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    blogging: don't sweat the little things ... oh wait, we should

    Blogging was one of the first features we released on Spaces. Since then we've gotten a lot of feedback  about these 'little' things that annoy our users. Thanks to all our users out there that reported these things to us and helped us make the experience better.

    Who cares what date I posted my blog entry on? It's still damn good.

    While your blog entries are ordered reverse chronologically, doesn't mean that the date is the most important thing. Lots of people complained that the way that blog entries were displayed make it look like date was more important than the title or your content. There's something about emphasizing 'not today' that makes things seem less appealing. Well now you can change that - for those out there were content is way more important than the point in time it was posted, you can now choose to display where the date/timestamp gets shown. At the top (as it was before), or down at the bottom of the entry.

    Rinse, Repeat - Why can't I multi-delete comments/trackbacks on blog entries? My finger is tired from all this clicking.

    Yeah, we know hitting the "X", and then hitting the OK on the delete confirmation dialog is a pain in the butt, especially when you want to delete a bunch of things. Now you can multi-delete comments/trackbacks (even entries if you decide that chronicaling your love life over the last couple of months was a bad idea and you want to wipe out any record of that)

    • Sign into your space
    • Click on the blog tab in the navigation across the top OR in your blog module click on "view entry details"
    • Click on the (+) to expand comments or trackbacks on an entry
    • Check the box(es) beside the items you want to delete
    • Click on "Delete selected items"
    • And click OK on the dialog to confirm.
    • Ta-da!

    I just want to respond to a comment!

    You log into your space and are reading new comments and stuff. You notice a comment that someone left you, and all you want to do respond with by leaving a comment. Too bad to leave a comment you have to go to the 'preview' or public view, find that entry (which may or may not be on your front page), and then finally leave a comment. Geez I'm tired just thinking about it. Wouldn't it be nice that when you're looking at that comment, you could click a link to add a comment and magically go to that entry? Now you can!

    Help! I'm stuck in a category and I can't get out.

    Ever clicked on a category to see what else was related and then couldn't get back to the view of all entries? It's kinda silly and we agree. So we've added a link to "view all categories" which gets you back to the default view.

    I click on a blog entry from a contact card in messenger and then I dont know where to go OR I want to read more but I can't figure out how to get to the rest of the entries

    On the first thing - Previously when you clicked on a blog update from the contact card in Messenger, you landed on the permalink page (the permanent 'link' to that particular entry). It wasn't obvious that you could read more blog entries or go other places in the space. While this problem is still being solved (ie. exciting stuff coming in another release), its way easier to get to the next entry.

    For the second thing, users can choose how many entries they want to show on their front page. We didn't make it easy for a visitor to your space to figure out to get to the rest of your entries to keep on reading. Now there's a 'View more entries" link at the bottom of your blog module on your front page.  
     

    Delete a photo from a published blog entry.
    Ever clicked on add photo and then really really regretted it because there was no easy way to de-associate that photo with your blog entry? And you either had to start a new blog entry, or publish the entry and then do a scramble to delete the photo from the settings > storage page. Yeah, also not very usable. Now when you go to a blog entry that has a photo associated with it, you can easily remove it right then and there. Don't forget you should always publish your entry (after you've made changes/removed photos)
     
    Like really, I'm SICK AND TIRED OF LOSING MY BLOG ENTRIES!
     
    uhm, yeah, so are we. Some times I swear at my computer but that doesn't really help. Eileen (one of our super fantastic devs) worked on improving this so that this happens less. (Mind you, if you decide to unplug your computer in the middle of adding/editing a blog entry we still can't help you.)
     
    So there you go, blogging improvements just for you. Well, ok and me...and the other millions of users on spaces. Keep the feedback coming!

    Thanks Karen

    Comments (2)

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    Picture of Anonymous
    Deb wrote:
    Help!  I have a counter on my blog... got that working all good... but I'm ATTEMPTING to put on a second Custom HTML for the weather network - I have the code and everything - but the space only allows me to have one - but I see other's have more then one - help -- can you please give me detailed instructions on how to do this???
    Dec. 10
    Jennywrote:
    hello, please kindly tell me why one cannot highlite and copy and paste while typing/correcting text in a blog.  And especially when the darn Spaces freezes and you lose everything, if you could hilite and copy to a notepad, etc, at least all the work wouldn't be lost.  Can you please advise?? thanx
    Aug. 29

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