Drupal

Let people know what poker blogs you read every day by creating your own widget. It also allows you to collect all of your own poker blog headlines if you use several blogging platforms. This is a simple trick for those who write a few poker blogs at a time and would like to add a simple widget to their sites with the latest headlines. The widget can be created by using Google Reader service.

Such a widget can be added to Blogspot or any other blogging service which allows custom HTML/script codes. Some of Wordpress-based blog services do not support it, so you may not be able to add the widget. The Wordpress.com platform is one of them.

There are two kinds of widgets:

1. Displaying all posts from all of the blogs that one has subscribed to in a set category (you can add even 1 blog subscription per category if you want). For example, I have subscribed to PokerStars Blog, Tao of Poker and all the my.PokerNews.com blogs. I set a category (it is called a label or a folder in Google Reader) and called it “Best Poker Blogs”. The widget will display posts from these 3 blogs.
2. Displaying only selected posts from subscribed blogs. The widget displays only the posts that one wants to share by marking them at the bottom of each post.

Which poker pro is your favorite? Phil Ivey or Chris “Jesus” Ferguson? They are both TOP level pros and definitely have something to say about their travels, tournaments they play in, their videos and lots of other interesting stuff a poker pro does every day. And although they both have their official blogs, they do not blog regularly. Actually only a few of the top level poker players update their blogs often and write about the things that are interesting to their fans.

We have already presented the TOP 10 General Poker Blogs and Top 10 Poker brand blogs. Now it is time to check which poker pros write their own blogs and which ones are actually good at it.

There are thousands of poker blogs, but only tens of them are worth reading and subscribing to their RSS feeds because of information quality and frequency. We have presented best 10 general poker blogs already. Let us present another 10 poker blogs managed by the well known poker brands. Biggest online poker rooms have their own poker blogs which are used as news about their promotions and masterminded players. Sometimes they are even written by the team Pros, therefore interesting and worth attention. However readers should be aware, that the goal of such blogs is to promote the particular brand and surrounding services, including gaming.

As in the first part of this article series, we should warn about the grading. 1st or 10th position does not mean superiority of the blog. This is not evaluation, so places are given based on author’s decision (personal author’s position is that some blogs, which are not so well known, should not be placed in the bottom ).

Poker 2.0 has recently started to investigate the most popular poker blogs. A few of the oldest and most respected ones have been created and hosted at Blogger.com which is constantly criticized for not bringing the updates necessary for its users. As we continue to analyze the blog engines designed specifically for poker players in some poker communities and social networks, we discover that some of them not only have a number of highly advanced blogging features, but are even determined to improve after reading our articles. In Part 1 and Part 2 we have already introduced 12 poker blogging engines. This article, being the last one this year, will analyze 7,5 more blogging services (why 7 and a half? Because I could not login and write the starting blog at the 8th blogging service – FlopTurnRiver, so its evaluation is not very accurate and is based only on the view from the outside). Those who did not read our previous analysis, should know that we evaluate the blogs in the scale from 0 to 5 based on the following 10 criteria:

1. Visibility to the non-members of the blogging platform
2. The editing of the text + embedding external media (YouTube or any other video, flash replayer etc.) options
3. Tools to customize the design and the looks of the blog
4. Possibility to manage the URI (the ending of the link) of a single blog post
5. Possibility to share it with your friends and various social networks
6. RSS feature availability
7. Is the blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly?
8. Does it have a statistics engine
9. Scheduling and privacy options
10. Tagging and categorizing your blog posts

There are thousands various poker blog on the internet. Most of them are plane garbage created just for link building or affiliate marketing. SEO rules the poker World; therefore lots of blogs are created just for the sake of keywords and not for some meaningful content or discussion of poker industry issues. Poker 2.0 Blog would like to introduce some short reviews of quality poker blogs. All of them can be followed by using any RSS reader. Some of them have Twitter accounts and even Facebook fan pages.

Here are a few groups of poker blogs in the market:

• General poker blogs – the blogs written by online poker players, businessmen and professional writers. They usually prefer to stay anonymous or just refuse to tell their real names. Well, a nickname is quite enough these days, so there is no need to elucidate their real personalities. These blogs cover everything that is happening in the poker world + the writer's personal life.
• Brand poker blogs – usually official or non-official blogs of the online poker rooms which mainly focus on the poker room's features, promotion deals and the achievements of the supported poker pros. Fulltilt and PokerStars have tons of pros, therefore there is always something to write about.
• Poker Pro Blogs – the blogs written by the poker pros (this might be done by the pros themselves, their agents or by some Public Relations agency). The blogs are mostly about their personal life, poker tournaments, online play and some business they are involved.
• Specific poker blogs – the blogs dedicated to some niche topics, just like Poker 2.0. They analyze only the narrow poker topics. I bet you wouldn't approve if the Poker 2.0 Blog would involve some ‘played-with-my-cat’ or ‘saw-through-the-window’ stories or my holiday photos . 

Do you still have doubts on where to start your poker blog? This article will introduce you to some of the most popular poker blogging platforms. In my first Poker Blog Engines article I have started analyzing poker social networks and blogging engines built exclusively for writing poker blogs. The rating system was based on 10 key points and their evaluation in a 5 grade scale. To remain objective and righteous I shall continue with the same 10 principles:

1. Visibility to the non-members of the blogging platform
2. The editing of the text + embedding external media (YouTube or any other video, flash replayer etc.) options
3. Tools to customize the design and the looks of the blog
4. Possibility to manage the URI (the ending of the link) of a single blog post
5. Possibility to share it with your friends and various social networks
6. RSS feature availability
7. Is the blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly?
8. Does it have a statistics engine
9. Scheduling and privacy options
10. Tagging and categorizing your blog posts

 If you are a poker player and would like to start your own blog to share your experience and views about the poker world, you'll have to decide on the essential issue – whether to use a general blogging platform such as Wordpress, Blogger.com, Tumblr.com, or a poker community blogging engine. Those who have decided to go with Wordpress or Blogger, please read this article just to make sure you know what you're missing and is it worth it.