We’re pleased to announce that today see the introdution of some of your requested improvements to the Nature Network blogs.
Here’s a summary of those features and how to use them (much of the following applies to bloggers only, although the section on rich-text comments applies to all). There are still more improvements to come, including a stats plugin, but this is taking longer to implement that expected because it has a dependency on another system. We hope to have this with you within the next month and apologise for the continued delay – we know how important this is to many of you.
Custom banners
You can now personalise the rectangular space at the top of your blog, the bit where the blog name appears, by uploading an image. Here’s how to do it.
1. Choose an image. You’ll need something at fairly decent resolution and width, as it has to stretch a full screen width. Obviously, it should also be something that won’t look odd when cropped to fit the long, thin box at the top of your blog. Most importantly, make sure you have permission from whoever owns the copyright to the image or, better yet, use a photo you took yourself.
2. Go to your MT homepage. Please avoid using Internet Explorer. The plugin you’re going to use doesn’t work in IE for some reason, and it’s the only one available for MT4.
3. Go to Design → Custom Header and upload your image.
4. You should then see a pop-up window asking you to crop your image. Point and drag your mouse to define a stretched oblong across the image. Don’t worry about matching the dimensions to your blog’s header – it should automatically snap to that size. Once you’re happy, click ‘crop’. It’ll crop your image and take you back to the main banner page.
5. You now need to ‘Publish’ your site. Click the two circular arrows in the main menu and Publish All Files in the ensuing popup box.
6. Note, we are aware that this 3rd party plugin is a bit flaky (many thanks to all those who tested it and provided us with feedback), but it’s the only option available at the moment. We have contacted the original developer to provide an improved version based on your feedback, but rather than wait several more weeks to offer this to you, we wanted to let you get started with version 1.0. If you get stuck or want us to create your header for you, just send the image you want to use to Matt or Lou.
Favourite sites
1. You can now maintain a list of your favourite sites in your sidebar. These could be other NN blogs, blogs elsewhere or any other kind of web site.
2. Go to Manage → Link lists, and click ‘Create Link List’
3. Give your list a name. It could be simply ‘Blogroll’ or ‘Favourite sites’.
4. Click ‘create new link’ and fill in the details for each new site you want to link to.
5. When you’re done adding, click ‘save changes’
6. You can edit/delete/add links at any time.
7. When you’ve updated the list, you need to republish your templates. To do this, click the two circular arrows in the main menu and Publish All Files in the ensuing popup box.
Better commenting
You should now be able to browse between and comment on multiple blogs without having to sign in each time. In addition, you’ll notice a series of formatting options when commenting on a post. Simply highlight the text you want to make bold, italic, etc. and click the appropriate symbol. The image below should give you an idea…or click the comments link on this post to try it out.
Other Improvements
Finally, in response to all your feedback, the other things that we’ve changed are as follows:
-moved the date of a blog post to the top of the post
-added the time that you leave a comment on a post next to the date
-removed the “policy” tab from each blog
-changed the wording when commenting on a blog to “Please read our Community Guidelines before commenting.”
-added more useful social media “sharing” buttons on each blog post so that you can share or bookmark you favourite posts on twitter, Facebook, reddit etc.
-made cosmetic improvements to the RSS icons next to each post
Thank you for bearing with us while we responded to your problems – and do let us know how the new features work for you.
PS If you can’t see these features on your blog yet – don’t worry, they are coming! We have to manually publish each blog, which can take some time. We’re working through the archive as fast as we can.