now you can restyle and host your reddits wherever you'd like (with contest!)

redditors have created lots of new reddits in the last few months (and subscribers and subscriptions are up 300% since the redesign) but allowing user-created reddits was just the first step. Now we want you to be able to fully customize your communities right down to the pixel.

Today is the day reddit fully becomes a platform for building link sharing sites.

We believe it's a feeling somewhere between when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly and when 6 Hydrogen nuclei combine to form Helium and [eventually] life as we know it.

Starting today, you'll be able to totally modify your CSS and use custom CNAMEs. Now your reddit can be restyled to look however you want -- like any Wordpress blog. Why stop at a custom logo (bacon reddit, I'm thinking of you) when you can change the entire design? Furthermore, your reddit can now show up at BaconBuzz.com or whatever domain you'd like if http://reddit.com/r/bacon doesn't cut it for you.

We've watched a number of our most dedicated redditors work diligently to grow their audiences. Raising a reddit isn't easy, but we remember what it was like when we started the site and how exciting it was to see a community take off.

So we're running a contest with huge prizes:

For the winner

• Macbook Air laser etched with the reddit logo
  
• $1,500 Apple gift card
• Stockpile of schwag (shirts, pins, and stickers) designed by me for their winning community
• A reddit bobblehead and some bacon
  

Runner up

• 32 GB iPod touch laser etched with the reddit logo
  
• $1,000 Apple gift card
• Smaller stockpile of schwag (pins and stickers) designed by me for their community
• A reddit bobblehead
  

Best design

• Wacom Intuos3 9x12 pen tablet
• $500 Apple gift card
  
• A reddit bobblehead

Here are the contest details.

Get started, create a reddit!

Entry is simple, just create a reddit or be the creator of an existing reddit community with fewer than 250 subscribers at the time of this post. You'll have one month to grow your reddit: reach out to your friends on forums, email friends and family, engage bloggers who write about content of interest to your community and submit some of their best work.

Absolutely do not spam. I cannot stress this enough; it'll just generate ire -- not traffic.

In accord with this, we're evaluating popularity on the following criteria: traffic growth (50%), activity growth (40%), and subscriber growth (10%). We will be vetting for legitimate content and vanquishing spammers.

Oh, and we're also giving a prize for best design based on these three metrics as evaluated by the five of us: quality of design (66%), originality (33%) and best use of the color orangered, RGB #FF4500 (1%).

We're excited to see what comes out of this contest. And now, here are all the legal details. Also in PDF.