This article was published on October 26, 2011

Turn your Google+ profile into a blog with Plusses


Turn your Google+ profile into a blog with Plusses

We recently showed you how to import your Google+ posts into your WordPress blog using a nifty little plugin created by Daniel Treadwell.

The plugin has proved to be popular with the Google+ crowd, and Daniel has taken the service one step further and has launched a new service which allows you to use Google+ as an independent blogging platform.

Google+’s interface is pretty cool, especially when it comes to sharing photos, but if you want your Google+ profile to look more like a blog, Plusses is exactly what you’re looking for.

All you have to do is sign in using your Google account, and all of your public Google+ posts are instantly displayed as blog posts. You can view the number of +1s, comments and shares, as well as any embedded media.

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At the moment, Plusses is pretty customizable. It comes with two themes, although we hear there are more to come, and you can also control the number of posts to display per page, and whether to display the full post or a summary on your posts’ page. Plusses also gives you the choice of excluding photo submissions as posts, and all posts which are reshared from someone else on Google+ are labeled as such.

Another much appreciated feature is the ability to select which posts appear on your blog. You might share bits and pieces on Google+ which you wouldn’t necessarily want on a blog, and with this feature, simply by clicking a check box you can choose which posts to remove.

There are of course some cons to using Plusses. If people want to comment on your blog, they can only do so on Google+ itself, and any posts with more than one image are divided into multiple posts on your blog. And lastly, your blog will only be updated once daily, pulling in new posts and comments, so if you’re looking for instant gratification, Plusses isn’t for you.

Like with the plugin, you need to bear in mind that the first sentence will be the title of your blog post, so be sure to give each Google+ post a short snappy title, otherwise you’ll end up with a title trailing off with ellipses.

With the beta service launching just yesterday, there are still quite a few more features in the works, including custom CSS stylesheets so you can tailor the look of your blog to your heart’s content, and the ability to use a subdomain  – in other words yourname.pluss.es.com. At the moment, the link to your Plusses blog includes your Google+ ID number, which makes it a bit unwieldy when it comes to sharing it.

Plusses is a great tool for someone who doesn’t have a hosted WordPress blog to use the plugin with, or someone who is looking for an easy way to create a blog. Because Plusses harnesses the power of Google+, the social network essentially becomes your blogging platform, and Plusses gives it the final cosmetic touches.

Check out some of the featured blogs created using Plusses, which give you a great idea of just how much you can get out of the service if you use it to create a blog.

Would you use Google+ as a blogging platform? Let us know in the comments.

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