Posted in General Information

After we had some downtime yesterday and the system was brought back up, the bullets on many of our users' blogs turned into question marks.

This has now been fixed, so if you were having trouble with this, it should now be back to normal.

Thanks for your patience!

Jodi

Posted in Upgrade Issues

For those on AOL and CompuServe who were not able to get into the site over the last couple of days, the problem has been corrected.  If you know of anybody who was affected by this situation, please let them know that they should be able to access the site normally now.  If they still can't, please contact me at the tech support email address over on the sidebar.

Thanks to Shawn, our web tech guru, for getting us all fixed up once again.  :-)  Now maybe, just maybe, he can get a little sleep!

Jodi

Posted in Upgrade Issues

I've been receiving reports that some users are getting messages that they are banned from the site or certain parts of the site.  This is not intentional and is some kind of a glitch in the system somewhere.  So if you or someone you know is currently 'banned' from the site, please know that our web tech is working on the problem and we will get everyone back in as soon as possible.  My guess is that a security measure has gotten a bit TOO tight and is therefore keeping some out, but I don't really know that for sure.  I do know that it is our #1 priority right now to get this corrected.

Check back here for updates.  I'll let you know here when I get any news about this.

Jodi
(who was on 'vacation' for a homeschool conference this weekend and can see by the volume in her email box how much she was missed. )

UPDATE: From looking at the emails I'm receiving, this problem seems to be limited to AOL users.  If anyone is getting the banned message that is *not* on AOL, please email me at blogadmin@homeschoolblogger.com and let me know.  We are now fairly certain that it's probably an issue with AOL not being compatible with something in our current set up.  Now we just have to hunt it down and fix it!

Posted in Upgrade Issues

Our server was moved Saturday night and most things are going well.  We have some small issues to contend with (as is always the way with computers!), but for the most part the move was a success.  If you had some trouble logging in or working on your blog yesterday, you are not alone!  We did have some outages off and on, but things seem to have settled down today.

If you did have problems yesterday, please try again today.  Most of those problems should not reoccur now that the server has stabilized.  We still may hit a few bumps in the road, so if you do notice a slow time or a time when you can't seem to log in or get blank pages, please wait a little while and try again.  Most of these issues clear up in a few minutes.  But, again, this should NOT happen on a regular basis any longer and we believe you will be very happy with the speed and reliability of the site since our server upgrade.

This has been a long time coming, and I speak for everybody on the HSB team when I say that we are THRILLED that it is finally done!  We've been very frustrated, too, and have been doing everything we could to make things better while we waited for this more permanent 'fix'.  Thank you for your patience and loyalty as you hung in here with us and prayed for us as we worked through these issues.  We are sure everyone's blogging experience will be much more enjoyable now!

Jodi

Posted in Neat Blog Features

With the server change, we now have the Friends page back.  This lists the entries of your 'Friends', with the most recent first.  You can use this page to easily see the latest posts that those on your friends list have made.  This was a feature we had before, but it didn't work correctly, so it was removed.  It is now back and working as it should!

To see your Friends page(s), you need to add /friends to the end of your blog address, like this:
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/blogaddress/friends

For easiest access, you will probably want to add a link to this page to your Links section on your blog.  Then you can just click the link whenever you want to read your friends page.  To do this, go into your blog settings, then to Links.  Put whatever you want the title to be in the first blank box, then the address in the 2nd blank box and save.  This link will then show up on your sidebar with your other links in the Links section.

We know many of our users missed this feature, so we are happy to bring it back for you!  You may also continue to use RSS feed readers (Bloglines, Google Reader, etc.) to keep up to date on your favorite blogs, but some find this Friends page to be easier to manage.  Now you have the option.

Jodi

Posted in General Information

Quite a few users have been receiving a long diatribe in their comments.  This person hit several blogs over the last few days.  We are working on keeping them from doing it again.

If you happen to be the recipient of one of these comments (or any other comments that you do not want on your blog), you can delete them by doing the following.  Go to the comment in question while you are logged in to your account.  There will be a link for 'delete' either just above or below the comment.  Each comment will have one.  Just click on that and you can delete it.

We apologize that this is happening.  We are trying to get it stopped, but more may appear in the meantime.  Please quietly delete it and don't give them the attention they are trying to attract. 

Jodi
Tech Support
www.homeschoolblogger.com/HSBTechHelp

Posted in Upgrade Issues

Unfortunately, the move to the new server did not take place last night as planned.  Right at the end, the server decided to have 'issues' and it was unable to be completed.  A 3rd party has to fix the problem, then we can start the process again.  Hopefully that will happen tonight!

So the bad news is that it didn't happen last night, but the good news is that it is still going to happen!  So please be patient just a bit longer and things will be greatly improved once the move is complete.  And please pray for our web tech as he works to get this taken care of - he is running on very little sleep and has other projects to take care of besides just ours.

If I find out any other information, I'll update you here.  (Sorry for the gap since my last post, I just didn't have anything to report!)

Jodi

Posted in General Information

We are aware that the server has been very slow and causing time-outs for some users.  This is simply a matter of too many people trying to use the server at the same time.  It doesn't have the capacity for so many at once.

However - we are hopefully getting moved to the new, larger server this weekend.  This should alleviate most, if not all, of these problems.  You should experience a much faster site once we are switched over.  We will also be able to fix some of the lingering issues that weren't able to be fixed permanently on the existing server.

We're sorry for the frustration of the slowness.  I've had problems with it myself (which is why, if you've sent in a tech support request in the last few days, I'm way behind on answering them).  I think we'll ALL be thrilled when we have the new server up and running!

Hang in here with us.  We're trying to keep up with this rapidly expanding community as best as we can.  You have all made us so popular!  :-)  That's a good thing, but we are all experiencing some growing pains along the way.  We appreciate your patience!

Jodi

Posted in Neat Blog Features

Are you running out of room in your blog photos area?  Like the cool Flickr add-ons you've seen on other blogs?

I ran across a nice tutorial that explains how to use Flickr from start to finish.  If you'd like to learn how to use this free online photo sharing service, this is a great place to start:

Webware Flickr Tutorial

I'm often asked about how to get more photo storage space (we don't offer more than the 1 MB here at HomeschoolBlogger) or how to use other sites' services.  Unfortunately, I can't really help with that because we don't offer support for other sites.  Hopefully this tutorial will help those who are wanting to know about such things. :-)  Flickr seems to work pretty well with Homeschoolblogger most of the time, so I can definitely recommend it for your photo sharing needs.

Jodi

Posted in General Information

Some users have been having problems with their templates looking 'funny' over the last couple of days.  This is being caused by a change we had to make in the jumpbar at the top.  It is being worked on and your templates should be back to normal soon.  At least those using default templates - modified and custom templates may be a different story.

Unfortunately, we can't help you fix your modified custom templates because that is beyond the scope of Tech Support.  You change your templates at your own risk, sorry to say.  But you may want to take a look at your blog to make sure everything looks as it should.   If not, you may have some detective work to do.

Work is still being done on the design of the jumpbar, so you will probably continue to see it changing until the final design is in place.

Jodi