As the man who built the sucker, I offer whatever support you need in building a more robust niggerati network. I'm also a partner now at smartcampaigns, so if you need server space, I can donate it, and file it under the smartcampaigns domain until it gets off the ground and becomes a thriving community (in which case you'd be able to cover the cost through a tipjar, most likely.

I appreciate the offer. I'm cool with server space and such. And honestly version 4.5.x has stuff I like that 4.4 (which CivicSpace is based on) doesn't, and 4.6 looks even more interesting for reasons that drift away from blogging.

But if you guys are going to be spawning Drupal sites I may want to talk to you about remote authentication. I don't have that set up here or at the n-net because we discuss some contentious issues and I honestly feel the need for the ability to cut off anonymous comments altogether. Remote authentication via Drupal.org kinda bypasses that (did you know that I, because I'm registered at Drupal.org, can maintain a personal blog at your site? I'm not sure you want stuff THAT open). I would strongly consider allowing smartcampaigns' users access via remote authentication. Since there's a basic alignment in our politics and approaches I'd have more trust in a random arrival from smartcampaigns than from your random techie site.

(oh, yeah, I'll tell you what I told Oliver when he went CivicSpace: lose the default template).

Dude, no kidding about that template. I've created a few new ones Nick Lewis, and then the emerging Emergency Action Blog. The PBAHQ template is proving to be a little more difficult, probably just because it matters to me, and any time I make template changes a peanut gallery erupts. As far as having an open blog, actually, we allow ANYONE to sign in and immediately post on our PBAHQ homepage. The advantage to having 170 bloggers from around the world is that there is always at least one that will drop by every thirty mins who I've entrusted moderation privledges to. So all of the comment spammers usually get caught within the first 10 mins, and end up getting frustrated and leaving. As far as problems with random people posting content, we've had none. In addition, our taxonomy admin settings, and aggregator are fully available to any user whose registered with us. I know this level of openness will end eventually, but I rather enjoy it, as long as it lasts. I've only been using civicspace for a month, but as I told Zacker, this might be the nerdiest thing that has been ever said, but I have a crush on civicspace. In addition, I've set up some rather bizarre experiments with civicspace that might yeild some interesting concept sites. Anyhow, its good to hear from you Prometheus, and I can always catch you on the drupal developer list.