There was some confusion about the sidebar widgets displayed in your blogs and we made some changes.

Some themes had default widgets when no widgets were selected in the Appearance->Widgets menu, and you couldn’t remove them, because they were hardcoded. So, we decided to remove the defaults per themes and this way every theme works the same way and you decide what widgets to show on your sidebar.

So, if you never configured your sidebar widgets, you might see an empty sidebar now. Be sure to drop by your Widgets menu and select what widgets you want in your sidebar!

Just to inform you that we updated the Flickr widget, and you’ll have to update your settings as it gets the photostream with a different and better method. Just pop by “Appearance”->”Widgets” and check your settings.

Besides that, there is a new theme available F01.01. Hope you enjoy it, and it also comes with various colorschemes.

The Blog.com platform keeps improving, trying to fill out the most requested features from our users.

We’ve just released the possibility to add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites!

This way people can easily share your interesting posts across the web, and your blog will gain visibility. Maybe you’ll get to the top of the Digg list!

Just go to “Settings”->”Sociable” and check out the options available.

As you can surely notice, we’ve been releasing some new themes in the past weeks. Namely the great themes by the company Woo Themes, fitted to Blog.com with increased customization.

These themes bring several colorschemes each, so it’s like having 5 or 6 themes in one. Oh, and you can also upload your own header pictures so that it feels more personal.

We intend to release at least a new theme every week, so check out the Themes menu in your blog once in a while, and give them a try to boost the look of your blog.

Another anticipated feature is now available at Blog.com! You can now search the Blog.com community blogs, by using the search bar in the homepage, or by going to the search page directly.

We expect to tweak this blog search a bit in the future, but you can start looking for topics, new blogs and what’s going on in the Blog.com community right away.

Have fun!

After many requests from you, and as promised, Blog.com is now starting to provide more theme customization options. If you choose the theme “Vigilance” (the default one), and go to “Theme Options” you can now upload your own header image, as well as change the colors of some of your blog’s elements.

This is just the first step, we will be introducing more customization to the existing themes, as well as releasing more great themes soon.

We are working hard on expanding this area as we know it’s of the utmost importance to you!

Happy blogging!

Whilst we’re developing an own plugin, that will show the blog stats on your dashboard, as well as the possibility to add statistics widgets to your sidebar, Blog.com is giving you the chance to add your Google Analytics tracker to your blog and so have a way to check out how your blog is doing.

Simply go to “Settings”->”Google Analytics” and insert your Tracking Code (UA-XXXXX-X).

What’s Google Analytics? How do I set this up?

Google Analytics is the free stats tracking system supplied by Google and produces very attractive (and comprehensive) stats.

To get going, just sign up for Analytics, set up a new account and copy the tracking code you receive (it’ll start with ‘UA-’) into the Blog.com settings. It can take several hours before you see any stats.

For more information on finding the tracking code, please visit this Google help site.

We are sorry for the inconvenience. We will be distributing database loads, working on the path that leads to never needing to stop the system for database operations.

If, by chance, you get caught editing a post during the downtime, just leave the browser open, wait for fifteen minutes and refresh the page. The user sessions will remain active after everything is brought up back online.

As you know, Blog.com offers you a wide range of features and lets you create your blogs for free. We are commited to provide as much free features as possible under an advertisement supported model.

However, we just released a set of paid premium features for those users who want to boost their blogs . They are completely optional of course, and come with an annual fee to enable them.

For the time being we released:

• Increased storage capacity
• Advertisement removal
• Ability to invite more than 35 authors to participate in your blog

You can buy each feature independently so that it suits your needs.

Check them out by clicking in the “Upgrades” menu in your Dashboard.

We released some new widgets for you to use in your blog’s sidebar.

Now, you can show your Flickr images feed, del.icio.us links and follow somebody’s Twitter. Plus, we added a Meebo widget so that you can chat with your friends using the blog’s sidebar.

We are currently developing other widgets, so expect some more releases soon.

Happy blogging!