I've been working hard the last two days to add the Premium Membership option... and I think we are all set!

You can upgrade your account by going to "My Account" and clicking the upgrade option next to your membership status.

Current cost is $9.99 for a full year... it will allow you to have up to 500 images in your gallery and banner ads on the top of the blog pages will not appear. More benefits may come in the future.

Let me know if you have any problems!

I have added a spellchecker on comments now... let me know if you have any problems with it.

Hi all... I have been (slowly) cleaning out the featured blogs and removing ones that have not been updated in a while, as well as adding new ones.

In regards to how featured works -- please don't ask or bug me to be featured -- I just browse around and if something catches my eye I feature it.

It looks like the internal change I made a week or so ago, the one that I mentioned may speed up the system, has worked! The system has been MUCH more responsive lately and we should be ok for a while.

Lastly, I wanted to ask peoples thoughts about a premium membership. Before people start yelling at me -- I plan on nothing changing with the current system... it's staying free as always! However, even with the ads on the site, the site loses a little money.

As a member, would you be interested in a "premium membership" that would gain you extra features or abilities? I envision it would be a fixed yearly fee such as $10-$20 and would be completely optional. As for what you would get, the only thing I know for sure would be included would be removing the ads when browsing the site. As for other features, I am looking to hear from you all as to what you would want to even consider upgrading to a premium membership.

Possible ideas: Larger storage limits for the galleries (right now there is a limit, however as of now I have no enforced it), no advertisements, the ability to email in blog posts or images (so you can work via cell phone), the ability to have private/password protected blogs (for example a blog just for your family members)

Let me know your thoughts! Please post "constructive" comments below... such as whether you would be interested or not and what you would want to see if you were interested.

Remember, the intent is for the site to remain FREE for all as it is now.

Lastly, I know I have been absent for a few months but I have been busy with family and some other projects I work on. I would love Blogstream to continue to grow and to be able to continue to improve the site! There are a lot of blog sites out there, however I believe Blogstream is different than most in that it is truly a community of people that care for each other.

I have noticed a lot of people putting video or audio on their blogs -- content that they only want to display once...

What I mean by this is that if you place two audio clips in two blog posts and view the blog, both audio clips may play over each other (unless you actually edit the old blog post and remove the audio clip or place it in the comments).

I added a new "tag" to let you place text you only want to appear in one blog post per page... it works like this:

[ [FIRST] ]
Place your text or HTML here
[ [\FIRST] ]

(when you type this out, remove the spaces between the two [ symbols -- I had to do this so I didn't trigger the code.)

Be sure to notice the second one has a backslash before the word FIRST, this is important or it will not work.

If you place audio code in between those two tags on two blog posts, and those two blog posts show up on the same page, only the topmost blog will display the text or code between those tags... otherwise a message will appear telling the user they have to view the blog post directly to see the message or hear the audio.

I hope this makes sense. Let mek now if it works! Should save you all a lot of trouble using audio/video in your blog. Bottom line, if you are putting audio in your blogs that automatically plays, place it in the tags above and it will provide a better viewing experience for your visitors.

Oh on a side note -- I believe I sped up the system quite a bit. I had some old code for searching that was not used anymore, and it seemed to be hanging the system occasionally. I removed it a day or two ago and the system seems to be responding much faster.

Hi everyone... sorry I have been away!

I have chosen two winners for the contest...

Lucy with "Tryin Not to Come Undone"

For her Blogstream University video, and now her "Foot" work.

http://tryinotocomeundone.blogstream.com/v1/pid/84469_Friday-Show-Time.html#TP

The second winner is:

Needs More Cowbell by E.M. Diesel and SixFootBlonde

http://needsmorecowbell.blogstream.com/

Congratulations!... both blogs have won the $250 prize!