Shift Happens
Quick tip for all of you Quick Bloggers: use the shift, Luke!
Shift-clicking, long the mainstay of desktop applications, is available on any Quick Blog list page (and our web-based email product, too). All you have to do is click one checkbox and hold the shift key down while you click another one. All of the checkboxes between those two will be checked for you. It even works for non-contiguous blocks of checkboxes.
It's a small thing, but when you're using some of our batch actions it can really make a difference.
I don't know where to post questions, but this is the only URL I received from GoDaddy support.
I thought I would try this and think it is generally easy and fast to use, and that is really great.
Some questions:
How can I get just one photo to appear on the Home page with text, and then have other photos appear after the jump (when the user clicks "MORE"?
When can you fix the bug where the date appears as the actual posting date, and not the date that the publisher choses?
Thanks much!
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There's currently no explicit way to do an after-the-jump style separation of content à la WordPress. Your best bet, which is not a bad idea at all, is to put your first photo and any text in the "Excerpt" field and then that plus the rest of the entry in the "Body" field as you normally would. Templates currently default to the "Excerpt" if that's available and fall back on "Body" if there's nothing in the "Excerpt."
As far as dates go, I'm not sure of the problem. I tried creating a brand new entry with a date different than today as well as updating an existing entry with a different date and both instances had the correct—the one I explicitly specified—date for the entry. Could you elaborate?
Hope that helps, Bill
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Thanks Bill,
I tried your "Excerpt" idea, but the photo is not included in the excerpt. How exactly did you get the photo included?
On the dates, the correct date is shown once you click on "more" to make the jump, but on the home page, it's the time of actual publish, you see that too? The home page date needs to match the date desired at time of publish.
Thanks
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It appears that it's not copying the <img> tag from the text box to the excerpt box, so you'd have to do it manually. The easiest way is to click on the "HTML" button underneath the text box, find the <img> tag that you want, and paste it into the "Excerpt" field. That will get you what you want until an upcoming release fully solves your problem. Sorry to be coy, but that's the best I can suggest for the time being.
I see the date problem now. Our templates are using different tags on the main page and the entry page. I'll fire off a request to our Creative team and let you know when that's available.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Bill
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Great! Thanks Bill,
Just to tell you, on my PC (running XP) the mouse hover over the HTML indication did not change the curser to the little hand, indicating that it was a link.
Can you tell me what the format is to enter URLs to ping? Should they just be separated by a comma? Should it be the "home" page of the domain?
There is another little bug: when I make text into a link, the font is changed to something much smaller. Is there a tag I can use to force the link and keep the font I want?
Also, how can I get a link to open a new window (Another tag question)?
Can I send you an email with my stupid tag questions?
Thanks much!
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URLs to ping's format is, if I remember correctly (and I'll double check this when I work on stuff later tonight), separation by commas, spaces, or semicolons. The field is intended to only be used for trackbacks and ping services. If you're not sure what to put in there, you probably don't need to do anything. By default, we ping a whole bunch of services to let them know that you've updated your blog. Also, we automatically check every link in your entry for potential trackbacks—the setting "Enable trackback autodiscovery." For the curious, we closely follow the specification for this.
I haven't seen the behavior you mention about link's changing, but I'll look into it. Also, if you want links to open in a new window, you can use the link button in the rich text editor and set the URL target to "New Window."
You're quite welcome, Bill
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Just checked and the URLs can be separated by a space, comma, semicolon, or pipe ("|").
So there you go, Bill
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Hi Bill,
OK, it sounds like there is no need to worry about the ping field.
Also, the link text changing size is due to viewing the page with Firefox. Have not yet tested to see if that is also why I see links that don't open a new window...
But, you know we all love Firefox, right? ;-)
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Glad to hear that. Just so you know, I develop exclusively in Firefox and then test my stuff in Internet Explorer.
Thanks, Bill
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I was also wondering:
How can I increase the font of the blog entry title?
How can I customize the sidebar, at least for background colors?
Is there a way to make a favorite template more narrow, like some of the other ones? (Fit better on a low-res screen)
Thanks again!
Rob
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Sadly, I have to answer: no, no, no. :-) But here's what I'm taking away from this: "Make everything customizable!" The blog layout and templates are about the least customizable thing in the blog. If it's any consolation, we use Quick Blog ourselves and we want it to be more customizable as well. I'm afraid I can't really go into more detail, but I very much appreciate knowing what parts you'd like to customize.
Keep up the great feedback! Bill
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Just wanted to know if Quick Blog is working on becoming more customizable. I'm will to stick around with the knowledge that improvements in ability to customize are in the horizon.
Thanks. Keep up the good work.
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I'm glad that you like things so far. I really can't speak about future improvements, but I think I can say that the Quick Blog team loves customization.
Hang in there, Bill
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Ive sent this email to the suggestions team on Godaddy. You mentioned you want to know what specific things should be more customizable, and thats what my email is about:
After using Blogger.com for my blog I got used to a very intuitive administrative tool. Now, that Ive decided to go on my own, paying for a (dot)com and hosting, I face this administrative tool that is very tedious and limited. I require a more versatile administrative tool, here are the following suggestions that I would like implemented into my Quick Blog (taking blogger.com as example):
1. Give me a better text editor. I cant center my text, cant change text color, cant really move the picture around. When I add a picture, I cant center it, I have to place the picture twice once at the top of the page, and the, I hit enter, and upload it once more. This is done for it to appear on the main page and the permalink, because If not, It wont appear on one or the other (try it), this should simply work without having to do this "cheat"
2. The picture java uploader app doesn't resize and positions the pictures where I want them (check blogger for examples) I have to do this manually, and when I resize them, loss of quality is consequential, and I cant click on the image to see the original size.
3. I think making it java makes it very slow.
4. The template editor is very slow and tedious. If I dont want to place text where it says "text text..." I just erase the text, but the space stays there. I would also love to be able to edit the HTML code, (like in blogger) letting me modify some aspects and adding others.
5. Have more templates, but again, If there was an HTML code editor, one could fix things up a little. And also let me see a preview of each template, I can only see them as small little icons.
6. Make the statistics more complete, with countries, unique ips. But again, if there where a HTML code editor, I could contract a third party statistics gathering service.
Look at blogger.com, they know how its done, check It, and make yours even better. =) Please take these suggestions into account, because the posting process is very tedious and Ive paid for one year hosting.
Thank you for your time.
Pedro Wunderlich
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Pedro,
Thank you for taking the time to highlight areas in which we could improve Quick Blog. Your comments with regards to the text editor and the templates have been seen by the developers, and everyone else that reads this blog:)
With regards to the implementation of images ,their editing and greater control of the text editor we'll examine ways in which we can improve upon this. Presently you can switch from design to HTML mode and place the colour / formatting options within each post but I concede this is not the friendliest way to allow this.
The provision of manual editing for templates is an area we're keen to implement and would address the majority of observations within your post.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
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Thanks for reading. Ive found a way around the color of the text, I use the blogger text editor where I write write the post, highlight the text, chose the color of the text, and then copy-paste it into my blog, publish it, and "whala!" instant microwave dinner.
Check out my page: www.nukesandcandy.com color text =).
Yea I know its not such a big deal, but its working, and keeping me from breaking my computer out of frustration.
works like a charm, anything else in the form of hacks that I find, I shall post.
Pedro Wunderlich
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Glad you found a temporary fix! By strange coincidence, the team was just checking out your blog today as we combed through our "newest blog" report. It's a great domain!
Thanks for the suggestions, Bill
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Just for the record: I agree absolutely with the entry posted by Pedro. A also came from Blogger and I am really surprised that QickBlog service is in some aspects less effective and handable than the other one. Specially since Blogger is a free service.
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