So today we are launching the Blogtown NZ Supporter feature. This enables any blogger to sign up as a Blogtown NZ Supporter and as a Supporter you’ll receive an extra 1GB storage space on the server (10 times more than free blogs) and your blog will no longer display any ads.

Another often requested feature is the ability to use a custom domain name with your blog. We’ve just implemented this feature too and are making it available to our Supporters. There are several other new features in the pipeline which will be made available exclusively to our Supporters.

To become a Supporter, please log in to your Site Admin page and check on the left-hand menu for a section called “Supporter”. It costs just $5 per month to sign up, but if you pay annually then you save $10 by only having to pay $50 per year. Payment is handled through PayPal so you can use your existing PayPal account or any major credit card.

If you have any questions or comments, please raise a support request through your Site Admin, or send us an email to support@blogtown.co.nz.

This issue has now been fixed and you should correctly see the Dashboard again after entering the admin section.

This update also fixes a number of bugs that had been reported, but if you find anything else that isn’t working quite right, please fill out a support request from the admin section of your blog, or send an email to support@blogtown.co.nz.

First of all, we have finally moved onto the new server and it is performing better than expected. Hopefully you should have all noticed the speed improvements.

As a result of the server move the stats package that we were using wasn’t compatible, so we have removed it from the site, but have implemented a new, better stats package which you can enable by heading into the Plugins section in your admin site. Once activated you’ll see a new menu called “StatPress” which will show you all your blog stats in near real-time.

All bloggers can now upload their own avatar to represent either your blog or your user account. You can find these settings under the user settings or general settings menus in the site admin.

There are more updates to come over the next few days including several new, advanced themes, as well as other new features.

We take outages very seriously and we always aim for enterprise-level uptime despite Blogtown NZ being a free service. We apologise for the site being unavailable and will update again shortly when we are able to proceed with the server move.

The move to a new server should also bring a big speed increase to the Blogtown NZ site, but if you notice anything not quite right with your blog, please let us know on the usual support email address: support@blogtown.co.nz.

Please have a look at the video below to see what the changes look like…

As always, if you have any questions, please email us on support@blogtown.co.nz if you have any questions.

There are now over a hundred themes to choose from and there’s also a new option to preview each theme so that you can see what your blog looks like with the new theme before activating it.

The admin interface has been greatly enhanced and with the most common functions all easily accessible from the dashboard, with notifications about recent comments and other useful information.

Uploading photos has now been made easier with the addition of the improved photo uploading tools in the Write screens.

The upgrade to the site will also allow us to introduce the new premium offerings which will allow users to disable the adverts, or choose to display their own ads, as well as getting increased storage for photos and videos.

As always, please email us if you have any questions.

These are some quite radical changes and provide too many new features to list here, so instead please watch the video below for more details.

As always, if you have any questions, please email us on support@blogtown.co.nz if you have any questions.

Thanks for reporting the faults.