Now Blogging News

Setting up your Avatar

With your blog you have the ability to set an avatar or personal photo. Here is a simple tutorial on how to go about setting your avatar.

The first thing you need is a suitable image or photo that you want to use. Once you know what photo you want to use then you will need to turn it into a an avatar. The easiest way to do this is by using the free online tools at shrinkpictures to create your avatar from your photo. Simply set the size to 100 and follow the instructions. When it has created the avatar for you, be sure to download the one you want to your computer.

Now, with your avatar, you need to upload it to your blog. So, log into your control panel and go to Resource center -> New resource. From here, you will be able to upload your newly created avatar.

Finally, to set your avatar, go to Control Center -> Settings -> User Settings. On this page there is the option to set your picture. You simply select the avatar that you uploaded to your gallery.

Easy wasn't it! So, if you have not yet updated your avatar and personalised your blog take a minute and make your blog stand out from the crowd.

Site Software updated

We have just completed a couple of software updates.

The software updates fix a few bugs and problems and should improve some back-end functions of the site.

Please report if you have any problems as a result of this upgrade. One possible problem is that some usernames may not work as there was a change to the security. Usernames can only contain Letters and numbers, so if your username has other characters, please let us know so we can fix this.

We have also removed several inactive and spam blogs.

The Big Cleanup

We have just spent some considerable amount of time going over all the blogs posted here and removed around half of them.

Yes, they were removed as they were nothing more than spam. Now, we are NOT going to mention what the triggers are that cause blogs to be deleted as we don't wish to alert the spammers of our methods of detection. There were quite a few that were very clever in their disguise - but not good enough as they are now gone.

We regularly monitor all blogs and eventaully we will find all spam blogs and delete them. A blog that is simply spam serves no purpose - except for the spammer - and we feel that they should not profit from the free blogs we provide.

A big thanks to all of those who reported spam blogs to us so we could delete them.

Now Blogging Survey

We have just sent out the following Survewy to all Active bloggers - so we can look at how we can further improve your blogging experience - We are hoping to get a good few responses - you can either respond to the email or simply reply to this post with your answers.

We are wanting a bit of feedback on the Now Blogging Website, and you, the user are in the best position to answer a couple of questions for us.

The purpose of these questions is to help us determine what are the important features to you and what you would like to see in the future to enhance your blogging experience.

Q1. Why did you choose Now Blogging to host your blog?
          Free
          Suggested by a friend
          Great looking site
          Other - please explain

Q2. What is your favourite feature/s of Now Blogging?
          The 10 meg of free space to host images
          Plenty of templates to choose from
          Lots of plugins to enhance my blog
          Great Admin interface to manage my blog
          No adverts all over my blog
          Allowed to earn money via adsense from my own blog
          Other - please explain

Q3. What feature would you like added to Now Blogging?
          More templates
          Support Forums
          Help and howto pages
          Other - please explain

Q4. Is this your first blog?
          No
          Yes
          If No, how many blogs do you have and where are they (site name)

Q5. How often do you update your blog.
          Daily
          A couple of times a week
          Weekly

Thanks for taking a few minutes to respond, from your answers we hope to further improve your blogging experience

More templates Updated

We have updated some more templates to take advantage of all the plugins we mentioned a couple of weeks ago in our Earning from your blog post.

With the addition of the template modifications to the following Templates,

andreas-3-columns
beautiful_day
rubric

This brings the total number of templates that have all the features ready is 10, which is half of the available templates.

We will continue to work on the rest of the templates until they are all enabled. Please let us know via the contact form if you are using a template we have not modified yet and we will update it ASAP.

Remember, that by enabling these features within your control panel it will help you promote your blog and earn money from it as well!

New Logo

You may have noticed we now have our new logo up on the website and we have a new default image for all profiles.

Thanks to the services provided by Anamul Graphics who created the new logo and default profile image. We highly reccomend their services if you are looking for graphics and graphic design work - they are fast and do great work at very affordable prices.

Start Earning from Your Blog

We have managed to get several of the templates updated and as of right now you can start earning money from your Blog! Yes, you can enable adsense and ads will show within your blog!

As of right now, the following templates have been updated to include technorati tags, social bookmarks and the big one - Adsense.

standard
connections
glossyblue
delicious_fruit
FallingLeaves
subtle
fblue

All you need to do is to ensure you have one of these templates ( Control Centre >> Settings >> Blog Settings to change your template) enabled and then you just need to enable the plugins you want.

Adsense plugin can be found at Control Center >> Settings >> Google AdSense

You will need to enable the plugin, input your publisher ID and then also enable content. We reccomend that you enter the following within the boxes - as these setting have been tested with all templates.

google_ad_width >> 468
google_ad_height >> 60
google_ad_format >> 468x60_as
google_ad_type >> text

If you want, you can of course use an ad channel.

If you are having trouble setting this up, then drop us a note using the contact form and we will do our best to assist.

Ok, in order to enable technorati tags you need to enable the plugin. Simply go to Manage >>Manage Posts >> Technorati and tick the box to enable.

Finally, if you want to enable Social Bookmarks so your blog readers can easily bookmark your blog posts just log in and go to Control Centre >> Appearance Management >> Sociable and enable the plugin and select which of the social bookmarks you want within your posts.

We will continue to work on updating all of the templates so that all of these features are available everywhere. If you are using a template that we have not yet updated, please get in touch and we will put it to the top of the list.

Updated Features

After the recent downtime, and the subsequent upgrade of our blogging platform we have finally sorted out all of the issues from the upgrade.

Of course, we have been concentrating on functionality and over the next few days will start improving the website and updating the default template to get the site looking better.

As we promised, we have added several new features - in the form of plugins.

The Plugins that we have added and now tested are

Akismet
Automatically close comments
NoFollow

These 3 Plugins can be activated from within your Control Center under Control center > Anti-spam management. They can all be used to virtually eliminate any spam comments on your posts.

We have installed some extra plugins as well, but before they can be used, we need to modify the template files.

Once the templates have been updated, we will of course let you know all about these other plugins that you can use to further improve your Blog.

The current plugins we are planning to add include technorati tags, sociable social bookmarks and the biggie - Google Adsense. Yes, we are planning on allowing you, the blogger to be able to have your own google adsense ads on your blog which could earn you money!

We have actually started adding the Technorati tags to the Templates! To use, you need to Active the plugin. Log in and go to Manage > Manage Posts > Technorati and select Enable this plugin and Save.

Once enabled, on the write and edit screens there is a new field called technorati tags. Simply enter the tags seperated by a comma. * as I write this post, this has been added to 2 themes only - standard and fblue, we will update all the other themes over the next few days.

As we get all the templates updated and activated, we will make a post on how to use the other plugins.

Now, the last new feature we have added is an automatic RPC pinger. Every time you make or modify a post you will send a ping to several sites to let them know you have made an update. This helps get your blog noticed and attracts visitors!

We ping the following sites:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://zing.zingfast.com

Take a few minutes and visit these sites and learn more!

Recent Downtime

As you probably noticed we have had some downtime with the site. We recently moved to a new server and during the move the database was corrupted.

We have finally managed to sort out most of the problems and will continue to work on fixing the remaining ones.

The good news is that your blog is now once again available and even better, all old posts have been restored.

We still have not managed to get all albums working correctly yet, but we are working on it.

You will probably have to select a new template as we have upgraded the software, and at the moment there are only a handful of templates that work. Simply log into your Admin Panel and go to Control Centre >> Settings >> Blog Settings - then select a templae from there.

We plan on introducing some exciting new features over the next several weeks that will further enhance your Blogging experience. Some of the things that we are doing is installing some additional plugins - which will be visible in your Admin panel.

Nowblogging Update

We are currently in the final stages of testing the latest version of the software that runs this website and are planning to do an upgrade within the next week.

The new version offers some great new features, and fixes a few small bugs. It will make your blogging experience easier and better.

When we do the upgrade, it will take us around 2-3 hours implement and during this time the site and your blog will be unavailable. All of your current posts will be there after the upgrade has been completed.

There is a very small chance that some of the blog templates may not be compatible with the new upgrade. If, after the upgrade, your blog does not work or gives any errors - then you should be able to log into your control panel and set it back to use a standard template. If you need to do this, then please contact us by using the contact form on our homepage and we will help you get this sorted.

After the upgrade, we plan on adding some exciting new plugins that will further enhance your blogging experience at nowblogging.net So stay tuned.....