If you're running Bloo version 1.20 through 1.22, you might, through luck of the draw, be having login problems. This is due to a cookie-unfriendly character (a percent sign) that might be generated as part of your blog's unique signature.

The solution for this is here.

This will be fixed in the next release.

Today Bloo version 1.22 was released. You can download it here. This release is primarily a bug-fix release, with specific attention toward fixing theme problems that manifest in earlier versions of IE.

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed the Pre Render event, which was not working on menu items. Fixed
• In IE, when logged into a community blog, the front page of the blog did not acknowledge the login. This has been fixed.
  
• Fixed problems with the base three column theme - had a fat-fingered style
  
• Fixed some themes that were not rendering in earlier versions of IE. Included in this were the Bloo Clouds theme, Red Train, Camera, Jill, Field of Dreams and Pure. These themes can be found at the Bloo Themes site.
  
• Bloogroll Posts description was incorrect. It needed to reference the RSS Collector which was established in version 1.20. This is fixed.

Three new themes have been deployed to the Bloo Themes site and can be downloaded from there. More are coming - the hope is to start releasing more themes and extension SnapOns in the near future.

Here are the themes.

Flower Power, based on the Wordpress theme by Mark Hoodia.




Japan Style, based on the Wordpress Theme by Good Design Web




Old Type - an original Bloo theme.




In addition, some problems that have been discovered when browsing with IE 6 have been fixed in the following themes:

Field of Dreams




Red Train




There are other themes, some in the core product, that don't render correctly in IE 6 (bleaugh on that browser). These will be fixed in the next version of Bloo, coming soon!

To any Bloo Community users who use Internet Explorer: a bug was discovered which causes the system to not "remember" that you are logged in when you view your main blog page. This is being fixed and a new release will be out, hopefully, soon.

Bloo version 1.20 is released! You can download it here.

In many ways, Bloo 1.20 will look a whole lot like Bloo 1.10. But it contains some pretty significant feature additions, and represents a real firming up of the underlying Bloo architecture as it's always been envisioned (but not quite implemented, until now):

Below are the major features and bug-fixes included in this release:

• Bloo Community - this one is pretty huge. Bloo Community is an extension SnapOn included in the core release that allows you to, on the fly, create sub-blogs off your main blog. Each sub-blog is a full-blow Bloo release, but entirely segregated from the content on your main blog. You can even open up things so that guests can request a sub-blog under your main blog (you have full control over accepting or rejecting that request, and also you can suspend or delete sub-blogs that don't behave). You can read more about Bloo Community on the Bloo Wiki, here.
• RSS caching and collection is now centralized and part of the core release. You can read more about this on the Bloo Wiki here
• Added About Me link to the Sidebar
• Provides for version checking on snapOns
• Cleaner error messages
• Created new Wrapper styles for themes - this gives more flexibility on how themes behave. You can read about the changes to themes in 1.20 on the Bloo Wiki, here (and if you've created your own theme in Bloo, you really need to read that to help convert your theme)
  
• Removed some old core themes. So there are less themes delivered with Bloo, but the ones that were removed were pretty cr@ptastic anyway. You can find more themes for Bloo on the Bloo Themes Site.
• Add more base themes for sidebar right, sidebar left, and three column. All Bloo themes at this point cascade from one of these three.
  
• Added the BlooWiki SnapOn to the release. Using this extension SnapOn, you can now easily turn your blog into a WIKI (our own Bloo WIKI is built off of this).
• Fixed a problem with localhost login (for people testing Bloo locally)
• Fixed a problem with trackback and comments links when title permalinks are enabled.
• Improved the RSS Feed
• Fixed a problem with the FavoritePosts extension SnapOn that made it not work if permalinks not set to title
• Fixed a problem with Theme Preview - Stop Preview wasn't working

Although originally scheduled for November, obviously 1.20 was not released at that time ;-) - some features were added, and a lot of work has gone into just getting it as ready as possible for public consumption. One big change was in how themes are handled; some style changes were made to the base themes to make them more flexible, and this delayed things a bit.

It's the stretch run now. The pre-release versions are being tested on several different sites, and final bugs and features are being resolved and coded. In addtion, work is ramping up on Bloo Community (more on that soon).

Thanks for your patience!

The newest version of PHP (version 5.2.8) has either a bug or a "feature" in how it reads XML that renders bloo blogs unreadable.

The good news is that this is fixable. Version 1.20 of Bloo should fix this problem for good, by changing the way we're laying down a lot of the XML that Bloo needs to produce all visual elements. 1.20 is coming out soon, so hopefully no one will experience any downtime. If necessary, a patch will be delivered.

If you experience unexplained, garbled output in your Bloo blog, contact your webhost to see if your server was upgraded to PHP 5.2.8. And please let us know here, so a patch can be delivered to you.

. . . hopefully in November.

Version 1.20 introduces some significant structural changes, although the blog will, for the most part, behave as before.

The biggest new feature in version 1.20 will be Bloo Community, which will allow Bloo bloggers to open  up their blog space for the registration of sub-blogs. It's kind of like setting up your own private MySpace (or Idaho, or whatever) community. The main Bloo site (http://outofthebloo.com) will be opening up for community blog registrations soon, meaning you can become a Bloo blogger without having to download and install the code in your own webspace. Lots more coming on this.

Following 1.20, a lot more attention will be paid to the development of themes and extension SnapOns.

There is a patch for Bloo version 1.10 that fixes a problem in the post category administration that is preventing the creation or editing of categories. When these operations are attempted, the web-page just times out.

You can download the patch here.

Once downloaded, do the following:

1. Upload the bloo.install.command.overlays.xml file to your blog's "install" directory
   
   
2. Upload the post.command.overlays.xml file to your blog's "core" subdirectory:
   
   
3. Once that's done, go to your administrative panel,
   a. select Lists and Settings  
   b. select Post categories  
   c. Click the "edit" link next to the General category  
   d. Edit it (if desired - but if not, still go through this process) and press Save
   

There is a patch for Bloo version 1.10 that is necessary if you are getting nasty errors when upgrading from Bloo version 1.00 to 1.10. Basically, the patch fixes a problem that occurs for webhosts that do not have gpc magic quotes turned on by default.

You'll know you have the error if you get something that looks like this when you run the upgrade program:

SQL Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that
corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near
''Page.sidebar'' at line 6:select o.overlay_id ,o.syntax from vl_overlay
o where o.syntax like '%Post.form.search%' and deleted_flag = 'N' and
o.name = 'Page.sidebar'

Two new themes have been uploaded to the Themes blog and are available for downloading and use on your Bloo blog. They are:

Butterfly (based on the Expression Engine theme by Thomas Arie Setiawan).



Elegant (based on the Elegant 2.0 WordPress theme by ShinRa)

Some new themes have been uploaded to the Themes blog and are available for downloading and use on your Bloo blog. They are:

Daleri Dark (based on the Wordpress theme by Andreas Viklund).



Pure (based on the WordPress theme by Celestial Star)



Note: Pure requires Bloo version 1.10 to function properly. If you're not already on that version, you can upgrade to it by following the instructions here.

Field of Dreams (based on the Field of Dreams WordPress theme by Nathan Metzger)



Note: Field of Dreams requires Bloo version 1.10 to function properly. If you're not already on that version, you can upgrade to it by following the instructions here.

Refreshing (based on the Refreshing WordPress theme by Kate of rock-kitty.net)




More themes are coming soon . . .

Bloo version 1.10 is (finally) released! It includes some nice improvements over 1.00. You can download it here.

Below are the main features and fixes included in this release

• New and improved install and upgrade programs
• Title-based permalinks are now available. In other words, instead of your post permalink appearing as http://myblog/post_id=1, your permalink can look like http://myblog/posts/out-of-the-bloo-a-blog
• Beefed up security layers to protect against hacks.
  
• Searches now work for static pages as well as posts
• Improved the emails sent on comments and trackbacks
• Linefeed to BR tag replacements for posts and pages are now smarter. They won't add BR tags within TABLE, OL or UL tags
• General improvements in sidebar styles and organization
  
• Fixed a problem with the published date in the Comments RSS feed
• Fixed a problem with the Recent Comments link, which was preventing it from working
• Fixed a problem with the upgrade/install Ping that caused some blogs to hang on install
  

For those of you on version 1.00 that have installed Patch 2, please avoid creating new themes within the system (i.e, don't create table-based themes). A problem has been discovered that will cause the blog not to initialize if you create a new theme.

This has been fixed and the fix will be in the next release of the software (1.1) coming soon. In the meantime, if you run into a problem after creating an on-the-fly theme within Bloo, you can get back up and running by manually deleting the new theme from the snap_on table.

If you need help, leave a message here.

Again, this only affects you if you're on Bloo version 1.00 patch 2.

Bloo version 1.00 Patch 2 has been released to resolve some known security holes in Bloo. If you are a Bloo version 1.00 user, this patch is highly recommended (note: it is only for version 1.00). You can download the patch, in either zip or tgz format, here. Just click on bloo.v.1.00.patch02.zip or bloo.v.1.00.patch02.tgz.

(for more information on the already-released patch01, click here)

In other news, work on Bloo version 1.1 is movin' right along. Expect the new version to be released soon!

An error was found in the default Page.sidebar overlay that comes with version 1.00 of Bloo. The fix for this is trivial, and there is now a patch available (bloo.v.1.00.patch01) that will fix it, here.

Note: If you are an upgrader who has already customized Page.sidebar, most likely you already have a good View Recent Comments link in your sidebar, so you may not need the patch. For new installers, the patch is necessary; you can also just customize your sidebar and fix the View Recent Comments link manually (go to Look and Feel, Overlays, and find and edit Page.sidebar in the Custom category) rather than bothering to download and install the patch.

The problem was due to some quotes in the href for that link that were inadvertently left as html entities in the overlay.

Also in the patch a small problem with the Last Published Date in the Comments RSS feed is fixed.

This is the big one . . . the first full Production release of Bloo! You can download it here.

Here's what's new in this release:

• Commenters on the blog can now edit their most recent comment after posting it. This ability lasts for several minutes
• The Private post type was created, allowing posters to create posts that can only be read by logged in posters or administrators.
• The Popular Posts extension now can have a specified time-window wherein it measures comment activity (rather than always just measuring for the life of the post)
• The blog now includes a “Lost your password?” feature, to allow users who have forgotten their password to get a new one.
• Now posters can create static pages, which are like posts but don’t display a date stamp and can only be displayed by going to the static page’s permalink URL. In other words, static pages don’t roll along in the normal post stream. This feature is useful for creating more “timeless” pages, such as an “About Me” page.
• The Bloogroll can now recognize a constant set in an overlay that specifies which Bloogroll categories to display. The constant is bloogroll_category_list, and is set in an overlay (usually Page.sidebar) using this syntax: _=bloogroll_category_list=Category 1,Category 2=_, substituting, of course, the real categories you want to display for Category 1 and Category 2
• Created the Contact extension, which allows the blog to have “Contact Me” and “Contact Post Author” links which will display forms through which users can send email messages to the blog administrator(s) or a post author without knowing the recipient’s email address
• Added links for “Older Entries”, “Newer Entries” on the Post display page to allow for navigation to older and newer posts.
• The permalink for posts is now, by default, on the post title, rather than the post time.
• Created the "Favorite Posts" SnapOn, which allows the administrator to show a list of his/her favorite posts from the blog.
• Created a Comments RSS feed.
• Created versioning in the system, which Bloo uses to detect when an upgrade is needed.
• We now have a new Bloo logo!
• Created a Trackback Send form, for sending trackbacks to other blogs.
• Form navigation is now smoother as the first field on most forms is now in focus by default.
• Changed the display of the “Everyone” security role to the more appropriately named “Guest”
• Renamed the “snapons” directory to “core”, for clarity’s sake.
• Removed the Remote Blacklist Spamicide extension SnapOn from the core release. Never much liked how this one worked (too many false-positives)
• Fixed a security vulnerability in Comments editing
• Fixed a problem with Post categories that have apostrophes in them (they were blanking out when the post was re-edited).
• The Bloogroll category drop-down was getting confused when the Category ID was greater than 10. This is fixed.
• Fixed problems with the RSS feed that caused it not to validate in certain feed readers.
• Fixed alignment problems in the post form when their were no post form extension snapons (such as Quicktags) enabled.
• Fixed a problem in the Lag Time Spam Checker extension snapon that was causing it to fail when checking trackbacks.
• Numerous other internal fixes and improvements

Forgive the silence recently. Much work has been in progress. The production release of Bloo 1.00 is nearly ready and will hopefully be released in the next two weeks or so.

Huzzah!

The new Themes blog is available! This is a space where Bloo themes can be demoed and downloaded. Some new themes are coming soon.

The theme blog is here: http://www.outofthebloo.com/themeblog/

There is a new patch available for release candidate 2. It's a relatively straightforward one - it fixes a security vulnerability in the comments SnapOn and also fixes a bug in category selection while posting: any category with an apostrophe in it was getting cleared when a post was edited.

You can get download the patch here.