OutdoorsBlogger is based on Wordpress, and as such offers tons of features out of the box, and we’ve taken it a few steps further by adding both plugins and custom built features for your blogging enjoyment.  Here’s some highlights:

• Write, link (blog roll), edit, and make static pages through a web based interface.
• Extended rich text editor allows all sorts of formatting options and advanced features
• Over sixty themes with many more on the way, many allow you to use your own header images
• Comment Que allows you to choose how comments are handled
• Widget ready with standard wordpress widgets or choose from any of WidgetBox’s 20,000 available widgets
• Upload photos & files
• Import a blog from many blogging services, or export when you’re ready for your own domain & hosting
• Contact Form plug-in to hide your email address from spam bots
• Flexible perma link structure
• Optional static home page allows your web space to look like a web site instead of a blog (perfect for guides, outfitters, trail clubs, and other orgs.)
• Trackbacks

What’s in the works?  These features are do out later this fall, not neccessarily in this order:

• Site Wide Tagging
• Google Maps Tagging for posts, with searchable map interface
• Visitor Statistics for each blog publisher
• Social bookmarking links for digg, stumbleupon, and many others
• “Email post to a Friend” functionality
• Support Forums (maybe an outdoors discussion too?)

You can now move your blog to OutdoorsBlogger without having to redo everything!

OutdoorsBlogger supports the following import options:

• Blogger
• Blogware
• DotClear
• GreyMatter
• LiveJournal
• Movable Type & TypePad
• RSS files
• Textpattern
• and of course, Wordpress, on which OutdoorsBlogger is based

From the Admin menu, click “Manage” and then “Import.” Just choose which service you use and upload.

OutdoorsBlogger isn’t just for blogging.  You can use it to make static websites for your trail club, charter service, guide outfit, or anything else outdoors for that matter.  When a visitor clicks on your channel (outdoorsblogger.com/yourchannelhere), your home page loads instead of the typical blog layout. Don’t worry, you can still have a blog on your channel too.

Why is OutdoorsBlogger great for web sites?

1. It’s so easy to use.  Anybody who can use the internet can creat pages, write content, upload photos, create sub pages, change themes, and so much more - all without knowing how to write HTML code.
2. It’s networked with other publishers of similar interests. Outdoors sports is all we do, so traffic from other areas of the site can’t get more targetted.
3. Even if it doesn’t look like it, it is still based on blog software… and search engines love them.
4. Best of all, it doesn’t cost you a penny.  Even if you maintain a separate web site, creating an OutdoorsBlogger space is a great way to drive focused traffic to you or your organization.

Steps to make your web space at OutdoorsBlogger

1.  Sign up, if you haven’t already
2. From the administration menu, create your home page by clicking “Write” and choosing “Page” from the sub menu.  Give your page a title, and click “Publish”, you can come back to edit the home page at any time.
3. Then click “Options” and the sub menu “Reading.” The first option deals with what your front page shows, and change it to “Static Page,” and choose the home page to display first. You can choose another page to display your blog, if you so desire.
4. That’s it. Use the editor to add content, photos, links, and anything else on your home page so that it’s just the way you like it.

Annoucing a new Outdoorsblogger plugin, Contact Form by Chip Cuccio. From the admimistration menu, go to “Plugins” and activate the plugin. Then go to “Options” and click “Contact Form” to edit your preferences such as email address and subject line.  Bloggers can now drop a contact form in any page or post by simply placing the [*CONTACT-FORM*] (remove the *s) tag wherever you want the form to appear. Here is an example below: