Blogivists HQ

It’s obvious that a lot of changes are happening around Blogivists.com. We’ve upgraded our software, coded in a ton of new features, cleaned up the old themes and upgraded the existing themes.

We’re also building a new support system that we hope will help deal with any major issues as they arise. This new system will be in place by New Years Day of 2010.

One of the new functions we haven’t talked much about is our upcoming premium services. As you might imagine, running this website is not cheap for us, but we work hard to keep it free for you. Of course, we can’t do this forever without building in alternatives that can bring in revenue needed to operate the site. Read the rest of this entry »

Good news!!!

Last night we upgraded our software from Wordpress MU 2.6.5 to Wordpress MU 2.7 and we think everything went through smoothly. You’ll notice a LOT of changes in the way the backend looks and feels, so you may want to take some time to surf around and get comfortable with the new system.

Now that the software is completely upgraded, we’ll be able to go in and do a final clean up of plugins and themes.

This means you’ll begin to see a lot of new plugins and themes in the coming weeks.

Thanks for hanging in there with us during these changes!

-Eric Odom

There will be an official announcement coming out this week, but I wanted to drop you a line letting you know why you’re seeing changes happen during the weekend.

First of all, regarding the server move that happened Friday night, it went pretty smoothly for the most part. We think we got all files and databases moved, and we think the domain structure is also fully intact. We are experiencing some slow downs on the backend (after you log in), but I think we’ll be able to iron those problems out this week.

You might notice significant decreases in the number of themes available. In fact, the theme you’re using may be taken out of the system during the next few days. The reason for this is that we’re getting ready for a major overhaul and software upgrade, and most of the themes we’re running are old, outdated, buggy and overall problematic to the site’s performance and visual appeal.

Chances are high that during the last week of January, there will only be about 20 themes available on Blogivists.com. Don’t worry though, we’re going to be installing some new themes that are much more modern, user friendly, up to date, bug free and visually appealing.

The same goes for plugins… many of our plugins were outdated. Some of them weren’t even supposed to be running with our current version of WordpressMU, so there was potential for serious damage within our code.

We’ve stripped out almost all of the plugins that were running on Blogivists.com. We’ll be taking a look at our current situation, the fixes that are coming with WPMU 2.7, and based on our findings, we’ll upload new plugins that will better fit our needs.

The support system will also go through a complete revamp. Instead of the old ticketing system, we’re now going to be using BBPress for a discussion forum setup. The cool thing about BBPress is that if you’re logged in to yoru blog, you’ll automatically be logged in to the forums and will have the same profile.

This should all be cleaned up, completed and ready to roll out in early February.

Thanks for hanging in there with us while we go through these changes!

-Eric Odom

Need a new theme for the new year? Start 2009 with a fresh new look!

We’ve added 20 new themes on top of the other 120 already available.

…or at least to your blog anyway.

One of the things we pride ourselves in doing at Blogivists.com is providing our bloggers with an audience. By now, you’ve noticed that every time you write a post, it appears on the right-hand side of the main page under “livefeed”. And – along with the title of your post, user name and number of comments – lies an avatar.

Ava-what!? Avatar!

An avatar, for those of you unaware, is simply a visual representation of your blog that accompanies your posts and – if you allow them – your comments. It’s a great way to shape your online identity and attract blog traffic in the process.

Now every blogger at blogivists has a default avatar (see left), but – as you can see – it’s quite boring, and thereby, quite lame. So the ball is in your court. Get yourself a personalized avatar right now!

1. Once in admin, click on “Users” (located on the right-hand side of the page next to “Plug-ins”.
2. Go to the “Your Avatar” option.
3. Click on the “Browse” button and find an image saved on your computer.
4. Click on “Upload Photo”.
   • If no image appears, there is a problem with the file type or size. Choose another image.
5. Using the preview box, select the area you want to use as your avatar. (Notice that you can expand (or decrease) the size of the preview box.
6. Click “Continue & Crop” and do another step 5 for your “Alternate Avatar”.

Ava-awesome!

A video tutorial of the process follows:

UPDATE: I know, I know: “I’ve already tried to put up an avatar…multiple times! It didn’t work.”

Fair enough.

Here’s the problem. Your image must be larger than 500px x 500px. Anything smaller than that will simply not work. I know – the admin says “75px x 75px”. That’s wrong (and as soon as we figure out how to change it we will). For the time being though, make sure the image you use for your avatar is greater than 500px x 500px.