Quick Blog 1.2.5 release
Greetings and salutations,
We’ve released Quick Blog 1.2.5 which includes the following updates.
Improvements to Email blogging setup ( paid blog only)
For those of you happily set up with email blogging, you can skip the next paragraph knowing that your feedback led to future Quick blogger’s not having to cut and paste their way through setup.
We received a lot of feedback regarding how onerous it was to set up Quick Blog to receive entries from your mail account. Email Blogging, previously known as “Mobile Blogging” allows you to dedicate an email account to receiving entries that can be posted directly to your blog. The upshot is that your phone, pda, or any device that you can send/receive email through a pop3 account can send entries directly to your blog’s front page which will update with the new entry.( this process is not immediate and it may be 15 minutes or more until your entry is posted.
What you’ll need for this feature is a dedicated email account for the blog to check for new entries and not your regular email account; this would be a very bad thing. How bad? As bad as all mails in the inbox being deleted bad. Since you’re not going to use your main mail account from email blogging let’s not worry about that. Let’s worry about people posting to your blog without your permission. Actually you don’t have to worry about that either. You can require that all posts by email are moderated prior to display while that cramps your immediacy if you’re a solo blogger it does mean that nothing untoward will see the front of your blog. If you wish you can turn moderation off and another protection kicks in. We only allow entries to be posted from a known email address to the blog. E.g. Your account email address or an address belonging to any of your sub-authors. Emails received from unknown accounts are discarded.
In addition we’ve ….
- Expanded time zone support.
- Sub Authors can now mail from the blog, previously this was restricted to blog owners.
- Gallery now orders the images time uploaded, e.g. the last image you upload will always be on page one.
- Total Entry views are now present on the articles statistics page.
Regards
Quick Blog Team.
Hi Folks! Lordy, Lordy am I glad I tracked down this blog! How do I get the new releases 1.2.4 and 1.2.5? I need them desperately. I am a paying customer with Godaddy.com, and boy do I have problems. I attempted to add a Webring link to my sidebar. I got one all right, but the link is shared by both my pages and won't function properly. Not to mention that the banner is HUGE and overlaps into the text area of the page - at least I think it does.Please please tell me how to download or whatever I need to do to update my blog. I have been fighting with my blog trying to get each and every single stupid little thing to functions properly for WEEKS.
Is there somewhere, anywhere on my pages that is NOT shared and won't eventually scroll itself off the page?
Did you know that the sidebar will accept
Speaking of them, why don't you and they get together and have have both sitebuilding and blogging run under the same application? You don't know the trouble I went through trying to link my Website pages to my blog pages. An everything I rebuild navigation over there, I lose my links to my Quick Blog pages.
And another thing - I have SSL for my accounts. So why don't the contact/subscribe pages have password capability? Sorry, I could go on and on. I have been just so frustrated. I work 40 hours a week on graveyard shift, and I am spending 8-10 more hours a day trying to get my pages to function so I can build my online business. I am affiliated with about 10-11 advertisers, and I have run out of places to put ads. H-E-L-L-L-P-P-P!!!
Thanks, Midge
Hi Midge,
Thanks for the comments.I'm going to address these again , briefly
All blogs are always on the latest version. That's one of the key benefits of using a hosted blog like QuickBlog, new features just appear, no downloading, configuring , installing and activating they just appear.
The sidebar issue. I'd really need to see the code being used, or just let me know the webring. So far all the issues I've seen are based in the snippets of code placed in the sidebar having errors or containing items that we don't currently support. While we don't usually trouble shoot these if you let me know the webring / link to the code I'll take a look at it.
SSL. The info on these screens isn't exactly private given that subscribers will be sent the mail in clear format, commenter will have their info on the actual comments.
The part you mentioned about having to rebuild the links is one of the reasons why they are not the same program it would really take a hybrid program , like a content management system, to seemlessly update blog links back into the navigation. That being said WST has an RSS feature which you could configure to look at your blog's feed. That way all the new posts / info would show up, though not in the main navigation. Well that's about a 1/2 what I wrote prior, I'm sure I missed all the good bits but thanks for taking the time to comment and I hope we can at least resolve some of your points within the near future.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
Is there a way to change the side menu size? I'm trying to work in the ads by google but they are smaller than the boxes so it looks funny. This template looks like the side menu is smaller.
Greetings,
At present there's not an overall way to change the dimensions of the sidebar. I have the same google ad block running on mine though the sidebar on the template is not as wide , short term another template choice may improve matters . Long term I'm going to see if we can address control of this area in a future update.
Thanks for the feedback.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I have a solution to this same problem. What I did was to use the custom text/html and insert in the code from my adsense setup.I use the wide skyscrapper to make it fit nicely to the sidebar.
I tried the wide and it is better but still not wide enough. My side menu I think is about 225 pixels or so.
Thank you for looking into it. I will keep playing with it.
I'm really disappointed to see such a minimal release. PLEASE can you address the misleading "MORE >>" link issue ASAP. I don't think you have any idea how badly this reflects on your product with viewers.
Greetings
From prior comments that we are aware just how annoying the more >> tags and template issues are to users. Many people were also similarly upset with the manner in which the remote mail was operating , as well as the other "minimal" items attended to in this release. I'm not trying to excuse their omission in this update just that there's competing requests that don't always make it to this forum. Nearly all the suggestions we've been receiving are valuable , appreciated, and in most cases we've either included them or are still trying to strike a balance between what the majority of users would find useful balanced against the time taken to enact a change.
There's no doubt that the current templates are operating in an illogical matter and we've given a strong indication that we recognize the problem and we're considering ways in which to change it.
Regards John
Quick Blog Team.
I am sorry that you found this release disappointing. As John pointed out, there were plenty of changes made that you might not have ever had a problem with or features that you don't use. I agree that there weren't any showstopping features in this release that made you write a letter home to Mama, but all the things we fixed or added addressed very real issues our customers were having and they needed doing.
The removal of "MORE >>" isn't as simple as opening up a text editor, deleting that line, and saving the file. Trust me when I say that we're with you on this. It's not my #1 thing I'd like to change about the blog, but it's definitely in the top 5.
I appreciate your patience and interest, Bill
One thing I'd like to see (apart from more control over the customisation of templates) is the abiliy to add an "About" page (or pageS) to the blog. Somewhere where I can put up a description of what my blog is about, disclaimers, contact details, disclaimers, etc.
Greetings Amos, Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback on the templates as well as the need for static pages. Static pages, such as About, bio or even the locations have been an item that we're discussing for a future release. A temporary workaround is to make a blog post with the info you wish to make static and then link to that using the Html/text sidebar. Obviously that's not a neat solution and we'd like to improve upon that but at least it gives you a majority of the functionality you requested with a few rough edges. Regards John Quick Blog team
Ditto that request. The need to have a customizable set of menu items that are separate and distinct from the actual blog is a show stopper for me right now.
I want to use the blog as the sole site but need to have various static pages.
Hello;
Why is there no place to ad links???? we can all use some links, i would love to link to my flickr acount, my main webpage and others...PLEASE FIX THIS? also, why is it we dont have much control over the html? i want to ad those little chicklets and WIDGETS???? and thing in the near future?
There's definitely no reason you can't add such things if you pay. One of the major differences between paid and ad-supported blogs is the Custom Text sidebar item, which you can have an unlimited number of. Ad-supported bloggers, however, can use the Blogroll sidebar item to add links to the sidebar.
Lots of ppl tell me the gray text is hard to read on the white background in my quick blog (http://blog.doublejumping.com). Any chance I can make it darker?
Eric, Thanks for taking the time to comment on Quick Blog. We're certainly looking into a solution for the light text on a light background and hope to remedy this in a future update. Regards John Quick Blog team.
Hi Eric,
Really nice blog, man, very well done. Just to let you know, I hope to shamelessly steal some of your presentation techniques. :-)
But apparently I'm suffering from some form of FAQ / Help blindness, because I can't find anywhere in QB how to put the sidebar on the left instead of the right. Have pity and clue the n00b, would'ja?
Thanks, GG
Doh! Wouldn't you know it, right after commenting I realized (just in the nick of too late) that it's the template chosen at the beginning that determines the sidebar location.
My comments about you having a sharp blog and about me being a clueless n00b still stand. The question can go in the bit bucket, though.
Thanks anyway, GG
Thanks for the kind words GG. I'm still learning as I go...feel free to ping me if you think I can help =)
Erik, there's a workaround but it's a little crufty because you have to remember to do it for every entry.
After you've composed your entry, switch the editor to HTML and force the text color to black by inserting a command before the text.
Any issues with this, QB guys? Or am I off in la-la land?
GG
Thanks for the continued updates. I have two PC's - 1 running IE 6 and 1 running IE 7. In IE 7 I can't see all the statistics. I would like to move to IE 7 on both my machines but can't until this is fixed. Are you guys looking at this?
Regards,
Gary E. Smith
SOA Network Architect
Gary.
There are currenly many issues within Quick Blog and IE7 which we is currently not a supported browser. We will of course consider furhter support of IE7 as issues are identified, such as statistics, we'll make amendments to correct these within future release.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I apologize for the feature-requests spamming (being a game developer myself, I know these things take time).
My top quickblog feature request would be a number to indicate how many comments have been submitted to the entry. Usually this shows up as a "Comments(3)" link in most other blogs.
And also, how do I get comment author links to their website to work? I see that it's working on this blog, but not sure why not on mine.
Never apologize for feature requests especially since we may already have created them, our favorite kind of request
John
Quick Blog Team
Hi guys,
Just making sure I understand the above before trying this. We can switch to a different template without losing anything in the entries, comments or sidebar, is that correct?
(I'll obviously do an export before trying it no matter what.)
Greetings,
When you change templates all you lose is the template itself and any custom text that was placed within them.
Back ups are a good idea too but the chances you would need to use them in connection to a template change are virtually non existent.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Whoa.
So existing customers can try out different site looks and decide what suits best, all in a consequence-free environment?
Schveeet, dudes.
I hereby publicly retract some (not all!) of my grumblings about slow QB features response. This is cooler than I thought.
Thanks, GG
Greetings,
S'ok most of your "grumblings" are valid points which we're quick to agree on re improvements that many others have since added their voice to. Now sadly I can't retract your statements since the memory hole is closed for the weekend
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
I have a question and it is about the email blogging tool.If I already have an email account under GoDaddy,what is the server name and what is the port?Can it be open to public or is it only available for co authors?
Anyway these are some suggestions that I would like to see on coming release.
1)More control on the text color on the sidebar and the title.
2)Google ads sidebar which complement the color template chosen(currently i doing it manually by inserting the color code at my adsense setup and insert via custom HTML/text)
3)Ability to add favicon(currently my site hosted at GoDaddy has one but the blog which is hosted using quickblog under a subdomain doesn't)
4)Removal or option to turn off the >more link.
5)More variety in the blog layout such as a three column layout etc...
6)An upgrade plan(like hosting) for those wishing more space and bandwidth.
Ok thats all for now :)
Regards,
Deeroy
Deeroy,
Let me start up the reply list generator.. what? we didn't program that yet? , never mind I'll do it.
1) We did have that available with users being able to style it using html but alas many people attempted to put all kinds of interesting code in there, will look into expanding that ability.
2) A good suggestion which we should consider for enhancing that feature.
3) will look into the subs not showing his up and if we can practically achieve it.
4) We're raven about that feature.. Never more is
5) Templates are also under consideration for an overhaul.
6) Another good suggestion investigating the base plan / upgrade possibilities is on my to do list.
Not a bad list at all, the "all for now part" phew , long as we get an hour or two between requests we should be fine
Regards
John
Quick Blog team.
Are there any plans to allow META tags - ie DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS so we can have more control over our Google-ads and search-engine placement?
Greetings,
We've indeed had this request to add an ability to add meta tags which we're considering alongside allowing users to modify the head section to allow them to claim their blog with other service. While the blog content usually is its own best advertisement for search engines we've seen quite a few requests for this. Thanks for taking the time to provide your suggestion via the blog.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Hi,
I didn't see a place to ask questions so I'll do it here... sorry if it's not the correct approach.
First, thanks for the fun application. I'm new to blogging so appreciate the easy interface.
2nd, I had to uninstall ie7 beta3 and go back to ie6 beacuse the text editing toolbar doesn't show up in ie7. Hopefully you'll have all the bugs worked out before MS forcefeeds it to us.
Next, Is there a way for me to text wrap next around a graphic? Seems like you can't have a small graphic sit next to a few lines of text. Looks funny on the page to have all the photos/graphics on the left of the page with no text bumping up to them.
I guess that begs the question, can I center a photo (or even text) without using HTML?
Lastly, is there a way to change width of individual cells in a table? Doesn't seem to work by dragging the interior grids.
Lastlyer, Izz this the right place to ask questions or is there a QB forum somewhere?
Thankx
Greetings Steve,
This is a great approach to ask questions, there's also a feedback! link on most pages of Quickblog too which sends mail directly to me, since I benefit from other people seeing your suggestions and then adding their own.
At present IE7 is still in beta and yes we have formatting issues on many pages currently. It's our intent to extend support for IE7 within a future release.
Is there a way, yes, if you're using the rich editor you can place the image on the page, select it, then use the indents to further adjust the horizontal position. Everything else I can think of would need addressed in the html view. Same goes for text it won't be a true center though.
And to complete the Trifecta of "sorry it doesn't quite work like that" manipulation of the tables without getting into the html view would not allow you to change the width, they are dynamic based on what you type into them, you can certainly alter them by dragging the wall of each cell but presently making a fixed width table is impractical and will be something we look into for a future release, along with the other items. As to Quick Blog's forum? Welcome
regards
John
Quick Blog Team
Hi -
I have the same question as a previous commentor. I have an email account through the website I made with GoDaddy (actually, I have 500). Is it possible to set up "Email-Blogging" through this email address? What would be the email server name and port?
Thanks!
Scott
Scott,
To set up a mail account for the blog, and only for the blog use the following settings.
Ensure the username is name@domain.com rather than just the name. The mailserver is mail.yourdomain.com the port can be left on the default 110.
Once you fill in this information save it, we send a mail to this account to verify it's set up correctly. If the mail has yet to arrive wait 20 seconds, type in the pass and save again.
Note that we only accept mails from addresses known to the blog i.e you have to send mail from the same address you receive new mail / comment notifications on.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team.
One of my regular viewers claims that on her computer, Using either IE6 or Opera browsers, the comments are displayed like they are in the editor with HTML turned on. In other words with all the HTML coding turned on. She sees all the HTML Tags. Help Please.
Do you know if she can see your blog sidebar or header (the top stuff)? I suspect, and this is just a guess, that she is somehow accessing your blog's feeds. It's not HTML but it looks close enough that it is easily confused. If you can get the URL she's hitting when she sees that, that might prove it one way or another. Aside from that, I can't think of any reason why that would happen—there is not, to my knowledge, a browser setting to show the HTML markup.
Let me know, Bill
Bill,
I got her insure that when she logs on to the site, that it must say ONLY www.bermudapalms.com and nothing else. I also unchecked the RSS feeds in Manage Blog/Settings and now she says it looks normal. She is 82 and its a little hard to get her to understand.
Thanks for the quick repsponse
Very strange. But it's working now so who knows!
Glad something worked, Bill
Is there a way i can wrap the text close to a graphic/picture?Currently i don't see any way i can do that and if i have a small image,it kinda look weird that the text had to be below it and not beside it.
Greetings,
There's a way, not the prettiest way to do so. But you can use the indent icons, eg
Another method is to use the table feature and create it without borders and place the image into that. You can then write around the image in the table ( again not pretty)
We'll certainly look into ways to improve that for a future release.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I think one of the most important thing to improve for the next release is spiderabilty.I find that blogs using quickblog has poor ranking and almost invisble ranking except for entries on the front page.I tried checking for web spiderabilty and it turned a really shocking result.Only one page and that is the main url.No point having lot of features when all you have is an invisible blog.Is there a way to solve this?
I had a great and lengthy reply to your comment, but my stupid browser crashed. Why didn't we implement autosave in comments? Geesh.
Basically, I agree with you. I think we need to improve our page titling and metadata support. Neither will overrule the two critical pieces for search engine optimization: external linking and good content. But they will accentuate those positives and make your site possibly stand out in the search engine results pages.
We've got a great foundation for optimization and we will certainly build on it in coming releases.
Thanks, Bill
Dear Bill,
I want you guys to know how much I appreciate the effort done by you guys to reply to all these requests.I know it can be annoying at times but in the end I guess we all have the same goal,that is to make Quickblog one of the best offering for all bloggers.Of course I understand that we can't pleased everyone all at the same time,so I guess we will leave it to the wisdom on your part to decide which features are critical to update/include and which can be done later.I am sure I made the right choice when I chose Quickblog and I know the people at GoDaddy will do their best to improve its line of products.
Regards,
Deeroy
(All the way from Malaysia,ever heard of the country?...hehehe)
Wow, what a great compliment! Terima kasih banyak-banyak, Bill
Since I haven't seen much action around these parts of town, I got a question I've been waiting to pop out. The perfect occasion.
If you look at my page I've got the top image with my logo. I would really love if this was clickable linked to the homepage. Can you make some kind of option that enables this?
The work around is that I add an image on top of it and link it, but that doesn't look good at all. Since I cant add any HTML on it, I cant add the "border="0"" tag, to eliminate that repugnant red frame around it.
Please, for the sake of getting rid of that "back to Main Page" link on the side bar, make it so. :)
Alexander Wunderlich
Greetings,
And sorry for the lack of action and I hope the next post or two from us will bring good news. On any template where the banner is not set as a background the image can be made into a link so we'd need to extend that ability to include background images . Good workaround idea but as you say the red frame is a little distracting. Nearly every other sidebar item can have the name changed, but not this one so would it help if you were able to change the name or would you just like it gone gone ... gone?
Regards
John
Quick Blog team.
Oh, sorry for my lack of elaboration on the "...back to Main Page" sidebar item.
I'm bothered by the fact that it says "back to Main Page".... on the main page!
if it where inside an article, then things would be less "twilight zone" like.
Perhaps have the name change when in the home page and when in and article.
or Maybe the name of the Item should simply be: Home, or something more universal.
...of coarse if the tittle background image where already linked to the homepage, no modifying of the sidebar item would be necessary.
...hope its clear enough?
Alexander Wunderlich.
Nukes and Candy team (of one).
Greetings Alex,
Indeed it's clear. The presence of a link to the location you are already in is a tad annoying but it never stopped the malls from capitalizing on the "you are here" marker. In short it would be useful to prevent the self referential button from appearing and that's certainly something we can look at. The image issue is still percolating in the pile of "under consideration" items and the chances of all , or some of the requests making it within a future release are quite good.
John
Quick Podcast team ( > 1 )
Oh man, I feel stupid, but I have to ask:
How do I trackback?
Greetings Alex,
Firstly I don't subscribe to the theory that there's no such thing as a stupid question. Yours is a good one though and truth be told if there's one feature of the blog that people ask about it's trackbacks. Quick blog has the ability to post and receive trackbacks.
First what's a trackback? Basically it's a notification to another blog that you've posted something related to their post content ( Ideally it is) this will usually appear on their blog, sometimes with an excerpt , as a link for people to read your take the entry it's attached to. Making them Quick blog is easy. At the bottom of the page URL's to ping where you can place the trackback link of the blog you are posting to ( note that once you save the field is cleared to avoid you pinging the same blog many times). Too much work?
K we have a setting "enable trackback autodiscovery" defaults to on which scans your posts for URLS to ping which updates their site. Outgoing's easy.
Incoming...
It's the same process in reverse from their blog ( not all blogs have autodiscovery or ping but most do) . Trackbacks have to be turned on but when you get one you should see a mail saying so, go into manage entries / trackbacks and approve it.
K that's the brief version if there's specific questions arising from these let me know and we'll work through it with a demo on your blog.
Regards
John Quick Blog team
Hey Guys,
I just got Quick Blog with my godaddy account. I have been using blogger until i discovered i could use my own domian to blog. But I am very used to using Windows Live Writer for my blogging. I am having trouble connecting Quick Blog to WLW. Is there a special way I can do this? One of the main reasons for this is i have discoverd that i take a long time to write my blog - sometimes several hours. so i do this disconnected. WLW allows me to save drafts and not be connected.
David,
Thanks for trying out Quick Blog and for your question regarding Live writer as a posting method. The answer today is that we don't currently support Liverwriter but please ask me again on Monday.
With regards to what do over the weekend You can also set your blog up to receive entries from email ( eamil blogging in the settings) Either leave the write window up in the background it's set to never time out for that page or set the post to save draft and resume it at your leisure.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
Now that v1.2.8 is out, I can tell you that access through WLW is available! Just go to Manage Blog > Settings > Remote Blogging and enable access. Put in a new username and password and enter those into Windows Live Writer's Add Blog Account wizard with your URL. (If it doesn't autodetect your information, you may have to enter in some additional information on the following step of the wizard. The API is MetaWeblog and the endpoint is, in your case, "http://www.bosspc.com/MetaWeblog.aspx") The next beta of WLW will have us listed to make it easier for you guys to set up this very handy interface.
Thanks, Bill
So i see V1.2.8 is out. Now that I've noticed you guys no longer post on your blog I must ask through here: Whats new?
Ooo, that cuts us to the quick. John's got a slew of articles just waiting to chronicle the goodness that is 1.2.8. He's probably posting them right now as a rebuttal to your comment. I know I need to start posting more. I'll take your thrown-down gauntlet as the challenge I hope you intended.
As for 1.2.8, there's a bunch of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and usability changes. Oh and MetaWeblog API support.
Thanks, Bill
Oh and if we could ever get the other guys on the team to post an entry, we'd be set.
*sigh*, Bill
Hi bill, are there any plans to allow quickblog users to use optional spam blocking techniques, such as akismet? I have always despised the captcha method of preventing spam.
Good question! We're slowly coming around to third-party integration and I can see offering user-licensed Akismet as an interesting option. I'll add it to the things-to-consider-doing list. (As a side note, the CAPTCHA we've got has been pretty effective. On my personal blog, I've only seen a handful of spam comments that passed the CAPTCHA and didn't hit the blacklist. Looking through the database, it seems like my experience isn't unusual. But CAPTCHA is really a bandage because they can be defeated; we've got a full slate of other options in our quiver when we start to see CAPTCHA being bypassed.)
Thanks, Bill