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!

On the whole, the 2.3 update went relatively smoothly. However, some new problems have popped up due to our switch from a purely cookie-based login system to sessions. We are now in the process of fixing this problem, along with some of the other issues that came up due to the security improvements we made in 2.3. We've been a little scarce on the boards over the last week because we've been working on the 2.4 update, which will include fixes for all these important issues. No new features will be added in 2.4 - just fixes for the new issues that are being discussed on the boards. I'll be sure to post an announcement on the boards when this is ready to go!

It's official! We finally released v2.3! It's available now in the client area, and includes all the features listed on the changelog. If you run into any problems, either with the new features or with the upgrade itself, please either send us a support ticket or post a reply in the thread Alex posted in the Announcements forum (here it is again: http://www.bloghoster.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3219).

 

Also, we promised you we would be giving you a tentative featurelist for BH v3.0. So, without further ado, here's what we have planned for the next version:

 

- Addition of the Smarty Template engine for BlogHoster files

- Improved organization/cleanliness of the BH code

- MySQL optimization (lowering query counts, closing open connections, etc)

- Addition of a comment management system in the user control panel

- Addition of a "Cancel Account" feature in the user control panel

- Improved user management in the admin panel (including the ability to mass delete inactive users with just a push of a button)

 

During development, we'll be scanning the Feature Requests forum to see if there are any additional features that we feel should be added to v3.0. Also, with the release of v3.0, we may add a template store to BlogHoster.net for BlogHoster admins to purchase additional templates for their installation.

 

That's it for now - thank you all for your patience and understanding. Good luck with the upgrades - be sure to let us know if you run into problems.

The past two days have been extremely productive. In addition to several bug fixes (BH mail being processed as junkmail, signup displaying incorrectly when all profile fields are set to "invisible", and moblog entry titles showing up with strange characters), I also made a couple of important larger changes to BlogHoster.

 

The first big difference in v2.3 (since last I posted a dev blog entry) is the switch from using login cookies to sessions. This will prevent the possibility of using javascript to display user cookies (even though they were encrypted) on a weblog. We felt it was safer if none of the user's information were stored in the form of cookies on their computer. I'm still fixing the "Remember Me?" checkbox so it works with the new system, but it shouldn't take me very long.

 

Another difference is the addition of a "Security Question and Answer" that the user must enter upon signup. When the user goes to reset their password (if they've forgotten it, for example), they will be shown their Security Question and be asked to provide their Security Answer. Only then will their password be reset and an email be sent to them. Our hope is that this will cut down on the number of false password resets that occur in BlogHoster systems.

 

Finally, I've made BlogHoster more secure from SQL injections. This is one of the most important parts of the v2.3 update since it will provide your BlogHoster installation with added security from attackers. In addition, I plan to add SafeHTML, a program designed to strip down all potentially harmful HTML, to BlogHoster. This should solve any malicious javascript that might be entered into the template or entry fields. 

 

So, apart from that, the last real thing I need to do before v2.3 can be released is paginate the browse page, since we've been told it's causing server load problems when too many users are displayed. Thanks for all your patience, guys, we really appreciate it. Also, if anyone would like to offer their BH installations, I could really use a few people to beta test (tomorrow or Saturday). Please email me if you can help out! In the next few days, I'll be adding a mailing list option to this Dev Blog, so those of you that opt in can receive an email whenever an update is posted!