Quick Blog 1.2.2 Release
Greetings and salutations
We’ve released some new features into your Quick Blog.
The first feature, and the reason many of you are even reading this page, is a Feedback link within Quick Blog. While it's not exactly hard to include a link within the page, we've elevated this link’s importance since it's your route to directly interacting with the Quick Blog team. Any comments or feedback you have about your Quick Blog features or operation are read, and responded to, by the team.
For example, our first "real" new feature,”remember me," came from one of our earliest bloggers. We had no idea how much the lack of this feature bugged us until it was brought to our attention. This feature saves your frequent commentators having to type out their information on every comment -- provided they are using the same computer/ browser.
For those people with multiple authors – another benefit of the paid blog -- we've changed the new comment notification to go to all authors that have requested such notification. Previously, this had only been sent to the main account holder.
We’ve combined “subscribe to blog/entry” into a single sidebar item, allowing more space for your blogroll/other sidebar items.
We’ve also redesigned the settings section to group similar items in a tabbed format and increased the timeout on the write entry page.
Quick Blog Team.
Thanks for the "remember me" feature. I think you meant the suggestion came from one of your earliest, more brilliant, bloggers? Regardless, my readers are happy - and I've given you praise in a post.
Funny post, by the way. We will try to earn your dedication!
Thanks, Bill
I need to drive traffic to my blog is go daddy going to assist their bloggers in this regard?
That is an excellent question! We do two things—off the top of my head—that will help you out. First, every time you post or update an entry, we ping eight services to let them know about it. If you start up a brand new blog, you'll quickly see traffic from sites like blog.gs, Weblogs.com, Technorati, among others. (We just bring them to you; the content you write is what will ultimately drive traffic.)
Second, we also do what's called trackback autodiscovery by default. That means that whenever you link to a blog from one of your entries, we go to that blog site and attempt to notify the blog that you've done so. Many sites will display those trackbacks on the individual entry pages where both search engines and visitors can follow the links.
We are, of course, bloggers ourselves so you better believe that we'll continue to explore new ways to drive traffic. I can't go into them but if you keep an eye on this blog (may I suggest one of our feeds?) we'll definitely be trumpeting them here.
Thanks, Bill
Hi Folks,
I love Blog 2.0 except for one thing.
The color of the text is grey, which makes it very difficult to read. And since blogging is all about reading, well, it defeats the purpose slightly.
Could you pls look into this as otherwise I'l have to move to Typepad.
The interface is great and the category setup is a breeze.
But, could you pls look into the text color. You can see it on my site at http://webmarketing.ivanwalsh.com/
thanks
Ivan
Greetings, Thanks for your comments with regards to the grey text on your template. We'll take a look at the color choices available for this template and see if there's a way to increase the legibility or provide a method by which the user can chose the color. In the short term changing to another template that has a darker font should improve the legibility for you. Regards John Quick Blog Team.
I agree with Ivan. They grey is hard on the eyes.
And I am anxiously awaiting more templates and options...hopefully they aren't too far off?
I can't get mobile blogging to work to save my soul. What gives??
Greetings,
Thanks for your recent mail with regards to the mobile blogging. While I can't discern what issue you are having from the brief description I'll go through the most likely causes
Firstly can you go into Manage blog /settings and select the mobile tab. Enter your password for the mail acct if it's not already present, then click test connection. If this step fails please check the mail server information/ user id and password and try again. If the connection works, follow the on screen instructions to save the pass again then navigate to another tab. When you return to the mobile tab you will be asked for a confirmation code. This code was sent to your remote mail address . After you have saved the code you can now send remote mail from any address that's already known to Quick Blog ( ensure the author has permission to send remote entries)
Quick Blog will download and delete mail from the mobile mail account so your chosen email account should dedicated to this feature. If you let me know which step you are encountering difficulties with I'll be able to respond in greater detail.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I talked to tech support and they said for some reason my encryption key wasn't being transmitted. best, mb
Greetings,
Glad to hear it's working for you, happy posting.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
Mobile blogging is still not working, even after three lengthy tech calls. I don't think the call center people know much about this yet
Mark,
I'm sorry to hear this issue wasn't resolved re my comments in a prior post. After your initial post we found that there was a delay in the authorization mails which has now been resolved. With regards to the ongoing set up of the remote mail retrieval I'd like call you, at your convenience to ensure you can get this working.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
How do i get my offline blog editor to work with my blog site?
There is currently no support for offline blog editors like ecto among others. We will definitely consider this for a future upgrade.
Thanks, Bill
Hi, Is there a way to list comments by newest first (on top) within each entry?
Thanks
Greetings,
Indeed there is a way to do this. Go into your manage blog, settings , then click on the discussion tab. The bottom option "view comments as" can be set to linear which will give you view required. You can see this in action towards the top of this page.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
After seeing the huge ads on top of your blog pages, including the one I just constructed, I doubt I will be using this service from GoDaddy.
While I commend your efforts, the other free services (like typepad.com and blogspot.com) are much sleeker and less obtrusive with their ads. I would bet that you are losing a number of prospective bloggers because of your huge, unnecessary ads.
You logo of the guy with the freaked-out hair, perhaps accompanied by a little bit of text (i.e. "GoDaddy Blogs) would be more than enough to get the point across. Why you have to make something so gaudy instead is puzzling to me.
I can understand your perspective. I also know that it would be great if we could give blogs to all domain registrants without any ads. But the bills must be paid and there's going to be some ads with the free version.
We're sorry that we couldn't satisfy your needs in this matter.
Thanks for your domain registration at least! Bill
You didn't understand my post. I didn't say "no ads"; I said, smaller, less obtrusive ads that would still get the point across, but be less of a rolling billboard and impose on the blog.
I would ask that you send that suggestion up the chain of command. Did you notice that I gave a suggestion, and not just criticism?
Your logo has great recognition - you can use it/capitalize on it, rather than shoving ads at people (pushing them away).
I did understand what you were getting at, but I figured that the core issue is ad versus no ad. If we made it smaller, someone would still think it's too big. I realize that you are fine with smaller ads, but plenty of people don't like any ads at all.
This has been up and down the chain of command. We wrestled with this before Quick Blog was ever released. There's two other factors that you probably aren't aware of: 1) Quick Blog is available through all of our resellers and so rebranding is vital and 2) we've had few (if any) complaints about the layout of the ads.
It probably goes without saying but the removal of those ads is just an upgrade away and the price is fantastic at just $2.95/month.
I understand your concerns and appreciate your suggestion, Bill
So you've been in meetings where the core issue is ads vs. no ads. Too many meetings, obviously, because that's not what I'm saying. Make the ads smaller. You still get your point across, but its less obtrusive.
Your whole argument about "if we made them smaller people would still complain" is a straw man. You don't know that. However, what you do know is you have one customer who is saying an ad that is 50% smaller than it is now would get his usage. Totally different - one is assumptive, the other is real.
Most people vote with their feet, so they won't complain - they just won't use your service. It's not worth their time to do what I'm doing right now. I could have done that, but I chose to tell you why I'm not using your service before I left. Why? Because I actually like your company, and want to help.
Let me ask you this question - how many people see an ad that never gets shown? Zero. Following this reasoning, a smaller ad is much more likely to be seen than no ad at all. I hope you see this.
It's a shame that you receive feedback in this manner, reacting so negatively to it. I'm surprised. I would have expected something much more positive and open from GoDaddy. I guess I'll have to change my idea of who you are as a company.
I am sorry that you took my response as negative. It was definitely not intended that way. I was actually trying to be more open about the thought that went into this. I'm also sorry if I gave the impression that we did not value your feedback; I know that most people don't bother to complain and that those who do are golden opportunities.
The ads were always a given on the free version of Quick Blog. It came down to a desire to have Google Ads as well as our own and reseller links. Given those two requirements, we made them as small as we could and then we made them smaller again in a later release. I'm pretty sure that no one here wants them to be any bigger than they have to be.
I'll float the issue again and see what we can do. Again, I am very sorry if I seemed argumentative; I was only trying to explain.
Keep on blogging, Bill
You have to understand that people are taking the time (their time) to tell you how they feel. They haven't been to the umpteen-hundred meetings you have.
The way I look at it, the first line of interactive support should be the advocate for the customer. You should be behaving as if what we say is important, and let the company know how we feel.
I felt dismissed by you, and I have to tell you that this going back and forth has worn me out. I don't care to interact with companies as a whole just for this very reason. I will fee much less inclined to do so with your company because of this. The only reason I bothered this time is because you are GoDaddy, and I thought you were different.
IMO, you should have been my advocate from my first post here, and you should have said you would take my idea or suggestion into your next meeting. The fact that you finally did that is encouraging, but I have to say that you've probably lost me in the process.
Good luck with your endeavor.
I’m Bill's as well as Quick Blog’s development manager and can assure you that your comments regarding the advertising banner atop Quick Blog have been passed to the marketing department for their review.
I'm sorry that we may lose you as a customer and wish you the best for the future.
Regards,
Quick Blog Team
i am really disappointed in my quick blog. i am definitely getting all of my $3/mo out of it. problems include:
- blog name cannot be changed. it says "greg@javaone" when i changed it to "genworth@javaone".
- the templates are primative and too small. some templates have 2 slots for "your picture here" while others have no slots and others have one. What if you only have 1 picture to insert? Then you are left with a panel that says "Your picture here" and there is no blank panel.
- there is no way to turn off the defunct Trackbacks feature
- why are people subscribing to blogs/entries? shouldnt they just subscribe to blogs only? its so annoying to see 6 entries for xml/rss
- the calendar is non-functional. should have a list of events that can occur. for example, i plan to be in san francisco for the javaone conference. i want a blog associated with may 16-19 so people can see what i have planned.
- set up is so difficult. i have spent hours setting up a template. then when i decided i had all the settings the way i wanted it, i didnt like the template and switched. all my template settings (like email) were lost
- the email feature doesn't work at all. i set it up and never got a confirmation email.
- users have to leave a frickin' pint-o-blood in order to leave a comment. i only expect coworkers to comment. do they have to enter 5 bits of info to do so? can't i turn off the security code?
- the image editing is so bizarre as to be unusable. sometimes it would replace an image other times it would insert an image.
- the only reason i use your software is because blogger is in front of the corporate firewall and i can set up a godaddy.com blogger that everyone can see. i have written my own blogger software in php that was easier to use and there are several free versions on the internet that i can install into my own server. i expect a lot more from a product i pay a monthly service fee for.
First off, thank you for your helpful comments. We were sincere when we asked for feedback. We know that you have a lot of choices when you blog and we thank you for blogging with us.
This format doesn't lend itself to a point-by-point addressing of your concerns, but it seems in order. If you want any elaboration, we'd be happy to contact you directly to discuss it.
We would be happy to contact you personally, if you'd like. Just leave a comment with your contact information (which we'll delete from moderation) and we'll be in touch.
Thanks again, Bill
1. Does Quick Blog allow CSS editing for self-customization?
2. Typepad's 3 column format looks alot better than Quick Blog.
Quick Blog does not allow CSS editing at this time. Is there something specific you'd like to edit the styling of or just a general desire?
Regarding templates, can you give me an example of a TypePad blog that uses a three-column format effectively? I'm inclined to think that two sidebars is a little navigation heavy, but I'm not against it as such. And as far as the templates go, we've heard the feedback loud and clear.
Thanks for your comment, Bill
I would like to see the ability to change templates without losing the customizations. Perhaps there could be groups of templates that would have the same characteristics, but different graphics, etc.
Thanks,
Dane
Dane,
Thanks for the suggestion with regards to persisting the user's customizations over a set of similar templates. We're taking a close look at improvements that we can make to the template system to make customization easier overall rather than extending the same same template with many variations on a theme. Either way I agree with the basic request and we'll consider its inclusion within a future release.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team