Many of you are already using Google Analytics or Clicky for your blog stats. Those are outstanding programs, but to make things a little easier, we’ve installed FireStats on all blogs. You can activate fire stats by going to your Dashboard>Plugins menu and locating the plugin FireStats. Simply click “Activate” and your are done. You can view your stats from your Dashboard.

We got hit with a barrage of spam signups yesterday. I was able to shut them down yesterday, but I have just completed cleaning up and adding keywords exclusion lists to prevent much of this in the future. I know I have still have many offensive words to add to my lists, so if you have any suggestions please email them to me at Email Me. (I use Email Address Obfuscator to encode my email address. More on that in another post.)

Click to see the current keywords I am blocking:

• Blog Names Deny List
• Email Domains Deny List

Several weeks ago I posted about the new Spam Karma plugin that we were testing. I’m happy to announce that the plugin is fully functional and we’ve been able to confirm it runs without any problems.

To use Spam Karma, simply go to the “Plugins” tab and activate Spam Karma 2. Then go to “Manage>>Spam Karma 2″ and configure your settings.

-Eric

Now that Lennie has all of the kinks worked out and the site is on the new server, Mike and I will be making some changes to the homepage as well as the backend. Some of these changes will be visible to you and some will not. In this case, the changes involve themes.

I’m adding several new themes to the system today, most of which you should be able to choose from via your presentation tab. Please comment here if you have any problems.

Also, if you see any themes out there that you think would be good for the community, please post them in the comments section here.

New Themes

Tropical Grunge
Tropical Grunge is a two column theme with a design that is much different compared to the average theme color scheme. It’s fast loading, clean, and widget ready.

The color scheme is a green/orange/yellow combination that uses graphics to enhance the look and feel.

Tropical Grunge should be available in your control panel under “presentation”.

Matthew (Sunshine)
The Sunshine theme is a template I’ve uploaded in case anyone wants to start a blog about FOIA and sunshine laws. The header contains a graphic image of sunshine rays and instantly puts out the message.

The theme has two columns and is fairly fast loading. However, the theme IS NOT widget ready, meaning… the sidebar cannot be edited. You can add links and categories to the sidebar, but you cannot move things around.

I’ll hunt for a widget ready version of this theme and post an update when it is available.

Natural Essence
I’ve seen a lot of simple “earth tones” themes over the years, but this is probably one of my favorites.

Natural Essence Wordpress them is a two column design with an elegant color scheme and an extra space in the bottom for the recent post section.

The theme is fully widget ready, so you can edit the sidebar until your heart is content.

Bernie
Bernie (as well as Tree) is a theme recommended by Sarah over at it’s my life, and I must admit I like it quite a bit.

Bernie is a two column theme with a blue, “open air” feeling color scheme. The theme is fully widget ready and has some unique icons being used in the posts and sidebar area.

The theme loads within a reasonable time and is easy to use.

That’s about it for now. I have a few more I’m testing, including “Tree” (need to figure out how to deal with the required plugins), so I’ll post again when more become available.

-Eric

We’re always looking for news ways to connect members of the blogivists community to each other. The widget you see in the right-hand sidebar of this page is our latest attempt. To install this feed in your sidebar, simply go to the “Plugins” page in your user admin area. Click to activate the “Blogivists Feed” plugin. The button will turn green indicating the plugin has been activated. Next go to your “Presentation>Widgets” sub-menu and drag and drop the widget onto your sidebar in the place where you would like it to display. Save changes and presto! That’s it.

Please leave comments below telling us whether you like this widget or not.

If you’re noticing a lot of spam comments getting caught in your comment moderation tab… you’re not alone. This morning I deleted 10 spam comments and I notice I already have three more.

Spam comments are annoying, and sometimes they can actually get through the moderation process. So how do we stop it?

Well, there are several plugins that we can use to fight spam. The most common plugin is Akismet, which is a plugin developed by the guys over at Wordpress. The problem with Akismet is that you have to have an actual Wordpress.com account to get an API key, which is required to activate the plugin on your blog.

With this in mind, I’ve opted to start testing Spam Karma 2. I’ve run Spam karma on single Wordpress blogs that I maintain, but never on a multi user system like ours. Therefor, it might be a few days before I can be certain it works properly and can be used by all Blogivists.

So, while you might see the plugin available in your control panel, I would ask that you not activate it until we fully test it and announce that it works without flaws.

Thanks,
-Eric

Blogivists now have the ability to invite friends and family to start a free blog via the control panel. To do this, log in and click the “users” tab, then click the “Invite” sub tab.

Next you’ll see three fields for the invite form. Fill in the name of the person you’re inviting, the e-mail address, and a short message (you can use the default invite message as well). Click “send invite” and you’re good to go!

-Eric

This morning I added a few plugins that “should” be active across the entire site.

Commentluv
This is a plugin that I’ve been using for about a year now and it has proven to be a great addition to the “community building toolbox”. The plugin adds a check box under the comment field. If the box is checked when the reader submits his/her comment, the system will fetch the title of their latest post and display it along with their comment on your blog.

It’s basically a way for you to share some link love with the people who comment and become active on your blog.

Note: This plugin usually does not work for Blogivists users who are logged in to the system when commenting. Blogivists blogs will be linked to through the authors name, but not through the comment feature. This plugin only works for external blogs and users that are not using our site for blog hosting.

Subscribe to Comments
This plugin simply adds an option under your comment field that allows anyone to subscribe to your thread comments via e-mail. If subscribed, the visitor will receive an e-mail every time a new comment is added. This helps users keep an eye on posts they wish to follow.

Subscribers can easily manage their subscriptions through a simple e-mail option included at the bottom of every e-mail update.

-Eric

Apparently WPMU doesn’t have easy video embedding built in. If it does I was having trouble with it. So I downloaded and installed this plugin to help.  This isn’t the most user friendly of plugins, but I chose it because of its versatility.  Let me know if you have problems or find a better video solution.