Archive for December, 2005

Darren Rowse wrote today the points he extracted from interview of Performancing with Matt Cutts, Google engineer, where he talks about optimizing blogs for search engines.

The first point was “I wouldn’t bother with year/month/day in blog urls; I’d just use the first few words from the title of the post in the url”.

Great. Now, what if your blog already uses year/month/day in URLs? If you change it, you’ll lose all your permalinks.

I have the solution. Here’s how to switch to example.com/postname.html permalinks AND keep the ability to use old names like example.com/2005/12/13/postname/.

1. Download and open your .htaccess file and remove lines “# WordPress BEGIN” and “# WordPress END” (so that WordPress can’t change your .htaccess file).
2. Add this line: RewriteRule ^(.*).html /index.php?name=$1 [QSA,L] at the end before </IfModule>.
3. Upload .htaccess back to your server.
4. Login to WordPress, click Options > Permalinks.
5. Replace your current Structure with  /%postname%.html
6. Download and open your .htaccess again and remove all the lines starting from “# WordPress BEGIN” to “# WordPress END”.
7. Upload .htaccess back to your server.

Done! Now you can access you posts by entering old permalinks, and new permalinks will be in example.com/postname.html format.

Wow! I’m happy to announce a very minor update with a major service support – BlogJet 1.6.1 (still Lime, remember? )

I think I’m the first one (two hours after the public announcement)… to release blog client with the native support for MSN Spaces.

NEW FEATURES

• Support for MSN Spaces.
• Saving Flickr login independent of “Save as default” option state.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed duplicating link text when using Insert Link in Code editor.
• Fixed: not deleting draft file after posting (with this option turned on).

Enjoy, Spaces lovers!

Download: http://www.blogjet.com/download/
Order now: http://www.blogjet.com/order/

Update: make sure you downloaded BlogJet 1.6.1 build 55, since previous versions didn’t work with categories in MSN Spaces. You can click Help > Check for New Version to check this.

I remember a few users requested support for custom smilies. With the new Auto Replace feature you have them.

First off all, you need to disable built-in smilies. Click Tools > Preferences… > Editor and clear “Replace smilies with images” check box.

Secondly, upload your smilies to your host.

Finally, click Tools > Auto Replace…, and assign words and HTML codes for your smilies. For example:

Word: :-)
Replace with: <img src=”http://example.com/smile1.gif” alt=”:)” height=”15” width=”15” />

Done! Now enjoy your custom smilies:

See how Auto Replace is poweful?

I remember a few users requested support for user-defined signatures for posts. With the new Auto Replace feature you have them.

Click Tools > Auto Replace… > Add. Then type in a keyword for your signature, then the signature itself:

Click OK, OK. Now when you finish writing your post, just enter the keyword (e.g. “sign1”) and you’ll get your signature.

- Dmitry
BlogJet

OK, seems like I’ve been heard – Blogger’s developers fixed issues with non-English characters. Thanks, guys!

…But titles still don’t work with Cyrillic characters:

Now, could you fix this too, please?

(Thanks to Joakim for letting me know about this.)

A few users asked me what to enter in “Flickr Login” field in BlogJet 1.6. Here’s the answer: use your e-mail (which you use to login to Flickr’s web interface).

I’ve made a few video tutorials for the new Help page.

They cover account creation and editing, configuring FTP settings (this is the most geeky feature), editing recent posts, posting, and using the Auto Replace feature.

Please don’t watch “How to Use Auto Replace” tutorial if you work for Microsoft, OK? 

I’m excited to announce the new release – BlogJet 1.6 “Lime”!
(Lime is a codename ).

NEW FEATURES

• Free Flickr integration plugin (included, no installation required).
• Auto Replace.
• Title and rel attributes for links.
• Ping default URLs.
• Protection for unsaved posts before publishing.
• Zoom icon for generated thumbnails.
• Saving of default layout settings for Insert Image window.
• Group posting (post to multiple blogs at once).
• Confirm when using Ctrl+Enter to publish post.
• Better FTP file upload progress indication.
• New blog providers: Blogzerk and BLOGZY.
• NTLM and Digest proxy authorization support.
• New keyboard shortcut: 
   Ctrl+Y - edit last post
   Ctrl+Shift+E - extended entry
• Ability to abort posting when checking spelling.
• BlogJetThis extension for Firefox 1.5.
• Speed and stability improvements.

BUG FIXES

• Work-around for WordPress and TypePad date/time issue.
• Now BlogJet can work via proxy with authentication.
• Fixed issue with FTP proxy.
• Fixed double trackbacks in TypePad and Movable Type
• FTP password encryption.
• Fixed: Insert Link window didn’t remove automatically http:// when inserting https:// of ftp:// links.
• Fixed “Cannot focus a disabled or invisible window”.
• Fixed: error message when posting with image selected.
• New connection core.
• Lots of other bug fixes… (sorry, I left the history of bug fixes on my old notebook ).

This update is free for customers who bought BlogJet. Also, for those of you who tried previous versions (excluding 1.6 beta), but had problems, please try downloading this version, since it will clean your trial period and you can start your free 30 days of trial all over again.

By the way, if you own a copy and want to upgrade to Family pack, use this coupon code: PGBJ30 to get 45% discount.

Download here: http://www.blogjet.com/download/
Buy here: http://www.blogjet.com/order/

If you don’t know what is BlogJet, read our home page .

Thanks everyone who helped with this release! Now, could you blog about the new version, please?

There’s an update: http://www.blogjet.com/blog/2005/12/13/blogjet-161-released/