The maintenance originally scheduled for 2/25/2006 has been postponed and a tentative date of 3/11/2006 scheduled for this release. This is necessary while additional load testing is performed to ensure the new system will handle high loads successfully. We will post another announcement when this date is finalized.

We have added another template to our stable. May I present... Fameuse!

This template is fixed width. If you are using a two column layout, you should limit images in the center column to 400px wide. If you are using a three column layout, you should limit them to 300px wide. This will prevent unsightly tiling in the header image.

You can use this for any existing blog or trial blog. Don't have a blog yet? Get a free trial now.

Our parent company, Red Rocket, has updated the look of the Red Rocket Blog. Take a gander. We're also working on making more Blogzerk templates with some nice image headers.

Do you have a Blogzerk blog? If so, we want to hear from you. Please send an email to info@blogzerk.com with the following information:

1. URL of your blog (e.g. http://blog.blogzerk.com/)
2. Title of your blog
3. Is this a personal or business blog?
4. What is the primary purpose of your blog?
5. Who is your target audience?
6. What makes Blogzerk worth paying for?

After a week, we'll take this information and put it into a new article about who uses Blogzerk. Please note that any information submitted may be used in whole or in part in this article. Please do not submit any information you don't want public.

Blogware will be conducting a maintenance window on February 25, 2006 to perform system maintenance for the Anti-Spam and Optimization release.

Date: February 25, 2006
Start Time: 11:00 PM ET
Duration: 10 Hours

Impact: During this window, the Publishers' Control Panel and blogs will not be accessible. Each interface will be made live as soon as it is available to minimize impact on end users.

With all the yummy changes made to Blogware and Blogzerk lately, we thought it would be a good idea to summarize what has happened lately:

• Blogjet for Blogzerk Released - get a discount on a Blogzerk only version of Blogjet.
• More Domains Added - we've added the following domains for trials and for paid blogs: cycleblogging.com, rideblogging.com, bikeblogging.com, runblogging.com, swimbikerunblog.com, tampablogging.com
• Educational Blog Template Added - we now have a nice educational template you can only get at Blogzerk.
• Blogzerk Photo Uploader for Windows - a beta version of a Windows app for uploading multiple photos to your blog.
• Many Bugs Squashed
• Multilingual Support Added - support for languages other than english in the control panel and blogs.
• Many Tips Added - tips on how to get more from your blog and customize it.

In the next couple weeks, support for moderated comments and trackbacks will be added.

I just posted an article in the Blogzerk Forums on how to prevent Google Images from indexing your blog's images which can help reduce the bandwidth used by your blog. Check it out and if you have any feedback or questions, reply to the forum article.

Blogware will be conducting a maintenance window on February 11, 2006 to perform system maintenance. This maintenance is a prerequisite for the February 25th release. The blogs and the management interfaces will be offline during the window.

Date: February 11, 2006
Start Time: 10:00 PM ET
Duration: 5 Hours

Impact: During this window, the Publishers' Control Panel and blogs will not be accessible. Each interface will be made live as soon as it is available to minimize impact on end users.

The following bugs in Blogware were squashed yesterday:
 

• Settings&Security-General-> Keyword fields - This was changed to 'Enter keywords, separated by commas " to match existing functionality.
• An improved Error message was developed for to present to users who enter an invalid username, or email and requests "Send Password"
• Reader Cookie Expiration - User sign in on the Blog page now has a 'Remember Me' field. This will set a cookie to remember the user's login details. Otherwise, the reader's login will only be valid for the browser session. Flushing the cache of all existing cookies was not done at this time. This will be targeted for the end of March.
• Sourcing Parsing Error - There was a case where files were not being parsed correctly and sourcing was occuring in cases where users had disabled it. This has been fixed.

Thanks to Blogware for the fixes!