New Blog Features

[Loren]

We have updated the Blog section of the site to the latest version.

Some of the new features/updates are:

New Default Style - The Blog has been overhauled with a fresh new style, one which feels more like a traditional blog.

Themes and Custom Headers - You can now install 'theme packs' and allow your users to choose which of these themes will be applied to their blog. Using themes you can completely change the look and layout of an individual blog. (I have not tried this yet)

Content Block Plugin System - It's now much easier to create your own content blocks, using a new plugin system. It's now possible to define settings for a plugin that apply to individual blogs, this means that you can integrate with 3rd party widgets that require a unique username for each blog. We've also included new content blocks in this release: Twitter, MyBlogLog, Google Reader, Friends Blogs, Recent Visitors, Digg, and Last.FM.

Social Bookmarks - A new bookmark manager allows you to define bookmark services for your blog system. These services will allow blog entries to be easily submitted to the bookmark services that you setup. There are several preconfigured services: Del.icio.us, Digg, Google, Facebook, Mixx, Reddit, and Stumbleupon.

Media Integration - The new tag allows you to automatically convert various media types into a more usable format. For example, [ blogmedia ]http://www.test.com/somemp3.mp3[/ blogmedia] would be converted into a mp3 player for the specified file. You can define any media type you like in the Media Tag manager, by default we include: Flickr Image Set, GameTrailers, Google Video, MP3 Player, MySpace Video, Veoh, and YouTube.

Other Changes:

- Feedburner Integration

- Akisment Integration

- Edit Entry Date

- Display article count for categories

- Blog Offline Mode

- Entry author replies in comments are now highlighted

- Admins can select a 'Featured Entry' to be displayed on the blog listing

We hope you enjoy this new version!