WordPress.com users rejoice, the WordPress team has added a new and welcomed feature – custom CSS. Until now, you had to stick with the limited customization that came with the stock themes. By purchasing the custom CSS upgrade in your WordPress.com blog’s admin panel for $15 USD, you have the ability to edit the CSS on your blog for one year. When the year is over you will have to purchase that upgrade again if you wish to make any further changes. I think this is a great way to mature WordPress.com’s business model while letting users rake up on the feature-set.
PaulStamatiou.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress
Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like PaulStamatiou.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.
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Hmm, thsi is a big deal especially since this would break the distinction between managed and self-hosted WordPress installs. I smell more micropayments in the works… who knows, maybe WordPress.com could later sell personalized templates for more, or even sell web space by the gigabyte for putting up media files. Overall I’d say smart move!
Then again, as more micropayments come into play it may be more worthwhile for users to leave wordpress.com for a hosted solution. It’s up to users but I think most will stick with uncustomised templates. $15 seems quite a bit just to edit some CSS.
Weisheng: Actually I think it’s a good thing. Remember that paying for this is an option, WordPress.com is still free just like the other managed blog platforms. Also, most other managed solutions don’t give you this level of customization (e.g. typepad, vox, livejournal)
Wordpress.com is a managed hosted blog solution which caters to those of us who are less money, time, or expertise to maintain a full-blown web server. By offering a solution for advanced features like the Advanced CSS coding, WordPress.com has struck the middle ground between managed-hosted and self-hosted blogs. I foresee that the $15 includes technical support, which is something I totally understand as opening a new floodgate of issues for the admins to handle.
Ultimately, I believe that this is a solution I am more confident of recommending clients interested in running their own blogs… there’s simply more headroom should they wish to expand.
When are we going to be able to put AdSense?
I think they are going on the right track. When you think about it, Typepad makes you pay this sum every month for the same result!!! $15 a year is more sounds more than honest to me for those who are starting to understand CSS and would like to tweak their blog. The following they’ll be able to set up their own wordpress blog and won’t have to pay. Good job Wordpress.
By the way, are using the free, unsupported verion of Moveable type over here?
Guillaumeb, my site is powered by wordpress as well. I’ve never messed with Movable Type.. other than a few attempts at installing it.
WordPress 5 minute installation++
now the time has come..Wordpress needs it. I mean people raking money from this free software..Still good idea for having just as an option..
Hmm..Good!
Paul is WordPress through and through as far as I know. His customisation tutorials got me started off with WordPress and K2.
I think its a pretty smart move, 15$ isn’t a whole lot considering the amount of money that’s probably going into hosting all those blogs
I was wondering how Automattic was going to make WordPress.com swim.
Hello, i love paulstamatiou.com! Let me in, please :)
I see a pay model for lifting the upload limit coming soon!
im pissed at how they just say 15 credits, or 14 cents a day. thats just lazy. i want to know how much it costs a month, i dont want to multiply it by 360 either to see how big the bill will be. other than that its a good way to collect big bucks.