Update online

Monday Jan 28, 2008

We are pleased to announce that the latest update for pixyBlog has just gone online (version 3.1.1). There are a number of bug fixes included in the update and a few new (or improved) features. The features are:

Improved handling of EXIF / IPTC information

We are now collecting more camera information from images. The information, which is known as EXIF or IPTC data, is stored in the JPEG files that are uploaded to pixyBlog. Users can still edit their camera information from the admin area as before. As part of this improvement we have also updated all the themes to support the extended data, and the information has been indexed so that it can be searched.

Captcha comment authentication

Since the birth of pixyBlog we have received a lot feedback about our comment authentication system. Until today we used a 'simple' mathematics question (e.g. what is "45 + 9") to help combat comment spam on our blogs. Some people liked it, most didn't. For this reason we've replaced the maths system with a Captcha style version where commentors simply have to copy the letters that are displayed on the form (see example below). We hope that 'most' people find this an easier process.

Latest photos on the pixyblog.com homepage

As pixyBlog has grown the front page (www.pixyblog.com) has become an important portal to our user's photoblogs. The 'latest photos' section displays the most recent photos uploaded and on a couple of occasions has caused a little friction between users. The reason is that users could upload 15 photos consecutively and take-over all the slots on the page. This was always done by mistake and usually from a new user who was innocently doing some batch uploading to get some content up on their new site. It was clear that this was going to continue to cause problems, so the front page now only displays a single latest photo from a photoblog, instead of allowing multiple photos from the same photoblog.

Finally, here are some of the bugs fixed:

Users can now change the order galleries are displayed on their photoblog by changing the gallery date.
Draft entries no longer appear in the Galleries or Thumbnails pages.
RSS/Atom feeds have been updated to include the Tags and Gallery information.

Posted at 06:49PM Jan 28, 2008 by Richard Jones | Comments[1]