Bloo version 1.33 has been released. You can download it here.

Below are the significant features and bug fixes in this release:

• Version 1.32 introduced a bug that caused comment counts on posts to be, at times, reported incorrectly. This has been fixed.
• Comment moderation works again (it kind of, um, quit working there for awhile).
• Community blogs (member blogs) were not able to create their own themes. Now they can.
• Pop up comments are now optional. In the Discussion Settings in the Lists and Settings administration panel a setting now controls whether the comment link produces a pop up or in page comments.
• Alternating styles are now available for comments and trackbacks, by setting the CSS style classes comment_row_even, comment_row_odd, trackback_row_even, and trackback_row_odd.

Bloo version 1.33, which fixes the aforementioned comment count and moderation bugs, and adds a few new features, is currently being tested on some blogs. It is expected that the version will be released for public consumption in the next few days.

A bug has been discovered in version 1.32 related to Comments handling. This bug causes comments to sometimes be miscounted on posts, and also appears to have disabled the Moderation function for comments (i.e., comments can't be marked as spam within the Moderation panel).

This is being worked on and a new release will be forthcoming shortly.

Bloo version 1.32 has been released. You can download it here.

Below are the significant features and bug fixes in this release:

• Added the BlooStats package, which keeps statistical counts on posts and thus aids in the performance of the blog
• Fixed a problem with the dates on draft posts, which were not advancing to the current date when the post was made public
• Was unable to delete comments on blogs that had Bloo Wiki enabled. This has been fixed
• Notification settings for new comments/new posts for a sub-blog were being sent to users of the main blog as well. Fixed this
• Fixed a none-too-friendly error message when bloo.config.php is missing.
• For users of Bloo version 1.30, there is now a quick upgrade option.

Bloo version 1.31 (release candidate for version 1.32) is being rolled out to several blogs for testing. If all goes well, version 1.32 should be available to the public in a few days.

More info coming soon . . .

Bloo version 1.30 has been released. You can download it here.

Below are the significant features and bug fixes in this release:

• Posters can now alter the date and time on a post
• BlooNews is now available. BlooNews allows for blogs to subscribe to Bloo news from the Bloo Development blog (devblog.outofthebloo.com). This extension also allows a blog to become a news publisher
• Added an RSS feed for Post Categories
• Community blogs can now be set as public/private. Only public blogs will be displayed on the front page of a community blog.
• Added profile settings to provide for email notification to a user if a new post and/or comment is created on the blog. If you want to be notified anytime another poster creates a post on your blog, or anytime someone comments on a post written by another poster, turn these settings on in your profile (obviously, this mainly applies to group blogs)
• Fixed a problem with decomposing ampersand entities in posts and pages.
• There was a problem logging in; if the server didn't have a valid domain name it wasn't saving the cookie. There were also problems related to logging out that have been fixed. Some of these problems were related to how the unique "blog signature" was being created. This root cause has been fixed.
• Foxed a problem with the RSS feed, which often did not work in bloglines.
• Fixed slashes/magic quote processing. Improper handling was causing slashes to appear in notification emails, for instance.
• The guest account was logging in to no specified administrative panel. Now is taken to the My Profile panel
• Fixed a problem that was discovered in the upgrade program when upgrading from a 1.10 blog.
• Generalized the RSS Collector, to allow it to be used for multiple types of RSS feeds
• Added the PhooCheckBox class to the Phoo Phramework
• Parameters can now be passed to a SnapOn

The next version of Bloo is now being tested on some key blogs and will be released for general consumption sometime in the next week or two.

More information coming. The Bloo New Year's Resolution is to have more frequent releases!

Bloo version 1.25 has not been released for public consumption yet, but the development blog has been upgraded to it so that it can start doling out Bloo News, using the new Bloo News extension. This is the first news post.

Once this version is fully vetted and rolled out, anyone who upgrades to it will have a much more direct way of being notified of new Bloo releases and other Bloo doings.

There are some new themes coming soon as well.

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 . . .