The blog.co.uk Blog - News, tips and more.

Editing tool for deleted tags now online

Category:

announcements

by

teamUK

@

09. Nov 2009 - 16:57:01

Dear bloggers,

The tool which replaces invalid tags with valid ones is now online. In order to use the tool, click on "Mo" on your "My blog.co.uk" page.

Your BCUK team.
Links:
Tags revisited

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

05. Nov 2009 - 15:47:28

Dear bloggers,

UPDATE: The tool to rename your deleted tags and thereby restore them will be available beginning of next week (most likely Monday, November 9th 2009).

Firstly, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused to you by the recent changes to the tag system. We realise that simply deleting the affected tags was a heavy-handed way of approaching the issue. We would also like to apologise for the fact that many of you received a section of the mail in German -- we appreciate that such a clumsy oversight only adds to the frustration that you were probably already feeling.

Following the reaction of many users towards the changes, we have come up with a solution to the issue that we feel is a sound compromise between the necessity for the changes and your desire to have your own personal tagging method.

We are working on a new tool which will allow you to replace these invalid tags with new valid ones all in one go (ie, you won't have to replace them all individually). This means that you will be able to easily re-index your blog posts. When this function is online, you'll be notified on your 'My blog.co.uk' page.

The reasons for the changes are complex, but simply put, the changes will improve performance and allow blogs to load faster.

For example, every tag 'creates' two new webpages -- one on your blog, one on BCUK.

So if you tag a post with 'life' and 'love', this creates six new pages (because each is also a page for all the entries all over BCUK tagged with 'life' and 'love'). As you can imagine, when one factors in the variety of combination sites possible when a large number of tags are used, it very quickly puts our platform under strain -- even as few as fifteen tags creates around 500 new webpages. We need to make this change now, in order to ensure that your blogs can be accessed at high speed.

As for tags with more than five words being deleted, this was simply because statistics have shown that five words are not necessary, and only a minute percentage of the total tags on BCUK consist of more than five words. So if you had a tag 'eternal sunshine of a spotless mind' deleted, then you can simply replace it with 'eternal sunshine spotless mind' without decreasing its visibility to search engines in any way.

We hope that this explanation has made it a little clearer why these changes were necessary.

We apologise once more for the annoyance caused, and wish to assure you that in the future, we will make a much bigger effort to make forthcoming changes to the BCUK platform more visible to all users.

Thanks,
your BCUK team.
Links:
New US law to change the face of blogging?

Category:

other

by

teamUK

@

03. Nov 2009 - 14:12:21

As of December 1st, 2009, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided that bloggers who review products will have to disclose any relationship with the producers of said product, even if that relationship is as tenuous as having received a free sample.

Blogging and other forms of social networking, such as Twitter and Facebook, have witnessed a huge increase in influence in recent years, an increase that both bloggers and advertisers have been quick to capitalise upon. Blogs lent an air of authenticity to product reviews, to which buyers attach a much greater weight than more traditional forms of advertising.

Although the new regulations will apply only to the US for the forseeable future, it is highly likely that such a significant change will not go unnoticed by European lawmakers.

You can read more about the changes here.

We'd love to hear your opinions on the matter. Do you feel like blogging will change as a result?
Links:
Improvements to the tag system

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

02. Nov 2009 - 11:30:14

Dear bloggers,

You can tag posts, blogs, profiles and media, and in the very near future, there will be a few changes to the tag system to make it even better.

Soon tags will be completely 'international' - you'll be able to use characters from other languages in tags, as well as numbers and other symbols. Pretty much everything will be useable as a tag, except HTML code. Tags will soon have to be at least two characters and could potentially consist of up to fifty, as well as up to five separate words.

They will also be displayed exactly as you enter them, and to allow our system to process all the new tags, special characters will not appear alongside the letters, numbers and hyphens in the URL of the blog post.

User tags and Interests will be limited to 150 tags, and posts, groups blogs, normal blogs, friends and designs will be limited to a maximum of fifteen tags.

Unfortunately, old tags that do not fulfill the criteria mentioned above will be deleted. If the changes affect any of your tags, you'll receive a Private Message from us informing you which ones have had to be deleted.

As always, feedback is more than welcome.

Your BCUK team.
Links:
No more registrations from Gmail addresses

Category:

announcements

by

teamUK

@

28. Oct 2009 - 18:13:04

Dear bloggers,

Over the last few days, we've had a huge number of spam registrations from Gmail accounts.

For this reason, we've had to stop accepting new registrations from Gmail accounts. This is only a temporary measure until we come up with a viable solution to the issue, and of course if you have already registered with a Gmail account, you won't have to change.

Thanks,
Your BCUK team.
Links:
Maintenance work 22.Sep. 2009

Category:

maintenance

Category:

technical

by

teamUK

@

21. Sep 2009 - 10:11:51

On Tuesday, 22. of Sept. 2009, between 09:00 and 10:00 CET we will have to do some maintenance work on our platform. The platform will not be accessible during that time.

Update: The Downtime will happen 2 hours later, beginning 9am
Links:
Attack on BCUK

Category:

announcements

by

teamUK

@

11. Sep 2009 - 14:10:33

Dear bloggers,

As most of you are probably aware, BCUK and its sister communities, blog.de, blog.fr, etc, were unavailable for about two hours yesterday afternoon.

This was because of a so-called Denial of Service attack. The attack was very promptly identified by our Admin team, and the platform was immediately taken offline to allow us to carry out investigations. Our forensic analysis of the attack is ongoing. After the necessary security measures were carried out, the platform was put back online.

As a result of this incident, some structural changes will be necessary. These will require the platform to be down for short periods over the coming days. Of course, we'll inform you here about when these downtimes will take place.

Thanks for your understanding,

your BCUK team.
Links:
New advertising formats on blogs

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

18. Aug 2009 - 11:17:46

Dear bloggers,

On blog.de we've already tested some new advertising formats on the blogs of free-users. The standard formats in blue/black with white background didn't often match the design of the blog.

The old ads look like this:

We tried to adapt the ads better to the layout, so the new advertising formats could look like this, for example:

Soon you will see the new ads on blog.co.uk, too. We are sure that by testing the new formats extensively, we will find the best solution for blog owners and readers.
Links:
Support for Internet Explorer 6 to cease

Category:

announcements

by

teamUK

@

20. Jul 2009 - 10:40:11

Dear users,

We have decided to cease support for Internet Explorer 6.

This means that new features on BCUK will not be tested on IE6 and we will no longer be able to resolve support questions arising from the use of this browser.

For the those of you who still use IE6, you will be informed after you log in that these changes affect you. We will provide you with some help in either updating your browser or getting a new one.

We recommend that you update to IE7 or IE8, or to change to a different browser - we recommend Firefox, Safari, Opera, Flock or Chrome.

These changes only affect the 'My blog.co.uk' pages - effectively any page that you need to be logged in to see. Therefore all blogs can still be read and commented on using IE6, since only users who are logged in will get a message from us.

Regards,
Your BCUK team.
Links:
BCUK merchandise is finally available!

Category:

other

by

Rampage

@

10. Jul 2009 - 10:11:32

It's finally here - the BCUK merchandise shop!

As you can see, there are a variety of t-shirts for men and women in a number of different styles and colours, as well a couple of bags and some other things too.

Unfortunately it is not possible for you to design your own t-shirts, etc, but if you send a PM to me telling me what you want, I'll be able to put it together and make it available in the shop. I can also modify any existing designs. So you can have BCUK t-shirts with your choice of colour, style and slogans.

If you have any suggestions for other BCUK merchandise that you would like to see, drop me a PM and I'll see what can be done.

Happy shopping!
Links:
New widget!

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

01. Jul 2009 - 15:35:02

Dear Bloggers,

Next week we'll be activating a new widget, with which you'll be able to display posts from other BCUK blogs. You'll be able to sort them by tags too, so that you could, for example, link to all the photography.blog.co.uk posts tagged with 'seaside' or 'mountains'.

This new feature will work in a similar way to RSS feeds. So if you don't want other users to be able to link to your posts, simply uncheck the 'Enable RSS-Feeds' option in your blog settings.

Happy linking!
Your BCUK team
Links:
Lots of improvements and changes to BCUK

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

08. Jun 2009 - 12:43:44
Dear bloggers,

We've made a number of small changes and improvements all over blogland. See below for an overview.

My blog.co.uk
- Improved layout in the blog overview
- In your PM inbox, more messages can be marked by dragging the cursor over the checkboxes while the left mousebutton is held down
Design
- After clicking on the paintbrush icon, a new overview page improves useability
- Three new Mokono designs are available: Discomama, Newspaper and Crimson Inferno
- Group moderators can modify group designs
- Improved spacing in the various areas of your blog. If problems with custom CSS arise, please let us know in the help blog
- The WOW headers in the WOW designs can be removed:
  #header-inner .bL {display:none;}
Blogs
- The 'recommend/bookmark' under each post has been expanded. Now there's a code there for a direct link to the post, making it easier to link others to the post
- There is now a 'login' link right at the comment box
Uploads
- The following file types can now be uploaded:
- .ppsx .odp (OpenOffice presentation)
- .odt (OpenOffice Text document)
- .ods (OpenOffice table document)
- .bmp (Bitmap image)
- .flv (Flash film)
Links:
Downtime announcement

Category:

announcements

by

teamUK

@

17. Apr 2009 - 07:00:00

Dear bloggers,

Due to scheduled maintenance, blog.co.uk will be unavailable from approximately 02:00am and 03:00am on Tuesday, April 21st.

Apologies for the inconvenience,

Your BCUK Team
Links:
Changes on RSS Feeds and Statistics

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

16. Apr 2009 - 10:00:13

Dear Users

As well as some changes to the RSS Feeds, we have modified the way bots (e.g. from search engines) are identified on blog.co.uk.

This will have an effect on your statistics - some of you will probably observe fewer page impressions within the blog stats. But don't worry! This does not mean that fewer people are reading your blog. We are simply filtering the search engine bots and removing the misleading page impressions that they cause. This will improve our statistics so that they will be in better accordance with external tools like Google Analytics.

Feel free to post your questions regarding the new statistics or RSS Feed on the help blog.

Your BCUK Team
Links:
Small changes on BCUK

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

25. Mar 2009 - 00:15:16

Dear Users,

We have implemented another couple of small changes here on BCUK.

As of now, it's not possible for a visitor to comment on a blog using a name that is already registered on BCUK. As well as this, your username can't be used as part of a visitor's name on your blog, and neither can any of your friend's usernames.

For example: As a visitor, you can't use the name Vasco or Florian. Vasco2, or FlorianXYZ would be fine though.

On Vasco's blog, as a visitor you can't use 'Vasco' in any part of your name - ie Mr.Vasco or Vasco2009 are not allowed. Also, Mr.Florian isn't allowed either, as Florian is on Vasco's friends list.

Also, you can now edit the default view for the new tag pages - just click on the icon of the spanner on the 'tag' widget in the Design Wizard.

We hope this further improves your blogging experience.
Your BCUK team.
Links:
The new tag pages

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

18. Mar 2009 - 13:27:10

Dear bloggers,

As we have already announced, there have been a few changes to the tag pages. These changes, both on BCUK and on your blog, will give you three different views for your chosen tag.

Clicking on a tag on your blog now leads you to a page which shows you a short preview of all the posts with your chosen tag. Depending upon whether the tag appears in the text of the post or not, you will either see the first few words of the post or a section of the post where the tag appears as a normal word. This page is called 'recent'.

As well as this, there's an option to view the 'most read' posts with your tag. They appear in a short preview form and are sorted by the number of pageviews, starting with the most viewed. You can also have a look at the full post - this is shows all of the posts with your tag, sorted chronologically. This view will be familiar to you - it's the way posts were displayed before these changes took place.

We expect to shortly modify the tag and tag cloud widgets to allow you to set which view is the one you see first when clicking on a tag.

As always, feedback is most welcome.

Your BCUK team.
Links:
BCUK merchandise

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

13. Mar 2009 - 12:52:50

It's been a long time coming, but finally we are almost ready to make some BCUK merchandise available in the shape of t-shirts, sweaters, mugs and much more.

Blog.de merchandise has been available for the last few weeks, you can have a look at it here. It's in German, but at least it can give you an idea of what will be available.

You will be able to personalise your own BCUK t-shirt, but we would also like to have a few standard BCUK designs made.

And this is where we need your help.

If you have any suggestions for what you would like to have on a BCUK t-shirt, let us know in a comment. We'll collect the most popular ones and we'll see what we can do.

Thanks for your help!
Links:
Changes to the tag pages

Category:

announcements

by

teamUK

@

04. Mar 2009 - 13:44:13

Dear bloggers,

As of next week, you will notice some changes to the tag pages. These changes will affect the tag pages both on your blogs and on the BCUK tag pages.

At the moment, clicking on a post tag on your blog (be it the ones under the post or the ones in the tag widget) brings you to a page which displays all the posts with that tag. This page will still be available, but will not be the first one that you see after clicking on a tag.

Due to large demand from the community, a preview page of all the posts with the chosen tag will be the first displayed. This preview page will show you a small section of the text in the tagged post. In addition, you will also be able to view the 'old' complete version, as well as a page that sorts the tags by pageviews, giving you an overview of the most popular posts with your chosen tag.

For those of you who wish to have the complete version as the first page you see after clicking on a tag, you can easily set up a bloglist linking to that page.

We expect to have the new pages finished by next week, and we will show you clearer examples as soon as they are completed.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback on this new development.

Your BCUK team.
Links:
The Bloscars 2009

Category:

other

by

teamUK

@

26. Jan 2009 - 12:07:59

It just seems to come around quicker each year - it's The Bloscars time again!

All the old classic categories are back (as well as one new one), and competition will be stiff for the honour of being declared BCUK's finest.

Can last year's big winners, rowtheboat, Old-Nick and ajnspencer hold on to their crowns? Will subville continue her ruthless domination of the Best Profile Picture category? Or will someone new come in and sweep the board?

Well, it is up to you. Yes, YOU! You can find voting instructions and forms here - hurry though, you only have until midnight on January 31st to get your votes in. That's just over five days. Do it, do it now!
Links:
Less commercial ads

Category:

new

by

teamUK

@

08. Jan 2009 - 15:42:31

Dear Users,

In future, you will probably notice some changes regarding the commercial ads on the blogs in our network. Our goal is to show less ads on blogs, especially if you visit a blog when you are logged in. This will be a longer process and needs some testing first, but we hope you will be pleasantly surprised.

Your BCUK team
Links:

:: Next Page >>

The blog.co.uk Blog: News, tips and more.

Editing tool for deleted tags now online

Tags revisited

New US law to change the face of blogging?

Improvements to the tag system

No more registrations from Gmail addresses

Maintenance work 22.Sep. 2009

Attack on BCUK

New advertising formats on blogs

Support for Internet Explorer 6 to cease

BCUK merchandise is finally available!

New widget!

Lots of improvements and changes to BCUK

Downtime announcement

Changes on RSS Feeds and Statistics

Small changes on BCUK

The new tag pages

BCUK merchandise

Changes to the tag pages

The Bloscars 2009

Less commercial ads

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