Post-Migration Issues & Fixes

Updated on July 3, 2008, at 3:29 PM (UTC-4 America/New York):

The latest version of BlogPatrol is migrated to our new server as of July 3, 2008. Thanks to all of you for your feedback on the following post-release issues and additional enhancements:

• COMPLETED on July 3: An activity in the works since June 6, the migration of BlogPatrol.com to the new server is complete. We had a number of challenges which delayed the process, but, at last, we've reached the goal of migrating the site to a better machine. Thanks to everyone for your patience, especially during the challenging parts of the migration.
  
• BUG FIXES / DEVELOPMENT PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: While our developer will not be fixing the bugs mentioned below during this time, I will be doing the following: (a) testing and documenting those bugs thoroughly so that the developer will be able to fix them more quickly after we have completed the migration to the new machine, and (b) updating the BlogPatrol signup / user instructions on this blog so that they reflect the new look and functionalities of the BlogPatrol service.
• BUG FIX PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: For some accounts, the referrers on the "Referrers" reports are all being listed as "self-referring/bookmarker".
• BUG FIX PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: The keyword data in the "Top 10" and "Last 10" keyword reports are not always consistent with the keyword data in other reports such as the "Detailed Visitors" report.
• BUG FIX PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: Resetting of the "Today's Visitor" value to zero at certain times of the day, as reported by users of various time zones. Fixing this error may take some considerable development.
• BUG FIX PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: The "Weekly, Daily, and Hourly" and "Details of Last 25 Visitors" reports are sometimes displaying incorrect data, such as visits for dates and times that have not yet occurred -- relative to the user's selected time zone. The data in these reports also sometimes does not match the data provided in related reports such as "Last 10 Referrers" and "Last 10 Pages Visited".
• BUG FIX PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: BlogPatrol accounts are sometimes increasing their visitor counters with NON-UNIQUE PAGEVIEWS (i.e., HITS), instead of UNIQUE VISITORS based on IP address of the visitor's computer. BlogPatrol counters are intended to count each IP address as a unique visitor during a given 24-hour period.
• BUG FIX PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: Some users' Country reports are showing the error message 'Invalid XML data' instead of the correct country data.
• BUG FIX PLANNED for July 7 and beyond: An object required error is appearing on the stats.php page in Internet Explorer v7.x browsers.
• COMPLETED on June 10: We have updated the instructions and screenshots for BlogPatrol Signup Instructions and How do I change the time zone of my BlogPatrol account? to match the new look and feel of BlogPatrol.
• COMPLETED on June 8: We have updated the How to add BlogPatrol to a Blogger blog instructions with screenshots that match the new look and feel of BlogPatrol.
• IMPLEMENTED on June 3: We have added the ability for you to ignore, or ban, up to four different IP addresses (home, work, wireless and other). In addition, we have enabled the ability to ignore (ban) dynamic IP addresses using the * and ? wildcard characters.
• FIXED on MAY 22: User gets logged out if s/he changes password. In order to resume activity in their account, then the user has to click logout and then login with the username and new password. Resolving this issue required some intensive redesign of our scripts, but all for the better for BlogPatrol users!
• FIXED on May 20: Bug fixing was delayed for a few days because of firewall issues that prevented our web developer's access to the BlogPatrol server. Issue has been resolved and we are resuming our work to fix bugs and provide enhancements.
• IMPLEMENTED on May 15: Amidst the bug fixing, we are working on a cross-promotional agreement with a company doing exciting things on the Web. This cross-promotion required us to develop some new graphics, so we decided to develop and install a BlogPatrol favicon as part of that graphics development project. Enjoy!
• FIXED on May 13: We think we have resolved the problem with logging in or staying logged into their account. Please let us know if you find otherwise!
• FIXED on May 13: We think we have also fixed the password reset function. Please let us know if you find otherwise.
• FIXED on May 9: Review all reports to make sure stats data match from report to report. Correct any errors found as a result of analysis For example, verify data for search engine and keyword search reports.
• FIXED on April 21: The "Daily Visitors for the Week of MMM DD to MMM DD" still needs to display the current day when that day has zero (0) visitors. Otherwise, it looks like the report is malfunctioning and not tracking visitors for the current day.
• FIXED on April 21: Formatting of URLs in the reports named "Top 10 Pages" and "Last 10 Pages".
• FIXED on April 18: In the Stats Dashboard, the display of the time zone's UTC code needs to change with the user's time zone selection.
• FIXED on April 17: Made sure that the start and end dates in the title bar of the “Daily Visitors” report correspond exactly to the start and dates of the bar graph data for that report.
• FIXED on April 17: Improved formatting of the BlogPatrol reports that contain URL links so that the links no longer line break too early, which left too much empty space on the right side of those reports.
• FIXED on April 17: On the BlogPatrol signup form, corrected the username validation routine so that it works properly in Internet Explorer v6+ to notify a new user that they have selected a username that already exists.
• FIXED on April 17: Centering of new "Account Settings View Stats Change Password etc." links and placement as one row of data.
• FIXED on April 17: The Demo Stats reports were not rendering unless a user was logged into their BlogPatrol account.
• FIXED on April 16: The "Top Blogs" list is not rendering in some web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox.
• FIXED on April 16: Homepage and other pages become unavailable due to other bug fixes.
• FIXED on April 14: "Today's Visits" has a different value than the current day of the "Daily Visitors for Week of MMM DD to MMM DD". When displaying correctly, these two report elements should display the exact same value.
• FIXED on April 11: Another issue with the "Details of Last 25 Visitors" is the multiple counting of unique IP addresses. (BlogPatrol is designed to count any given IP address as being a unique visitor over a 24-hour period.)
• FIXED on April 10: Many of the web pages are displaying the text in a red font, which when fixed will be a standard black font.
• FIXED on April 9: Removal of the display of the User ID # at the top of the login.php once that user has logged into their BlogPatrol account.
• FIXED on April 9: On the My Account Settings page, the "Ignore my Computer" (formerly called "Ban my IP") function is not working because it will not save any data in its corresponding data field. Also the "my IP address is..." button is not working.

We will continue to post regular updates as we resolve the above-mentioned issues and/or identify new ones. We're also excited to bring you as many enhancements and improvements as our part-time budget and resources allow.

Work in Progress: New Release of BlogPatrol

Updated on Apr. 6, 2008, at 5:02 AM (UTC-4 America/New York):
We have completed the migration of the site and BlogPatrol is now back online. We are now testing the web pages for any residual issues. So far, we have noted that there are issues with:

• "Today's Visits" has a different value than the current day of the "Daily Visitors for Week of MMM DD to MMM DD". When displaying correctly, these two report elements should display the exact same value.
  
• Certain timezones are causing stats reports to report strange data, such as visits for times that have not yet occurred.
  

We will continue to post updates as we identify more issues and/or resolve existing ones.

Updated on Apr. 6, 2008, at 3:19 AM:
We have completed all but the final step of bringing the bug fixes online. The final step will require that BlogPatrol remain offline for a short time. We will post another update once the final step is completed.

Posted on Apr. 5, 2008, at 12:30 PM:
Beginning at 12:30 PM UTC -4 (America/New York) on April 5, 2008, BlogPatrol will be offline for up to a few hours while we load the new release of BlogPatrol, including many bug fixes, onto the live site.

News on Upcoming Release of BlogPatrol

Updated on Apr. 3, 2008, at 10:16 AM (UTC-5 America/New York):
We'll be releasing all the work we've been doing by Saturday, April 5, 2008. Thanks for everyone's patience with our efforts. The release should fix the "login problem" for everyone.

Updated on Mar. 5, 2008, at 4:26 AM:
Another step forward: I have started to create new editions of the support pages that (a) provide sign up instructions for new users and (b) help current users to manage their BlogPatrol accounts.

Updated on Feb. 28, 2008, at 6:44 PM:
The work continues with progress being made each day. A few bugs remain, and we'll continue with our development and testing until they are all removed.

Updated on Feb. 21, 2008, at 11:42 AM:
Our web development consultants have done great work to resolve the problems with the password reset function and user login process on our development and test servers.

Now that testing is starting to wind down for this major release, we are turning our attention to re-doing all the support pages on our blog so that the screen shots will reflect the improvements in the BlogPatrol web pages. The work is tedious and the progress is slower than I would like, but it's important to do this work correctly. I've decided not to give any more predictions on when the work will be done (because my schedule predictions are almost always wrong), but I will continue to post regular updates.

Come to think of it, I also need to put a list together for you to see all the improvements and bug fixes that we have made... well over 50 of them in all!

Updated on Feb. 13, 2008, at 12:01 AM:
Just wanted to let everyone know that we have moved ahead with asking our web development company to do a complete anlaysis of the problems that a lot of people are having with the password reset function and user login process. The idea is to identify and deliver a solution to this issue once and for all as part of the release of our service enhancements.

Updated on Feb. 11, 2008, at 1:01 AM:
Well, still testing here. Sometimes it just takes longer than you think it will to get things right. I apologize for the delay in what (eventually) will be the release of exciting improvements to the service.

Updated on Feb. 4, 2008, at 5:07 PM:
Our test results so far have shown that we still need to work through several more rounds of testing, so the release of our improvements will be pushed back probably to the end of this week (Saturday, February 9).

Posted on Feb. 1, 2008, at 9:04 PM:
Just wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know that we are completing the final stages of testing to provide you with improvements to make it easier for you to update your account info and to use your BlogPatrol reports stats.

Hopefully, if all continues to go well with the testing, we can release the improvements by Monday, February 4.

How to Fix your BlogPatrol Account

Originally posted on January 22, 2008 at 4:47 PM UTC-5 America/New York.
Last updated on January 25, 2008 at 4:12 AM.

BlogPatrol users are reporting that BlogPatrol has stopped working on their Blogger (blogspot.com) blogs as of last Friday, January 18, 2008.

Symptoms:

1. Not all BlogPatrol accounts are affected. It appears that those Blogspot.com blogs which have the BlogPatrol code installed in the footer (i.e., along the bottom) of their blog template are the ones experiencing problems.
2. When you view the Layout and Page Elements of your blog on Blogspot.com, you do not see any Page Element label where you have installed the BlogPatrol code. (Prior to 2007, Blogspot.com used to allow insertion of code like BlogPatrol's directly into the HTML template. Since 2007, bloggers now have to insert BlogPatrol code as a Page Element.) It appears that Blogspot.com has done some kind of refresh where "legacy installations" of BlogPatrol's code that used to work now no longer work after January 18, 2008.

To get your BlogPatrol account working again:

1. remove the BlogPatrol code where you have it installed now
2. install it on your blog again using our instructions

In case you need it, the long form of the URL for our install instructions is http://thepatrolblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Install%20on%20Blogger

If you would like personalized assistance from BlogPatrol Support, please contact us using our web contact form. Thanks as always for using the BlogPatrol service.

Scheduled Maintenance and Site Restoration

Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007, 9:06 AM (UTC -5 America/New York)
BlogPatrol.com is currently offline while we make some updates and patches to our web server to enhance the site performance and increase server security. More updates to follow.

3:38 PM -- We have run into unexpected difficulties while making the updates and adding the patches to our server. We are still working on bringing the site back online. We apologize that the site is still offline.

6:52 PM -- The BlogPatrol website is restored and back online. We will provide a full update on what happened and how this outage will be avoided in the future.

BlogPatrol Net Tools Site Temporarily Disabled

We have temporarily disabled the BlogPatrol Net Tools site while we make some changes to our server configuration over the next few weeks. This is the site that was published at the URL http://tools.blogpatrol.com.

We will post an update when this service is back online.