After a long development period (well, long for me anyway), BlogCFC 3.8 is now finally released. I'm only going to summarize the changes that were made in the beta and the RC. I'll go into more detail about what changed from the RC.

Before all of that - many of these changes were due to suggestions made by Rob Brooks-Bilson. Many of the post RC fixes and updates were done by Paul Hastings. As my readers know, I'm not shy about sharing link to my wishlist. (In case you missed it, here is another link. ;) Both Rob and Paul have wishlist links on their site. If you are happy with the 3.8 release, please visit their wish lists and tell them thanks. (Of course, I won't turn down a gift either. ;)

So - let's get into the changes:

  • First let me summarize the major updates to 3.8. Blog title links have been updated to use a search engine safe format. While I know some of my users debate it - the syntax at least looks a heck of a lot nicer. Along with URL changes, Rob made changes to various meta tags to help Google better index the site. While I have no scientific proof, I do think this is helping already, as I've seen traffic slowly improve.
  • Now for the post-RC stuff: Mainly there were small fixes here and there. Paul Hastings helped out with locale/internationalization type stuff. As the blog has grown, not every new file has been properly updated. He took a look over the code and added tags where appropriate.
  • The pop up windows for both entry editing and comment editing now include the toolbars. Why? If you use the Google toolbar, you can get "free" spellchecking for your blog editing. Of course, don't be lazy like me and forget to actually use it. The popups can now be resized as well.
  • The single most common bug people have with BlogCFC is due to the caching. I added big bold red text to the Word doc describing this and how to get around it. For the two people who actually read the manual, this will help. (It's not like I read the manual either. ;)

As always, please let me know if you run into any problems. The Galleon conference for BlogCFC may be found here, and I'd rather you post bug reports/feature requests there please.