Google results

I'm writing some notes for a presentation about blogging at Warwick. One of the things I'm interested in is blog entries which become highly visible to search engines. Does anyone have any interesting examples of Google searches which return a Warwick Blogs entry somewhere in the first ten results?

I should clarify what I mean by "interesting", perhaps:-

• Results for something other than someone's name are interesting (so "crystalography" would be more interesting than "John Smith").


• Results about a subject other than someone's life are interesting (so "Plato" would be more interesting than "John Smith party fifteen pints").


• Results which are ranked number one are more interesting than results ranked number ten.


• Results which point to posts which are in some sense serious – they are reflective or critical or analytical – are more interesting than results which point to rants or rambles or funnys.

None of which is to say, of course, that there's anything wrong with blogging about your life, or ranting, or being funny. But if you know of any Google searches which meet one or more of the above criteria, it'd be very helpful if you could leave a comment. Thanks.

John Dale : 31 Oct 2005 12:41 |  Tags: BlogBuilder |  Comments (32) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New login screen

We deployed a small update of BlogBuilder this morning. There is one BIG change you will notice, the new login screen.

We have a new single sign-on (SSO) system that we are starting to roll out across all of our services. Part of this is to switch all login screens from the current pop-ups and various other types to a single full screen login page.

You don't actually have to do anything differently or use a different login, it will all work as before with the exception being that you will be taken off to this full screen instead of the pop-up. As Warwick Blogs users will be the first to use this system, any feedback would be much appreciated.

Update: I should have mentioned that with this login screen, if you completely close your web browser, it will log you out. This is for security reasons so that someone else can not just come along and open up and browser and be logged in as you

Update 2: There is now a remember me checkbox that you can use to stay logged in between closes of the browser

: 14 Oct 2005 10:37 |  Tags: BlogBuilder Single Sign On |  Comments (31) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

570 empty blogs deleted

Follow-up to Deleting empty blogs! from Blogbuilder news

You might have noticed that the total number of blogs in the system went down today. This is because we have just deleted 570 old blogs that were completely empty and more than 6 months old.

If you have lost your blog in the deletion, do not worry and just register again.

: 07 Oct 2005 13:43 |  Tags: BlogBuilder |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Performance problems

I'm afraid we seem to be having some performance problems at the moment. Generally pages will load very quickly, but occasionally the whole system grinds to a halt and you might not get a page to render for a minute or more.

Hopefully we'll get this fixed tomorrow.

: 03 Oct 2005 21:16 |  Tags: BlogBuilder Performance |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Small BlogBuilder update

Small deploy this morning fixing a couple of little things:

• No more 'null' tags in your entries
• Tag admin screen now working again
• A few small CSS tweaks

: 27 Sep 2005 09:28 |  Tags: BlogBuilder |  Comments (8) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

BlogBuilder update: Tag synonyms

There has been a new release of BlogBuilder today, with the following changes:

New Feature

• You can now get URLs that AND tags together by putting a + between tags in the URL itself, such as http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/showall/tag/movie+review/
• There are now agreed Tag Synonyms so the Top Tags and individual Tag pages now take into account similar tags, for example, when you go to the tag for Movie you will also see tags for Movies, Film and Films, and this is taken into account in how big "Movie" is on the Top Tags page.

Improvements

• The text on galleries has been tweaked slightly
• Posting comments has been tweaked slightly to make it harder to "double-post"
• When you create an entry, it should take you back to the screen that you created it from
• There have been some design changes and fixes – this may make your custom CSS look a bit weird, or it might not.
• You can now select a blank style (for the ultimate custom CSS'ers)

Bug fixes

• The "My Comments" page now sorts like it says it is by default
• The bug where Internal Trackback emails are sent many times has been fixed
• A problem with deleting images that had been uploaded in a Zip file has been fixed
• Tag counts in the sidebar are more accurate.

Mathew Mannion : 23 Sep 2005 15:48 |  Tags: BlogBuilder Tags |  Comments (13) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

100,000 comments

There are currently 99,856 comments in Warwick Blogs, which means that some time in the next few days we'll hit 100,000. In one sense, of course, so what? It's just a number. But even so, we're kind of pleased that the system has lasted long enough and proved popular and interesting enough to contain that amount of discussion and debate; the count of comments, much more than the count of posts or images, reflects the degree to which there is a community here, as opposed to a bunch of people all typing away in their own private worlds. (Livejournal, anyone?) How long to a million?

John Dale : 20 Sep 2005 11:00 |  Tags: BlogBuilder Blogging |  Comments (19) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

BlogBuilder update: New designs

If your blog looks wrong, try doing a forced refresh (pressing CTRL and F5 together) or restarting your browser

There has been a new release of BlogBuilder with several improvements and fixes:

New Markup / CSS

Andy Ingram has created new markup and CSS for blogs pages now. You may need to press Ctrl-F5 in your browser (a forced refresh) to make sure you have the latest stylesheets.

Included in this:

Changes

• HTML rearranged to put entries before the sidebar, gives improved accessibility and search engine results
• Fixed various issues of content dropping below the sidebar
• Left-floated images should no longer drop into the entries below
• Utility Bar appears correctly in Opera 7
• The background image in the header of all blog styles should now be visible in Internet Explorer
• The whole banner area (except utility bar) is now part of the link back to your overall blog view
• Removed opacity effects from various blog styles to allow more consistancy between browsers
• Most blog styles tweaked in some way for browser consistency
• Galleries should now be more readable (no more white on white)
• The bluegreen2 style is completely redone
• New style: black 2
• New style: puce
• New style: swift1
• Favourites markup improved and styled to suit each individual blog style better

Known Issues

• Existing styles don't appear exactly the same as before, if you feel an important part of the style has been overlooked or changed, please don't hesitate to mention it.
• Javascript has been used to make some of the blogs styles appear correctly with the new layout markup and styling. If javascript is disabled the blogs may not appear exactly as intended. Resizing the text in the browser may also cause problems; this can be fixed by reloading the page. Pages should still be fully readable however.

New Blogs Search

New Blog Search has now been implemented into the front page and the sidebar. When you start typing in, search results will appear immediately below the box, and then you can click on any of the results or on "more results" (or press enter) to get to the posts you want.

Search works better if you're logged in, because if you're logged in then it will search protected posts as well.

New Features

• Tags: You can now select which tags you want to display on your sidebar, or how many of your top tags to display, and also display a list of untagged entries if you please.
• Tag Selection: You can now click on a number of suggested tags when making an entry
• Comment Spam: When a non-logged in user tries to make a comment on your blog, they must answer an arbritrary question (by default, "What colour is an orange?") – this has allowed us to set the default commenting permissions back to "Anyone", which should make the WGA people "well chuffed".

Improvements

• My Comments: By default, your "My Comments" page now sorts by the date of the most recent comment on the entry, not the date of your most recent comment. You can still sort by the old format if desired.
• Comment Information: When you're trying to make a comment, you can see a padlock next to the "COMMENTS" title which will tell you who has permission to comment - this will allow you to see easily why you're not allowed to comment (did you forget to login?) or if your own entries are accidentally locked (or unlocked)
• Book/DVD/CD/Game Reviews: You can now attach a custom picture and URL to a Book, DVD, CD or Game review just like with Movie and TV reviews, so you could quite easily make Gig Reviews under the guise of a Music review and they would appear under the "Music Review" entry type.
• Top Tags: The top tags page is now weighted differently; it will weight tags that appear on several blogs much, much higher than those that appear on a single blog. Also, the Top Tags page now only shows tags used in the past month by default, in order to show popular issues at the present time.
• Miscellaneous: When on a tag page, you can now see the actual entry and image counts being displayed and how many are available on the other links. The "Tag" counter on the front page now only shows the number of unique tags. Tag counts in the sidebar no longer take into account draft entries.

Bugfixes

• Image Editing: You can now edit your images again. Sorry about that.
• Tag Selector: You can also use the up/down arrows in your entries again. Again, sorry…

Mathew Mannion : 16 Sep 2005 10:18 |  Tags: BlogBuilder Comments CSS |  Comments (43) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Custom CSS Removal From Blogs

Soon, we will be deploying new changes to BlogBuilder, which include major changes to the markup and CSS for the pages in order to make them more accessible and neater.

As a result of this, all Custom CSS that has been added to blogs will be removed, and you will revert to your default CSS - with the new design.

To make sure that nothing is lost, I have (painstakingly) gone through all blogs with Custom CSS and compiled it into a text file, which you can see below:

link

If there are any problems, contact me – else, the changes will be made, probably sometime this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

Mathew Mannion : 15 Sep 2005 13:06 |  Tags: BlogBuilder CSS |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

BlogBuilder update: Better tags

There has been a new release to BlogBuilder this morning, with a few fixes that people may find useful:

Custom Taglists

You can now create a custom taglist on the Admin -> Appearance page of your blog by clicking Yes on "use Custom taglist" and entering a list of tags into the field below.

Easier to tag entries and images

You can now get suggestions when you're typing in tags for your entries or images. For a short visual tutorial on how this works, you can see the entry here: link

Miscellaneous

• Chinese characters in profile titles now work
• Chinese characters in tags should now display correctly (but not when you click them yet)

Mathew Mannion : 12 Sep 2005 10:46 |  Tags: BlogBuilder |  Comments (12) |  Close comments |  Report a problem