<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">Hi Folks,</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">I am looking for someone to help us get our blog section up and running.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">The idea is for the blogs to provide us a platform we can offer to staff, freelancers and other writers out-with our regular news. Often we get people looking to contribute but the topic, time or style just do not fit with our mainstream content. Other uses are the likes of coverage from festivals and other short-term events.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">So I want to have an network of blogs within the site with each one loosely tied to our main categories. I guess the functionality required is somewhat like many of the blog networks on the Web, except all the blogs will be identical in design.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">Possibly we will need a photoblog theme in addition to a standard one. Both would be based on the main site design, so not looking for an original design. However, we will welcome ideas regards functionality and cross-pollination.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">I also want to be able to create new blogs without having to configure every setting each time. Furthermore an overall portal page would be required showing the latest posts etc. Possibly some categorization here to match up with the main site, I am guessing this could be done by aggregating associated blog RSS or such.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">I have also been looking at moveable type and Expression Engine but I think MU might be a better option as it seems to moving forward with paid support options etc…again maybe you can let me know your thoughts on it being the right choice. Note although we need that sort of multi-blog functionality users will not be allowed to create blogs themselves, it will be manual on application.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">The site is a fairly busy independent news/entertainment outlet, <a href="http://monstersandcritics.com">monstersandcritics.com</a>. So optimization, security and spam protection are very important.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">No doubt additional work after the initial rollout as we have a German version of the site launching in Q2-3.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">If you are interested please drop me a line (james dot wray at monstersandcritics dot com) with your thoughts. Please put Blog Development in the subject.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">Many thanks</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">James</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">James Wray</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">Editor in Chief: Monsters and Critics</font></p>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><a href="http://www.monstersandcritics.com"><font face="Calibri" color="#800080">http://www.monstersandcritics.com</font></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">james dot wray at monstersandcritics dot com</div>