We have recently rolled out a couple of new features over at MySietch. Want to start your own MySietch blog? Check it out.

Sidebar widgets:

Sidebar widgets allow you to customize your sidebar using an easy to understand drag and drop interface. To use widgets go to the presentation menu and play around. A couple things to keep in mind. Not all themes can use widgets. Some themes have multiple places you can use widgets (multiple side bars, footers etc). Using widgets will replace your current sidebar. If you want to go back to your old sidebar simply remove all the widgets and it will return to the default sidebar.

Adsense:

Want to make a couple dollars off your blog? Sign up for a Google Adsense account and you can use the adsense widget to monetize your blog. Simply add the adsense widget to your sidebar and enter in the information that is given to you by Google (click on the widget once it has been placed in your custom sidebar and enter in the info). Your ad’s will run 80% of the time and the other 20% of the time The Sietch ad’s will run. I figured you were doing most of the work and should receive most of the payment. Make sure to use ad’s that will fit into the sidebar you are placing them in.

Stats:

We have rolled out Firestats, a pretty comprehensive statistics program that will show you just about everything you would like to know about the people who are visiting your blog, including what posts are the most popular the number of visitors and the place they visited from. To turn on Firestats go to the plug-in menu and turn them on. You can read your stats from the dashboard, the stats menu on the the dashboard, or you can add your stats as a sidebar widget.

Spam protection:

Getting lots of spam comments? Well now you can bust them by using the Akismet plugin. You can turn it on from the plug-in menu. Once you turn on the plug-in you need to activate the spam protection by going to wordpress.com and signing up for an API key. Put this API key into the form when prompted by the plug-in. Akismet will filter out comments it thinks are spam. You can sort through the comments it thinks are spam in the comments menu just so no false positives are trashed.

If you are into blogging and want to join a growing community of green bloggers give MySietch a try, its free, fully customizable and easy to get started with.