Bloggers Buzz

Episode 4 of the popular WordPress Podcast has be released covering WordCamp, changes at wordpress.com, more…

* WordCamp 2006 recaps, including video, audio, photographs and BBQ. (The Blog Herald has some very good coverage including a podcast.)
* Changes at WordPress.com:
1. $15 U.S. a year to edit your own CSS. (Randy Walker and Tony Street debate if this is a good idea.)
2. Domain-mapping beta test.
3. Allowing private blogs.
4. Menus to report spam and mature content.
* Bryan Veloso barely gets unpacked before tackling changes to the admin page.
* Redeigned login page, coupled with an argument for Sandbox over Kubrick. Will the winner of Undersigned’s theme competition end up as the default?
* Indranil’s theme Brown
* Create N Place plug-in allows you to write new blog posts right on the front page of your blog.
* Why cause problems for people using accountability software like x3watch from XXXChurch.com, when it’s so easy to just update Bad Behavior?
* Music: Ferdinand and Isabelle by The The Mark Kleinhaut Trio

with Bobby Watson, from the A Balance of Light. (Thanks go to Nick Carver at No Idle Frets.)

WordPress has started to break down language barriers by releasing language specific “home pages”:

As Ryan wrote in his blog, we’re starting to enable more and more languages that are finishing the community translation process. Personally I’m very excited about this because it really represents the core of what WordPress is about: providing the tools to allow people to communicate and connect with folks they care about.

As a next step, we’ve been creating WP.com home pages for each of these languages, so if you wanted to cruise WordPress.com in Hebrew, Farsi, or Bulgarian you could. To help you navigate these, we’ve thrown a big list at the bottom of the pages on WP.com that take you to the different portals.

blogging, wordpress, languages,

WordPress is seeking ideas for paid upgrades after launching Custom CSS:

Now that we’ve launched Custom CSS and the response has been good, I’m pretty curious what you guys would be interested in for future paid upgrades.

So this is an open thread. Suggest, kvetch, wish, fantasize. Is there anything we’re not doing today that would provide enough value that you’d be willing to pay for it?

Suggestions can be made here

blogging, wordpress ,

Chris Garrett at performancing gives his observations as to what the likely monetization strategies of wordpress are now that paid features like Custom CSS are arriving:

My first reaction was this seems a pretty lame first product if you ask me, I can think of others I would have preferred. After thinking on it a while I think this is a good move. This nicely introduces the Wordpress.com user base to the idea that it’s not all free without holding a gun to the users head saying “pay up or lose out”. Anyone using Wordpress.com just because it is free will probably not miss this functionality, those who are interested in a more unique look will not be overly put off by the price tag.

Read the rest at performancing.com

blogging, wordpress.com, WordPress,

Continuing on from the earlier WordPress.com news comes the news that at long last WordPress.com bloggers can edit their blog themes with the arrival of custom CSS:

It is our greatest pleasure to give you what you want. Since the very first signup, WordPress.com bloggers have wanted to edit their themes. Today is your day.

With the release of the Sandbox theme, you have a clean slate with some of the best markup ever generated by WordPress. Add to that our new Custom CSS, our first paid upgrade, and you are on your way to creating a blog like no other.

The Sandbox theme’s skins can help you get started by providing flexible layout options; it comes with one-, two- and three-column themes with sidebars on either side. Or you can select No Stylesheet and do it all yourself. Additional skins will be provided as we develop them.

For those who need help with their CSS and those who like to help, we have created a forum topic for CSS customization. (Podz is very talented but he can’t be expected to debug your CSS for you.)

We expect there will be a growing supply of unique Sandbox stylesheets available in the wild, so be sure to show off in the forums when yours is ready!

wordpress, blog design, blog templates, WordPress,

Big news for WordPress.com users tonight with the ability to create Private Blogs:

For a while now we’ve enabled privacy options for your blog because we understand that not everyone wants everything out there. Tonight, we’ve decided to take that a step further.

If you go to your Dashboard, click Options and then Privacy, you will see a new set of options. You used to just be able request for your blog to be unlisted in search engines and such. Now you can also choose to protect your blog so only WordPress.com members you choose can have access to it.

All you have to do is choose the protected blog option, then add the usernames of the folks you want to have access to your blog. Everyone else who tries to visit your blog will get a message saying they need to be a member to have access. We currently are limiting protected blogs to 5 members while we test out the system.

Give it a go and let us know what you think. Also remember, you don’t have to do this to your main blog, you can always create another for the more sensitive or private topics. (You can have as many blogs as you fancy.)

Tags: WordPress.com, WordPress, privacy, blogging,

WordPress.com have deployed the Sandbox theme to WordPress.com list of available themes

Tags: themes, templates, wordpress.com, WordPress

The good folks at WordPress have just announced some great news for bloggers wanting to have more contact with their visitors with blog intergration with Meebo:

The good people over at Meebo just announced a new service called MeeboMe that lets your visitors chat directly with you on any web page. This isn’t a shoutbox where every visitor can see each other–it’s a direct connection to you, just like an instant messenger. Working together, we built a Meebo widget for WordPress.

If you have a blog on WordPress.com and a widget-ready theme, just go to your Presentation -> Widgets admin page and drop the widget into your sidebar. Then go to meebome.com, get a bit of code and paste it into the widget. Save the changes. As long as you’re logged in at meebo.com, your visitors will be able to chat with you directly!

To kick it off in style, I’ve added the widget to my own blog.

In case your WordPress blog is not hosted on WordPress.com, you can paste the embed code right into a Text widget.

Tags: wordpress, meebo, instant messages, chat, widgets