Written on August 4th, 2006 at 09:08 pm by Darren Rowse
WordPress.com adds Private Blogs and Custom CSS Upgrades
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
15 Responses to “WordPress.com adds Private Blogs and Custom CSS Upgrades”
vivek
August 4th, 2006 9:28 pm
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.
Mike
August 4th, 2006 10:24 pm
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.
Rex
August 4th, 2006 11:49 pm
I love WP, so nice and easy to use. And anybody can install it. It’s a one stop shop for bloggers.
WordPress.com Adds Custom CSS by Blogging Pro
August 5th, 2006 12:32 am
[…] 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. […]
Bill McRea
August 5th, 2006 2:04 am
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.
Tim
August 5th, 2006 2:09 am
Could we add adsense now?
Laura
August 5th, 2006 3:42 am
Bill, this is about wordpress.org, the hosted blogging service, where users can implement lots of different themes, but can not modify them.
The Zero Boss
August 5th, 2006 4:26 am
I’m all for WordPress monetizing the wordpress.com service. It’s a wonderful tool.
Top 10 Hacks
August 5th, 2006 5:04 am
I’m currently a happy Blogger.com-user. Hmm. What are the benefits of WP?
Alan
August 5th, 2006 3:17 pm
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.
Data Circle » Blog Archive » WordPress.com adds paid upgrades
August 6th, 2006 5:16 am
[…] WordPress.com adds Private Blogs and Custom CSS Upgrades […]
Fundraiser
January 19th, 2007 7:09 am
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?
Darren Rowse
January 19th, 2007 7:26 am
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.
Web Designer Group
February 23rd, 2008 4:43 pm
Good new. WordPress is doing fine. Private blogs are very useful especially for professionals who want to share ideas about their specefic field.
artikelverzeichnis
March 2nd, 2008 12:16 am
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.
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