Blogcast Faq
Over the past week since Blogcast merged, I've been receiving a lot of feedback on the merge from pod casters looking for their old features or wishing to remove some of the new ones. In reviewing these mails and talking with some of you, the following questions have come up more often than others (and most come from the podcast side):
Where's the large player gone?
The player has been moved to a sidebar item and defaults to off. To activate this, go to Design Blog, Sidebar Drag and "Quick Blogcast player" over to the active side. Click Save. Your player is now back in place. The in line player for sound / video will still appear in the articles.
Comments : how to remove them and prevent their recurrence.
Firstly, we'll prevent any new entries from being created by logging into the blog and then taking this path through the menu.
Manage blog: > settings > entries
Change default comment status and default trackback status to closed
Click on apply.
Now go to manage entries > entries and set the display to 100, or less if you have fewer than 100 podcasts. Click the Top left check box to select all entries and then from the drop down “select action” link pick “disable comments/ trackbacks” then click apply then repeat this process for items 101-200 etc.
Where's the stats / podcast counter ?
We have removed this count temporarily to correct an issue with inaccurate information being displayed. No data has been lost during this process as it's currently not being displayed and should be restored in the near future.
Where's my per item Image?
Previously you could upload a separate image for each podcast, or add in a default image if none existed within the MP3. This feature changed slightly from the prior edition with regards to the large media player now only showing the main channel image. We'll revert this behavior in an upcoming release. Meanwhile all the items are still present and will display within programs that support it. A temporary work around is to use iTunes to add an image to the file. To do this open the file in iTunes, click on “get info” then artwork then click ADD. You can now place your picture in the file.
The player has been moved to a sidebar item. Default is off.
To activate this go to Design Blog, Sidebar Drag "Quick Blogcast player" over to the active side. Click Save.
Where's the explicit tag?
This will be added back into the application in the near future. The items are still correctly labeled as explicit on the large player / rss feed but not currently displayed within the entries.
Thank you all for your suggestions, feedback and questions on the Blogcast. Keep them coming either by posting here or by filling out the feedback survey within the application.
Thanks for removing the counter!!!!!
If you're bringing it back PLEASE make it optional.
I'd rather have more specific stats in the back office than a public counter
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Greetings,
We have brought it back , we have made it optional. The on switch resides in the manage blog > settings > podcast tab and we've left it off since the majority of feedback I had was to do so.
I'm seriously looking at the stats for a makeover in a future and we're discussing this presently, if there's any specific views you'ld like to see let me know and we'll consider them. Thanks for the feedback.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast
I am a new user of Quick Blog, but can't seem to find out how a user, ie vistor can upload a photo. Is there a way to do this? In the comments section it appears it only takes text.
Greetings John,
Presently there's no practical way for users to upload in the comments box without making a reference to an image that's already uploaded/ accessible to the web. Note you have to have the option on to allow html within comments for this to function. I'll look into ways we could make this more obvious / easier in a future build.
Regards
Another John
Quick Blogcast Team
Why not just have free image hosting, with limitations on the number of bytes used and some size restrictions? That would make implementing avatars easier also.
You could even have the images that a user uploads accessible with the use of PHP and mysql so that they can get the URL's to the images easily.
Greetings Robert,
For many people we already have free image hosting via Online Photo Filer which is free with domains, or their renewal presently. While we're already integrated with those in several locations it's likely they'll be providing this kind of feature more overtly in an upcoming release.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast.
I'm not sure I like that this just lists the title of the blog but it's o.k. What I don't like fer chure is that I can't change the size/color of "Posted by Revvell blah, blah, blah.." Comments size "Display comments", etc. I called and spoke with a support person on GD and he couldn't figure it out either. Help!!!
Thank you!
Revvell
Greetings Revvell ,
The post data at the bottom is called Blog content in the dropdown but it has a wider effect than just the data at the bottom of the screen and you may have to set the Entry text back to something legible after it.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast
I've noticed that when Google picks up one of my blog posts it lists the name of the page as "Back to Main Page." Is there a way to get more descriptive titles in the search engines?
Thanks
Greetings Matt,
We did make a change over the last couple of weeks that added the page title/ article title back into the header which makes it odd for them to be taking the top link from your sidebar. We're actually looking more deeply into SEO and how the major search engines interact with the blogcast and will be looking at more descriptive metadate being automatically generated from the content of the blogpost.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast.
Regarding images. I know there is not a standard for sizing the pictures BUT, we made one enhanced podcast. Now the pictures are are show with the right proportions when played via iTunes. Here it's being stretched. See http://podcast.revvell.com/ and episode w/Arvee Robinson.
Another this which is really troublesome. When adding pictures to an episode here, the code disappears so we cannot make changes to the episode.
Greetings,
I can indeed see we're not showing the correct aspect ratio which is stretching the image. I'll take a look at improving that behaviour. I'm thinking that any workaround would then look silly on an ipod/
I'm afraid I need more information on the last part, which code is disappearing?
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast
Do you support media streaming for the .mov files, like YouTube, or are the files downloaded completely to the user's desktop?
I prefer to have my .mov files streamed, and not downloaded.
Please advise.
Thanks!
- s
Greetings,
Depending on the users player We use QT's inbuild progressive download which looks exactly like it's streaming and starts playing the file prior to the entire thing being downloaded. Most users are unaware of the difference between this method and true streaming.
You Tube , though using flash video, uses the same progressive download method, the file really is downloaded it's just not as easy to separate and reuse for most people . For it to work as a podcast the file itself has to have a downloadable component and there's no practical way we can restrict users from downloading the video.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast
Hi, Thanks for the quick reply.
Actually, I don't mind if they do download it, but these are big files, and I don't want to require them to download the files to their desktop just to see the video.
Also, I'm not particularly interested in these necessarily being podcasts. I just want a site where I can stream the .mov files. I would point to them from the blog site I already run.
Is your site a good choice for me? I need something affordable which can just handle the streaming.
Thanks,
- s
Seth,
They don't need to if they have QuickTime7 installed and the original item was encoded to allow progressive download which would fulfill your need. We have a max filesize of 100mb just now so without knowing specifics re expected # of downloads a month or concurrent users required it's hard to say if we're the best fit though I am biased
John
Quick Blogcast
o.k. Thanks. Well, I can certainly vouch for your technical support. You've been very prompt and helpful.
Thanks again.
- s
Hi,
Two questions:
1. Is there a way to wrap text around the inline podcast player? I added this to the CSS stylesheet, and it works for still pics:
.floatimgleft {
float:left;
margin-top:10px;
margin-right:10px;
margin-bottom:10px;
}
But when I try to use the addition of
class="floatimgleft"
with the inline player's html code, it does not work.
2. The big podcast/media player in the sidebar does not seem to be working for me. When I click on it in the sidebar, it opens up the player in a new window, like it should, and it displays a track listing. The "play" button is lit green, but there is no sound coming from it. The meter stays at zero (00:00:00). The reverse, forward, and stop buttons light up green when I click on them, and I am able to scroll through the track listing. But it does not play anything. Using Firefox, the window just says " waiting for media.podcastingmanager.com".
I use an iMac, G5, running 10.4.10. I've tried using Safari, Firefox, Camino, Seamonkey, Opera, Omniweb, all latest versions with quickblogcast site to address both questions above, with no luck.
Any help?
Thanks.
-RY
P.S.
Thanks for the new templates, I just updated my site. And thanks for making it easier to control the look of the blogs. I don't know anything about CSS, but the thing I did above for text wrap around was pretty easy, and I'm looking forward to learning more about CSS.
Greetings,
For the first answer applying your class to the div surrounding the podcast player should work. Unfortunately, there's really no way to do that per-entry or per-blog. So while the actual action is cake the implementation
would means us having to expose the {{BlogcastPlayer}} token and then storing a particular class to apply to it which we're not likely to address in the near future. Your best bet, perhaps, is to wrap the player in a div with your class applied.
Secondly the time issue is a known problem between us and OSX which we hope to have resolved in a future version.
Regards
John
QBC team
How do I set up my blog to point to a sub directory such as www.myurl.com/blog instead of using a sub domain of blog.myurl.com?
Is there any support for the Icon .ico format? It appears not to be supported. I can upload a .jpg, but not an .ico. I want a favicon for Internet Explorer! Thanks.
Greetings ,
.ico is supported. The problem seems to be that IE's are so much pickier about the ico creation than FF which seems liberal in comparison. If you could run the image you have through this site http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/ which creates a file that we should accept. I've added one to our address bar now which worked on Safari, IE7 and Firefox 2.
Regards
John
QBC team
This is more of a question I was wondering if you might at some point post an explanation about how the statistics are compiled. Particularly for the "referrers" under the general tab and the lists under the "Article Views" tab. For the "referrers" I'm curious about what causes a hit to be logged. Will a feed request from something like Feeddemon cause a hit to record? If I am sending out feeds with full articles does that then skew my article views data? In article views why do the numbers for previous days continue to change the next day.For example my article views for a Saturday was 84, but then on Tuesday I noticed it was 113. Really, anything in-depth about those counters would be helpful in figuring out just what it all means. Thanks!
Greetings,
I can indeed point at two such posts on stats but they are not awfully useful in terms of how they are meant to work , but more why they weren't working at the time
Referrers.
This , er, refers to incoming links from other sites. E.g your friend places a url to one of your entries, or blogs, in one of her entries and then people click on that link. www.yourfriendssite.com would then be counted as a referrer. While we have all this information presently we're just showing the most popular which rather reduces the usefulness of the stat. Feed demon would show up in this list.
Article Views
Counted as unique requests similar to above. If someone clicks on the link in the feed to open the article that adds one but just pulling the feed itself does not. There are some good free services that can give you more feed specific information and I often suggest feedburner.com to people looking for specific use/ reuse stats related to their feed. So no they full feeds will not affect the views count unless someone clicks to directly go to that article.
The hits on individual days should not change in that manner. Otherwise we have time traveling bloggers. If you are referring only to the total changing then yes it's only taking stats from the last 30 days on a rolling basis. Please let me know if it's the former and I'll look into it further.
A revision of the stats and their display is on our road map for a future version since we have the information but could do a far better job of displaying it.
Regards
John
John,
First, up front, pardon my ignorance because I know nothing about tracking statistics. But, given that I post full articles on my home page, rather than excerpts, I'm wondering how a visit to my homepage is recorded by your statistics software. In the event that someone visits my homepage and scrolls down reading all ten articles posted, is that counted as a single article view of the most recent post? Or does scrolling down the page register article views?
Also, is there any way to incorporate Google Analytics code into my blog? I've looked at the meta page, and have actually successfully entered Google's verification code, but haven't figured out a way to incorporate the Analytics code. Would I need to paste the code into the html for every blog entry?
Thanks, in advance, for your help.
Greetings,
Let's start off on a positive note it's great to ask questions it gives me a reason to be within the blog during the day
I'm afraid Google Analytics can't be easily placed within the blog cast presently but it's under active consideration to do so. Presently the user doesn't have the ability to have the tracking code automatically appear on each page view and to be honest I don't know what happens when a page full of posts ,each with their own tracker, hits Google. It shouldn't break anything by doing so. This is certainly a useful feature for us, and you , to have in the program.
Basically in QB the entries when clicked upon are counted as one hit regardless of the clicks origin ( e.g feed or link within Blogcast). Scrolling has no effect on the stats.
We are not currently showing overall hits to the main page presently which is something we need to remedy and I'll be putting that in for a future release.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast Team.
So if someone has my blog bookmarked and, say, once a week they click on their bookmark to visit my blog . . . and they then proceed to scroll down the page and read the seven new articles I'd posted since their last visit, the QB software would count that as a single "article view" because, though they scrolled to read seven articles, they didn't need to make more than one click to reach my blog and read all seven articles?
If this is the case, then it seems the "article views" statistic could significantly underestimate my readership, right?
I suppose one way to address this to get more accurate stats would be to post excerpts that force a click to view the full article. But my strong preference has become starting my posts with a photo. And my understanding (from a question I posed here earlier this week) is that photos can't be included in excerpts.
Any advice for me to improve the accuracy of the stats I'm getting? Thanks.
Greetings,
You are indeed correct in the first scenario and while we'd solve that with analytics or by including number of hits to the main page.
Now the good news is that people that find you in search engines are usually following the complete page path so non bookmarked hits are more likely to be captured. Excerpts are indeed a common way of solving this issue, not just with us, and we have a setting to accommodate this for the front of site with excerpts as well as a check box to "allow full feeds" for the RSS.
Photo excerpts should be possible but it's currently in need of attention.
Regards
John
QBC Team.
I made a post on my blog that talks about me leaving these question on this blog. You can see it at my blog
Question for Quickblog Statistics menu
Right now when viewing our statistics...the article view report specifically, we can view 10 posts and the number of views for those 10 posts. Is there any way you guys can make it so we can view 10,20, or even all posts on one page?
Also what about exporting of the article views report to .pdf or something like that?
Quickblog would be that much more powerful if we had the option to view our statistics as bar charts or any other type of graph.
Greetings Austin,
I already had stats on my mind, they've been on it for a while. Basically we have a lot of great information but getting to it's either difficult or in many cases impossible from the UI. Firstly let's address your questions
with regards to exporting the data I'm looking at excel or CSV formats. PDF is fine but it's not so easy for others to get the information out of them into other applications. I basically want people to be able to take their data and filter out what's interesting to them rather than us guess at what you may want.
Stats, graphs and assorted items would again be most welcome. Here's my thoughts. I'm looking at trying to cover the best of both worlds here. USA today like info graphics on the front giving you immediate feedback on the last few articles, days, comments etc. The key word is a limited set. For those that have a need to delve deeper I'd like to have download that can be used in Excel, Numbers or the blog statistics packages that exist out there. As to what it looks like? It's looking like my white board with a few squiggles on it.
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast.
Hello John,
Any update on the Google Analytics inclusion? Thanks!
Evan
Hi Evan, Google currently does not have an API for their Google Analytics product; this means we cannot directly integrate it into Quick Blogcast. You can still manually add Google Analytics to you blog by following the instructions given on the Google Analytics home page (http://www.google.com/support/analytics/).
Alright I'll try to make this quick and simple.
I recently added another author to my QB account and set him up a template. If you want to open it up in a new window it's located at The-Gov.info
Question 1:
I want to change the style information for the 'older entries' link that's located at the bottom of the page. It's labled as < DIV class=/*pagn/* when I view the HTML source but when going through all my CSS style sheets in the editor I've noticed that the style information is combined with a bunch of other stuff on the page.
Do I need to create another class myself or is the 'older entries' link creating the 'older entry links' on the fly?
Question 2:
Lastly, I'd also like to add that 'older entries' link to the top of the blog template directly under the header image.
Thanks so much in advance.
Austin,
1. We have fixed the issue for the pagination older/newer links css style class. You can customize the class pagn and change the style information.
2. We value your suggestion to add 'older entries link to the top of the template.'. We will add this to our feature enhancements list and will be fixed in the upcoming releases.
Thanks