Added Vimeo.com support

I added a new short code for Vimeo: [Vimeo:url], (or [vimeo:id] or [vimeo url=url]), now all you need to do is add this tag in your post and Journalhome will automatically embed Vimeo.com.

I will also update the list of short keys to make it easier to remember/use, (it will be added to the Youtue, Digg, Mp3).

Let me know if you come across any issues using this tag, (Thanks flightsim for suggesting this new shortkey).

09h55 - 4/26/2011 - comments {1} - post comment

Link your blog to your twitter/facebook accounts

If you already have an account here at JournalHome and would like to link your twitter account it is very simple.

1. Log into your JournalHome account using your JournalHome user name and password.
2. Click on the twitter button to log in.
3. Log in to your twitter account.
4. Twitter will redirect you to JournalHome, as you are already logged in your twitter account will automatically be linked.

The same applies to Facebook.

1. Log into your JournalHome account using your JournalHome user name and password.
2. Click on the Facebook button to log in.
3. Log in to your Facebook account.
4. Facebook will redirect you to JournalHome, as you are already logged in your Facebook account will automatically be linked.

Let me know if you have any issues.

16h54 - 4/21/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Some small fixes.

Hi,

I have made some minor changes to JournalHome, mostly bug fixes.

1. The facebook login was creating some crazy username rather than been clever and using the user name/surname.
2. Twitter plugin was not saving some information properly.
3. The blog general settings page was not giving a reason if the avatar is/was not saved properly.
   1. The avatar is now saved properly, (did not always work in some edge cases).
4. Added Vimeo shortcode support, (use [vimeo:url]).
5. Changed the youtube short code to use [youtube:url], (all entries using the old tag(s) have been updated).
6. Changed the retweet short code to use [retweet], (all entries have been updated as well).
7. Removed pseudo short code 'help' next to entry title.
8. Fixed an issue with spam links in comments, (the links would not always work).
9. Updated to the lattest version of PHP (5.3.6).
10. Small google analytic changes.

As always, let me know if you come across any issue you think I might have left out.

12h33 - 4/21/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

New user area

I have updated/redesigned the user area, ('cause I was never really happy with the way it was done originally).

Now you have your dashboard with your general settings followed by your blog(s) settings.

Hopefully this will make it a bit easier to navigate and manage your entries/posts.

As always, let me know if you have any issues or if you think I should re-order things a little differently.

19h06 - 4/19/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Added 'AddThis' bookmark plugin

Hi,

I created another plugin, AddThis. it is basically a bookmark plugin. Have a look at their features.

Or have a look at their own Youtube presentation.

To edit your settings simply go to your plugins page and enable the AddThis plugin, (bottom of the list).

As always, I added it to my own blog here so you can have a look at it.

06h00 - 3/17/2011 - comments {2} - post comment

Twitter users can now update their status

I have made a small change to the twitter plugin, you can now update your status whenever you add a new entry.
The default behaviour is to use your title and url as the status update, (it will also add a #Journalhome tag).

If you haven't linked your twitter account with Journalhome then simply:

1. click the twitter button on the main page
2. Login to twitter.
3. you will be asked to 'link' your account.
4. ... that's all you need to do.

Let me know if you see anything wrong

Thanks

13h24 - 3/5/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Lattest JournalHome fixes.

This is just a short list of the little fixes I made.

1. Fixed an issue with tags, (not been saved properly).
2. The entry anchor was not been placed in the right place.
3. Updated the twitter plugin to allow users to update their status.
4. Email addresses are now hidden properly rather than replaced by no-reply@example.com, (the entry is removed from the menu altogether).

New/Old plugins

1. I removed the blogrush plugin because blogrush no longer exists ...
2. Created the Feedjit plugin, to see it in action jut go to your plugin page and activate it, (it is also on this blog).

I did a few other little tweets but I can't think of them all now.

As always, contact me if you have any issues.

12h20 - 3/3/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Bring on March!

I thought I'd give a small update with what is happening here on JournalHome.

1. The spam bot is now checking entries, weblogs, comments, walls and so on. I still think it is doing a good job .
2. I have fixed some broken templates, there are still more to work on but I am getting there, slowly... My aim is still to, eventually, be able to use Wordpress and Blogger templates. They were designed by professionals and most of them will be more than happy to have their work used here, (I'll ask them first of course!).
3. I added a few more plugins:
   
   1. Retweet button
   2. Facebook 'I like' button as well as the comment box, (there is a new one out now so I will update the comment box later today).
   3. CKEditor advanced editor, (and updated the tinymce editor as well).
   I am always keen to create new plugins, so if there are any plugin that you feel should be added, or simply would be 'nice' to have, please let me know.
4. Re-wrote the comment section, it now uses and is a bit more interactive, (I hope). I also added a small simple editor to allow users to add links and so forth.
5. The load on the database has dropped drastically thanks to some very basic/small changes.
6. You can now create an account with your twitter and/or Facebook account.

I have mentioned it before, this is part of my ultimate push to keep Journalhome active, (and alive!), but also to make it easier to move to a new platform, (wordpress?), if need be. The way the code is structured now it is simply impossible for me do much more than react to an issue rather than been pro-active at dealing with them. But I am actively cleaning up as much of the mess as I can, trust me it is not pretty :)

I have been looking at Google Analytic and so far the result seem to have been rather positive, (believe it or not Journalhome has seen a traffic increase of about 10% to 20% since I got rid of a lot of spammers and cleaned a lot of broken code).

The only thing that saddens me is how few 'real' users are actually joining JournalHome, I can only hope that new users will slowly start to come in, this site, like any social websites, needs user interaction to survive and this can only be achieved with new users, (it's a bit of a catch 22 I fear).

As always, please remember that my virtual door is always open, feel free to post a comment or send me a private message if there is anything you fee is not working properly, or you feel should be fixed/changed.

15h06 - 3/2/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Important update to Facebook plugin

I have made one important change to the facebook plugin, (version 0.3), it now includes the facebook comment box by default.

If you do not want this behaviour, simply go to the plugins page and change were you want the facebook button to appear, (or even if you want it to appear at all).

I hope this small change won't affect your blogs too much, of course I am open to any suggestions you might have.

I also created a new category for the Journalhome changelog where those kind of updated will be listed.

15h04 - 2/20/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Disabled trackbacks

Hi,

I had to disable trackbacks for a while, there is an issue with them slowing down most submission.
I will update the system and re-enable track backs as soon as posible.

Thanks

FFMG

23h38 - 2/17/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Retweet me

I created a new plugin to allow the users to re-tweet your entries you can either have the button placed before or after your entries or you can add the button manually in your posts, simply you can use the tag [retweet] to insert the code anywhere you fancy.

Talking of tags, I also fixed a small issue with the tag, (by that I mean it wasn't working properly ).

So head over to your plugin page and activate the retweet me button to add even more social interaction.

03h44 - 2/12/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Connect with Facebook

Following from my previous post you can now log in Journalhome using your Fracebook account.

New users can just click the facebook Sign-in button and, (after allowing Journalhome to have access to some basic information), you will have an account created for you.

If you already have an account here, simply login to Journalhome as per normal, and then click the sign up with Facebook button, your FB user ID will be linked to your JournalHome user ID.

Remember that, as with Twitter, I, (Journalhome), don't have access to any of your private information. We cannot add new status updates or things like that. This is purely to make it convinient to log in using your Facebook username and password.

Please let me know if you come accross something that does not look right and I will look into it.

The main aim of the Twitter and Facebook buttons is to make connecting to JournalHome that much easier.

I might tackle Google connect next but, (as with Twitter), I want to wait a week or two to make sure that everything is working ok.

08h26 - 2/7/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

The need for speed!

I added some, (more), caching to some pages that don't change that often, I am not talking about the blog pages, but rather the stand alone pages, (like the home page for example).
It also only applies to anonymous visitors.

The pages are only cached for 5 minutes, but this will help in removing a lot of load on the database, (especially durring busy/peak times).

One of the obvious issue with this change is that it takes up to 5 minutes for your brand new entries to make it to the front page. Do you think it is a problem? Would you like to see that changed to 1 minute or less?
Other pages, like the main statistics pages, on the other hand don't really suffer from the same problem, (do we really want to have up to the minute statistic updates?)

Let me know if you see some odd display/behaviour because of that or if there is something you would like me to look at.

Thanks

Edit:  Just a quick note, because the pages are only cached for anonymous users, (users I know nothing about), you will see your posts to the home page immediately, (this is because you are not anonymous to me). Others will only see the change in 5 minutes.

Edit2: Another small issue is that the spam blogs that are 'caught' after they make it to the front page will now take 5 minutes to be removed. I will ignore this issue for now because the process is still manual, do it often takes a lot more than 5 minutes for me to see a new spam blog/post.

07h09 - 1/28/2011 - comments {2} - post comment

Latest JounrnalHome updates

Hi,

I have been doing a lot of updates in the past 2 or 3 weeks, mostly to standardise the way things work in the background.

The spam bot is working really well, I am happy with it now, my final task is to add the comments to it so I can cleanup the hundreds, (if not thousands), of spam comments that have still not been deleted. The bot is currently monitoring _new_ spam comments but the old ones still need to be verified. Sadly, some spam comments still make it out, but this is mostly because the process is still very much manual.
Once this is running properly I will automate everything a bit more. You will see that some spam blogs still make it to the front page, that's because, as I mentioned, the process of deleting accounts is still manual, so until I get around to removing them the system assumes that they are 'good' blogs.

I am glad that out of the 20 or 30 spam blogs that are created at least one or two 'real' blogs seem to appear, once I can create new plug-ins and make the whole interface more user friendly that should bring in more people. Please tell your friends to start coming back :)

Other things that have happened,

• New version of the editor, (the 'Advanced' one).
• I also moved some buttons around for the editor to, (hopefully), make it easier to use.
• More user pages now use the blog template, (edit or delete comments for example).
• Updated the album functionality to fix a few background issues.
• Fixed a whole bunch of performance issue to make the site generally a bit faster.

As always with JournalHome those issues are mostly in the background, this is still part of my big plan to move us to a better blogging software engine.
By the time I am done it should be 'trivial' to move to a new engine as it will only be a matter of moving the data across.
But to keep JournalHome.com running I have to do all this in the background.

Please remember to contact me if you find any issues, I will look into it right away! While I am looking around, also feel free to ask me for new feature, not 'things' you would like JournalHome.com to do.

19h29 - 1/18/2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Sign in with Twitter

I added yet another new plugin, you can now sign in with your twitter account, if you do not yet have an account here then you will be prompted to create an account with just one click, (we just need an email address).

That way you can simply log into JournalHome while been logged into twitter, no need to remember both passwords or anything crazy like that :), you can start blogging in less than 5 minutes.
There are no verification emails or codes to enter, if you have a valid titter account then you can use JournalHome.

The first time you sign in you will be ask, (by twitter, not me), if you want to authorise JournalHome to connect with your twitter account and that's pretty much all you need to do.
If you already have an account here but would rather use the twitter button then simply log in here and click on the tweeter button for the link to happen and everything should work splendidly.

As always, let me know if you see something that doesn't look right and I'll have a look at it.

Edit: You can now log into Journalhome using your Facebook account.

15h29 - 12/29/2010 - comments {0} - post comment

I Like Facebook

I created a new plugin for facebook, now you can add the 'I like' button before/after all your entries.
Love it or hate it, Facebook is here to stay, and the 'I like' button give your blog a bit more exposure.

This is not an application! Journalhome will not have access to any of your facebook information, this is simplty a button that your visitors can click to indicate that they like your blog entry. And then, on their facebook profile your entry will appear.

As always, if you see anything wrong/broken simply drop me a comment here and I will look into it right away :)

F.

13h33 - 12/26/2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Unplugging twitter.

06h31 - 12/24/2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Moving things around a little.

15h15 - 12/21/2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Ruthless Spam checking bot

08h59 - 12/8/2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Added another spam check tool.

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The easiest way to stay up to date is by using the RSS/XML feed.
Place this URL within your rss aggregator and it will automatically update itself whenever a new journal entry is published.