Save me from myself Quick Blogcast 2.0.6 release.
Save me from myself Quick Blogcast 2.0.6 release.
Two weeks ago we updated the editor, added an easy method to post from You Tube, and while pausing only for a few frames at the bowling alley to celebrate, we were back to the task of adding a slew of new features for our Quick Blogcast 2.0.6 release.
Amongst the new features (in no order of importance, developers have egos after all):
Save and Continue
Now when you are composing a post, there’s no need to save your work, go back to the entry screen, and select the post you have just saved before you resume writing. Just click Save and Continue, and your draft entry is protected from power cuts, cat induced keyboard input, as well as forgetting you’re in the middle of a post when you just –have- to search for a news story and overwrite your window. Oh wait! We catch that too. Attempting to navigate away from an entry in progress now has to be verified.
Tips:
This only works on draft entries. Once an entry is published, the save / continue button will no longer appear on that post while it remains live.
Greater control over the feeds you display.
We’ve made the podcast RSS2 feed switchable so that those of you that never intend to podcast can remove it from your sidebar. This setting can be located within Manage blog > settings > Entries
Revised meta data handling to allow you more control.
Over the last couple of versions, we’ve been paying more attention to SEO (search engine optimization) and listening to Blogcast users. In the end, there was no way to make everyone happy with a default or automated solution. So, we’ve added another song into our Internet production of “Hey Google we’re over here!!!” (Playing “off Broadband” at a monitor near you). Sorry, I had to add a little meta discussion there. We had tried a system where we’d automatically create meta tags, description, keywords based on the entries categories (keywords), and on excerpts (the first few lines of your post).
Anti Spam improvements:
Changes on the visitor side and behind the scenes should reduce the number of spam comments that you are receiving. (At least from machines. It’s a bit harder to curtail spammy humans)
Chicklets:
Another popular request was that we auto generate the chicklets. Chicklets are small images, often of a site's logo, primarily used to allow the easy submission of your entries to social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us, or sites such as Digg. An example appears directly below this post. We’ll follow up with an article on the benefits of using these services in the near future. You can locate these at Manage blog > settings > Entries. Select your choices then save. Go on...select all. It’s free! They look exactly like the ones below this post.
Until next time, keep your comments and feedback coming.
John
QBC team
You guys are wonderful - now I only have 1 more request (for now) - an email this post feature - please! ;)
Greetings Michelle,
We have considered this in the past and while it's on the roadmap we've had few requests for it. Now that doesn't mean we won't do this but I've yet to find a way that's less time consuming than copying the link directly. E.g For you to mail the link, we need your email, name, friend's email and a captcha ( like the security image we use on our comment form) as well as a message. Alternately you could mean mail this post from within the context of the admin which poses less issues to implement though it would be unusual behavior for a blog.
Regards
John
QBC team
The ability to save on the fly is an excellent addition. Thank you.
Don't stop with the meta on the SEO side, please....
Greetings Austin,
Thanks for the kind words on the save/ continue functionality being added. With regards to the SEO features we've added on the last build , allowing the description to be generated on a per page basis from the users choice as well as creating keywords automatically from the category posts, also the option to use the same tags on every page ( one I don't like but a couple of people were rather keen on it being there so it's an option) We've one more feature ready to roll in this area and apart from the optimizations I believe you suggested investigating in terms of the order the page renders to investigate we've covered the major requests so while we won't stop improving it they are at the point were changes will likely become more gradual.
Regards
John
QBC Team
Please disregard the question I posted a few minutes ago regarding migrating content from one template to another. I've done a little reading on the "Templates" section of this blog, which I admittedly should have done first, and then did some playing around with my blog . . . previewing new templates.
But I have another question I haven't been able to find an answer for. How can I tell the dimensions of an image that can be accomodated in a given field, like the header image wrapper? I upload images that don't quite fit the field, and I'm told the actual dimensions of the image I upload, but if I knew the proper size to start with, then I could resize my image to those specs in my photo editing software. Thanks!
FRM
Greetings,
I did disregard the earlier comment as requested. What should be occuring when you select an image from the dropdown, such as blog header wrapper, is that the image should display and to the middle right of the image the dimensions should appear for it. If you've found a template/ image for which this is not occurring let me know and it will be fixed.
Thanks for your comments.
Regards
John
QBC team
Hi John, I just purchased Quick Blogcast and am looking forward to setting up and working with the blog...
A question about "Pages". I know there are Categories that can be created, but will you have a feature that allows you to creat single "Pages" to post bios, contact info, or an about us section to the blog? I'd love to see that feature.
Thanks,
Greetings Michael,
Firstly I apologize for the delay in response as I was out of the office for the past two weeks. We don't currently have static pages but it's a feature that is on my to do list. Alternately we have a work around which is essentially creating a blog post, then creating a link in the sidebar to the blog page's permalink. If you turn off comments and trackbacks you can whip up a pretty good bio/ location page.
Alternately there's an about me/ bio sidebar item that you can create and then link back to a page created in the above manner. I hope to make this a far easier process in a future version.
Regards
John
QBC Team
How do I add RSS Feed to my Blog ? I have tried, but the url doe snot seem to work ? Why is that ?
Also, can I add the RSS feed summary (titles) in teh Side bar some how ?? Which component in teh Side bar can be used for that ??
I want to add a summary list of RSS Feed updated entries in the Side bar area... Is htis possible ?
Is it possible to add it to an Entry ?
Greetings John,
Firstly I apologize for the delay in response as I was out of the office for the past two weeks. The feeds are controlled in two locations. One is the Settings>Entries and is an item called Feed types and this is the choice of what the sidebar displays for feeds. The sidebar item is called "feed list" and is on by default.
Your main blog feed is www.yourdomainname.com/rss2.aspx
Alternately you could be asking how you display the titles in the sidebar, you could use our recent entries item to show the same effect.
Entry wise it's not built into the blogcast but you could use a flash based, RSS reader to achieve the effect. Google flash rss reader and you should find many examples that could be used in an entry or sidebar.
Regards
John
QBC Team.
One great feature in Quick Blogcast is the option to have double hyphens automatically converted into a dash in the body of a blog entry.
Any chance of getting this same feature incorporated into the "Title" field?
Also, a separate question . . . the text editor has the options of aligning text left and right, but seems to lack the option of aligning text center. Is there any way to center text and photos with the current editor? If not, will you consider adding this capacity in a future version of the software?
Thanks, in advance, for your answers.
Greetings FRM,
I will look at the implications of changing the title field to replicate that behavior , if we can't think of a good reason not to do it I will add this in for a future version.
Onto the separate question. The editor does have that ability but it's currently hidden , this editor can do quite a bit more than it currently displays but rather than open up with all the bells and whistles active we're testing it out as we go along. Centering is certainly something I would expect to see in a future release. Presently centering would be a manual process of going into the html view and tagging it either side. Yes that really does need to be changed. Thanks for the request I look forward to seeing it soon.
Regards
John
QBC team.
I wanted to know if your blog had a feature like the Huffington Post that allows users to "flag" for offensive comment.
I would be allowing students to post....and they are an "anything goes" type of group.
Greetings,
We have approached the moderation task from the other end. Only the blog owner or their designates can approve the comments on the way in. We don't have a public moderation feature at this time but it's certainly something we would consider. The question flagging poses is this. Would flagging just notify the blog owner to take action or would it remove the comment pending review? You then have an issue with the people wishing to disrupt the blog being able to take out the good comments too. I'd be interested in which model you think works best.
Regards
John
Our purpose is to save the owner the trouble of reviewing comments before they go on. Thus, we only want the reviewer to have to review "flagged" comments. And, we would have to have some mechanism that reports people who are abusing the "flag" feature.
To allow people to remove the comments of others would not be acceptable.
We want control over postings with the owner. But, we do not want the owner to be overwhelmed in a review function.
Hope that helps.
Greetings,
Thank you it's certainly a different way to approaching it than some of our other programs. When we look into additional moderation models this will certainly be taken into consideration.
Regards
John
QBC Team
Please, please, please look into adding the ability to delete all spam trackbacks at once instead of 100 at a time.
I usually receive 2000 spam trackbacks every few days. That means I have to select and delete 100 trackbacks 20 times (100 per page)just to get them out of my spam list....and that's every few days...
thanks a billion,
Austin
Greetings Austin,
I agree with you that it would make more sense to approach the problem selecting all and keeping the good ones ( There are a couple ) I'll look into this increase of track back spam and see if there's more we can do to prevent it from appearing in the first place.
Regards
John
QBC Team
It's not a huge deal.... but I thought I'd point out that it's "a SLEW of new features" and not "slough".
"we were back to the task of adding a slough of new features for our Quick Blogcast 2.0.6 release."
Oops.
I forgot to copy the revised version up at publish time.
all done
Regards
John
QBC Team.