Thursday, July 21, 2011

Wizbang's Redesign

Check it out. It's smooth looking and modern.

Most of the blog updates folks are doing use the online magazine format, which honestly I don't love as much as the traditional reverse chronology. There are great blogs, for example, Lonely Conservative and Maggie's Notebook, but I'm still so resistant to change I guess I'd go with more of a Legal Insurrection look. Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to comment registration. As noted at Wizbang:
The Disqus comment system appears to be working out well. There are lots of features available to Disqus users that are documented in their knowledge base. As there are years of comments that have been imported from our old site, regular commenters may be able to merge their profiles and claim old comments. There’s even some tricks like being able the enter the @username of another commenter. While some do not like the fact that commenters must be registered, I think I’ve made it as easy as possible to leverage other identity systems as opposed to having to create a whole new persona. Requiring registered commenters makes for a better community and will allow us to police it more effectively.
This is exciting. I'm hoping to restore some of the previous vitality I had at the comments here. Wordpress is cool with the registration function, so that's a big incentive for change. I'm also talking to potential contributors to build a multi-author roster of right-bloggers.

Stayed tuned.

4 comments:

Maggie Thornton said...

I understand the angst of making changes. It took me along time. When I decided to magazine, my concern was that the reader didn't see the whole article. Of course, I could set it to do that, I think. So now I have 18 articles up, IF the reader is on the home page and didn't come to a specific article. As it turns out, it has worked out well for me. I do think more pages are being read.

However, the full article view would surely draw more interest.

Sounds like a lot of new features at Am Power. I look forward to seeing "what's up" here:-) I think you will really like Wordpress. Thanks for the lovely mention!

(while blogger was a wonderful option as a beginner, I can't understand no option to comment with a link to my "outside blogger" url).

Maggie@MaggiesNotebook
http://maggiesnotebook

Maggie Thornton said...

Just visited the Wizbang layout. Very, very nice!

LibertyAtStake said...

It really depends on what you are trying to do. If you are aiming to be a widely read real time dispenser of alternative news - like Maggie Thornton - the magazine format is a great fit. If you are essentially writing a chapter book chronicling the insane times - like I am - the traditional reverse chronology is fine.

d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”

The Lonely Conservative said...

You don't even need Discus. Right in Wordpress you can set the discussion where you can approve all comments or approve first time comments. As for the Magazine Theme - my old theme was incompatible with a wordpress update so I had to make a quick switch and I knew the magazine theme was compatible. The only problem is that I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the number of comments to appear on the front page.