The Blog Peoria Network

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve added some content to the sidebars of most member blogs. These additions include:

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I’ve spent some time investigating this, and I’ve made a change that will cut back on spam blogs, otherwise known at “splogs.”

Basically, I’ve renamed the file that lets people sign up as users and get their own blogs. The link is on the front page. This will, I think, foil some of the robots that search for WPMu signup pages. Eventually, news member signups will be moderated, which means I have to approve them.

Unfortunately, this breaks the link on so many member blogs. I’ll be going through the theme files and changing the links.

Why is this important to members?

First: Spam blogs take up resources. They soak up bandwidth.

Second: I like to run a list of member blogs and most recent member posts on the front page of this site. I have plans to make the front page of this site the place to go to see content from this community’s citizen journalists. I can’t do that if on any given pay have the blogs on this site are gibberish and long lists of links to bestiality or incest sites.

By the way, users who use Widgets on their sites can paste code that lets them show fellow Blog Peoria Project members. Just paste the following code into a PHP Code Widget (you have to approve the plugin, first, and be using a widget-ready theme).

The code is:

<?php list_all_wpmu_blogs(’50′, ‘name’, ‘<p>’, ‘</p>’, ‘updated’) ?>

I’ll be adapting the default Blog Peoria Project theme to automatically include this script.

Also, members can activate the RSS Feed Widget, and direct it to show the Blog Peoria Project Members Feed:

http://blogpeoria.com/wpmu-feed/

And as I’ve announced here before, I’ll  eventually be moving Peoria Pundit to the Blog Peoria Project. I’ll be leaving the current site up so the thousands of incoming links won’t be broken. It’s just a matter of notifying advertisers of the new address, and building a theme that has room for the ads and the links to BP members.

I know. I’ve been threatening to move all Peoria Pundit posting activity here for as long as there’s been a Blog Peoria Project. This time, it’s personal.

And after that happens, I’ll be doing more marketing to folks who really ought to be posting here. The new Blog Peoria Project will be truly a network of Peoria blogger/citizen journalists, businesses and organizations.

Some of you may have already noticed: I’ve switched out the “favicon” for many BlogPeoria sites. The favicon is the little image that appears next to the blog URL in the address bar. Since the last upgrade, the default favicon was the blue-on-white Greek “Mu” letter. This bugged me, since I once as using a hand-made yellow-on-maroon “bp” symbol. I finally got around to deleting the old “Mu” and switching it with the “bp.” Unfortunately, some sites continued to render the old symbol. I tried deleting, but it didn’t work. So, I spent a few minutes manually adding a line of code to the themes of the most popular Blog Peoria Project blogs.

From now on, the only time you will see the  “Mu” icon is on administration pages.

ALSO: I removed the plugin that let users scrape content from other sites. The only other site that was using it behind my own heinleinblog was abusing it.

They are:

• 3-column Pressrow.
• Royale
• DailyBlogTips (1.2, 1.2 and 1.3)

I have not tested any of them, therefore I am making no promises. Anyone who tried to use them will be able to tell if they are Widget ready. Any member blogger who I know personally and who wishes to make direct changes to these or any theme’s code, let me know and I’ll give you access and a password.

The TemplateMonsterBlog has posted five absolutely free themes for Word Press. I’ve uploaded them and added ‘em to the mix, naturally.

They are:

Cameron Mall Grunge Mix:

Corporate Play:

Fighting the Darkness:

Lonely Lemom”

Tropical Grunge:

None of them work well with SideBar Editor, so don’t even try.

Let me know if you want to use the Optimal Title plugin, or if you want me to manually add sidebar content. I’ll make arrangements for you to have an exclusive theme.

I didn’t create the design being used by new Blog Peoria member The Biggest Small Town in America. But I did tweak a standard Kubrick-style theme a bit to be able to use a few plugins and show off a nifty patriotic design.

And sorry. No one else can use it. That’s one of the things the $100 buys.