Thripp.com is a new WordPress MU-powered social network focused on blogging, with the goal of harnessing technology to work with you—to enable your creativity by empowering your voice, while backing you with a community of supporters so you never have to go it alone. I just launched this on 2008 May 24, so we have a long road ahead. Join if you want to build a community that trusts it’s citizens.

Right now, the community is mostly me. I read everything posted and am active at my own Thripp.com blog, so you can count on the site …

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I’ve created a WordPress plugin called Tweet This, which lets your readers share any of your posts on Twitter by clicking an icon that looks like a bird. It’s active on all Thripp.com and DaytonaState.org blogs! Try it out with the buttons here.

2008-10-08 Update: I removed this feature because it doesn’t work right as the comment count increases… I’ll have to change the math behind it some time.

I’ve added a value metric in the sidebar of every blog! Also, there are stats on the average number of words per post, number of tags and categories, and the number of threaded comments and pingbacks.

My blog is worth $829,191. This development blog is worth $7189. Daytona State College News is valued at $2440. VicAndHelen.com is a measly $15. My mom’s blog is worth $1270, while my cousin’s is just …

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Tag, date, and category archives have a new format: they show the first 100 words of each post, including HTML and images. To read more you have to click “CONTINUE READING.”

Before, they were full-text just like regular pages, basically becoming a holding pen for posts. Most people browsing archive pages don’t want to read everything; they’re skimming for information. But the reason I refused to use WordPress’ the_excerpt tag is because it strips images or HTML. Since my Thripp.com blog is a photo-blog with the photos at the top of each post, that is unacceptable.

After much searching, I’ve found …

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Check out Comments > My Comments on your blog’s menu, thanks to this WordPress MU plugin. I removed the one under Dashboard, since this one seems better. You see the comments you’ve made at other blogs recently, and comments after them.

We already have a good comment threading/email system, but this is good if you’ve just forgotten where you’ve commented recently. You can click “dismiss” on any comment to remove it from the page (the comment won’t be delete though; only the owner of the blog you commented on can do that).

Also: I removed Design > Themes, because there is …

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Check this out:

That’s what you’ll see on your blog when you’re logged in. You can post right from the home page! Sure, you can load up the write post screen, but that’s slower and more complicated (WordPress MU’s backend is a bit bloated). When you click in a box, the default text is highlighted so you can type right over it. You can save your post as a draft, in which case you’ll be redirected to see it in the list on your drafts page, or you can publish it immediately.

From the home page …

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I’m delighted to announce the addition of DaytonaState.org as the complement to Thripp.com! Thripp.com will now be called the Thripp.com network wherever possible, which is inclusive of the new site.

I’d been blogging at Daytona State College News (DaytonaState.org) for a while about the school, but now you can actually blog over there just like Thripp.com; you can be You.DaytonaState.org. Sign up here: daytonastate.org/wp-signup.php.

DaytonaState.org is the only online community dedicated to Daytona State College. If you’re a student, faculty member, or just love the college, join today! Your account is for life. I’ll be reading everything posted …

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Yes, you read right! I just added this feature, and redesigned the footers to use the same color schemes as the headers. To add text or HTML to your header, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your Thripp.com account.
2. From your blog, click Design > Widgets in the toolbar above the header.
3. Click the drop-down box that defaults to “1: Sidebar.” Select “2: Header,” then click Show.
4. Look for the widget “Text: Arbitrary text or HTML” in the list on the left. Click Add.
5. In the blue box that appears on the right, click “Edit” and then type whatever text …

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If you’re like me (I hope not), you have three Thripp.com blogs: The Thripp.com Development Blog (this one), Brilliant Photography, and Daytona State College News. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way to feature content from one blog on another?

That’s just the feature I’ve added today, thanks to the Ada A Blog Recent Posts Widget plugin. You can add up to two other Thripp.com blogs to your sidebar under Design > Widgets, with the widgets, Thripp.com Blog and Thripp.com Blog 2. Here’s an example of mine, with my settings:

You can …

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Thripp.com is now 30% faster than I said it was in my previous post. Brilliant Photography gets the biggest chunk of the speed boost, because it was the slowest to start.

All the HTML is now one line. That doesn’t yield a big speed improvement, but it’s just cool. The big thing is that I turned small images into CSS sprites and merged all the JavaScript files into one honker (148KB). That file is compressed with gzip if your browser allows it, and all the current ones do, so the bandwidth hit is only 45KB. Still big, I know, …

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