Greetings and Salutations
My name is John which is long for J. I lead the blog development team (some of which you’ve “met” through their posts already) a job made far easier by the talented people that make up the team. After the introductions we’ll be providing “hint and tips” on how to get the best out of the blog, topics that interest the team and a chance to show off the blogs that our users have created using Quick Blog.
I’ve been with GoDaddy.com® for
several years now, originally starting out as a software tester (QA)
and later moving onto the development of the program.
This blog is important to me, and the team, as a chance to interact with the creators that use Quick Blog. I didn’t call you users, consumers or customers, no sane person ever bought a product so they could claim to be a user or customer without expecting some value from that which they devoted their time to. I’d like to reiterate my colleague’s words with regards to providing feedback via this blog; your words have weight here. If there’s a feature we don’t have, or that doesn’t work in the manner you think it should, tell us. Until next time.
John.
I was wondering since you guys who created the software and continue to develop it (which I love deeply, its ease of use and the look it creates is amazing), if there was some where I can post a feature request. If there is none currently then I might as well post it here.
I want to edit the Meta Tags of my website (title, description, keywords) so I can get better response from google and other search engines. I was on the phone with tech support for a while on this and ended up saying I couldnt do it unless I created a gateway website because the blog is a template. Well here I am begging you to add this as a feature to edit the meta tags quickly and easily within quickblog adminstration menu. It should be easy to do right? Well anyway, thank you for the great product and for reading this and your time.
Sincerely
Uncivilized Citizen of TheDocumentarian.com
There's really no forum right now for unsolicited feature requests, so posting a comment to an entry is really the only way to do it. We sure don't mind and feature requests are always on-topic 'round here.
As for your request, it's not exactly easy to do. On the face of it, it's not a big deal. We'd just have to create some customizable parts of the templates—and apply it to all 50 templates (our designers would be the ones doing it, so I'm fine with that part...)—but the tricky part is what to use to populate those fields.
If, for example, we provided a simple set of text fields in the settings section, how would that translate across all of the multitude of pages that a search engine would index for each blog? In other words, those values you entered would be the same on a search page as on an individual entry page. That's would easily be ignored by any search engine worth its salt.
If we allowed you to customize the metadata for each page in turn, it'd be an "accounting" nightmare for everyone because the user would have to manually enter something for every entry as well as the generic pages and we as a blogging engine would have to comb through thousands and thousands of pieces of metadata to associate things properly. We generally try to avoid making the serving of blog pages hard on the system because there's just so many of them and they're so frequently accessed.
That's not to say that it's not feasible. We can do anything we want to because we're programmers. It's just that it's a complicated business that requires the right balance of functionality and simplicity. I'll definitely add it to the list, which we keep in a safe place, though I can't say when it'll get done or what form it will finally take.
Thanks for the feedback; we really do appreciate it! Bill
Greetings,
Thank you for suggestion with regards to adding meta tags for user as well as for the kind comments about the blog . You were indeed in the correct place to make a feature request which will be considered for a future release. If there's anything else you would like to see included within the blog please let us know.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team.
Wow, John, I can't believe you and I are up at midnight answering comments left nine hours before. I'm glad I got mine in first so I didn't look repetitious. ;-)
Bill
Thank you Bill and John for responding to my post and listening to my request. I really appreciate it and I didnt mind its reptitous nature eventhough it was wierd recieving 5 emails from Quickblogging all in a row like that. Now that I know, I'm not shooting in the dark, I will defintely look for more opportunities to request features ;)
Once again, thank you for your time.
BTW I dont need a meta for every page just the front one so I can get some hits from people searching for info on Documentaries and Documentarians, so maybe you can just allowed the header to be html edited at the user's discretion for paying customers only. Everything is easy when you dont have to program it ;)
And while on "vacation" too:)
John
John, Bill
Feature request:
1. Extended reporting (statistics) to show trend over days, how any visitors and graphs showing growth are useful.
2. Pleaes link IP address in statistics to iplocation so we can find out where users are coming from (location)
3. Please add about author on the sidebar so I can put a picture and bio of the author
4. Please provide area in sidebar for ads which I wish to place.
thanks. Otherwise good functional product that is very easy to use. Well done. Keep the good work up.
Greetings,
Bill-John here, er John-Bill sounds too Little house on the Prairie that one, but I digress onto the fun part of the job, improving QuickBlog.
Thank you for taking the time to suggest ways in which we can improve QuickBlog and firstly the good news. Our last release , early Friday AM number four on your list was added to the paid blog.
We now have a sidebar item for those enrolled in the adsense program and a custom text/HTML area for those that wish to use other affiliate links, photo bugs or a myriad of items such as a picture and bio as you mentioned in number three.
We'll consider the stats suggestions for a future release. Please keep a look out for updates.
John
Quick Blog Team
Is it possible to add no-pragma and no cache meta tags (perhaps as options)? I'm having issues with IE caching the background color of a previous design and not showing the new color. Firefox, Safari and other browsers are fine. IE, as the man said, "not so much."
Jesse, Thanks for your feedback and suggestion. We'll consider this for a future release. Regards John Quick Blog Team.
Feature request: Template flexibility.
I can't believe how much time I've spent 'fighting with' the templates! I want a template that allows me to have both an image banner across the top, and a photo on the side. I also want a template that makes full use of at least one of the two sides (unlike this blog, which has 'borders' on both left and right); some templates do that, but have very little flexibility in other areas.
I'd also like an easier way to browse through templates; it's very time-consuming to truly preview a template.
I also went to battle with the templates and after many hours both of us decided to call a truce and focus on what's on the inside of a few of my blogs.
In the long run, I actually learned a few things and because the people here at QB take the time to read and reply to every comment and suggestion, I don't mind sticking around to see just how far QB will rise to.
Greetings,
It shouldn't be a battle.. So let us know what you want to achieve and if it's currently possible we'll help you get there. Not only do we read every comment , we've been known to act on them too
Regards
John
QBC team .
You guys freaking rock!
GoDaddy's Quick Blog support team - customer service done right
Thank you for past support and thank you for future support.
Austin
Austin,
Thank you for your kind words and continued support on behalf of the blog's developers and support staff.
Regards
John
QBC team
Absolutely love working with go daddy and using the blog. I have one question, Will you be adding more templates to our choices of design style?
Everything works so efficiently but seems more challenging to find a template that looks good.
Hi Nicole, our template team is currently working on designing brand new templates that are more flexible and more contemporary in terms of design. In the next few weeks, we will be announcing these new templates as they are released.