How Do You MU?

I just saw in the WordPress.com faq blog a question about putting associating buttons and other images with links. The answer is that you can do this when you “Add Link.” There is a box for you to enter an image URL.

I just checked to see if EduBlogs.org is running a recent enough build to have this same box. It is, and it does. So, James, if you provide a sidebar-sized EduBlogs logo, I will gladly link to it from this blog. And I’m sure that many other grateful EduBloggers will do likewise.

I expect that many of the other WPMU hosts are running a recent enough build to have the same feature. So they, similarly, could offer their bloggers a button to wear proudly in the sidebar.

Further interesting posting from James, at another one of his many blogs. He’s posted a review of WPMU and a review of each of five other multi-user blogging tools, along with a summary post.

I was about to trackback, but it seems unnecessary given that James has been good enough to link to this blog (for the list of WPMU sites in the sidebar). 

James, who runs edublogs.org, and hence hosts this and well over a thousand other blogs, recently posted thoughts on running edublogs. I was very pleased to see this. I’d be very interested to see similar posts from the folks running other WPMU hosts.

James’ post covers three aspects of hosting edublogs. 

• Purpose. “I want edublogs.org to provide free, high quality blogs for educational professionals.” Now that’s what I call a clear mission statement.
• Technical. James would like to do more in terms of community-building, but there are limits, some time-related, some technical, to what he can currently do. I get the impression that WPMU is handling the large number of blogs pretty well.
• Sustainability. The large number of blogs impacts bandwidth, which in turn impacts bank balance. Starting to charge for edublogs would go against the very purpose of edublogs (see above quote).

Matt commented that he’s interested in putting edublogs on the WordPress.com architecture, and that this would help with some of the technical issues. I’m not sure whether this is an offer to fund the bandwidth, and thus help with the sustainability of edublogs.

Again, many thanks to James, not just for the hosting, but also for this very interesting recent posting. 

Blog Peoria is the 30th WordPress Multi-User host of which I’ve been told. I’ve added it to the list. To be more specific, I’ve added it to:

• The sidebar of this blog. I still intend to switch to a theme that shows lists of links on post pages, as well as on the main page. I also intend it to be a theme with the sidebar on the left. Since the list of WPMU hosts is the main thing going on at this blog, I may as well make the sidebar as prominent as possible.
• My delicious bookmarks, tagged with wpmu+host.

Congratulations to Donncha on the ever-wider use of WPMU. And the use got wider even as I was writing this post. I’ve just been asked to add Planet Weblog to the list, so it’ll be the 31st entry.

The 20th addition to the list of WPMU hosts in the sidebar is Pointillist Press. As its name suggests, this is a site with a very distinctive look. You currently need an invite to get a blog there.

In other news, service at Webloog.com has been suspended. I’ll leave the link on the sidebar, because I understand that it’s a temporary condition.

I haven’t posted much to this blog in the last few weeks. That’s in part because I’ve been posting to other blogs. It’s in part been because there are no icons above the post when I edit, so I have to hand-code (or import from elsewhere) any links, formatting, or other html I need. That’s been the case for a few weeks now.

Another reason is because the main thing I’ve been doing with this blog is maintaining a list of WPMU hosts. I do that in the sidebar (and, as I posted recently, with an RSS feed from del.icio.us).

I wanted to reflect that by using a theme that had two columns, with the sidebar on the left (i.e. a theme that makes the sidebar more prominent than do most themes, which put the sidebar on the right). So I looked for one under Presentation in the Site Admin for this blog.

I find that Presentation shows me an image for only a few of the themes available at EduBlogs. So, in order to see if a theme meets my current criterion (i.e. sidebar on the left) I select it and then view the site. I find that many of the themes put all the links together. In the case of this blog, it means that the regular Blogroll and the list of WPMU themes get mixed up together.

James, I know that you are very busy, but when you see this, perhaps you could comment or email to let me know, and we can talk about these things?