ideaForest.net News

Updated to Manila 9.5

Scott Greiff — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 01:36:47 GMT

We are proud to offer all of the wonderful capabilities of Manila 9.5 to our ideaForest.net subscribers. There are too many new features to list here in detail, but some of the more exciting new features are:

Version Control,
Custom Templates, and
Podcast Support

Comment Spam Countermeasures

Scott Greiff — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 14:40:56 GMT

In an attempt to curb spam comment posts in our Manila services, ideaForest.net now makes use of Dave Winer's myCommentSpamBuddy Manila enhancement. Feel free to contact us (admin@ideaforest.net) if you find that your site is receiving spam comments.

RSS Enclosure Support

Scott Greiff — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 19:09:20 GMT

ideaForest.net Manila hosted sites now support Dave Winer's Manila extensions that allow hosted Manila sites to include enclosures in their RSS feed.

Block/Unblock Members from Profile Pages

Scott Greiff — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:45:43 GMT

When logged in as a managing editor, you can now block or unblock members while viewing their profile page, by clicking the Block/Unblock Member button at the bottom of the page.

This is especially useful for sites with many members, where finding the member via the member stats page may be time-consuming. [UserLand Software Updates]

New Theme - 'Brushed Adament'

Scott Greiff — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 00:35:51 GMT

'Brushed Adament' is a modern template, which features accommodations for a second top-navigation, modules, and an open area where you can insert your own logo by simply modifying the background image. This theme was created by Bryan Bell and is now available on ideaForest.net.

Manila: Easily Delete Comments and Trackback

Scott Greiff — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 13:49:20 GMT

Managing editors can now easily delete comments and TrackBack pings from comment and TrackBack pop-up windows in Manila sites. To delete a comment or a ping, check the box below it, and then click the Delete Checked Comments button at the bottom of the comment pop-up window.

In addition, each comment and TrackBack ping now has its own permalink, displayed next to its post-time, which can be used to link to the individual item.

Manila support for Flickr

Scott Greiff — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 02:28:03 GMT

Manila weblogs are now supported by Flickr the "online photo management and sharing application." [UserLand Product News: Frontier and Manila]

New Manila themes: Minala, Rounded, Spots and Tomo

Scott Greiff — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 03:21:16 GMT

Four new Manila themes were posted to themes.userland.com. The new themes have also been installed and are available for use on ideaForest.net servers. [UserLand Product News: Frontier and Manila]

Weblogs.com Migration Special

Scott Greiff — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 17:29:54 GMT

We would like to welcome users displaced by the closing of Weblogs.com by offering the following migration specials.

For the next three months we will be extending our free-trial period from 30 to 90 days. We will also be cutting our Private Manila Hosting costs in half for the first year to only $60.

Because we're such nice guys, we're extending these offers to everyone who signs up with ideaForest.net! Set up your free-trial today!

Off-line Status Blog Now Available

Scott Greiff — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 19:26:41 GMT

In an effort to inform our customers of systems issues that affect communication through our main servers, ideaForest.net has established an off-line blog to communicate status of our services in times of emergency. The blog can be found here.

IdeaForest.net Now Supports SPF Email Validation

Scott Greiff — Fri, 28 May 2004 13:49:45 GMT

In the most recent upgrade to our Surgemail mail server, ideaForest.net subscribers are able to take advantage of Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to help ensure that inbound email is coming from a valid mail server and not being forged. This is one powerful tool in the fight against unsolicited email, or "Spam." Read more about SPF here.

New Manila Hosting Pricing

Scott Greiff — Sun, 18 Apr 2004 18:29:20 GMT

We are pleased to announce new low pricing for Manila hosting at ideaForest.net. All Manila sites hosted from our ideaForest.net domain now only cost $36.00/year when paid yearly, or $5.95/month when paid monthly. With that you get with this level of subscription is a Web address of "www.ideaforest.net/yourSite", one email address (you@ideaforest.net), 100MB of storage and allowance for 1GB of bandwidth per month. As always, you are free to try the service for one month to see if it fits your needs.

Modules macro

Scott Greiff — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 00:03:16 GMT

We've posted a new docs page for the module macro that Bryan Bell used in his two new Manila themes. The Creating a Theme page was also updated with instructions on adding modules to a theme. [UserLand Product News]

Theme: Brushed Metal

Scott Greiff — Mon, 19 Jan 2004 01:16:12 GMT

ideaForest.net now offers Bryan Bell's new Manila theme called Brushed Metal: "This is basically the same theme, structurally as Papaver But I'd though I'd make a version for those not so into pretty flowers."

Theme: Papaver

Scott Greiff — Mon, 19 Jan 2004 01:15:24 GMT

ideaForest.net now offers Bryan Bell's new Manila theme called Papaver which makes use of the little-known module macro: "Modules are compelling because they will allow users to create Manila sites that are easy to use right from the start. Designs can include a sample BlogRoll, editable footers, and easy to manage sidebar content."

Manila: Password-protected RSS feeds

Scott Greiff — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 01:22:22 GMT

A new feature for Manila which makes it possible to subscribe to RSS feeds in Editors-Only Manila sites using any RSS news reader which supports HTTP authentication. [UserLand Product News]

Theme: Book Worm

Scott Greiff — Fri, 24 Oct 2003 02:57:53 GMT

Today we added Bryan Bell's theme Book Worm to our Manila Web templates collection.

Manila: News Item Department Enhancements

Scott Greiff — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 00:42:13 GMT

ideaForest.net Manila Web hosting subscribers can now enjoy improvements to the News Item Departments
"News item departments now each have their RSS 2.0 feeds. In addition, each Manila site now has a page which lists all the departments in the site, along with links to each department, and its RSS feed." [UserLand Product News]

Manila: Discussion Group RSS Feeds

Scott Greiff — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 23:50:57 GMT

ideaForest.net's Manila Web hosting services now support RSS feeds for discussion groups. "Manila can now generate an RSS feed for your site's discussion group. Your discussion group's RSS feed makes it easy for you and your readers to follow discussion on your site using any news aggregator which supports RSS." [UserLand Product News]

Email Postage Services

Scott Greiff — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 13:08:14 GMT

ideaForest.net now offers email postage services to all of its hosting subscribers. With recent technology introduced to our mail server, you can now require postage on all or some of your incoming email. Our mail server connects directly to Centipaid's email postage service. This is another great new way to block, or profit from unsolicited email.

Manila: Mail-to-Weblog

Scott Greiff — Thu, 25 Sep 2003 02:53:14 GMT

ideaForest.net now supports the new Mail-to-Weblog feature. "The Mail-to-Weblog feature makes it easy to post to your weblog by simply sending an email to your site. When this feature is enabled, Manila periodically checks for new messages in a POP email account that you specify, and posts new messages whose subject matches your "secret subject" to your weblog." [UserLand Product News]

Manila: Comment notification via email

Scott Greiff — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 04:37:16 GMT

ideaForest.net now supports a new Manila feature: comment notification via email. If the feature is enabled, whenever a new comment is posted to your Manila site, an email will be sent to to your notification list, notifying you that a new comment was posted. [UserLand Product News]

New Manila feature: WYSIWYG editing in Mozilla

Scott Greiff — Sun, 24 Aug 2003 17:33:52 GMT

We are pleased to announce that ideaForest.net Manila services have been updated to include WYSIWYG editing for Mozilla. The editor works in Mozilla 1.3b or later on all platforms. It supports text and paragraph formatting, text and background coloring, lists, and tables, and has multi-level Undo/Re-do.

New theme: NoisyOrange

Scott Greiff — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 03:55:16 GMT

A new theme, NoisyOrange, is now available to all Manila users. This original theme was created here at ideaForest.net and is available for free to the entire Manila community.

To use this theme, log into your Mania site as a managing editor, select Prefs from the editor's menu, select Theme, choose "NoisyOrange" and then hit "Apply Theme." Enjoy!

New feature: Hotmail Retrieval

Scott Greiff — Wed, 23 Jul 2003 01:23:52 GMT

The ideaForest.net Email system now has the ability to retrieve email from subscriber's Hotmail and MSN email accounts. Contact support for more information.

New feature: TrackBack for Manila

Scott Greiff — Sun, 20 Jul 2003 00:45:33 GMT

Manila services at ideaForest.net now include Trackback.

TrackBack is a notification system which is used to notify another site that a post in your own site points to a post on the other site. Manila supports both incoming and outgoing TrackBack pings.

Docs are here. [UserLand Product News]

New Manila feature: robots.txt

Scott Greiff — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 01:00:24 GMT

Manila now generates robots.txt files, based on preferences set by Managing Editor: "robots.txt is a special file which tells web crawlers and search engines what areas of your site they are allowed to visit and/or index. Manila's robots.txt feature makes it easy for Managing Editors to edit the restricted paths in their site's robots.txt file." [UserLand Product News]

Email Anti-Virus Available to All

Scott Greiff — Tue, 10 Jun 2003 16:28:41 GMT

Due to the impact of spam and viruses on our subscribers and the Internet community at large, we have decided to include spam and anti-virus countermeasures to all of our subscribers.

ideaForest.net mail servers are now running ClamAV virus protection. All mail coming in and going out of our servers will be scanned for the latest viruses. If a message is found to contain a virus, it will be removed from our servers before the message gets to our subscribers or out to the Internet. Virus signatures are updated twice daily to ensure that we're up-to-date with the latest list of vulnerabilities.

Anti-virus protection is included in all email services offered here at ideaForest.net.

Filer Plugin Now Available

Scott Greiff — Sat, 24 May 2003 20:39:25 GMT

To make your Manila file manipulation chores a little bit easier, we are making the Filer Plugin available to our Manila hosting subscribers. One big benefit with Filer is that you can share files publicly, to only members, or to only your site's editors.

This feature replaces GEMs functionality only if you choose to activate it for your site. (Prefs->Plugins->Filer checkbox)

All images and GEMs/Files are served by an Apache server here at ideaForest.net. We don't charge extra for this service.

Moving your Manila site to ideaForest.net?

Scott Greiff — Mon, 12 May 2003 15:46:52 GMT

Manila has a feature which allows managing editors to download a copy of their site to their local computers. We at ideaForest.net can then use this file to transfer your Manila site to our servers. The link above will take you to instructions on how to make this happen.

phpMyAdmin Now Available

Scott Greiff — Tue, 06 May 2003 01:46:28 GMT

We are pleased to announce that phpMyAdmin is now available to our Apache Private Domain hosting customers. This package gives you the ability to manage your site's MySQL database through your Web browser.

New Subscription Options

Scott Greiff — Thu, 01 May 2003 20:33:24 GMT

ideaForest.net now offers monthly subscriptions to our Manila and Apache based offerings. We also have pricing for our private domain Manila hosting plan.

Easy editing of Navigation Links

Scott Greiff — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 19:56:52 GMT

We just updated our server to give you the ability to edit the navigation links on your ideaForest.net Manila site. You can get more information about this feature.

Member Email Addresses Now Safer

Scott Greiff — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:19:24 GMT

IdeaForest.net has implemented UserLand's latest change in the implementation of Manila to hide the email addresses from email harvesters. This means that the email addresses of your your site's members will be safe from spammers.

News Aggregator Now Available

Scott Greiff — Sat, 19 Apr 2003 18:05:39 GMT

Manila's News Aggregation feature is now available to ideaForest.net Manila website subscribers. Details on how to enable this feature for your own Manila website can be found here.

Headlines Added

Scott Greiff — Fri, 18 Apr 2003 05:00:06 GMT

News headlines concerning the services here at Idea Forest Network will now appear on the homepage of the site. You can also subscribe to news items by using the RSS feed linked below.