Blogivists HQ

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is that we’re getting ready for a major overhaul and software upgrade, and most of the themes we’re running are old, outdated, buggy and overall problematic to the site’s performance and visual appeal.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The same goes for plugins… many of our plugins were outdated.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

R3volution Continues Wordpress Theme

We’re excited to announce the first in what we hope will be a series of themes exclusively available through Blogivists.com. This theme was designed by Graziano Musca. It is a one-column theme that features a very useful drop-down menu for accessing categories and other widgets. If you’re a blogivists.com blogger, this theme is already installed for you. Simply select from your “Presentation” menu.

R3volution Continued Wordpress Theme Features
-Special “Drop Down” menu area (click on “Menu” tab to access… see screen shot below)
-One single column to highlight simplicity and focus on post content
-Widget ready (for upper “Menu” content area)

Download Theme :: Demo

Sample Homepage:

Sample Homepage with special content area opened:

Download and Demo!

Download Theme :: Demo

We’re currently going through all of themes on the site and cleaning them up, as well as removing themes that are, shall we say… outdated and old school in design. This means we’ll be getting a lot of newer, more modern themes in the system over the next few weeks.

We have a few themes in mind, but would like to invite you to submit themes as well. If you happen to come across a free Wordpress theme that you would like to have available on Blogivists, please comment here with the direct URL for the theme’s release page. One thing to keep in mind is that any theme we use on this site MUST be widget ready. The release page will usually mention this, but if not we can download it and check for you.

Also, if you know of features that could be useful for Blogivists, we would love to hear about it. Feel free to comment on this posts with any ideas or suggestions you might have.