As some bugs were fixed, some were introduced. One of these has caused Site Stats to not be generated since 3/10/06. This problem is being worked on and we will update this post with more information.

UPDATED 4:52 PM ET: The stats will be run tonight and should be available by tomorrow morning.

UPDATED 10:50 AM ET, 3/14/06: The stats are currently running now.

UPDATE: Caching did not make it into this release but will be part of the 3/25/06 4/22/06 release.

No, not cash or cachet but cache. As part of the spam protection release on 3/11/06, caching was added to Blogware to help with performance issues. Blogware will now cache all content. This reduces the database load since cached content can be quickly delivered from the cache server instead of from the Blogware database.

When content on your blog is changed, the cache will be updated. Non-authenticated visitors may see data that is up to one minute old before the cache expires and the new version is loaded into the cache. Authenticated users will always see the non-cached version. Using the View Blog link from the Publisher's Control Panel will always show the non-cached version, regardless of authentication status.

Please keep this in mind when adding content to your blog or changing layout components or templates. To see the non-cached version, you must either be logged in to your blog (not just the Publisher's Control Panel) or use the View Blog link in the Publisher's Control Panel.

The following bugs were squashed:

• RSS headline components now work with Atom 1.0 feeds
• Atom feeds are no longer detected as Invalid in RSS headline components
• Paging formats on Next / Prev links for paging by day, article, by month have been corrected
• Custom Components are now show in alphabetical order

On 3/11/06, Blogware (the backend that powers Blogzerk) promoted a new release which added new spam protection settings. This article is a summary of the spam protections settings detailed in the initial announcement of this release.

Spam Protection Settings
A section was added to the Settings & Security -> Publishing Defaults page named ‘Spam Protection Settings’.

This section adds the following options:

• No Follow for Comments and Trackbacks - sets any URLs in comments and trackbacks to use the NOFOLLOW attribute.
• Comment Moderation - allows blog owners to preview and approve comments
• Trackback Moderation - allows blog owners to preview and approve trackbacks

The following existing settings will be moved to this section:

• Anonymous Comments
• Comment Verification

Posting Comments Using the New Comment Form
The Comment Form has new fields added to provide blog owners more information about commenters. Anonymous commenters will be able to enter contact information including a Name, URL and Email. Authenticated commenters will be able to enter a Contact URL.

When blog owners review comments in the Publisher’s Control Panel, the contact information will be shown in the by line of the comment. The URL will be formatted as a hyperlink to the commenter’s name.

Blocking Referrers
Blog owners can ‘Select and Block Unwanted Visitors from their Blog.’ Referrers who are on the Blogware System Blacklist will now be prevented from visiting a Blogware site. Users who are blocked from Blogware or a specific Blog will now see an ‘Access Denied’ error message when attempting to access a blocked area.

When a blog owner selects ‘Delete and Block’ comments, trackbacks, or referrers, the IP or Hostname of the blocked item will be added to the user’s firewall. The blog owner will be able to see the list of Blocked Hostnames and IP addresses in their firewall.

Blogware also maintains global blacklists and whitelist that are applied to all blogs. In addition, Blogware will now maintain a spam keyword list. This list contains typical ‘spam’ words and will be updated as the spam-world evolves. All trackbacks and comments will be checked against these keywords as part of the automatic spam trackback and comment checks.

Updated Help Manual
The Blogware Help Manual has been updated to include all the changes made in this release. It includes detailed information on the various settings and screenshots with additional information.