I updated the Midnight Snack template. This is a very simple template with no plugins and no calendars.

Have a look at the example site and tell me what you think

I updated the Infinite Destiny template. It now handles the wider comments box as well as the wider plugins.

Have a look at the example site and tell me what you think

The other day some spammer sent me an an email complaining that his/her account was blocked and that there was no way of 'appealing' the block, in fact he complained that there was no contact page at all.

I have to admit, I am embarrassed to say, never even though of it, users have been able to contact me via messaging, but this is not possible to contact us if your account is blocked, or even if you are just wanting to ask a question.

So you can now contact-us directly if you have any queries/questions and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

I added a new shortcode tag using GeSHi

You can now use the shortcode [code:lang] or [code language='lang']

For example you can use the SQL language, ([code:sql])

--
-- SQL example for GeSHi
--
 
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS foo;
CREATE TABLE foo (
  id INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  characters INT(11) DEFAULT '0',
  time_taken DOUBLE DEFAULT NULL,
  language_used VARCHAR(100) DEFAULT NULL,
  SOURCE text,
  time_highlighted datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (id)
) TYPE=MyISAM

There is a comprehensive list of languages available, but most of the basic languages are included.

I made some minor changes when it comes to comments

1. No URLs will be allowed in the title of the comment, (if allowed to have titles).
2. The number of URLs in the body of the comment will now be limited, (the number will vary depending on various parameters of the poster).

Let me know if you come across any issues.

If you have a secure Facebook account, (I think it is a requirement now?), you can now login to facebook, (or even create a new account using Facebook).

This is the secure site, https://www.journalhome.com/, over time I will update all the links, (internal of course), to be 100% secure, I just want to make sure that everything runs fine for a while.

Visit us on our Facebook page.

I finnally fixed the Daffi template, it was very outdated and, to be fair, completely broken.

It is now a bit wider and allows for most/all plugins to be entered.

Click on the image to see what it looks like.

I am still, (yes still!), working at converting some wordpress themes, this is taking a lot longer than expected, but at least the work is slowly progressing.

Let me know of you have any other templates you want me to look at.

On the Tuesday 24th January 2012, the US Senate will vote on the Internet censorship bill.

Whilst it is an American law, it has far reaching repercussions for the web as a whole.

The bill will affect us all, and the way we all use websites.

Hi,

I laughed in the face of Friday the 13th and made some minor updates

New items:

1. I updated the tinyMCE editor to version 3.4.7, this is the default editor, (when no other plugins are active).
2. I updated CKEditor to version 3.6.2, you can activate that editor Dashboard > Plugins > CKEditor

Fixes:

1. Trackbacks were not working properly to say the least.
2. Minor tweaks in the background.

As usual if you see anything wrong, please give me a shout.

I am in the process of making various updates and, although I am trying to be as careful as possible, some errors crept in.

Last night, (UK time), users were unable to create new entries for about 4-5 hours, the editor was just not working properly anymore :(. I fixed the issue as quickly as I could.

Sorry about this, please let me know if you come across any other issues that I might have missed.

In case you are wondering about the title, I had to put about $5.00 in the swear jar last night...

We often get some questions about 'disappearing' comments.

What happens is no big secret, but rather a sign that we are not relying on technology as much as people think we are. You see, we have a spam bot running in the background, constantly evaluating entries, weblogs, and comments, (and a few other things). While it catches most spam on the spot, sometime it goes into 'safe mode' and asks for the comment to be moderated rather than risking making a bad decision.

While this is happening, a notification is sent to you, informing you that there is a new comment on your blog. Been the super efficient bunch that we are, we often review comments very quickly and delete it if need be.

This means that, by the time you come to read your blog, you find nothing more than tumbleweeds.

Note that we don't judge any comments, we only remove spam comments, nothing more, nothing less any other form of comments will have to be moderated by yourself. You can go to your account and delete the comments you don't wish to see.

Also note  that a copy of the comment is sent to you, if you feel that we were wrong, we will happily restore your comment...

There were some issues with the network this morning but it seems to have resolved itself, (somewhat worrying when those problems come and go).

At one point it looked like the Yahoo search engine robot had gone a bit crazy and was flooding the site, but I am not entirely certain that this was the issue.

I will keep monitoring it to see what the issue might be.

Sorry if you experienced some down time ...

[update 20/10/2011] I am still having some issues, I have disabled the statistics for now, so they will be a bit skew for a day or two ....

What is a shortcode?

A shortcode is a ‘tag’ or a short hand way of getting something done. For example if you want a youtube video to appear in your post, you could do it the hard way and enter all the flash code or simply use the shortcode [youtube:http://url]

We then take care of all the ugly work in the background.

Why should I use shortcodes?

There are 2 main reasons

1. For compatibility, We take care of the background code, so if the provider changes something, (the way they embed their videos for example), then we will be right here to change it for you.
2. For ease of use, a shortcode is a lot easier to use than the actual html/flash code.

I want a short code!

Simply post a comment here and we will add the new Shortcode as requests are made.
I will update this list as time goes by with instructions on how to use each tags.

Available shortcodes

Miscellaneous

• [digg] add a digg voting button

Video

• [vimeo] embeds a Vimeo video
• [youtube] embeds a Youtube video

Audio

• [audio] replace an mp3 file link to an mp3 player.

Why are weblogs suspended?

We have a few bots that constently 'read' weblog entries/posts/comments/walls/etc and, if they find something they don't like they inform the moderators to suspend the weblog.
This is not an automatic process, the moderator can choose to ignore the suggestion(s) given by the weblog.

How do the bots work?

This is not an easy question to answer, first of all because it might help certain editors to try and 'beat' the bot.
But more importantly because it changes all the time, the bots have hundreds of rules to check if a weblog should be suspended or not, those rules change all the time. So answering this question today might not give the same answer tomorrow.

My account was suspended, how can I get it back?

You can send us a message, (user JournalHome), or you can send an email to the admin here, you can even add a comment here. We will then review the site again.

When is the suspended site deleted?

We normally keep the sites for a few months before completely deleting them. We normally don't recycle the user name/weblog name for a year or so, In some extreme cases we never recycle the names.