Blogivists HQ

Firestats was “so so,” but it didn’t quite do the trick and was a bit outdated. Because of this, we’ve gone ahead and installed Statpress on all Blogivists Blogs.

To view your statpress results and options, simply login to your blog’s dashboard and look at the lower left in the dashboard sidebar. Expand the Statpress window and choose overview for the stats, options for the options menu.

You can still use your own stat tracker, of course, but this one is readily available in the dashboard and easy to read.

Enjoy!

-Eric Odom

OK, I admit… I’m kind of excited about this poll. Not just because the poll is about the upgraded software we’re running, but also because I get to announce a new global plugin that will help you host polls on your blog as well.

That’s right… we now have the PollDaddy Plugin running on all Blogivists blogs. What this means is that once you set up a free Poll Daddy account, you’ll be able to easily post Poll Daddy polls in your blog posts.

Instructions:
Once you set up your free Poll Daddy account, find the button that allows you to create a new poll. Poll Daddy will walk you through the simple steps and options on setting up your poll. Once you save all of the settings for the poll, you’ll be taken to a page with some code for the poll.

Ignore the code that you’re presented with, and in the right sidebar you’ll see a box for “Wordpress Blogs”. Click on that box.

The next page presents you with three options. You want the option that says “I host my own WordPress blog (version 2.5 or higher)”. When you click that option, you’ll be given a short strip of code. Copy that and paste it into your blog post.

Save… publish… and vote!

With that said… please vote in this poll.

[polldaddy poll="1343719"]

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