Good news to BlogHoster users. Version 2.8 has been released, and is now available for download in the client area. The changes and fixes in this version include:

• Fixed ticket #7: Templates are left aligned in Firefox and Safari (Tunnel, Mexican Sunset, Aphid, Best Friend and Binder)
• Fixed ticket #8: Avatar border is not properly displayed in Firefox and Safari (Tunnel, Mexican Sunset, Aphid, Best Friend and Binder)
• Fixed ticket #1: Problem with apostrophe in the category
• Resolved ticket #2 as invalid bug: Password changed when moving user to another group
• Fixed ticket #6: No line breaks in the confirmation email
• Fixed ticket #10: Custom Profile Fields do not work
• Fixed ticket #11: Warning messages on admin_users.php
• Fixed ticket #12: Warning messages in user's pages

Version 2.8 also has six new templates designed by Design Disease, which we have named Aquamarine, Torn Paper, Clean & Clear, Wallpaper, Spectrum and Rose.

Current users can download the 2.6 to 2.8 upgrade from the client area, while a full version is also available for download to new licensees, or current users who wish to do a full reinstall.

We're happy to announce that BlogHoster is under a new management team effective this November, 2008. Still under parent company Splashpress Media, the new team is now headed by J. Angelo Racoma and Randy Nivales.

Angelo manages the network's creative and marketing aspects, while Randy heads web development. Both have been previously involved in developing, running and marketing large-scale hosted blogging services, so we are assured that the new team has experience and can apply best practices to the management, development and support of BlogHoster.

A new version is in the works, and several new design templates have been uploaded. We will be announcing exciting changes soon. But for now, we are focusing on improving support for the existing userbase.

Our webhost had a hard drive failure causing us to lose some data for this website- but luckily not for anything to do with the product itself as we have that data very securely backed up. However some of the entries on this blog and the main website news section have been lost, along with some minor cosmetic changes we had made over the last few months. Annoying at most- we're changing hosts and have purchased redundancy to avoid this happening in future. Work continues on an update (2.8) and also general feature planning for the future update v3.0 which will include many great new features.

I wonder how much we could sell the story of Q2 2008 to a TV network for? Forget "The Office", the on-screen version of constant events that have plagued the Bloghoster team over the last few months would be a million-dollar series for sure.

But just in case we fail to make millions selling our unlucky tales to HBO, we're carrying on as normal from now and three of us are coding away on the next patch (2.7.1).

Once this is finished, and tested, and tested, and tested, and released, we will begin developing some of the hundreds of suggestions we have had for Bloghoster V3. An exciting time for sure.

Unfortunately the registrar holding our demo domain have messed up and we are having to wait a little while longer to get the demo back online.

We hope to have the 2.7.1 update released soon, once again we do apologise for the delay on this as our main coder for this release has been in hospital.

I'd like to introduce Mike who has joined Bloghoster as our new coder. Some of you may already have seen his nick in the bug tracker (Xikeon). Mike's Dutch and was born in Amsterdam. One of his main hobbies appears to be 'white hatting' (I had a feeling he would be good for the job when he emailed us out of the blue to report a bug on our website, and go on to suggest a free fix). He'll be on the forums at some point too.

 

Mike's been chatting with Barry and between them they will be deciding how to distribute the most important of the bugs so that we can get the most long term and annoying issues ironed out as soon as possible.

 

I still have some budget remaining for salaries so I will also be looking for a third coder to join the effort. This way we can have a minimum of three eyes checking all revisions, which will be the first time Bloghoster has had such a level of 'peer review'. Stay tuned.

 

 

Members please see this forum post for news on updates:

http://www.bloghoster.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=4292&st=0&p=21243&#entry21243

Thanks

Hi Folks,

We've been working on some more bugs, and planning for another patch before the end of the month.

Meanwhile- one day left in a competition which might interest some of you!

http://www.splashpress.com/2007/worth-value/

We have fixed a few more bugs which are now included in both the bloghoster270 and the 260-270 update files. You can re-download these from your client area. For those who want to know exactly which files were edits, here is the specifics of our work:

• Issue # 0000016 [related] [bug] resolved: Fixed bug with profile URLs not being correctly populated with weblog values. Previously, only one was offered. The files you need to replace are: [manager/index.php] [manager/edit_profile.php]
• Issue # 0000027 [bug] resolved:  Fixed bug with birthdate values where a user fails to input a birthdate. The files you need to replace are: [signup.php] [profile.php] [manager/edit_profile.php]
• Issue # 0000033 [bug] resolved: Fixed bug with users able to create categories with a slash or other reserved punctuation. Users will now see a tip and have to remove any such punctuation. The files you need to replace are: [manager/entrycat.php]
• Issue # 0000016 [bug] resolved: Fixed bug with editing profile, if user has multiple blogs each profile page will be displayed in a list in your control panel profile page. The files you need to replace are: [manager/edit_profile.php]
  

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing to the bug tracker and helping report useful information. We have fixed a few bugs which are now included in both the bloghoster270 and the 260-270 update files. You can re-download these from your client area. For those who want to know exactly which files were edits, here is the specifics of our recent work:

• update_270_tpl.php runs against your database checking and updating existing templates in a 2.6 system with new tags. Use this at your own risk- heavily customised systems with unique templates especially.
  
• Issue # 0000025 [bug] resolved: browser incompatibility issue with passwords and editing users. Two files need updating to fix this: admin/admin_useredit.php and admin/admin_header.php
• Issue #0000040 [bug] resolved: password hash appearing after saving changes to a user. files: admin/user_cookies.php
• Issue #0000031 [bug] resolved: unable to comment as registered user. File: header.php
• Issue #0000007 [feature] resolved: Changed knowledgebase back to forums.

We have opened a bug tracking system so that users can submit issues to us and they can be organised more effectively than in the past. The URL is http://splashbugs.com/bh/

Please expect some ironing out of issues with the system in the early days of its use.

v2.7 is finally here. We are also well into 2.8 so now is the time to be joining the forums and posting your feature requests. Remember, the more positive replies a feature request gets, the more likely it is to be developed.

2.7 cleans up some important consistency issues such as templating, and also includes a few hopefully useful features that users have been requesting. If the feature you really hoped would be here didn't make it this time- don't fret! Just make a loud noise on the forum and we will be sure to reconsider it for 2.8.

Check out the changelog for more details.

If you are waiting on a reply to a helpdesk ticket - thank you for your patience! We are now making our way through the backlog of tickets so we should be helping you shortly.

We're working hard to finish things up here.. 2.7 will be up soon and by that point we will also be into 2.8. Thanks for your patience and sorry for the delay!

Hi Folks,

I wanted to update the blog with a list of the work we have done so far which will be included in the next release 2.7. We have a long list of other things to be moving on to, and we are keeping a close eye on the forums and feature requests. I will be making some polls soon to see which features are the most popular so we can try and please the most people.

- Fixing & testing sql problem for recent entries - draft entries were being shown to the public
- Fixed the upload photo problem (safe_mode)
- Fixed the problem where emails didn't format properly with line breaks
- Added the ability to keep the template when posting a comment
- Added the ability to keep the template when using the photo album
- Made changes to browse.php: members listed via alphabet plus search for members
- Added the ability to add a picture to a comment on a blog
- Added the ability to add smilies to reactions
- Fixed the problem with the login page "remember me" not always working. (At first we didn't recognise this bug, but finally we saw the light).

More coming soon.

Hello everyone- just a quick note to say we are actively writing code at the moment and are taking on board your thoughts and feedback. If you have proposals for new features or have found a bug please let us know via the forums:

http://bloghoster.net/forums/

I'll have another update for you soon.

The next version of BH, 2.6, is slated to be released this evening or early tomorrow. 2.6 will primarily consist of bug fixes for issues recently brought up on the community forums. These include:

 

Bug Fix: Fixed HTML in Terms and Conditions, single-quote conversion to HTML entity, and other htmlspecialchars_decode() related problems.

Bug Fix: Fixed adding images to posts

Bug Fix: Fixed showing non-verified users in browse users.

Bug Fix: Fixed content default for new entries bug.

Bug Fix: Fixed case-sensitive login names.

IfCategoriesAllowed template tag can now be used anywhere in the user template.

 

We are also planning a reorganization of the BlogHoster.net website, including the archiving and privitization of the message forums. Additionally, I would like to announce that we have lowered the price of a single BlogHoster license to $249.95. All of you who have been waiting for the price to drop for a second license, now's the time!

 

We have almost finished reviewing the feature requests as outlined on  the thread that can be found here.
Please post any other features you would like to see in BlogHoster. We plan on using this thread asa roadmap for the next few versions of BlogHoster.

Also, to those that  suggested features, Thank You. The community is a critical part of our product and we could not have produced what BlogHoster is today without your feedback and support.

The following are the planned updates for the next version of BlogHoster(2.5).

1. Posting images and pocasts from the Photos and Files manager now works correctly.
2. RSS feeds are now enabled by default.
3. Moblogging now functions correctly instead of displaying a blank screen.
4. The
tag will now work correctly when used in comments.
5. Using single quotes in a comment now works correctly.
6. PHP can now be used in the top and bottom ads.

This list may be updated or modified before the target release date(March 1st).

We plan on releasing BlogHoster 2.5 by the end of the month. Included will be a variety of bug fixes as well as a few feature improvements. The changelog will be updated with all of the planned updates sometime this weekend. Also, we plan on selling 10 packs of templates. These will be on sale at the end of the month.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Stirling and I'm the new addition to the BlogHoster staff. I'll be answering your support tickets and responding to your questions on the forums. Also, I'll be working on the next version of BlogHoster, so keep the feature requests coming!

So far this week I've been answering support tickets and responding to forum posts. I have started the preliminary changelog and feature request list for BlogHoster, and hope to have a significant chunck of the next version of BlogHoster complete by next week. I will be sure to keep the community updated here - stay tuned!