It's a blog upgrade announcement, mostly, so if you're outside the Minnesota blogo/activist/readersphere, you probably won't care much. But it's worth spreading the word, at least to me :)
When I started MN Campaign Report, as I've noted in response to several questions on how I got into blogging, it was pretty straightforward. It had that orange banner on a white background Blog*Spot-default theme, and virtually no one read it. Version 1.1 added a slightly more palatable theme, and in May 2006 I bit the bullet and went to a remote-hosted site using WordPress. We've been at MNCR 2.0 been since then.
Until now. It's difficult to explain, but WordPress feels stale, somehow. It does some things very well - sidebar links, for example, are database-driven, and thus don't require any futzing with HTML to funtion. That's good. The site theme is relatively easy to manage. But at a certain point along the traffic-growth continuum, the platform starts constricting the level of communication and community that a blog like MNCR could potentially supply.
Enter SoapBlox. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been working behind the scenes to build MNCR 3.0 on the SoapBlox system, the platform behind Minnesota Monitor, Swing State Project, Burnt Orange Report, and several other fantastic blogs around the country. The most important difference is the presence of user diaries - essentially, mini-blogs for readers who want to do more than just comment, or bloggers who want to cross-post in a local forum instead of spreading seeds to the wind on DailyKos, or candidates who want to connect with the Netroots at any level (Tom Vilsack, I'm looking at you, hombre). You get the idea - the possibilities are endless.
This week, in addition to the stories I'm sure will come up, I'll be transitioning to the new site, currently located at http://www.mncampaignreport.net. Eventually, mncampaignreport.com will point at the new site, and this one will stick around under the .net domain, so don't sweat updating your links just yet. What you can do, however, is go to the new site, sign up in the top right menu, and check out some of the great features. The layout will change slightly just to look a bit more like home, but that's what a gradual roll-out is all about.
You may say "Hey, I noticed some new stuff at MNPublius.com too - what gives? Is this a liberal conspiracy?" My answer is, I hope not. The timing was purely coincidence, but the potential is a thriving, growing, progressive blogosphere in Minnesota going toward the 2008 elections. I hope to make MNCR 3.0 a vibrant part of that vision.