. Right?
Few more things to say
You can read Muhammad’s official blog post about “ASK.MBT” by clicking here. He has gave some in-depth details about his forum so you better read it. It will help you to learn more about “ASK.MBT” since the intention behind this post was to introduce this new phenomena to you guys.
P.S: So its all for now, stay tuned for more. You can also like our Facebook fan page or follow us on Twitter. Or if you are busy with Yahoo then subscribe our newsletter.
Hi Husnain,
Its good knowing about “ASK.MBT”. There is no doubt the Muhammad and his team is doing a great job on this new forum. Checking out on this forum now! 😀
I have left this comment in kingged.com where this post was shared.
Hi Husnain,
Glad that Mustafa came up with this amazing help forum. Getting help with Blogger queries was never this easy.
Good to see you spreading the word.
– Rohan.