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Welcome back to an all-new BlogHer.org, everyone! You made it happen: Our beta site is now live with a number of the features requested by this community.
We couldn’t make every improvement, so we tried to stay true to our mission – to create opportunities for women who blog to gain more exposure and community for our blogs. BlogHer.org has been redesigned to help people find all 13,000+ of you members and the 10,000+ blogs you’ve listed on this site.
We’ve also tried to make it easier for you to use BlogHer’s services to get discovered. And I should note, right off the bat, that we have a lot of work to do to make this site accessible to everyone, especially the hearing and sight impaired communities. We will tackle that important project next.
Here’s a short list of some of the new superpowers members have. (Not a member? Register here) For the full list, you’ll find much more in our new section,Using this site, authored by the amazing Denise.
- New ~ Blog here on BlogHer. We invite you to post some of your latest blogging and link to the rest back to your blog. (Remember, it’s our mission to drive traffic to you!) When you publish your blog post, you'll be able to find it on the front page immediately, in the "All Posts" tab. You'll also find it in the "All Posts" tab under the topic area(s) you selected. Thanks for blogging according to our community guidelines.
- New ~ Add your blog and your blog URLs to your new profiles. Edit your profile by clicking on the purple “My Profile” button in the top right-hand corner of the page. Next, see the edit button? Go for it!
- New ~ Add your blog RSS feed to your new profile to show off your latest headlines automagically to the rest of us.
- New ~ Tag your posts and your profiles
Whether you’re posting a blog or updating your profile, you’ll be able to use tags to help people find you more easily and quickly. Why just post in Politics and News when you can also free tag your post YouTube CNN Anderson Cooper Election ’08 Debates Spin? Now look at the lower right-hand corner of the page – if you tag your profile, people can find you with this special profile search.- New ~ A comments feed – and a visual indicator on our homepage about who is commenting where. Again, thanks for joining the conversation and abiding by our community guidelines.
- New ~ Topics pages link to blogs in that topic
See? These blog lists still aren’t as portable as we want them to be – but this is an important small step.- New~ ”Pick a color”
We decided to have a little fun re-skinning the site with bright colors (see the upper right-hand corner where you can try on different looks). What’s your favorite?- New~ A new idea for our tag line
: “The community for women who blog. You say it, we share it.”
In 2005, Elisa Camahort, Jory Des Jardins and I organized BlogHer’s first conference in response to the question, Where are the women bloggers?. When conference-goers asked us to organize a site to answer that question around the clock, BlogHer.org was born and our answer to the question -- “Where the Women Bloggers Are” -- became our tagline.
But two years later, that tagline feels a little off. Today blogging by women is so widespread that “Where the Women Bloggers Are” sounds a little like we ignore the zillions of other sites where women bloggers also are. When, in fact, BlogHer exists to drive attention to what women bloggers are doing everywhere.
That's the reasoning behind the updated tagline you see at the top of this page: We are a community for women who blog. (And our friends, regardless of their gender :) Our mission has never changed, and our vision is grand, but our commitment to all of us who blog here is this simple: You say it. We share it.
What do you think? A conversation has already started about the idea -- Bobafifi disagrees with our new description, but Terri987 agrees that the old tagline was “too literal.” I’d love your thoughts.
There’s more – but again, you’ll have to read Denise’s post, Using this site for
