In a previous post, we announced three major improvements to the functionality of Nature Network’s blogs: customisable banners, blogrolls and better comment formatting. Those features are now in the latter stages of testing, and we’re giving a handful of bloggers access to the test server to try them out.

We’d now like to highlight a second wave of improvements that will follow hot on the heels of the first.

• We’ve fixed single sign-in for the blogs, so you should be able to move from blog to blog without being asked for any passwords.
• We’ve added times to the date stamps on blog comments.

• The author and date of the post is now visible at the top of the blog post.

• We now have a better ‘share this’ toolbar to replace the current ‘bookmark in Connotea’ one.

• Cosmetic changes to RSS feeds.
• The ‘Policy’ tab has been removed
• The slightly confrontational text “Please keep your comment brief. Excessively long or offensively phrased entries will be edited.” has been changed to “Please read our Community Guidelines”, with a link.

In addition, we’ve been testing a stats package to give bloggers a better idea of their readership. This is looking good, but is a lot more complex to weave into the mix than the changes outlined above. Please bear with us while we find the best way to do this.

As always, feel free to raise any questions either in the comments below or by emailing network@nature.com.