Focus On: Collaborative Blogs

We discover bloggers on WordPress.com exploring different passions and interests, immersed in unique industries, fields, and worlds. At the Daily Post, we’ll highlight these niche blogs and the various communities within WordPress.com. We hope these spotlights introduce you to new communities and ideas, and inspire you to find — and create — your own cozy corner in the blogging world.

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Many of you come to the Daily Post for the interaction within a community: a space to ask questions about WordPress.com features, to join in on discussions about the art of blogging and craft of writing, and to connect with those who share your interests.

Our “Focus On” roundups have zoomed in on niche communities on WordPress.com, from bloggers living the expat life to holiday DIY crafters. Today, let’s look at a sampling of collaborative blogs — multiple-contributor sites with a specific focus — and explore how like-minded writers and artists support one another.

Widgets 301

This week, we’ve talked about navigation on your blog — making it easy for your readers to find your content using custom menus, for example. We’ve already talked about widgets before, in “Widgets 101″ and “Widgets 201,” so let’s continue exploring how we can use them to direct your visitors to different places — and add some texture and color in your sidebar with little effort.

To follow along, head to Appearance >> Widgets in your own dashboard. This is where the magic happens — where we’ll enable widgets by dragging them from the Available Widgets area to the right, where we’d like them to appear on our blog.

Working With Custom Menus

A reader is visiting your site for the first time. Where do they go? What do they click on? Adding a custom menu to your site helps readers see how your site is organized and what you consider important.

Improved Features: Menus, Post Locking and Revisions, and Autosave

We’ve just made updates that improve your experience on WordPress.com. You can click on a link in this list to jump to a section in this post:

• Organize your content with improved Menus.
• Avoid accidental content changes on multi-author blogs with Post Locking.
• See your changes easily with the improved Post Revisions feature.
• Protect your content with a revamped Autosave feature.

You may notice some of these changes as you poke around in your dashboard, but if you want to get acquainted with them right away, read on.

Source and Attribute Creative Commons Photos Like a Pro

Miss Manners will be the first to tell you that when someone gives you a gift, the proper response is a warm, enthusiastic, “thank you!” in writing. Did you know that when you accept the “gift” of a Creative Commons-licensed work such as a photo or illustration for use in your web projects, Miss Manners would endorse that same, warm, enthusiastic “thank you!” in the form of proper sourcing and attribution? Being a good citizen on the web means demonstrating proper behavior, at all events. Today, we’re going to share the wonder that is Creative Commons and your responsibilities for sourcing and attributing any material you may download there.

Widgets 201

In the first post of this series, “Widgets 101,” we introduced some popular widgets, including the Text and Image Widgets, and also mentioned quick ways to transform an image by changing its shape or adding a frame. Since this month is all about photography and phoneography, let’s focus on Image Widgets and explore how to customize them.