First of all, on the HUTD front page you have three new story sections: One for Press, one for National teams and one for Federations. Each of these sections shows the three latest blog post.

Also, to the right you’ll find a widget with featured blogs, having replaced the official blogs widget. In this widget you’ll find direct links to the Dev blog and Press, but also to new pages with the latest NT and Fed blogs. All in all, we hope it will be much easier to find interesting blogs to read now.

However, the big news of the day is naturally the introduction of Fed blogs and the Press blog!

Feds can now open up their own blogs here on HUTD, which naturally place a HUTD widget on their federation page within Hattrick linking to the blog. Very similar to how things work for national teams and team blogs.

If you are the chief officer in a fed, you can create a fed blog:

1. Go to your dashboard (and activate the advanced admin area if you haven’t already)

2. Select Hattrick

3. Create a federation blog

You’ll now find a link to your fed blog dashboard in the top bar, under “My sites”.

The Hattrick Press blog  will be managed by the Global Editors. On this blog they will share interesting news and articles from the Hattrick world. Happy reading!

Activating stats from Google Analytics:

1. Go to your Dashboard (activate advanced admin if you haven’t already)

2. Select Plugins

3. Activate Google Analytics

4. Select Settings (in the left menu)

5. Select Google Analytics

6. Insert your Google Analytics tracking  code (if you haven’t got one, sign up for one on http://www.google.com/analytics. Help/guide can be found here.)

Save it and you’re done!

You can also add the Google Analytics dashboard to your blog dashboard, making it easier to see your stats:

1. Go to your dashboard

2. Select Settings

3. Select Google Analytics Dashboard and follow the instructions

If you want your stats to be public, there is a Google Analytics widget to use. Just add it as any other widget from your dashboard.

Activating Akismet Spam filter:

1. Go to your Dashboard (activate the advanced area if you haven’t already)

2. Select Plugins

3. Select Akismet Configuration and follow the guide.

For some 1,5 months thousands and yet thousands of gamers voted for their favorite games on BBGsite to appoint the Best Browser Games of the Year 2011. We won the Favorite Simulation Game award, with more than 50% more votes than the runner-up – simply amazing.

Our most humble thanks to our fantastic community; you who voted for us day out and day in, kept the buzz up about this award and also spread the word about this to all corners of our community. Winning the award in this way really makes the award so much greater for us, it makes us appreciate the price even more.

Some special thanks to all of you in the community who spread the word in our forums, both globally and nationally – you know who your are. And you rock!

Click here to see the full winner list.

When a new national coach is assigned (after an election), the new coach can claim the blog. At this point the old national team coach will lose access to it and so will all the editors. The new coach can then choose new editors, if he/she wants to.

If you’re a National coach, this is a how you create a blog for your National team:
1. Register to Hattrick United if you haven’t already (you can delete your team blog if you don’t want it)
2. Go to your dashboard
3. If you are in the Easy Admin Area, activate the Advanced Admin Area (using the button in the top right corner)
4. Fill in the form that allows you to create a NT blog
5. The blog will be created and so will the url to your blog (you can’t change it)

If you want to add editors to your blog, do like this:
1. Go to your dashboard (switch advance area on if you haven’t)
2. Select Users
3. Select Add New

All bloggers have access to a NT Widget which they can add to their blog to support their NT. There is also a new Meetup widget for everyone looking to arrange or attend Hattrick meetups. The social sharing has improved with Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet and Google +1 buttons at the bottom of each blog post.

Happy blogging!

Add and remove favorite blogs
Anytime you find a blog you would like to bookmark, simply press the bookmark icon next to it’s name in the header. Remember you have to be logged in to add and remove bookmarks this way. Simply press that same icon again to remove it from your favorites. (This icon has been added instead of the “add this blog to your favorites” link that appeared in all blog posts.)

Front page
If you’re logged in, your favorite blogs are always listed below the featured headlines on the front page of Hattrick United.

Most favorite blogs widget
It is also possible to share you favorite blogs with your readers by using the HUTD:  Favorite Blogs widget.

Happy favoriting!

Speaking about the future I would like to share what will happen next here on HUTD.

Next up is blogs for National teams and some widgets connected to that. This has been much requested and I think it defitinitely will spice up the National teams a lot. Apart from that we will also add Like and Tweet buttons for all blogs.

After this update we have a list of things which we could include in the next update, but we haven’t decided on exactly which of these things we will start with. In the list we have things to make your blog life easier, more HT integration, widget improvements, country pages and other kind of blogs. But if you have something you really want to add to the wish-list, it’s certainly not too late. Either let us know on the Hattrick United forum on Hattrick (15016110.1) (preferred) or tell me in a comment to this post.

The HUTD forum on Hattrick can naturally also be used for help or sharing tips and tricks. Or for just tell the world how marvellous your blog is. Happy blogging!

If you want do adjust the theme, do like this:
1. Go to your dashboard
2. If you are in the Easy Admin Area, activate the Advanced Admin Area
(using the button in the top right corner)
3. Select HUTD
4. Select Theme Options
5. Adjust design and style (etc)
6. Save changes

If you want to add widgets do your blog, do like this:
1. Go to your dashboard
2. If you are in the Easy Admin Area, activate the Advanced Admin Area
(using the button in the top right corner)
3. Select Appearance
4. Select Widgets
5. Drag-and-drop widgets to your sidebars

If you want to add a menu to your blog, do like this:
1. Go to your dashboard
2. If you are in the Easy Admin Area, activate the Advanced Admin Area
(using the button in the top right corner)
3. Select Appearance
4. Select Menus
5. Enter a name of your menu and click “Create menu”.
6. Choose where to place your menu (main or top)
7. Choose the items, categories or links from the left column to add to your menu
8. Save your menu.

If you want to change the background (requires Supporter), do like this:
1. Go to your dashboard (and activate Advanced Admin Area if you haven’t already)
2. Select HUTD
3. Select Custom Backround
4. Check Activate Custom Background
5. Here you can upload a new background image or set a background colour etc.

If you already have a blog you can import it to Hattrick United. Do like this:
1. Login
2. Go to the dashboard
3. Activate the Advanced Admin Area (top right corner) if isn’t already.
4. Select Tools
5. Select Import
6. You can import from Blogger, Movable Type, Typepad or WordPress.
There is also an RSS importer, which should make it possible to import from any blog.

Don’t like the WP admin bar at the top? You can disable it:
1. Go to your Dashboard
2. Select Advanced Admin (in top right corner) if it is not already
3. Go the Users page in the left hand menu
4. Select your profile
5. Here you can hide the profile bar

If you think your avatar (team logo) is not cropped in a good way, you can get better results yourself:
1. Go to the dashboard
2. Make sure you are in the advanced admin (you can swap this with a button in the top right)
3. Go the Settings link in the left-hand menu
4. Press the “Blog Avatar” link that appears below the Settings link

If you want to change your avatar, then:
1. Go to the dashboard
2. Make sure you are in the advanced admin (you can swap this with a button in the top right)
3. Go the Users link in the left-hand menu
4. Press the “Your Avatar” link that appears below the Users link

If you want to post a video (youtube etc), do like this:
1. Write the url to the video on its own line in your post, without any tags or anything.
2. WordPress will automatically embed a video player for it to your blog post.

Hattrick United is the blog portal for Hattrick managers and their teams. This is a place where you can give the life around your club another dimension, and make your club more personal. Managers have in all times told amazing stories about their team legends and the daily – and sometimes quirky – life in their clubs, something which has really spiced up the game world. But up until now there has been no good common place to read and share all these fantastic tales and legends, and if you haven’t had Hattrick Supporter it’s been even harder to share these stories. Well, now there is a place for all!

Hattrick United is designed to make it easy for you to run your team blog and tell the story about your club. It doesn’t require much time to update it; all you basically need to do is to write the news and stories about your team. Other information, such as your series table, past and upcoming matches, transferlisted players etc, can be automatically fetched and updated from Hattrick. You just decide what information you want to show on you blog, and then let your fantasy, creativity and imagination come alive.

When you open a team blog on Hattrick United, you get a link to your team blog and your latest blog entry added to your Hattrick club page. Managers visiting your club on Hattrick will also find their way to your blog.

Hattrick United is based on WordPress, so if you’re familiar with WordPress you already know how things work. And if you’re not familiar with WordPress yet, it doesn’t take long to learn how to use it. Hattrick United is a CHPP product (even though developed and published by us) and you have to grant Hattrick United access to get information about your team. This is done when signing up to Hattrick United, and if you later want to remove this access you can do so in your Hattrick preferences.

Here on Hattrick United you will also be able to follow our official blogs, such as the dev blog where you can read about what’s going on in our heads on – and off – Hattrick.

We hope you will enjoy your time!

We know there is more life in and around Hattrrick clubs than what first meets the eye, and we believe that goes for your club as well! Creating a team blog is a great way to tell the stories about your club which the world has not yet heard of. And we are pretty sure it will enrichen your – and others – gaming experience as well. So what are you waiting for?

- The only thing you need is a Hattrick team. If you do, create your team blog here.

- Don’t have a Hattrick team yet? For real? Fix that error immediately on www.hattrick.org!

- A team blog on Hattrick United is completely free of charge.

- Information about your team, for example your matches and your series table, is fetched from Hattrick and can easily be presented on your team blog.

- If you’re a Hattrick Supporter, you have access to extra widgets and more possibilities to personalize your blog’s appearance.

In case you haven’t got the message yet it’s: Get your own free team blog now!