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January 10, 2006
New Features; the Work Continues [Updated]
In our never-ending quest to make Terrablogs the best blogging portal we continue to make incremental (and sometimes substantial) enhancements to your blogging experience. Most of these changes come out of our love for cool things and our own love for blogging. Some, however, come out of necessity when we are faced with the ever-growing challenge of keeping this project running. Every once in a while we have what we think is a good idea, so we spend a little time and make it happen. Some changes you will never see since they happen behind the scenes; however, we work hard to make sure that everything we do has a real benefit for you, the user, so that you continue to enjoy your blogging as much as we enjoy having you as bloggers.
This entry is the first (well maybe the second) of what we hope to be a series. The intent of this series is to let you know about the work we are doing so that you might appreciate and enjoy all the new features as much as we do. So, without further ado, here's what we've been doing lately.
FRONTPAGE UNIFICATION:
As was noted in the last entry Chattablogs got a bit of a facelift. Shortly thereafter Atlblogs and StLouisBlogs got facelifts as well. It is our plan to give each of our blog domains a facelift in the not-so-distant future. We are working with our graphic design team to determine color schemes and such for each domain and soon after we nail down those details we will continue with the facelifts. [UPDATE (7:30pm): We decided to go ahead and unify all the front pages today. We quickly created some new logos and pushed out the code to all blog domains so that we could get the process started. The logos are possibly temporary and the color schemes are definitly going to change, but now we've got everyone on the same page and we can all enjoy the new features.]
In a technical sense, these facelifts were a great advancement for us, the Terrablogs administrators. The unification of domain frontpages means that we are able to more quickly and efficiently make changes that directly affect all users, such as the release of new features. As you will see from the continued list of new features, anything that is released on one of the unified domains gets automatically released on all the others. Hooray! In the past it was quite a hassle to make changes across multiple domains because it entailed changing dissimilar code on multiple different domains. Not an easy task for a project that isn't paying the bills. Hopefully this unification will kick start our creative juices and allow for more innovation, which will mean more fun for all. Also, the unification will allow us to more quickly and easily roll out new blog domains, so that all your friends in Chicago and Pittsburgh and New York can stop harassing us about getting their blogging portals started. :) They're coming, trust us. However, they're not going to come until we are able to purchase a new server. But that's a story for a different time. However, I will say, do consider supporting Terrablogs.
In an aesthetic sense the new look is just sleek and sexy, in my humble opinion (IMHO). There are also a few added little benefits for you. You are now able to easily tell which blog the recent comments are coming from and are able to do a Google search of the current blog domain right from the frontpage. Ain't technology great?
THE ENTRIES CALENDAR:
As you can see here, we've released a calendar which allows you to view entries, and comments, by date. Unfortunately the calendar only works for non-IE browsers right now. We fully intend to make the calendar page IE-compatible in the future, but at this time IE's annoying ability to render perfectly valid html and css as worthless garbage makes it prohibitive to make the calendar work for that browser. So, if you are using IE and are able, do yourself a favor and get a browser that works and that isn't evil. There are still a couple of tweaks in the calendar interface that we are de-bugging and hope to release some time very soon. So keep your eyes open.
AJAX IS COOL:
For those of you who don't know what AJAX is, check this out. We'll wait right here for you. Now, don't you feel smarter? For those of you too lazy to read that whole article and increase your knowledge of the World Wide Web around you, you know who you are, I'll just say that AJAX is a really cool trick allowing a web page to serve up new content for you without having to refresh the entire page. It allows the webpage to only change the the piece of the page that needs updating and leave everything else alone. To see an example, check out the frontpage of Chattablogs. You should notice a link that says "more" just below the "recent comments" section, and a similar link just below the "recent entries" section. If you click on this link, don't blink, because before you know it the content of the pertinent section will be refreshed we the next batch of comments or entries, whatever the case may be. Cool, ain't it?
Well, that about wraps it up, except for some behind-the-scenes changes that we can talk about later, if you ask really nicely. If you have any ideas about ways that we can improve Terrablogs, don't be shy. Let us know. Leave a comment in this thread. We can't guarantee that we will be able to make all, or any, of the changes that you suggest, but we do love hearing feedback from our users and it is our intent to make this service usable for YOU. Until then, enjoy the show, and don't forget to tip your waiter.
New Features | By Admin | 7:30 PM
Comments
AJAX is quite the cool.
Posted by: stelmodad at January 10, 2006 2:31 PM
Dearest administrators, something's screwy with the donation link, I think. Maybe it's just me, though. I'll give it another try in a bit.
Posted by: WonderGirl at January 10, 2006 9:27 PM
Sorry 'bout the double post, but I was getting the code you guys put up here (http://blog.chattablogs.com/archives/025858.html#comments), and had the same error that katie had and no way to post my question there. Ron, how did you fix that?
Posted by: WonderGirl at January 10, 2006 9:42 PM
Hi, WonderGirl. The code we posted here is totally unrelated to the donation links -- that's some old javascript stuff that we figured out how to use with old entries. The other admins and I were talking about that earlier today and wondering if it's even actually useful.
Here's the dealy-o. I can't replicate the issues you're having with the donation links. And I have clicked on every single one that I can find everywhere we have mention it. Always works for me without fail. Another Admin has tested it too. Works every time. Strange. What operating system are you using? And what browser? (For bonus points don't say Internet Explorer *wink*.)
To try a donation that bypasses the support page, you can go here.
Thanks!
Posted by: Ron at January 10, 2006 10:04 PM
will give the link a try again! and FIREFOX, naturally. Probably just my computer being nutty.
Anyway.
Yeah, the code was a seperate question--- I do want to use it if you can tell me how to fix that error.
Posted by: WonderGirl at January 11, 2006 8:12 AM
I read the article, sounds good.. I wish I could help you out with the fires, I am a recovering pyro so it would be theraputic... that's spelled wrong... anyway I just wanted to say thank you for keeping this thing (chattablogs up) my family in california is very thankful to check in and hear a little something of what's going on in my life.. so thankyou... and hail to ajax, without problems with back buttons... hail hail...
Posted by: Brian at January 11, 2006 11:07 AM
Hey, it's spelled 'therapeutic.'
And I like the new mainpages. Good job, people. Kudos to you.
Posted by: Krista at January 11, 2006 12:32 PM
