July 15th - The work has begun, Wordpress for all!

Wordpress MU - after a few days of playing about with it, i have to say i like it! Ok, it's not quite perfect, but it looks like it will soon be the standard choice for hosted solutions, along with it's elder brother (or should that be sister?) for single installation purposes.

I'm writing this from the admin panel, and unfortunately the WYSIWYG editor - the type that hides html code for easier use - is flat out refusing to work! Not that it should matter too much, as i'll be using offline editors to write and publish articles from now on, and encouraging you to do the same! It makes life a whole lot easier for committed bloggers! (not that i profess to be one)

The other issue as far as the WPMU engine goes is themes - or rather the lack of editing options for users. Right now you cannot choose a theme and then edit it to your heart's content. The best you can do is alter the layout of the sidebar and (eventually) the header images / colours, which although fine for most, is none the less not ideal. Still, as an all-in-one package, it works nicely!

The aim of blogging shouldn't be (in my opinion) to make money, it should be to talk about issues important to you. If that so happens to draw in readers, who then click on ads you place on the blog, all the better! Having said that, i still want people to have the option to blog and earn. I'l be looking into a few alternatives, aside from the conventional adsense (yes, i know it can make good money, but i've gotten a little bored of hearing the term lately, so maybe something else is in order too).

That's all for now. Keep watching the site for improvements, and if you're feeling adventurous, why not Sign Up Now and play with it before it's 100% stable!

July 22nd - Themes, Themes, Themes

This afternoon i set myself the task of adding in a set of extra themes to spice up the blogs that (i hope) are soon to come here. But of course, when you set yourself a daily goal, what invariably happens is that things keep happening that stop you from completing it! I'd picked out a few themes yesterday, and so it was just a case of uploading them all and customising them a little to fit the needs of OIOblogger.

The first few themes went smoothly enough - upload, add appropriate links, tidy up design a little, check for cross-browser compatibility...all going great I thought to myself. A few seconds later, i was looking at a blank screen, as a storm took out the power to my local area. Slightly frustrated by this, i waited a few hours for the electricity to be restored (during which team the power came on briefly twice, only to vanish again as quickly as it had come!). Once power was properly restored, i went back to work...

Unfortunately the next theme failed to look as nice as i'd hoped, and so a bit of sprucing up on my part was required. I do all my initial visual confirmation in FireFox, and after 15 minutes i was happy with how it looked, and so quickly flipped over to the (accursed) MS Internet Explorer to check it out. Nope, it wasn't going to work, the page came to a sharp halt half way down, and refused to render further. Thinking it was the shoddy way IE likes to interpret CSS files, i decided this partiular was better left until another day. Having clicked on the don't display this theme icon, i was back on my way; a grand total of 5 themes added in a little over 4 hours!

I added another 10 or so after that, and then took what i thought (you may disagree) was a well earned break, having accomplished very little. But some of them do look quite good, and all so far have been adapted to allow for customised user sidebars, and a few allow for color and image changes within the theme admin menu. I also have up and running a user theme editor, where it would be possible for users to create and maintain their own local copy of a blog theme, for complete customisation. I can't use it yet, as giving users the ability to write and execute php code is not something i want! Might see about just limiting it to CSS file creation in the future, as a middle-ground solution.

Anyway, the core themes should all be up and running by tomorrow i hope, so that will be one less thing to do later on. I'll throw in the usual Registration link at this point, feel free to test run a blog at any time!

Screenshots on the way soon!

July 24th - Performance Blogging

This news bulletin is short and sweet. It is simply to make people aware of the blog editing extension for FireFox, called Performancing. You can read more about it here.

You can view the tool's Homepage here, or download the extension directly. You must have FireFox installed to use this!

July 31th - Qumana - Offline Blogging

A similar tool to the Performancing browser extension, Qumana enables users to manage multiple blogs from a single application. You can read more about it here.

Qumana's website can be found at: http://www.qumana.com - Download Qumana here (PC) or here (Mac).

August 6th - Theme CSS Editing

A couple of days ago Wordpress.com introduced a new option for their bloggers, the ability to customise the CSS file of the Sandbox Theme, for a small cost of around $15 per year. Not to be out done, i've made my own user CSS editor. It stores a local copy of the CSS file of any Theme on the site, for you to edit in the admin area, and it won't cost you a penny to use. :)

For those not familiar with CSS and what i can do, it is a file that defines the style of a page - anything from font size to background color. Whilst it's not quite as flexible as being able to make your own Themes from scratch, it does allow you near complete control over where to place elements on the page, and to an extent how they look. More info can be found here

Finally, i have uploaded the latest Sandbox Theme, as it is the easiest Theme available to go wild with using customised CSS output. You can use this feature by logging in to your Admin area, selecting the Presentation menu, and then clicking on CSS Editing.

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