[Editorial] Merging FbKnol, WpVeda & OrkutDiary back into Devils Workshop

Today, we have merged OrkutDiary, FbKnol, WpVeda back into Devils Workshop. If you were a subscriber to any of those blog, you will continue to get relevant content delivered to you without any interruption. For more details please read this article.

Devils Workshop, as some of you may be aware is more than 5-year-old blog. Over the time, we forked out 3 new blogs – OrkutDiary, FbKnol and WpVeda out of this Workshop.

The goal behind creating those topic-specific blogs was to provide comprehensive information source to readers following some of hottest topics out there. Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet our goal. In fact, with so many blogs in our network, we ended up spending more time in managing them leaving us less time for writing. So after more than a months brainstorming we decided to “undo” our mistake.

Today we have merged 3 blogs in our network, that are OrkutDiary, FbKnol, WpVeda back into our top blog Devils Workshop.

Why we decided to merge them….

OrkutDiary was merged few days back for obvious reason – we ourselves stopped using Orkut since long so it wasn’t updated for quite some time. Writing about stuff we don’t use personally was never our style! 😉

FbKnol was merged as personal interest started to drop in it. Though FbKnol stats were quite impressive, its future didn’t look promising enough to invest more into it. (off-topic: personal interest is shifting to Google+)

WpVeda‘s merger is hard to justify. We have no plan to quit WordPress platform for blogging (and business also). WpVeda was just turning out to be a misfit in our overall strategic plans.

As you can see for each of above blog we had a reason to merge it back into Devils Workshop. After this merger, rtBlogs network now has one dedicated blog for all technology related stuff i.e. Devils Workshop.

What does this mean for Subscribers?

If you have subscribed to any of above blog via email newsletter, RSS feed, twitter and/or Facebook fan-page; you will continue to get updates without  any interruption.

If you are already a subscriber at Devils Workshop, then you can unsubscribe from old blog(s) as content related to them will be served on Devils Workshop again.

What does this mean for Contributors?

If you love writing about Facebook, WordPress or even Orkut, you now have a much bigger and better platform to write. Yup, you can now post all technical stuff on Devils Workshop without bothering about niche!

I hope this will make some of our contributors happy who were not comfortable posting on small topic-specific blogs.

Summary…

Going by records, efforts we put into creating 3 blogs, their logos, themes, branding, etc are all go in vain now. But I have a gut feeling that this will prove a right decision going ahead.

For rtCamp, rtBlogs was never a prime source of revenue. So, we never bothered about this decision’s impact on search-engine rankings, traffic, revenue and other factors across rtBlogs Network.

Following line can sum up this event in better way…

I may be walking slowly but I never walk backwards… whenever I walk backwards it’s for a long jump!

Let us know how do you feel about this merger! Your comments, feedback, suggestion, criticism – all are welcome!

(image souce: clappstar via flickr)

14 Comments

Radha Krishna September 2, 2011

The 2 blogs Orkutdiary & FBknol should no doubt be merged because a dedicated blog for Orkut & Facebook doesn’t make much sense. It’s a pretty good step. But I wonder why WPVeda is merged here as it is a dedicated source for WordPress Users!

Rahul Bansal September 2, 2011

@Radha Krishna
For WpVeda, as per original plan, main contribution was expected from rtCamp developer team. But they have now 4 WordPress-related product blogs to look after which is making them hard to find time for WpVeda.

Rajeel September 2, 2011

I think it’s still a good decision as the merging takes place, the readers of DW will again increase. I think you will be more powerful with an increased readers base 😉

Rahul Bansal September 2, 2011

@Rajeel
With this merger, workload has been reduced. This will give us more time to look after DW which will definitely help it grow faster. 🙂

Vibin September 2, 2011

That’s an intelligent decision and I see an increase in Feedburner count there! 😀

Rahul Bansal September 3, 2011

That increase in count is natural. Feedburner subscribers from different blogs cannot be merged. We still have dedicated feeds for facebook, orkut and wordpress topics. I will add their counters separately somewhere in new theme (under-development)

Akshay Kakkar September 2, 2011

Hmmm, nice step for seo! now u wont need to optimize each websiite :P.
but what about mail subscribers of different blogs?

Tip : allow users to subscribe to personalized categories (the one that is in mashable). 🙂

Rahul Bansal September 3, 2011

Well, I never took much efforts for SEO. Blogs do not have much returns to invest time in SEO in my opinions. 😉
WordPress, Facebook & Orkut feeds are already being served using old-URLs, facebook page, etc.
We are adding more subscription options in new theme.
Thanks for suggestion. 🙂

Anand Kumar September 3, 2011

Managing multiple blogs are always been a hard work. Good Initiative.

Rahul Bansal September 3, 2011

Yep. Unless u have a big team like big blog networks, running one large blog over many small blogs in more efficient (lesson learnt from mistake!)

Mandar September 7, 2011

How about releasing your premium themes under GPL? 😉

Rahul Bansal September 23, 2011

Most themes were already outdated. We do not mind releasing them for free but they need some cleanup work. We also plan to port them to our recently released http://rtpanel.com/ theme framework

Srinivas October 30, 2011

Expected this decision long ago. Single blog helps in reducing costs and adds more value to guest bloggers in terms of exposure. Long way to go DW.

Amandeep Singh November 6, 2011

I wish that this proves to be the right decision for DW… I have seldom seen any wrong things happening here since I have been following you guys 😉