We’ve got a huge amount of new blogging toys coming your way here in 2012!

To help lay the ground work for the even better stuff yet to come, you will now notice two snazzy new boxes greeting you when you first login to your blog’s dashboard.

There is more!

Go to Dashboard > My Blogs and you will see a list of all blogs you belong to, improved management tools, and a filter to only show blogs that need your attention to moderate comments or posts!

And one more thing!

We’ve done a ton of work on many of the more behind-the-scenes type of things that will help ensure a happy and fun blogging experience for all.

Part of that work includes a better payment and account management system for Edublogs Pro – which many of you may notice, we now can accept credit cards without the need for PayPal accounts! We’re also happy to work with your school to accept Purchase Orders or checks too!

This is something we’ve heard from many of our users needed improvement, so we’re happy to make the checkout and Edublogs Pro subscription management process even better.

Stay tuned!

Just a sneak-peek at what our team is working hard to bring you in the coming weeks and months:

• better student moderation and management tools
• more beautiful and customizable themes
• an improved mobile blogging experience
• and much, much more!

What do you think?!

Feel free to contact us or leave a comment below with your thoughts on the above or if you have ideas of your own on how we could be better.

Happy blogging!

 
A couple of weeks ago, we introduced you to Yoko – our most mobile and iPad friendly theme yet.

As of today, we’re adding Liquorice to the mix, which is also “responsive” to whatever screen size your blog’s visitors are using.

We think many of you will like the more whimsical fonts and easy to read layout of this new theme.

Make sure to go to Appearance > Premium Themes and check it out!

For those of you that don’t want to change themes and still offer your mobile readers something good to look at, not to worry, we’ve got even bigger news coming soon on that front!

Whenever you first create a blog here on edublogs.org you are given a brand new URL, or link, for your site.

For example, studentchallenge.edublogs.org is the URL for the Student Blogging Challenge blog.

As of today, you can also access the same site using studentchallenge.edublogs.com – see what we did there?

Even though the .org ending is the real URL (and the one you should use and give out to people), the .com ending will now work!

This will especially come in handy when giving out class blog links to students and parents that can forget or get the URL mixed-up.

Other Fun URL Facts

• We see lots of users that out of habit, put a www. at the beginning of their URL. And while that will work too, it makes your link longer than it needs to be. Leave the www off! :)
• You can use domain mapping to change your URL to any available domain on the web. For example, theedublogger.edublogs.org is domain mapped to theedublogger.com – which is much shorter and easier to remember!
• You can have an unlimited number of blogs, all with different URLs, with your one username. Just go to the “My Blogs” page in your dashboard to create new ones or manage the ones you already have.

Happy blogging!

We are thrilled to unveil a brand new theme today!

Yoko – as it is called – is our first “responsive” and HTML5 theme.

This means that it will look great on all types of devices – including tablets and phones.

Exciting, huh?

This works because the theme is designed to move the sidebars and change image and text sizes automatically  - all depending on the screen size.

You can see the theme in action on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day blog.

Features

• Responsive and mobile friendly design
• Custom header image with several pre-set images to choose from
• Select the link and background colors to personalize the look
• A social widget that makes it easy to share links to your facebook, twitter, google+, and linkedn profiles
• Modern feel using the latest in web design

Yoko is already available as a ‘premium’ theme on edublogs.org blogs – for Pro and upgraded student blogs. It will soon be available on all Edublogs Campus sites as well.

Quick help with themes:

1. Changing your blog’s theme
2. Uploading your own custom header image
3. Creating your own custom navigation menu

We’ve got more themes like this in the works to release over the coming months. If you haven’t updated your blog’s look in a while – now might be a great time to do so!

Happy blogging!

One of the best parts about working at Edublogs is seeing daily all of the amazing learning experiences of students through blogging.

We regularly try to share these examples on our Facebook and Twitter pages, but this one in particular seemed worthy of a bit more.

Six teachers, from six different corners of the world, have collaborated together and co-created the Our World, Our Stories project blog.

The seven week long project has a different class, each from a different country, leading the students through learning experiences each week. For example, this week the students are discussing about the similarities and differences between their typical school days in each country.

You can learn more about all of the details on the about page here.

We absolutely love this idea and encourage everyone to check-in on the blog over the coming weeks to see how it plays out.

Or if you are interested in doing something similar with your students, feel free to leave your name, location, age group, and a link to your blog or contact info in the comments below. 

Perhaps you can find willing classes to start a global blogging project on your own.

What amazing work by these teachers, and what an exciting experience for these students!

When Edublogs was first started years ago, most users just had one blog that they kept up with.

Now, with the exciting increase of student blogging, many users are managing hundreds of blogs all from their one account!

The newly revamped ‘My Blogs‘ page, found in the top left under ‘Dashboard‘, now makes it all so much easier.

From this page, you can:

• Select your primary blog
• Close or archive multiple blogs at the same time
• Bulk add a user to multiple blogs
• Remove yourself from multiple blogs at once
• Go between multiple blog dashboards with ease

The links above will take you to our user guide pages with loads of more information and detailed directions.

Be sure to visit Dashboard > My Blogs to see more.

Used along with the recently improved Blog & User Creator, the My Blogs page will help you setup and mange as many student blogs as you may need.

Earlier today, this blog post was published on Edutopia.org that shares results of a recent survey by the National School Public Relations Association in the US.

The survey asked parents and non-parents (over 43,000 of them!) how they want to be kept informed about what’s going on at school.

The results were surprising in that social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter did not make the top of the list at all. In fact, they ranked below television and attending school board meetings!

Luckily for those with blogs, 4 out of the top 5 methods most requested can be taken care of in a flash. In short, parents like information to be on a website (which is really what a blog is) and they like email notification.

So be sure to setup email subscription notifications of new posts on your blog, and you should be all set!

You can see email subscription in action in the top right of the sidebar of this post – subscribe if you would like!

There are two methods to enable subscription described below – one for Edublogs.org and one for blogs on one of our Edublogs Campus sites.

Here’s how to do it on Edublogs.org blogs:

Step 1: Activate the “Widget Pack” plugin

Found in the Plugins menu of your dashboard – this will give you access to many cool widgets!

Step 2: Drag over the “Email Subscription” widget

Go to Appearance > Widgets.

Place the Email Subscription widget, which will appear when you activate the “Widget Pack” plugin, into one of the sidebars of your blog.

Step 3: Ask parents to subscribe!

That is really it!

Once parents put in their email address, they will get a quick email with every blog post you make. This way, you can keep all of your announcements, newsletter information, and the like on your blog and they can be notified when anything new is posted.

For Edublogs Campus Users

It is even a bit easier for our Campus users.

Just go to Appearance > Widgets and add the “Subscribe by Email” widget to a sidebar.

Then let parents know to subscribe. You can keep track of who has subscribed using the “Subscriptions” menu item in your dashboard.

Any other advice you would like to share on keeping parents in the loop? Share in the comments below!

We did it!

Well, actually YOU did it!

We have officially surpassed the ONE MILLION blog mark here on Edublogs.org!

Truthfully, we have several hundred thousand additional blogs on our Edublogs Campus sites which put us over the top over  a year ago.

But we couldn’t be more excited, as this also means we will remain 100% advertisement free, even on free blogs! :)

Here are some things we would appreciate you do to help us celebrate:

1. Become a facebook fan and follow us on twitter to keep up to date with our latest news – we also like to randomly give away free Edublogs Pro accounts to our fans and followers :) Share our great news with your followers too if you like!

2. Check out the Teacher Challenges to brush up on your blogging skills or share it with others who may just be wanting to start out. This self-paced free and open professional development will take your blogging to the next level.

3. Let your school administrator or tech coordinator know about Edublogs, our million blog milestone, and what we offer – including the ability to make it easy to create and manage as many blogs as you want through an Edublogs Campus site.

4. Write a post on your blog about our millionth blog and/or what you like about blogging – leave a comment below with a link to the post.

And for anyone that leaves a comment below with a link to your blogging post we’ll put you in for a drawing for a free Edublogs Pro annual subscription (or extension if you are already a Pro user)!

We’ll also give you a SECOND Pro account to give to a colleague of your choice! 

Make sure to get your post and comment in by Wednesday, August 24th.

Happy blogging!

If you’ve logged into the dashboard of your blog in the last few days, then you probably have already noticed – but we just rolled out many exciting new features!

Plus, we’re just 11,000 10,000 blogs short of the 1 million we need to keep all blogs advertisement free forever!

It’s just too much to share all in one post, but here is a quick overview of some of what is new:

1. A new dashboard look

This will be the first thing you notice if you haven’t already. Everything is still in a familiar location, but the look and feel is a bit more polished.

As you explore the made over dashboard, you will find several improvements such as better search for themes, easier ways to sort posts and pages, and other little tools built in that should make blogging a bit easier.

2. The Admin Bar

Across the top of your blog you will find a new Admin Bar which will help you navigate around your blog and our site.

You can turn off this bar under Settings > Admin Bar in your dashboard if you would prefer – but we find it handy to quickly add a new post, login, or go back and forth between the site and dashboard.

3. Wikis

You will find a new Wiki plugin which lets you add pages to your blog which are fully functional wikis!

Settings allow you to choose between letting all visitors, only registered users, or a select few to edit the wiki. Changes are tracked and discussion is encouraged. This one we know many of you will love!

Read more about wikis on our help and support site here.

4. Custom Menus

Under Appearance > Menus you will find a brand new area for customizing the order and layout of your menus.

The drag-and-drop menu creation allows you to add links to any site on the web, specific categories, and more.

Adding custom menus is easy, and detailed directions on how are here.

5. Easy Blogging

Our Easy Blogging dashboard got a complete face lift too! This feature was designed so that more inexperienced bloggers can get their feet wet by removing a lot of the less used options. Plus, we just think it looks cool :)

You can go back and forth between the Easy Admin and the normal dashboard areas anytime.

6. Blog and User Creator

We greatly simplified the process of creating new users and blogs by rolling everything into this one new and improved creation tool.

Pro users will now be able to more easily create additional blogs, student blogs or accounts, and set it up so that you can manage them all right from the get-go.

7. Google Maps

There is also a new Google Maps plugin which makes it easy to add maps to your blog – including satellite and street views!

Best of all, it is easy to use, but you can find more details of how to use it here.

There’s more!

There is actually quite a bit more – including the ability to hide parts of a post until a selected time, improved form making, and updates to many themes. We will be sharing those in more detail in the coming weeks.

In the mean time, play around and let us know what you think! 

As always, feel free to contact us should you need any help with any of these new features.

Enjoy!