22 posts tagged “themes”
It was hard to choose from the 355 entries, but the judges have announced the winners of our month-long "What Do You Have to Say?" theme design contest, sponsored by HP. And the winners are....
And while we know it's not polite to brag, you'll forgive us for a moment while we gush about the fact that the 2nd and 3rd prize winners are both Voxers!
The Second Place theme, “Live and Learn” was submitted by Li Kim Goh, or as you may know her: gollykim. We thought it was pretty cool to hear that Li, “didn't really think about winning, but mainly [entered] just for fun [while also] creating a few new banners for [her] own Vox blog.
When asked why blog design was so important to her, Li answered, ““because it draws readers' attention and makes your blog stand out from the millions of other blogs.” With such a great design, we think Li did just that.
The Third Place winner, Terri, showed off her “funky-fresh style” with her theme, “Vector Drips.” Terri said that having her theme picked made her day. You know what Terri? It made our day too!
The best part of the contest? In the coming weeks, we’ll make all the winning themes available on Vox, TypePad and LiveJournal so that you can use them on your blog!
Thank you to everyone who entered the contest and CONGRATULATIONS to all the winners!
Only ONE Week Left to Enter the HP "What Do You Have to Say?" Theme Design Contest!
A few weeks ago, we let you know about the HP "What Do You Have to Say?" Theme Design Contest. If you've been meaning to enter, but haven't gotten around to it yet - now is the time! There's only a week left to submit a theme that showcases your personal style and creativity.
The winning theme will be made available to millions of bloggers on Vox, TypePad and LiveJournal. And you may win $1000 gift certificate from Hewlett Packard!
What are you waiting for? Visit the contest homepage to learn how to submit your theme, as well as VOTE on your favorites. Remember, this is a contest, so once you've submitted a theme, be sure to tell your friends and family to vote for it.
Speaking of Themes...
We have two more custom themes from Gwen Stefani and HP. These themes are available for a limited time only, so hurry up and select one for your blog. Or, pick from our other new themes: Inked and Spiral & Turns.
Pick your new theme in the design area.
Everyone at Six Apart has been working incredibly hard as of late... But there's no point in working hard, if you don't make time to play even harder. On Easter Sunday, a few 6Aers ventured out to the 8th Annual BYOBW Race. That's "Bring Your Own Big Wheel" for those of you who may not be familiar with it.
Finally, if you haven't already... This is your last chance to vote for Vox in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards. Vox is nominated in the "Publishing and Photography" category and we really hope you'll take the time to VOTE and let everyone know how much you love blogging on Vox. Voting is open until March 31, 2008, so please hurry and cast your vote... Time's running out!
Until we meet again...
-daisy
Design It With Style: Enter the HP "What Do You Have to Say?" Theme Design Contest
One of the first things we notice when we're checking out your Vox blogs is which theme you've chosen to represent yourself and your blog. Whether it's "Basketball Night," "Shopping," "Country Day," or a custom banner you've designed yourself, the banner at the top of your blog really does provide a first impression of the content we might find there, as well as a hint about your personality and style. We've also found that a great looking theme can inspire creativity and motivate us to post to our own blogs.
Which is why we're so excited to announce the HP "What Do You Have to Say?" Theme Design Contest.
All you have to do to enter is design a theme that showcases your personal style and creativity. The winning theme will be made available to millions of bloggers on Vox, TypePad and LiveJournal. Plus, if your theme is chosen as the winner, you'll win some really cool prizes from HP:
First Place: $1000 gift certificate from Hewlett Packard
Second Place: $500 gift certificate from Hewlett Packard
Third Place: $300 gift certificate from Hewlett Packard
Visit the contest homepage to learn all about how to submit your theme, as well as vote on your favorite themes. The contest just started today, so there aren't many themes to vote on just yet, but you'll want to check back often to read the contest blog and see what kind of designs other Voxers and bloggers around the world are submitting.
We can't wait to see what you come up with!
Need Some Inspiration?
We released a bunch of new and featured themes on Vox today, including three custom designs from Gwen Stefani and HP (with more on the way)! There are also some egg-cellent Easter and bunny themes, a baseball theme that will knock your Vox blog out of the park, a couple of Hanafuda playing card themes for March and April, and though we hope you won't have to use it too often, a writer's block theme for those days when you just don't have much to say. (By the way, if this ever does happen to you, try checking out the Question of the Day and the Vox Hunt for inspiration!)
What are you waiting for? Start thinking about what you have to say and get started on your contest theme design!
Oh! And from all of us at Team Vox...
This time of year, just about every place you go to is decked out in something festive. So why not spruce up your blog too?
We've just added new holiday themes for Christmas and Eid al-Adha, as well as wintery themes with gingerbread houses and mistletoe to celebrate baking and making out, respectively.
Has anyone decorated their blog with a new personalized theme for the holidays? If so, comment with a link so we can check it out, and let other Voxers know if you're willing to share it.
- Krissy
We are well into November, and though it's sunny and 70 in San Francisco, I imagine for some of you a brisk chill is in the air, the trees are almost bare and thoughts of snow-blanketed winter mornings and hot cups of cocoa are starting to creep into your head.
But before we hunker down for winter, we should celebrate the successful harvest (Thanksgiving) and the victory of good over evil within every human being (Diwali, or "Festival of Light). We thought the best way to do this would be to give you some great new seasonal themes. (And a green city. Just 'cause.)
Now that most of the office dogs have all come back to work, our productivity has skyrocketed. Check out what's new:
Neighborhood Activity
Want to know what your neighbors are up to? Now when you visit the home page you can see all the recent activity by your neighbors, including who has added new neighbors, changed their theme, joined a group, added a favorite, or updated their profile photo or tagline. It’s kind of like spying out the front window when your real life neighbors go to get their mail, except this is more interesting. If you want to keep your goings-on private, head to Account > Privacy & Defaults and uncheck the box next to “Share my recent updates”.
Speaking of neighbors, we’ve just added your personal tagline to the display in the Neighbors sidebar. To edit or add a personal tagline, go to Accounts > Profile and find it under the Biography heading.
Vox This & Links List
A few posts ago, Steve tipped you off to the new Vox This feature. Did you get a chance to try it out?
Vox This lets you easily bring content from other sites into your Vox, and we hope it's not long before we see other sites out there adding Vox This buttons to their pages.
It’s easy to use it. Just drag the button below to the bookmark toolbar in your browser (in Firefox) or right-click it and add it to your favorites (in Internet Explorer, you probably want to put it in the Links folder). Then, whenever you come across something on the web that you want to Vox about, you just hit your Vox This button.
Try it out, and be sure to (re)read Steve’s post for the full instructions on how to use it.
As you add links via the Vox This button, they’re saved and archived for you in the new Links list. What’s the new Links list, you ask? You can display the five most recent links you’ve uploaded by adding the new Links list to your sidebar. To add the Links sidebar to your blog, go to My Vox > Design and click on “Customize your sidebars”. Check the box next to “Links” and click the Apply button.
That Links sidebar will display a stream of the links you’ve added via Vox This. You can also type a link into the blank to add it to the stream. To see the archive of all the links you’ve added this way, click on “View more of my links”. From there you can edit the links or change the privacy level.
Changes to Edit & Share Links on Assets
We’ve made a few changes to the menus you see on each post and asset.
As we mentioned last time, we have renamed and changed the Digg This link to be a broader Share option, with a dropdown menu that lets you select where you’d like to share: choose del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Newsvine or reddit. You can use the Share menu on any post, photo, video, book or audio you see, whether it’s yours or someone else’s.
On your own assets, you’ll notice that we’ve consolidated the edit menu, taking out that extra bar so it takes up less room on your blog. Just click the link to edit, or click the arrow to see the options to “Add to group” or “Delete”.
New Themes
We're always adding new themes. Check out Kinetic, Stripes and Maple Leaves in the Design area under "Featured".
There are also two new Branded themes from one of our partners. We could all use a little more energy, right? If you're looking for new ways to stay alert, Diet Pepsi Max has zero calories, ginseng and extra caffeine. They've created two themes you can apply to your Vox, both of which change three times throughout the day. If you need a drink to wake you up, head over to the Diet Pepsi Max site to check it out.
Mo’ Beta
If you’ve signed up to be a beta tester on Vox, you can get a sneak peek at the upcoming VH1Eyecandy conduit when you’re uploading photos and videos. They’ve only just added a little bit of celebrity content so far, so try searching on Kelly Clarkson, Demi Moore, Hillary Duff or Bruce Willis to test it out. They’ll be adding photos and video of a ton of artists and celebrities before the official launch, so stay tuned for more details.
-- Krissy
Spruce Up Your Sidebar
Beta testers have been adding widgets
to their sidebar for a few weeks now, but starting today everyone can
get in on the fun. Another bit of good news: we're now supporting
javascript and iframes, which means we've lifted the restrictions we'd
set earlier.
To add a widget to your sidebar, head to the Design tab and click on "Customize your sidebars". Check the box next to "Embed" and click on the configure link to paste in the code and optional title for your widget. You can add or edit sidebar widgets from your blog too. When you're viewing your blog, click on the link that says "Dress up your sidebar". Please note: if your widget is wider than 160 pixels, it might look all wonky or just not display at all.
We just added a link to every post and asset to let you Digg it. This is the very first step in our upcoming Share feature that will help you share the best stuff on Vox with the other sites you're already using. Don't get too used to seeing the "Digg This" link; in a future release the link will change to "Share". The Share menu will still let you Digg something, but we'll add in options to share with more of the sites you enjoy using as well.
Neighborhood Digest Email: Delivery Time is Changing
You've
been receiving your daily or weekly neighborhood digest emails at
midnight in your local time zone, but we heard your feedback that you'd
rather receive them earlier, before you'd had a chance to read your
neighborhood page. So we've just adjusted the send time to 11AM. For
those of you receiving the weekly digest emails, this change will kick
in next week when we send it out Thursday at 11am. To adjust your
neighborhood digest email settings, click on Account, then on Notifications.
New Themes
Introducing
two new time-based themes! These themes will change color and design
three times every 24 hours, according to the time zone you've set for
your blog. (If you need to change your time zone for any reason, click
on Account at the top of the page and then Your Account.)
Just in time for the 4th of July here in the States, we've also just added some BBQ and Stars and Stripes themes, or you can use the Fireworks themes to celebrate. Voxers around the world in any time zone can show their love of music with the new Turntables themes. See all the new themes on the Design page.
1st row L to R: Havaianas Relax, BBQ Green, Mountainscape; 2nd row: Stars & Stripes, Summertime, and Turntables
- Krissy
We're back, did you miss us? We just launched some new features, so read all about 'em!
Personalized Sharing
You can now include a personal message
when you use the Share feature to send posts or assets to your
friends. Now they won't have to wonder why you're sending them that
photo of a chihuahua - you can tell them right in the message! You can
share with someone who's already on Vox, or send to any email address
and the message will include an opportunity for that person to join.
In the Groups tab, you'll now find a Featured Groups box below your invitations. To get started, we're featuring mostly Vox-related groups, but we'll be featuring more of your groups as time goes by. In the future, we'll add a way for you to nominate a group to be spotlighted.
Updates to Features in Beta
A big thanks to everyone who shared their feedback about the blog dashboard that we introduced in beta in our last release.
It was very helpful -- you've inspired us to re-work the dashboard a
little bit. We're pulling it off beta for now, but look for a new and
improved version to return at a future date.
Starting next week, you'll be able to sign up in beta to receive Vox digest emails which include the last five updates from your neighborhood. We'll tell you more about this next week, with full instructions on how to sign up, so stay tuned!
New Themes
This batch of new themes includes Comic Book,
Mondrian, several colors of Leaves, new Nokia themes and some sponsored
themes from Havaianas. Get the Haivaianas themes while they're hot
because they're only going to be around for a few months! Look for the
Latest Themes module on the home page that displays the most recent themes we've added -- just click the arrows to scroll through all the new designs.
Did someone ask for Sidebar Widgets? (Coming Soon!)
Good news for all of you who want to embed your crazy code and widgets -- in our next release we're bringing post embeds out of beta, so everyone will see the Embed button on the Compose page. Also in that release, you'll be able to add one embed module to your sidebar. We know you want more control over your sidebars and we're working on it, step by step. So hang on for just a few more weeks because we're launching these embedding features in June.
- Krissy
Anil just wrote up a great post on the Spider-Man 3 Official Movie Blog as the Movable Type Featured Blog.
We couldn't help but notice that the folks behind the brand new movie gave Vox a little love too, by creating some special Spider-Man 3-themed Vox templates.
So if you're a Spider-Man fan, now you can dress up your Vox blog in webs, spiders and/or Tobey Maguire's mug!
- Krissy
As we've mentioned before, there is a way to opt in to test new Vox features before they are released. Your testing and feedback help us make tweaks and changes before we roll out the features to the entire Vox community.
One of the latest features we're beta testing is the ability to embed code in your posts. Embedding lets you put all sorts of neat things into your posts, like polls, charts, slide shows and much more.
Currently you can only test the embed feature in posts -- you cannot embed media into your sidebars. We've already gotten feedback that you really want to be able to embed code into your sidebars, and we're looking forward to this ability too! But please be patient, it's going to be a little while longer before we roll out that capability.
You have to become a beta tester in order to see the embed button in the Compose page. To participate in beta testing new features, click Account and go to the Your Account page. You'll see Vox Beta along with the statement "Yes, I would like to test new features." next to a checkbox. Just check the box and click the Save to become one of our testers. Be sure to leave your feedback by following the "Beta Feedback" link in the control strip! We're also currently beta testing the new control strip, which you can preview before we roll out the final version to everyone next week.
For more information, read the full instructions about opting in to Beta testing new Vox features and also about Embedding Media in a Post.
How will you use the new embed feature?- Krissy