New Blog System Contender from Sugar Inc.

Earlier this month (between September 10 and today), the Sugar Inc. network (which targets women readers), owned by Brian Sugar, launched a new blog network/system, built on the Drupal platform.  This post is a rather in-depth look at the new service and its advantages and disadvantages over other platforms.  I disregard (for the most part) the fact that it was built for women, and take it from the blog system standpoint, as I believe that anyone will be able to use the system.

Try out the new system at OnSugar.com.

Background Infromation

The blog network that is a part of this new launch has writers that publish more than 200 posts per day on approximately sixteen different blogs.  Their network publishes more than just posts, but slideshows, polls, and quizzes; they need to be able to quickly publish “beautiful” content on sites that receive millions of pageviews a day.  As a result, they’ve developed this system that makes it efficient and cost-effective for them to run the Sugar Inc. network of blogs.

The “best platform” is now available for regular bloggers not apart of the network (although you’ll be creating a sitename.onsugar.com blog).  Some features include being able to create magazine-like spreads, “following” (similar to Blogger’s system, but more specific to the network), timed drafts, a partnership with Getty images (for placing up-to-the-minute photographs on your blog for free, and additional images that are a part of the blog network.

The Signup Process

On the main page, you’ll notice that there is very few technical details, as I couldn’t find how much space you are alloted or any other details throughout the blog (without reading the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy).

Main OnSugar Page

Overall, the main purpose of the service is to allow members to connect with one another and share similar interests, at whatever their personal lifestyles may be.  It also allows you to blog naturally, without requiring you to deal with the code that can bring your site down if not edited correctly.

The main page also has clear purposes that have been laid out below the image and off to the side:

- Create galleries, spreads, polls, quizzes, and more.

- Search thousands of products from hundreds of retailers.

- Get free access to gorgeous Getty photos.

- Find and follow your favorite blogs.

“Sweet and Simple Publishing” – “Publishing that Makes Sense”

When you join, you aren’t required to edit a lot of information, a process that is supposed to be simple – only requiring you to add additional information once you have joined the site and have begun publishing.

OnSugar Login/Create Account Page

Creating New and Add-on Sites

During the sign-up process, you’ll be promoted to input and create a blog, using the domain of your choice.  You’ll likely find that this is one of the easiest sites to sign up for their service – very few questions arose as to what I was inputting during the entire process.

Create a New Blog Page

Simply designate the web address, site name, about this site, site icon, favicon, and posts per page (1, 5, 10, or 25) to get started.

Basic Navigation and Features

Upon signing in, you’ll be greeted with main page, featuring quick links to main pages, areas, and community-related information, including your personal stats.

The tabbed navigation structure at the top of the main content area allows you to view Sites You Follow, Sites You Might like, Your Sites (with a list of recent posts/RSS feed/links to blogs), All Sites (recent posts from every site), Most Followers (thumbnail collection of sites with most followers), and Newest Sites.

Main Dashboard Page (Minus Navigation Bar)

To the left, there are links to view posts in specific categories, depending on the particular category that you are currently in on the page.  For example, if you click “Text”, text-based posts will be displayed.  You also have the choice of excluding Galleries, Spreads, Polls, Quizzes, Quotes, Links, Chats, Videos, and Audio-type posts.

To the right, a brief portfolio of yourself is displayed, with an image/avatar, your name, status, how long you’ve been a member for, and the last time you logged in.  You can also see the number of followers, posts, sites you are following, and number of sites you blog on.

Moving up to the header, there is a drop-down navigation list, allowing you to quickly go to the home page; your username links to your Inbox, Profile, direct link to blogs, create a new site, import site, tools “Goodies”, edit profile, and logout.

Next, there is a drop-down list for individual sites, allowing you to create a new post, view posts and drafts, view site, edit themes, add widgets, pages, add/remove writers, followers, and customize the site settings.

Finally, there is a help link to the right.

Writing a Post

Within your individual site’s drop-down list, you’ll find the write post link, allowing you to write a post, whether a textual, gallery, spread, poll, and so on.  You are immediately greeted with an extremely well designed, simple, and effective design for creating new posts.

Writing a New Post Screenshot

Before I go on, it is worth noting that each type of post is laid out using large icons and associated text near the top of the content area, making it easy to switch between them.

According to the editor, you don’t even need to create a title for your posts, so you might be able to use this feature if you are not the person for spending time creating titles, and would rather create the content and not have to deal with that.

The text editor is a rather basic, WYSIWYG editor, with typical icons for everything from bold text to adding images – clicking on the “add image” icon will bring up a pop-up/hover window, allowing you to upload a picture from your computer, the web, from Getty images, Fashion Week, or ShopStyle.  There are a number of additional sub-tools that can be used on individual pages, specifically ShopStyle (Men, Women, Living, etc.).

A “good” thing about this editor is that categories, tags, and post status (publish now, save as draft, or publish on a specific date) are not included on the main page unless you press “Advanced”, at which point they are displayed beneath the text/HTML editor.

Many of the other posts areas are just as easy to use, if not easier.  However, as far as controls, there is a severe lacking of them, which is likely not the case when they are using this on their large-scale blogs.

Editing the Theme

Widgets - To add widgets, simply go to the Widgets page, then add, remove, edit, and rearrange widgets, according to the way you want them displayed on your blog.  Many of the widgets only include one option, limiting customizability but adding ease-of-use for the blogger.

Widgets Page with Drag-and-Drop Editing

Theme Editor - The theme editor consists of a split column page, with the options and customization on the left, and a theme preview to the right.  You are brought to “Active”, displaying your current theme, but you can also browse Featured, Shared, Yours, and Create areas for customzing, adding, and browsing themes.

Theme Editor

There are currently approximately thirty themes available, ranging from clean, white themes to dark themes.  Some of the themes, as stated on the page, have been inspired by other themes, specifically Chris Pearson’s Cutline and other themes.

Within the edit area, you can change the information, CSS, page, comment, post, and image code, creating an endlessly-customizable blog using the system.

Pages

To add a page to your site, you simply click on your site’s URL, then find “Pages”, where you can add a Text, Link, RSS Feed, Tag, Archives, Videos, or Galleries pages to your site.  However, it appears as thought these are mainly used for archive-type posts, rather than true text-edited posts.

Monetization

Users will be able to monetize their sites through standard ad networks including AdSense and Glam, as well as well as through the widgets that they have created through affiliated sites (not yet available).  Anyone who generates an income will receive a cut of sales that result from the widget.

Documentation and Help

Help is no more than a click away by accessing the OnSugar Help pages, which offer simple, “blog-type” posts on how to use the system and its numerous features.

A powerful feature that is explained here is Share OnSugar, which allows you to sue a bookmarklet within your browser’s favorites to drag-and-drop links and resources that you think readers may find useful.  You can also publish directly from this pop-up window.

Other articles explain how to use page breaks/other coding, creating text posts, pages, chats, links, editing and deleting posts, deleting a site, and more.

Help Pages

You can preview what a blog looks like with the “Blogging Tips” blog I created simply as a part of my test account.

Conclusion

As far as the success and future of the site/service goes, I hope that they are able to continue the blog platform, as it features many elements that people are looking for from the free Blogger and WordPress.com platforms.  While it may be tailored to women, I can see how it can be cross-gender should they introduce a more male-centric color scheme or partnerships with related parties.  

It is off to a good start – the foundations are there, it just needs bloggers to input feedback and help improve the features and functionality that is currently built into the system.

Should the service become popular (both in the sense of profit and membership), more options will become available as well as seeing a branching out from the current status.

It does make publishing easy, without the added terms and lack of certain functionality that “competing” larger services currently have.

What are your views of the new blog system, now that you have seen screenshots and related information about it?

Additional Features of OnSugar

These features can also be found at the “What is OnSugar?” blog.

Key Features Separating OnSugar from Others

• 10 different post types – text, gallery, spread, poll, quiz, quote, link, chat, video, and audio
• Free access to hundreds of thousands of Getty Images and other images that are a part of the network via the image uploader/insert tool.
• Drag and drop “spread maker” for creating your own look with images from the network of sites
• Create a blog and build your audience of followers with automatic notification of new posts
• Multiple sites per account
• Folow your favorite sites and view an aggregated feed of your followed sites.
• Multiple authors per site
• *Easily import from Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad
• Free
• Full domain support

Key Site Features

• Drafts and timed posting
• Search
• Archives
• Pages for placing About Me, Galleries, Videos, and more
• Widgets for highlighting content from your site or around the web, placed in the sidebars of your blog
• Related posts from your site, or sites that you follow
• Completely customizable free themes

Technologies

Main technologies that run the site and blog system are Drupal for the content management system, Akamai – entire platform uses this delivery network, memcached for speeding up and serving pages, Smarty for the templates engine, sIFR for replacing text elements on screen with Flash equivalents, TinyMCE rich text editor, LLMP (Linux, lighttpd, MySQL, and PHP), plus a fully documented API.

Links

These links can be used for navigating the site and for quick access when discovering additional aspects of the site.

• Sugar Inc.com
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• About Us
• Help/Support for OnSugar
• OnSugar Development Documentation (API)
• What is OnSugar? – Blog
• Official OnSugar Blog

Note: This service is still in beta/pre-launch mode, so there may be limited functionality at times.  Official launch is near the end of 2008 (90 days).

[Original source from TechCrunch]