Well, I've got most of the user interface done, the url's rewritten and enough of the back end to create a topic. The format looks just like the rest of the site but the user can upload their own profile and header images. The part of keeping it simple was to have it be attractive but easy to manage (so you won't have to be loading "skins" or modifying .tpl files).

The main menu illustrates the pages/selections that will be available for the blogs.

Still working on a bunch of stuff for the back end but I thought I'd try it out with my first blog post.  

My Blog

Today we cleaned up much of the display in the head tags and made them as unique as possible to assist, or at least not raise any flags, for search engines.

We also added social bookmarking links at the bottom of each blog post so that the specific page information could be forwarded to; Digg, Del.icio.us, FURL and Stumbleupon by clicking the appropriate button. 

Got the main blogs page done yesterday. It features the most recently updated blog (most recent new post), most active blog (greatest number of posts) and most popular (most comments from visitors). Blogs Home

It also shows each blog that's been created at the bottom and I'll be adding the most recent few posts to the main page. The idea is to make it easier for visitors to find the information they might be interested in and to promote those that are actually updating them regularly.

I have to work on a couple of more things on the back end and then finish the registration page and then anyone can sign up for their free blog.

I'll be redoing the main navigation of the site to include the blogs, as well as, making a few other minor changes but it's getting close. 

Did the file upload component for the profile and header images yesterday. Redid the menu and added a FAQ's page so that hopefully some of the questions could be answered before registering.

Still working on a couple of bugs with the rich text editor (allows you to modify your posts without knowing html... rather like in the forum just more robust).

I'm guessing I'll go forward with the registration page as soon as I get the terms of service done and work out the bugs as I move forward. Kinda confidant that it's not going to slow too many down... based on my experience with the forum. (smiley here) 

Well.... it's far from perfect, but the registration is up for anyone who might be willing to test it. There's still a lot of work to be done but it should be good enough to give it a go.

Still working on some bugs in the rich text editor. I just may have to switch to another program but I'd like to see if we can keep the same one that's utilized in the forum. (you notice that they didn't use the image upload in the editor either, you have to upload the images after posting) The text editing features and options are outstanding but I'm just having trouble coordinating the image upload within the editor. Hmmm.

I've been beating my head against the wall on that one so I think I'll give it a rest because I don't have any difficulty with it as I load my images first anyway and there are many more features and refinements to be working on.

Added a search feature to the main blogs page whereby visitors may search the title and body of the blog posts with the following options: contains a term, contains all of the terms or an exact match.

I also added a send mail to the comments section so that when a visitor adds a comment an email is dispatched to the blogger to bring it to their attention. Members won't have to take the time to log in to see if they have comments added unless they get the notification and no comments will be added unless approved by the specific member.

Finally got the rich text editor sorted. Never did get the image features worked out in the text editor that's used here... I could get the image to load, but then it wouldn't be saved and then when I got it saved every time I changed the permissions for files accessed the image path wouldn't be stored.

The guys that wrote the editor sell an image manager to add on but it was only in php and .net and it was over a couple of hundred bucks if I recall correctly so I skipped it. (this site is done entirely in asp) 

At any rate, I finally gave up and went with another editor that seems to be working fine. It's called the FCKEditor and has pretty much all of the same features, it just looks a little different. The upload and edit images are working fine, the only issue that I'm seeing so far is a  bug in the spell check feature which I will be looking into. 

I'll load some screen shots in a couple of days to illustrate how easy it is to use for those of you that are taking the time to keep up with the progress. It's been quite fun actually though I am looking forward to putting it to bed so to speak. (smiley here) 

I added an upload and resize component to the header and profile upload managers so that both images would be resized to fit the parameters of the page. Adding the resize feature will ensure that the page not be distorted when over sized images are uploaded and will increase the speed at which your page will display by ensuring an accurate file size.

Unfortunately it will distort your images if they are not in the appropriate proportions before uploading but it's better than skewing the whole page IMO. I'm working on adding a crop image function so that the correct dimensions can be pulled out of any oversized image with a mouse click but it's not ready yet.

I also rewrote all of the url's to be search engine friendly and to include your blog name in the url of your main page. (eg. tampabaycharter.com/blogs/yourname/) I didn't include the user name in the category and posts pages as they would be pretty long.