Thursday, October 28, 2004
Blogit hits a milestone!
Earlier today at 6:38 AM, Blogit hit the half a million mark in comments. Wow! 
Do you know who made the 500,000th comment in Blogit's history?
None other than beachbelle who has been a Blogit member since June 19, 2003. Thank you beachbelle and every one of you who has helped make Blogit the incredible community it is today.
The 500,000th comment can be found here. It was in response to a post by WileyCoyote (Blogit member since July 31, 2003).
Here's to the next half a million comments! 
Thank you.
Regards,
Blogit Team
www.blogit.com
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
New subscription plans and pricing launched
Dear Blogit Members,
Today we are launching new subscription plans and pricing for new subscribers. The last price increase was almost a year and a half ago in May 2003. In appreciation of existing subscribers who're at the rate in place since May 2003 we have no plans at this time to change the pricing for their plan.
The price increase will also mean an increase in earnings for writers since 50% of the Basic subscription (as is the case today) will continue to go to the writers who are read by each subscriber. This means that more than double the dollar amount is now available to writers from each new Blogit subscriber.
The change in price was necessary since our costs continue to rise due to the recently released new features, a significant system upgrade that provides improved hosting and reliability, and expanded capacity for the new photo hosting and continuing growth, redesign and customer service for the constantly growing member base. We will also be investing in additional marketing to add more members, which will make the site more valuable to everyone.
Due to increased blog spamming, we have received requests from customers to consider restricting the number of blogs and/or charging different amounts for the number of blogs. The new Blogit Basic service will now allow one blog per subscription while the top offering, Blogit Gold, will allow up to five blogs.
Existing subscribers currently have what is now called Blogit Basic. There will be no price increase for their Blogit Basic plan (as long as they are at the rate in place since May 2003) and they will continue to have unlimited blogs and access to the classic custom templates.
If existing subscribers decide to pay extra and upgrade to the Blogit Gold or Blogit Silver plans that include photo hosting, additional member photos, and easy/advanced control over layout and style, they will be charged the new rate for these new plans. However, unlike new subscribers, existing subscribers will continue to have unlimited blogs and access to the classic custom templates even if they change plans.
The new subscription plans are as follows, and include discounted yearly subscriptions:
Blogit Gold
Read hundreds of thousands of posts and comments, and publish up to five blogs (online columns). Includes 100 photos, advanced control over layout and style, and five member pictures.
Cost: $15.95/month (if purchased as a 12-month subscription) or $19.95 per month.
Blogit Silver
Full access to hundreds of thousands of posts and comments. Publish up to three blogs (online columns). Includes 50 photos, easy-to-use layout and style choices, and three member pictures.
Cost: $12.95/month (if purchased as a 12-month subscription) or $15.95 per month.
Blogit Basic
Everything you need to get started reading and writing. Read hundreds of thousands of posts and comments, leave comments on the blogs you read, and publish your own blog (online column) and one member picture.
Cost: $9.95/month (if purchased as a 12-month subscription) or $12.95 per month.
If you would like to upgrade to one of the premium Blogit packages, please go to the Blogit Change Plan page.
Thank you.
The Blogit Team
Updated: 12:05 pm PST on Thursday, October 28, 2004
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Two changes based on member feedback
We're pleased to announce the following changes to Blogit based on member feedback over the last few weeks.
When adding someone to your block list, you are now asked to confirm the addition. This keeps people from being accidentally blocked.
Member pictures can now be larger (up to 120x120 pixels -- was previously 70x100 pixels).
We appreciate all feedback and try to incorporate your suggestions when we can in our ongoing efforts to add features and improve the Blogit experience.
Thank you!
Brian
Blogit Team
www.blogit.com: The online writing marketplace.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Blogit rolls out new features!
We have added a number of frequently-requested new features. As some of you may have noticed, we upgraded the Blogit site with a brand new template system earlier today. We're now pleased to announce the following new features accessible through My Account:
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The Member Pictures page makes it easy to add a picture to your About Me page. You can upload a picture in JPEG, GIF or PNG format, up to 2 MB in size. We expect to offer the option of multiple pictures in the future.
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The People List allows you to track the names of the most fascinating members of the Blogit community (e.g. Brian of the Blogit Team 
) and share them with readers of your blog.
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The Blog List allows you to add your favorite Blogit blogs so that readers of your blog can see who you recommend as good reading (besides yourself, of course!).
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The Link List allows you to track and highlight your favorite web pages, articles or sites.
With the new Blogit Lists, it is now a snap to track -- and share -- the most scintillating Blogit personas, the best writing, and your favorite spots on the Web.
If you have a blog, the first ten items from each list appears in the sidebar, along with an Explore link that allows readers to page through all of the items in the list. The Blog List page also displays useful information such as a blog’s owner and last post.
If you are using a custom template, please see the Template Tags help page to learn about the new People, Blog and Link list tags.
We hope you enjoy these newest improvements to Blogit!
Regards,
Brian
Blogit Team
www.blogit.com: The online writing marketplace.
New Template System for Blogit
We're pleased to put in place today a brand new template system for Blogit!
The rebuilt template system will allow us to add many frequently requested features, some of which we will be making available shortly. Other benefits include:
- Quicker display of default templates, using the powerful XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Transformations) technology standard.
- More stable custom templates. When creating custom templates, please follow the new Style Guidelines section on the Designing Templates help page. We expect this to help prevent custom templates from being affected by future changes to the default templates and/or to the Blogit header and footer.
- Better accessibility and web standards compliance. This is the first step of a long-term goal to make Blogit as accessible and consistent as possible across web browsers on various computers.
Do you have an existing custom template?
To minimize display issues for existing custom templates, there is a new “Use old template styles” box on the custom template editing page. This box is checked for existing custom templates.
Although this checkbox appears to resolve most issues, some custom templates may require minor changes. If you would prefer to switch to a default template, go to your blog's editing page, click "Change template" and select the default template.
Regards,
Brian
Blogit Team
www.blogit.com: The online writing marketplace.
Friday, June 4, 2004
One month since upgrade
It has been one month since the system upgrade, so we wanted to post an update.
Without most members noticing, we moved from the old system to a brand-new system in a different state. Thanks to careful planning, we were able to minimize downtime to less than 30 minutes during the move.
We are spending about ten times as much on the new system. This has been a significant investment, but uptime logs show that availability and reliability have greatly improved as a result.
The expanded capacity will make it possible for us to add new features and improvements to Blogit. We will be announcing some of these over the next two months.
Regards,
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Home page design and content changes
We're pleased to launch the new Blogit website design today. As mentioned earlier, we've been working on this as part of our Blogit service upgrade.
The design and content of the home page has changed. If you prefer the previous home page, you may still view that by clicking on the Old Home Page link at the bottom of the current home page. Newest Posts are also still available via the link on the home page. And all of the Category links take you to a specific category where you can sort blogs by name, ranking and how recently they were updated.
While we continue to make improvements to the Blogit service, we are also working to grow Blogit (and the money available to writers) through marketing partnerships and additional advertising.
To ensure that Blogit can be marketed as widely as possible, partners need to know that Blogit writers cover many different subjects, not solely adult-only subjects. When writers post Mature Audiences (MA) content on the general site instead of on the MA site, and it appears on the home page, it can cause confusion about the scope of Blogit.
This is why we made the decision to move New Posts to its own page to reduce the risk of misplaced MA content appearing on the home page. If you see MA content posted on the general site, please notify the writer (or us) so it may be moved to the MA site. We've also changed the way Featured Blogs appear on the home page for the same reason.
We hope you like the new Blogit site.
Thank you.
Brian
Blogit Team
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Changes afoot
Many changes are coming to Blogit this year. The major system upgrade and the rotating home page lists were just two of the first steps.
Coming next: additional changes to the home page, a brand-new design, and much more!
Thanks to its members, Blogit has grown tremendously over the past year, and our goal with the changes is to accelerate growth further and faster.
Regards,
Brian
Blogit Team
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Home Page Changes
With the Second Phase of our upgrade now complete, we'll be making changes to the Blogit website over the next few months.
One immediate change is Blogit's decision to showcase more blogs and members. This will be based on a variety of parameters. You will now see a dynamic Top List in the right hand column. This will feature some of the more popular categories as well as the Longest-Running Blogs, for example, and various other lists.
Please note that the original Top Blogs (in the last seven days) list continues to appear in this rotation. It is also linked at the bottom of the home page, next to New Comments and Most Popular (in the last 24 hours).
Your suggestions are always welcome. Thank you!
Brian
Blogit Team
www.blogit.com
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
Thank you 100,000 times!
As some of you have already noticed, we hit the 100,000th post on Blogit last night.
The Blogit Staff wanted to thank you for making Blogit the success it has become. Each member has contributed to this -- with thousands of blogs, and almost 170,000 comments on over 100,000 posts!
You can see Blogit's tremendous first year growth here.
Brian
Blogit Team
