Template Tweaks
Greetings and salutations,
· The number of comments and trackbacks are now displayed beside their respective links on the main entry page.
· We now link to the websites of users that fill in their site information when commenting.
· We’ve changed the feed graphic from XML to 
which is fast becoming the standard icon to indicate the presence of syndicated content. As an added bonus, this neatens up the feed sidebar item on many templates and may lead to less people asking you “What is XML?” I know this was becoming a pain in the RSS for some of you.
There have been several small adjustments to spacing and positioning throughout the templates, though none are exciting enough to warrant their own bullet point.
Hi. I'm interested in using the quickblog feature, however I'd like to know how much can you customize the templates, etc. Can I add pictures or graphics in "non standard" places? I.E. Not the top banner, but maybe on the left hand side of the page somewhere.
Mike,
Presently the customization of the templates is confined to the header area and the position of the image / text area within the template chosen. We're continually looking into ways of improving our templates and will pass your comments along to the designers for consideration.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
John,
Thanks for responding! Since you're going to pass something along to the developer anyway, I have a few other suggestions!!
I'm just playing around with it so far, but a couple things that come to mind are:
The ability to choose our own colors.
The ability to remove certain section of text that I don't want to fill in. It seems like now, even if I remove the "put your text here" in the customize template area, it still allocates that section and just leaves it blank.
Otherwise its great!
thanks again.
I have a similar question ,Although I would like to maybe minimize the top banner or move it somewhere, because when you log on to my site, you have to scroll way down in order to view the site and Im worried that people are going to get aggravated
Ginny,
Thanks for your comments with regards to the templates and the top banner's position within them.
Most people will read your blog from the RSS feed itself and while there are many differing template types where many have thinner top bars we don't yet have the editing ability within the designer to move these around for the blog it's a suggestion we've had on several occasions and is certainly being considered for a future update.
This of course doesn't apply to free blogs with the ad banner which well you've identified the reason that it needs to be there.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
Hi guys!
Just making a few efforts to get my Blog up & running. So far it's been an exercise in Frustration.
I just looked at something I publishied & the text is running into the coloured margins - U can't show crap like that to the Public!!
oh yoy!
& across the top of the Blog instead of the usual pervasive Go Daddy ads is an Ugly "Server Not Found".
I'm sure if anyone in the world is aware of the old saying "Time = $$Money" it's Bob Parson's of Go Daddy!
So what gives here??
Billy ,
The image used on the "create something out of nothing"entry is too large for the template causing the unfortunate effect noticed here. Reducing the size of the picture should restore the template.
I've been unable to replicate the "server not found" message with regards to the top banner on the blog but will look into it. Hopefully this will reduce the frustration factore.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
Hi John!
i think this has been answered but i wanted to add a Flickr Badge & some other "outside" Buttons but i don't think any HTML code can be added to the Templates right??
what about adding Google AdSense ads??
Greetings,
It's certainly something that we're addressing and we're looking into accommodating all of the features/ behavior you've highlighted with relattion to expanding what content you can place on the sidebar.
At present Quick Blog doesn't support user html within the templates. While there would still be restrictions on the the use of adsense / other marketing material on the free blog the paid blog would allow you to place any legal advert / content
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
Would like to add google ads to my blog. Are you looking at this capability soon?
Gary
Yes, it is definitely something we're interested in offering. We've got some things that need to happen first to lay the groundwork, but it's going to be happening sooner than later. Is that cryptic enough for you? :-)
Thanks, Bill
What is the expected timing of being able to publish a flickr photos to my blog?
or be able to put HTML into my sidebars or headers?
David,
Firstly with regards to being able to publish from Flickr(TM) are you referring to their "Blog this" feature? If so we're examining the feasibility of adding this feature into a future release.
We've received several requests to provide the ability to add html to the sidebars and header area but I'm afraid I don't have the expected timeframe for its inclusion available.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Is there anyway to upload your own CSS file?
I have tried top connect via the FTP protocol, but no luck.
There is no way to upload your own CSS file, but I would think that any general customization scheme would include some sort of CSS editing. I honestly had never thought about allowing the upload of a custom CSS file, but I really like the notion. If you're a designer or can muddle through CSS, it could be a nice way to drastically alter the look of your site in one fell swoop.
Quick Blog is a hosted application and so we cannot possibly allow FTP access to it. It's possible at some point that we could create a version that would integrate with our shared hosting programs, but there's nothing on the horizon in that regard.
Thanks for the suggestion, Bill
Thats just it, though, you cant change anything with the CSS.
We are restricted to what you guys have putout. Alot of people do know CSS and would love to be able to used their own CSS file. At least be able to LINK to it. You could easily put something int he "customizeable" par that you could do a CSS Link, and have that generated into the main Blogfile.
Right. There are a lot of ways to implement customizable CSS and you've given me several that I hadn't considered. I'll keep them in mind when we start our Great March to Customization.
Thanks! Bill
What's the deal! I am no longer able to format my entries. The tool bar to spell check, to change font, to add pictures or hyperlinks doesn't exist any more. This is vital to my keeping my blog on this site. Help me out. Please email me a response.
There's two possibilities (without knowing the specifics): 1) you're using a browser that the rich text editor doesn't support, which is anything other than IE for Windows and Mozilla/Firefox on all platforms or 2) you've inadvertently changed the "Default editor" setting from "Rich" to "Simple," which you can check on the Settings > Entry Settings tab.
Let us know if there's something else going on, Bill
Nobody has the TIME to wait yer talkin about!!
Quick Blog is a CLOSED SYSTEM designed to keep ALL the $$$ for Go Daddy*
the world doesn't work like that anymore*
Wake Up & Smell da coffee*
We're sorry that we couldn't have this blogging engine offer everything we'd have liked it to at version 1.0. We had to make certain choices to get it out to market as quickly as we did (we went from 0.0 to 1.0 in 6 months). There are certain things that just take time and our competitors have had plenty of that—Blogger is 8 years old, MovableType is 5, and WordPress is 3 (5 if you count its ancestor, b2). We released on December 16, 2005.
Personally, I think we've come a long way and there are certain things that we have that trump what else is out there. We've got a long way to go and we certainly appreciate any amount of patience our customers can muster. We are all users of this blogging tool as well and we want it to succeed just as badly as you do—okay, way more actually.
Hang in there, Bill
Im please with the majority of features of Quick Blog, and I am pleased to announce that my page, after 5 days, has received 2,000+ hits.
Now it is obvious that when success begins to climb, one begins to think about advertising.
My question: How can I add advertising to my blog if I cant touch the HTML code?
The second question is I would like to know when the Quick Blog update I hear of is going to be released?
Greetings Pedro,
First congratulations on the blog and building a solid readership in such a short period. I'm unable to provide a direct answer regarding the next Quick Blog update though it's very much sooner, rather than later. As soon as I'm free to discuss the next release I'll post an entry with the new additions.
Regarding the ability to monetize your blog I'm aware that the ability to customize the blog to allow users to advertise ,display affiliate links or even place a Flickr bug within their blog is of great importance. Such a feature is being considered for inclusion at the earliest opportunity.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
Thank You for the promt reply, and its great to know you guys are working on what your costumers are asking for.
Keep up the good work.
I was wondering are you going to add the ability to stream RSS Feeds to the blog sites? I have an account with digg and would like what I digg to come to my blog site.
Thanks,
Daniel
Daniel ,
Thanks for the suggestion regarding the ability to pull in third party content to your Quick Blog.
I'm keen to extend the abilities of Quick Blog owners so that owners can pull in their own choice of content such as the ability to display feeds with links, news or thumbnails from their photo album within the sidebar section. I don't have a timeframe at presently for the inclusion of this feature but it's certainly one we're considering for an upcoming release.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I am trying to figure out whether to stick with Godaddy's QuickBlog or not. I really like the statistical information but the other missing features above are pretty crucial (advertising, html in header and sidebar, rss feeds, etc). I can wait for a while but can't wait for a six months to a year. Any type of timing indication would be really helpful.
Sadly, we cannot give even hints of time frames. As John said in a previous comment, this 1.2.3 release lays the foundation for advertising and the like. I think you'll see the walls and framing go up pretty quickly. :-)
Thanks for your patience, Bill
Since this seems to be a sort of wish list: I'm going to be posting a lot of photographs on my blog. I would like a way to organize my uploaded pictures into folders. As far as I can tell everything is going to be on big pile and that will get difficult.
Also, I would like to be able to disable the right click to download function.
Being able to change the template colors to match my website would be nice.
Thanks for all the suggestions! This is why I love having a blog: we ask, you guys tell us. I'll add all this to the future functionality list.
Keep 'em coming, Bill
Do the blogs have secure login if you wanted it not to be made public?
I'm not sure I fully understand your question. If you're asking whether we have a secure login process, then yes it is using standard SSL just for authentication/login. If you're asking whether there's a way to make your blog inaccessible to the public without logging in, then the answer is no. This sort of functionality is definitely on our radar and if you would be so kind as to lay out the sort of scenario you're thinking about it would be enormously helpful.
Thanks a lot, Bill
want to setup family blog and have it only viewable and accessable for family
need secure ids for logon
Greetings Tom,
Sorry for the delay in replying to your comment. Presently we don't have this feature within the blogcast but there is good news. We're working on private blogs for a future release that follows that model.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast team.
Spell check doesn't seem to be working. I click to change the typo but the change does not take effect.
The text is bumps hard against the left margin (color bar)of the page. It would be more attractive and easier to read if there was a one space padding between the left margin and the first character of text.
Gary,
We may need more information regarding the browser type / operating system that you're experiencing the spell check issue with. I've made several typos within this reply ( on purpose of course;) ) and the errors were identified and my chosen replacement selected.
Thank you for the feedback with regards to the layout of the pages we'll take a look at this for inclusion in a future release.
Thank
Regards
John Quick Blog team
Hi, I haven't been able to repeat the error. Probably a lack of caffine user error.
I do have a useablility comment. Why is the editing window so small? This isn't unique to Quickblog, when I tried Blogger it was as bad or worse. When I add images to the post it can get pretty cramped and I can only see a line or two above and below the picture. The need to keep scrolling makes editing harder than it has to be. I can send you a screen shot it you want it.
Gary,
I wish I could send you some good caffeine but the developers may take exception:) Now onto the usability comment . I believe you,I've encountered a similar situation , and agree that this is an area for improvement which we are considering for an upcoming release.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I currently am using the photoblog template and enjoying it. Several comments from friends say they like it as well.
Would like to suggest a template change to the photoblog template so photographs are referred to as photographs instead of as Articles.
For example, if a viewer wishes to add a comment about a photo I've posted, they are asked: "What did you think of this Blog Article." Obviously it's a photograph; not an article.
They can go to add their comments, but it's confusing when a photo is referred to as an article.
Thanks,
Joe A.
Houston
Joe,
First I'm glad to hear that you are enjoying the Quick Blog and that you have taken the time to suggest a way we can make it friendlier. We are certainly looking into ways to extend the customization of the templates and the "fixed" labels for many of the items such as comments, trackbacks for example. It would seem logical to extend this to allow users to rename "articles" to their choice. Sadly just changing this template to call articles "photo" would prove equally confusing to people that aren't posting images within this template. Keep watching for updates:)
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
How about some more constructive (I hope) criticism of Quickblog.
I usually upload five or six images at a time. How about increasing the upload funtion past four images.
The uploaded images should be displayed with the most recently uploaded images FIRST. Eventually I'm going to have hundreds of images on this blog. The images I just uploaded are the ones I'm adding to the current post yet for each image I have to click around to get to the back end of my Image gallery.
In the long term it would be much more efficient to have a folder system for uploading and managing images on the blog.
The editing screen. When you open a new post there is no blinking cursor anywhere, even after you click on the edit window the cursor doesn't show.
Another annoyance is the SAVE button kicking me out to the management screen. I save regularly to protect my work and want to keep editing. How about a new button, Save and Upload to go out to the Mgmt screen. Or a new Save and Edit button if you don't want to alter the current Save function. I already mentioned that the window should be much larger but I think I'll say it again.
Thanks for listening.
Gary,
Greetings and thanks for the feedback( yes it's constructive ) with regards to the image uploading. You're right on both counts that the order in which the images are displayed is counter intuitive , after all it's reasonable that you would want the most immediate item in most cases as would a general rethink of the image management section.
The save button , there's a long story behind that one, the write entry page itself should never time out but obviously that's not the safest method to ensuring your articles safety. Would you find an autosave feature useful in lieu of a separate save / continue button?
The lack of the blinking cursor has been noted and it's inclusion in a future release, as with all the great points mentioned above, are now under consideration. Wide, we got it:)
John
Quick Blog Team
since image uploading has been already brought up, I host my images on my smugmug gallery and they have the option of giving me a link of any of my images to post on forums and blogs. when I attempt to do so here using the [IMG] tag, it will not show the image in my blog, only the text. I also would like to show several images at a time but really don't want to have to save images from my gallery to my hard drive and then insert them. Is there something I'm missing or is this feature enabled? Thanks
Nathan,
If you could give me an example of a full url from Smugmug that you are wishing to embed and I can send a step by step way to implementing it. One easy way of creating blog posts that I would recommend is using an external client such as Window's live writer to place the images in and make a link/ load it directly to your blog's disk space.
While [img] is not recognised by the blog <img> is and I wonder if that's where the problem is? If you could send a link my way, and the steps you are taking to embed it, and I'll get a step by step point back to you .
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
thanks for the assist....here is a link from my gallery that I tried to post tonight...
http://Photographics.smugmug.com/photos/17449082-S.jpg
what I was trying to do initially was similar to what I do on other forums:
[IMG]http://Photographics.smugmug.com/photos/17449082-S.jpg[/IMG]
but that does not work so any suggestions you can give would be helpful...
Nathan,
Many forums use [img] as a convention but it's not one we currently support. Other than posting remotely to the blog by email , with images attached, or using a blog client such as Live Writer then it's a manual process.
As you are writing you click on HTML at the bottom of the write entry page then where you would like to place the image add in < img src ="http://Photographics.smugmug.com/photos/17449082-S.jpg"> and then return to design mode. I'll certainly be taking a look at making this process easier.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
How about flash? I like to add some videos to my blog, apparently, I can't. Pictures gallery won't work, file gallery will put a link to the file(I want it to be displayed in my post, not in a link) and upload the file on the server and add the html code in the post just show a big white square. Is there a restriction? Thanks a lot!
Greetings,
Thanks for the question re adding videos to the blog. Firstly we do have people using Quick Blog that have files hosted via You Tube with this functionality working as you describe. Running the file locally, e.g on the blogs storage, may not be as succesful. Depending on how you are calling the movie there may be issues re what the player expect to see. This really falls without the remit of this blog but I'll mail you for further information and we'll see if we can get this working for you.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Would like to see the ability to change font color for entries. Many of the templates do a very light gray that is quite hard on readers. Thanks.
Greetings Jill,
Thank you for you comments on Quick Blog and the color choice on the main body text.
While there are a few templates that have black "ink" on a light background we've received feedback such as yours regarding the lack of contrast on those templates showing a light grey compounded by the inability to change it.
This is certainly a change we're considering for a future release. If we enact such a change you may need to republish your existing template and we'll provide further information on this blog at the appropriate time.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I was hoping to add Feedburner's FeedFlares to my posts and template. Looks like Quickblog doessn't support this. I think it's costing me a lot of viewers, and no one can easily add me to del.icio.us or Technorati. If I could install the FeedFlare, all of the other problems would be solved. Any chance that this will be incorporated?
You're the second person to ask for this. I wasn't aware that FeedFlares were available for blog entries themselves; I thought they were just added to FeedBurner's version of our feeds. That's pretty slick.
That said, our current templating system does not really lend itself to this sort of thing. But I think we've made it abundantly clear throughout comments and entries that there is plenty of room for improvement in the templates. So I would say there's a good chance this will be implemented in the future. That's as committal as I can get.
Thanks for the feedback! Bill
I would like to add my voice to the CSS customization feature request. For us, the heading fonts are way too small and the colors don't always work. Yes, we can change the text size for the entry, but then the heading looks very strange. In our opinion the ability to change our CSS is an absolute must have - and technically, it seems it should be pretty straightforward.
We would like to see something very simple implemented at first -- like adding a "Style Sheet" option to the "Customize Blog" section.
Thanks!
I add my voice to the other comments about being able to better edit the templates. I've got to move from another blogging service and I've spent a ton-load of time on getting that thing set up to pretty much match my website. I have yet to find another service that'll give me what I want, and I'd love QuickBlog to be that service since I'm already with GoDaddy on so many other things.
Greetings Carol,
Thanks for your comment on the templates and the ability to edit them. Presently our editing opportunities are likely not going to be able to replicate your current blog exactly , specially if they have navigation outwith the sidebar though it's an item I'm keen to see resolved in the near future. It looks like a Cold Fusion blog / solution on your site so any hosted blog site may not have the full abilities you are looking for and setting up a blog on a hosting account rather than a managed one would get you closer to what I think your needs are. Then again we're free to try with a domain so give us a whirl if you have the time.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I get failure reports every day from feedburner. They say that there is a problem with the template in that the html code isn't readable by most rss feeds and it keeps timing out.
I would like more flexibility with the templates too. For instance, I have a wide banner that only works on one or two of the templates. Being restricted as they are limits my choices.
The other annoying thing I've noticed (on my own and other blogs hosted here) is that the timeout function happens regularly when commenting and you have to re-enter the security code. This happens even if I've just finished typing. I've had several people tell me they're so frustrated they don't bother leaving comments.
Sherri,
First I'd like to apologise for the delay in reply. I ran your feed through feedvalidator.org and came up with errors relating to the Youtube video that is embedded but still claimed it to be a valid feed. If you could temporarily move that item to a draft out, save that, then see if the error still exists within www.feedvalidator.org or feedburner. If you are still seing issues with timing out ( which we had just resolved prior to your post) please let me know and I'll look into this further
I agree with you on the templates and you may have noticed we've replaced over a third of our templates with CSS variants which will make it possible to offer those features at a later date. The timeout comment issue has been resolved last week and no longer bumps you out after 20 minutes, write entry and reply to comment should have the same protection. We have 1/3rd solved
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Hi Guys...
Is there anyway I can get a Google site verefication Meta tag into the head section of my Quickblog? I don't seem to have too much control over placing things in the head section. I need to place a Meta tag there so I can use the Google Site maps. I've tried putting it in the meta custom section, but Google always says it can't locate it. When I do a view source, I can't find it anywhere either. I have your deluxe hosting plan for my website, digitalscenic.com and doing things like this are a breeze.
Thanks for any help.
Tom Sheehan
Greetings Tom,
I've had success with this method in the past , just tried it out and it still seems to be working. You can add the script to the sidebar in one of our custom text boxes and leave the "show on website" box unchecked. Drag it over to the active side and save the page. Get into your Google account and run the verification again.
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"><br></script><br><script type="text/javascript"><br>_uacct = "UA-55555555-2";<br>urchinTracker();<br></script>
We're looking at making this a more obvious feature in a future release.
Regards
John
QBC team
Thanks so much! :)
I'll try it agaiin this way.
Tom
Hi John, It won't work in the sidebar. I tried a number of ways. Google says it has to be in the head section only. like this:
Your Title
Thanks,
Tom
Tom,
I'll take another look at it as I have one set up in the past on my account. We're planning on adding this feature in an upcoming release , in the same manner we have on our website builder, but I'll see if there's any work around that's possible in the short term.
Regards
John
QBC
It works for me on the sidebar, but you have to place it as the very first entry in the sidebar. since it's hidden, it won't affect the look of your current sidebar....
Nathan ,
Thanks for popping in with the assist. We're still working on adding in an easier way to analytics set up.
Regards
John
QBC team
I would like to add a Google Search function to my left side bar. I've gone to Google, obtained the required Meta Tag and entered it into the first sidebar entry as suggested, and Google still can not verify it.
What else can I try?
Thank You,
Scott
Greetings Scott,
I'll bet back to you after I've Googled the answer. Seriously there's more than one way to add a Google search to the sidebar that they offer and to ensure I'll be giving you relevant information I'd be grateful if you could provide the URL from which you're getting the code.
Regards
John
QBC team
I just started a blog on godaddy.com with blogcast. I had a wordpress blog before (and still do), and I want to add pages to the top of my header like they have in wordpress (they are static pages). Any ideas on how to do this? My blog will eventually be a storefront, and I need to be able to have other tabs. Thanks!
Greetings,
We currently don't have static pages within the Blogcast but we do plan on including them within a future release. Presently the only way to add them is to "fake" it by adding an entry without comment / trackbacks and linking them from the sidebar which I'm afraid is not too close to what you currently wish to acheive. Keep an eye out for this in a future version of the blogcast.
Regards
John
QBC team.
Is it possible to remove or change features involving date creation and blog posts?
Instead of:
www.onlineqbfool./2012/01/01/theend.aspx
Is it possible to have:
www.onlineqbfool/category/theend.aspx
And if this is something that can easily be done or do I need to learn how to create a THEME & CSS template from scratch myself to do this?
Unfortunately it is not possible to remove or change the permalink '../2012/01/01/theend.aspx'. This link is generated using an algorithm to make it a unique for each blog entry.
Thanks so much for your response.