WordPress.com has had two new features offered to users in the last few hours.
Private Blogs – the ability for publishers to request your blog be unlisted in search engines and the ability to only enable other WordPress.com members to have access to it.
Custom CSS – this is something that I’ve heard many WP.com publishers asking for – the ability to tweak your blog’s design. Before you rush off to change your templates you should know that this is a paid upgrade option. To buy the upgrade you need to add 15 ‘credits’ (credits costs $1 each). Credits can be purchased via Paypal.
Looking at the ‘upgrades’ page it seems like this is probably the first of numerous upgrades that will be made available to users.
I think this is a pretty good way to go for WP in attempting to find a way to monetize WP.
Many of us have used their platform for free for a long time and hopefully some of their 287,000 blogs will purchase the upgrade and help inject some money back into the system so that they can continue to develop this great product.
Found via Matt
Good news for wp user. You are right; wp is one the best blog platform out there.
If I am not mistaken, they must be developing adsense ads for their using AdSense API.
I think it’s funny that Bloglines starts talking about a way to make feeds private and then WordPress comes out with the private blogs. It seems that Web2.0 is starting to realize that some level of security might be nice for quite a few people.
I love WP, so nice and easy to use. And anybody can install it. It’s a one stop shop for bloggers.
[…] Darren Rowse, of Problogger.net, chimes in with his two cents on the new additions. Looking at the ‘upgrades’ page it seems like this is probably the first of numerous upgrades that will be made available to users. […]
WP is the only platform I use and I’ve become quite good at tweaking it to do things I want.
The question I have is we can modify the CSS for most theme’s already, so what do we get by buying the upgrade? Am I missing something.
I sure do not mind paying WP for advanced features.
Could we add adsense now?
Bill, this is about wordpress.org, the hosted blogging service, where users can implement lots of different themes, but can not modify them.
I’m all for WordPress monetizing the wordpress.com service. It’s a wonderful tool.
I’m currently a happy Blogger.com-user. Hmm. What are the benefits of WP?
Top 10 Hacks: If I were to list it to you, I’m afraid it would go on for quite awhile (and it would probably be deleted here for being ridiculously long). My advice to you is to give it a try. There’s no harm in that, and you can see the awesomeness of WP for yourself (as well as its many features, intuitive design, and ability to be customized beyond ends).
It’s nice that WP is finding ways to try to raise money to continue development. WP is truly an awesome piece of publishing software.
[…] WordPress.com adds Private Blogs and Custom CSS Upgrades […]
A few questions from a blog idiot
How do you keep the spammers from eating you alive? i’ve seen blogs with nothing but spam postings.
How do you keep some left wing extremist from posting racist or defamatory rhetoric? and if you cant stop them, what are you legally liabel when they do?
can viruses be posted to blogs?
there are tools for most blog platforms for stopping comment spam. Here on a WordPress blog there are a few plugins – I use ‘akismet’ but there is also ‘bad behavior’, ‘spam kharma’ and others.
in terms of slanderous comments etc – different bloggers have different standards and approaches. Some leave every comment up, others moderate heavily. If someone comments with what I condisider to be non family friendly or defamatory comments then I simply either delete it or edit out the bad bits. I only do this on extreme cases (It rarely happens) but figure it’s my blog so I’ll keep it to the standards that I wish.
I’ve not heard of viruses on blogs. They can get hacked (again rare) but i’ve not seen anything about viruses.
Good new. WordPress is doing fine. Private blogs are very useful especially for professionals who want to share ideas about their specefic field.
to my mind wordpress is the best i have ever seen. its modular and flexible an can be used in a lot of different ways.