AmeriCymru 2.0 - Part 1

AmeriCymru is 3!  And to celebrate, we're upgrading both sites.  Yes, there are two AmeriCyrmu's:  

AmeriCymru.net, our social site, is the place to meet other Taffs, Gogs, Cymruphiles and descendants of Wales the world over to make new friends, network, play, brainstorm or just find out what's happening with the Welsh in the world.   The blog is our online magazine, to showcase articles, multimedia and content on the arts, culture and news of Wales and Welsh-Americans.   Both sites of course present opportunities for Welsh artists, authors, musicians etc to promote their work to the Welsh American community.

The blog ( and several sub-categories including books, poetry, art, humor ) is now linked from the AmeriCymru social site and can be reached from the top navbar 'Magazine' button and associated dropdown menu.

Here are the three most important additions to the site ( beside the new look template ). They can all be found at the bottom of every post:-

This the Outbrain widget and it's purpose is to suggest other ( hopefully vaguely related ) content on the site that you might like.

This is the DisQus commenting box. You can leave a comment here or join a discussion thread. Comments containing urls or images are moderated and if you are on Twitter you can send your comment to another user by using the @ symbol followed by the users name. In order to use the new commenting system you will need to log in. The screenshot below displays the various login options. It is also possible to share your comments on Facebook and Twitter. All comments , regardless of which pasword or service you log in with will appear in the same thread. Comments containing urls or images are moderated.

And finally, the 'Popular Articles' widget. This displays the most popular articles on the blog ranked solely according to the number of hits they have received in the last seven days.

We hope you will enjoy these new features and visit and comment on the blog often. In part two of this series we will reveal the new features that will be added to the social site ( http://americymru.net ) soon.

The Americymru Blog Goes Social With The Google Friends Connect Toolbar

Many of our members and readers will have noticed that content on Americymru is spread over two sites. We have sought to integrate them as seemlessly as possible but nevertheless we use both the Blogger and Ning platforms.

Until now interaction has only been possible on the Ning portion of the site but today we have added the Google Friends Connect Toolbar to the Americymru Blog. To join simply sign in with your Google or Yahoo password and you will be able to add comments to the comment wall which is a dropdown from the bar at the top of the page. It takes a little getting used to but we feel that it adds a whole new dimension to the site for our members. Google will, no doubt, be adding new features to the toolbar and hopefully it will become an even more useful tool for communication and interaction in the future.

For now it sports a comment wall which allows you to add comments and embed YouTube videos. It also allows integration with a few "external" services such as Twitter. If you decide to check it out heres a screenshot of the top left corner of the screen where you go to sign in:-