I have now updated your blog visitor counter. You will notice it has dropped -- don't be alarmed... this is due to it now counting unique visitors per day, rather than total visits by anyone, anytime. It will be much more accurate and fair for everyone. It now tracks "Visitors" rather than "Visits".

More details are in one of my earlier news posts.

I have finally finished a test version of the Blog Palette Editor which will let you change the color and fonts of your blog pages!

This is still in test phase, so please be nice. There may be things that are confusing or don't work.

I have setup a blog to support it at:

http://palette.blogstream.com

I will be adding more comments and help as I can.

Please let me know what you think... after this gets stabilized I will have a palette area where you can choose from preset palettes for your blog.

Some of you may have gotten a random "error page" on the site since last evening. I don't know exactly why it started happening, but i made a change to make it stop. It had something to do with some new additions I made yesterday. About 600 of you saw it -- sorry for any inconvenience.

-John

I am going to be fixing something I have wanted to fix for a while -- Blog Counters. This is what creates the "visitors" number on the right side of your blog.

Right now it is not really accurate -- it counts some people multiple times, and it's easy for one person to drive it up which is unfair for everyone.

Also, some search engines that scan your web pages can cause the counter to increase as well... making it more inaccurate.

I have implemented a new counter (which is currently hidden from view). It is much more accurate and will count true visitors, once per day and should not increase due to things like search engine scanning, etc. I will also be keeping a log to scan for any activity where someone might be trying to force the counter higher.

I'm sure you are all wonder... "What will happen to my current count"? Well... it so happens I have a true log of every visit to your blog since you started it. I will be writing a program to scan that log and accurately count each "visitor" on a daily basis, removing multiple visits by people, search engine visits, etc. and will adjust your counter to this new value. The positive side of this is that it will be fair for everyone -- if you had more real visitors, your counter will be higher than someone elses.

Your counter may drop a bit from where it is now, however everyone elses will drop as well (it will be relative). Also any counters that have been forced higher will be much lower and where they should be to be fair to everyone.

I will let everyone know in this news blog when I do switch over -- it will probably be in a few days. I know many of you will be upset that your count will be lower, however it is the fairest thing for all members and it will be much more accurate and have more meaning. It won't be perfect, but it will be much improved over the current simple counter system.

Feel free to post any comments.

-John

I know it has been a while since I have given you a new feature... and there were a few things I promised you. So this AM i started working on the custom template features for your blogs.

It's almost ready -- just give me a few days as I am finishing up something else. You can see a sample here (NOTE: It is just a quick sample, of what will be able to be done -- it is not finalized):

http://learningpiano.blogstream.com

Basically you will be able to change the colors, font sizes, etc. on just about anything on the page. You can actually do more than I have done here -- you will ultimately be able to change font styles, bold, italics, size, etc. as well as box background colors, etc.

I'm just converting the old format to the new one so that you will be able to change these things.

What I plan on is allowing everyone to customize their own page and over time there will be a gallery of pre-set templates you can choose from.

In the future I hope to allow people to complete change the page design -- but for now color will be the first step.

-John