What surprised me was that the upgrade to Wordpress 2.7.1 was easier than going to the toilet and flush it. The upgrade was automatic – unlike the previous versions where upgrading was really a painful experience for a guy like me not into this techie stuff.

And now the coolest part is – plugins can also be updated automatically, just like what the standard single user Wordpress blog does for quite some time.

So enjoy blogging – and watch out for new themes and more useful plugins soon.

Also, a Bloggista.net Forum will be added to serve as FAQ and Support site, and hopefully its community driven. I’m already tired of answering all issues and support queries by email.

Watch out for it!

A new feature of Wordpress 2.6.2 is the automatic display of the latest News and Post at Bloggista.net main blog page into the individual blog Dashboards – this ensure all Bloggista.net bloggers are informed and updated of any recent news, updates, changes and other useful information. But still, we strongly recommend that you subscribe to the email RSS feeds of the main blog.

New Themes are available that are compatible with Wordpress 2.6.2

New plugins were also added to help manage and improve the performance of each blogs. These are:

1. WP-Spamfree Plugin – a very powerful anti-spam plugin that eliminates spam in comments.
2. Ultimate Google Analytics – a plugin that enables each blog to track statistics: number of visits per day, where visitors came from, keywords searches, outbount links clicks, inbound links plus many more. Go check out the Plugins page of your blog and add the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin. Important: You need to signup for a Google Analytics account.

In the coming days, new plugins will be installed to improve the performance and speed of all Bloggista.net blogs.

The upgrade should be painless – and should take not more than an hour, if everything goes well.

Check back soon for a new and different Bloggista.net blog.

For more information about the new features of Wordpress 2.6.2, check out the tour video below:

1.

Win an Easy USD100 and Surprise Prizes on Bloggista.com. Simply think of your best definition of the word ‘Bloggista” and post it in your blog to grab a chance to win USD100.00 and many surprises.

Top 10 Blogs will also be selected and each will receive USD10.00 for being just part of the Top 10. Now that’s more than what Smorty or SocialSpark could give out for a write up of no more than 50 words and maximum of 3 sentences. You also need to provide a sample usage of the word “Bloggista“.

For more details about this contest, jump to  post. Of course you need a blog to participate, if you don’t have one yet, you can sign-up for a Free Wordpress Blog at Bloggista.net.

1. You supplied the accurate email address.
2. Check your “Bulk” or “Spam” folder. Your email client may have redirected the Bloggista.net email into those folders.
3. Make sure to add in your Email Safelist the email addresses included in your Welcome Email.

If you haven’t received a Welcome Email and an email of your Bloggista.net Username and Password, make sure to contact the Bloggista.net BlogMaster.

All approved blogs not confirmed or not started after a period of 30 days will be deleted.

Remember, we hate spam and splogs, so please make sure you read our Terms of Use thoroughly.

For information on how to drive traffic to your sites and how to make money from your blog, check out Bloggista.com.

Happy Blogging!

Depending on the theme’s over-all design, a theme can have a single sidebar and is called a 2-column themes (the layout of this site, Bloggista.net is based on a 2-column theme where the sidebar is placed on the right).

Dual sidebar themes have 3-columns where the sidebars are placed both on the left and right or side-by-side, more popular choice is to place the widgets on the right side (Bloggista.com is an example of a 3-column theme blog).

Some themes could have 4 or more sidebars (check out Shopping.bloggista.com). However, there are also blog themes that do not have widgets, and the layout is already fixed (check out Consulting.bloggista.com to see an example of a blog theme with no widgets).

What are the uses of Widgets?

Widgets are used to add customized content on a blog, in the sidebars. In Wordpress blogs, several widgets are available that make Wordpress a popular blogging platform among bloggers. To use the Widgets, go to YourBlog’s Dashboard > Presentation > Themes | Widgets.

RSS Widgets: Contents can be “feeds” or entries of another blog or site. You can place up to 10 RSS widgets on your blog should you wish.

Text Widgets: These are the most flexible and useful widgets for Wordpress blogs. The Text widgets can be used to place any HTML code of a third-party utility and widgets (like that Entrecard widget you see on top of this blog, or those widgets and elements placed at the bottom right sidebar – Alexa rank, buttons, sitemeter, etc). Text widgets can also be used to display ads, as in Google Ads. There is no limit as to how many codes you can place on a Text Widget, and you can use up to 10 text widgets on your blog.

Category Widgets. These widgets can be used to display your blog posts’ categories on the sidebar. Categories are useful if you wish to group your posts based on relationship and specific topic. Categories are also used in some plug-ins to display all your related Posts. Related posts are determined based on what category you used, and all posts with the same category are then considered ‘related posts’.

Plugin Widgets. Some Plugins also create new widgets that you can use on your blog. All these widgets are found in your Available Widgets section. For more information about Plugins and how they work, check out Quick Blogging Guide: Working with Plugins post.

How to place a Widget in the sidebar?

There is no trick to this as it is just a simple drag and drop process. Select the widget that you want to place on your blog’s sidebar and drag it to the sidebar of your choice. Make sure to configure the widget (if available) by clicking on the “Configure” button found at the bottom-right portion of the Widget. See Screen.

Plugins can either enhance your comments form by adding a subscription option (Subscribe to comments plugin), or by displaying your commenter’s latest posts (CommentLuv plugin). You can also display your Top Commenters/Commentators or Recent Comments and posts on your sidebar (by using the widgets functionality).

You can also embed a YouTube video (Gecko Tube plugin) or embed any HTML code (video, ads, etc.) using the EmbedIt plugin. You can also block SPAM comments by activating the AKISMET plugin, or make your blog ranks well in the search engines by using the All-In-One-SEO plugin.

To use a plugin, you must activate it first. You can check if a plugin suits your need and preferences by clicking on the plugin’s information link.

Only compatible plugins are installed and available for Bloggista.net users. And more plugins will be added whenever better and useful plugins are available. The following basic plugins are currently installed for use.

Akismet 2.1.3

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

All in One SEO Pack 1.4.6.8

Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. By uberdose.

bStat Upgrader 0.1

Upgrade from previous versions of bSuite stats/bStat to bSuite bStats. By Casey Bisson.

bSuite 3.03

It’s okay for a few things, but you could probably do better. Documentation here. By Casey Bisson.

bSuite bStat 3.02

Stats tracking, part of the bSuite collection of blog tools By Casey Bisson.

bSuite Slideshow .01

Animates a series of photos as a slideshow (requires bSuite v.3 or greater). Insert the following in your post content to create the slideshow (accepts any number of photos, seperate photo URLs with space or newline). By Casey Bisson.

bSuite Tag Importer 0.1

Import bSuite tags and metadata to WordPress tags and taxonomy. Documentation here By Casey Bisson.

cforms II 7.3

cforms II offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. Please see the VERSION HISTORY for what’s new and current bugfixes. By Oliver Seidel.

Commentluv 0.999

Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it’s ready. Currently parses with wordpress, blogspot, typepad and blogs that have a feed link in the head section of their page. By Andy Bailey.

EmbedIt 0.1

A simple plugin that allows you to embed any HTML code (Youtube, UStream or whatever) in a post, deciding precisely where to embed it, allowing you freedom of coding your html without being annoyed by the wysiwyg editor. USAGE: While editing a post, create a custom field with key HTML1 and paste the code you want to embed into the Value field. Then just write [ H T ML 1] in your post where you want to embed the html code. (Just use the standard wysiwyg post content editing window, no need to switch to Code view). If you need, you can use up to nine times the trick: HTML2…HTML9 in order to embed up to nine html different snippets per post, placing each snippet in a different custom field. By Matteo Ionescu.

Flickr Manager 1.4.01

Handles uploading, modifying images on Flickr, and insertion into posts. By Trent Gardner.

Gecko Tube 1.1

Insert YouTube videos in post using same method as on wordpress.com. Adds link in RSS feeds for feed readers that disallow embedded content. By Gecko Rock.

Get Recent Comments 2.0.2

Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar. Visit Options/Recent Comments after activation of the plugin. By Krischan Jodies.

Google XML Sitemaps 3.0.3

This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.

Gregarious 1.9.10c

Social bookmarking By Ankur Kothari.

Lightbox 2 Plugin 0.7

Auto-converting all linked images in a post, excerpt and even comments to lightboxed links. (see options menu). — Using Lightbox v2.03.3 and compressed Prototype Javascript. By Kjell Bublitz.

Simple Recent Comments 0.1.2

Shows a list of recent comments. By GNot.

Subscribe To Comments 2.1.2

Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess By Mark Jaquith.

Top Commentators Widget 0.999

Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Adapted from Show Top Commentators plugin. By Lorna Timbah.

WordPress.com Stats 1.1.1

Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.

wp-cache 2.1.2

Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”. By Ricardo Galli Granada.

Bloggista.net offers several free Themes that you can choose to make your blog look better. To change your blog’s design, follow these easy steps:

Step1. Login to your blog using the Meta link on your blog, or by typing the following link on your browser -> http://yourblog.bloggista.net/wp-admin.

Step 2. Once you’re logged in, Wordpress takes you to your blog’s Dashboard. To change your blog’s theme, click on the link below “Welcome to Wordpress” which says “Change your site’s look or theme”, or alternatively, click on the Presentation Tab in your dashboard.

Step 3. Clicking either way should bring you to the next screen where you can browse and select a new theme from the set of themes available. Make sure to view your new blog’s look after selecting your new theme.

Bloggista.net will continue to add more great themes so better check out on Themes regularly. You can also suggest new themes – as long as its free to use them.