If you use Google Reader, we have a Bundle for you! This is a bundle of BG Views Network sites. It currently has seven feeds in it, but we will be adding more shortly.

What I do not understand is this: When I update the bundle, subscribers do not automatically see the changes to the Bundle. They must click Subscribe again. Why is this not automatic? A Google help forum post on this very subject has gone unanswered too, so I am not the only one seeing this as a problem.

I must say I am impressed as to how fast Google added us to Google News. I am less impressed that despite the fact that I submitted our site name as The BG News (just so happens to be our name) that we are known in Google News right now as "Bowling Green News."


This means my news sitemap XML file will not validate, because of the site name mismatch. So until Google gets around to answering my question, we will be known as Bowling Green News in Google News, and then when it is set to our proper name, I will have to change our news sitemap XML file again.

Nice of them to be quick about including us, kind of a pain in the ass they screwed up our name.

UPDATE: Good news! They got back to me today saying our name has changed. So we will see tomorrow once they pull our articles if the news sitemap throws an error.

One of the new features of the Housing Guide is the Area Map. It is a Google Map of Bowling Green with markers dotting the map. Each dot has a link directly to the entry in the Housing Guide. Click this thumbnail to enlarge.

I have a fairly simple piece of advice: If you chose to use Blogger as your blogging platform, do not purchase your domain through Blogger/Google (unless of course you know that you will never, ever, be moving that domain in the future). Should I explain more? Okay...

It is true, Google makes it very easy to map a custom domain name to a Blogger blog. They even setup Google Apps for Domains for you. So what is not to like?  The process for moving the domain to a different host and or registrar has got to be the worst registrar move I have ever seen, and I have lived through some hellish registrar moves (I am looking at you iPower).

A couple days ago, I upgraded the Movable Type install to 4.261. I had been testing out "Motion" for some time now. While I am not yet ready to roll out our Motion based template, it is well under way. More about that in another post.

What this upgrade means most is support for Google accounts. Once I enable it on all the sites in our install, you will be able to login and comment using your Google account.

The update means a lot more for me behind the scenes, but I will just keep it that way as I am sure you are not interested in hearing about all that techno mumbo-jumbo. But if you are interested in all that cool stuff, knock yourself out.

Now I just need to modify the pages such as the login form, and some other images and such as they were before, customized for BG Views. That should not take long.

The upgrade from MT 4.24 to 4.261 was pretty painless. It required an update to Dan Wolfgang's Hot Date plugin, and the deletion of the AIM and WordPress OpenID plugins, as that functionality is now built in.

Of note, Facebook Connect Commenters is now at 1.1 and did not break anything here. Commenting still works with a Facebook account, and it pulls in Userpics from Facebook too.

Today I update Share to 1.2, and Pole Position Champion 1.0.5, two more plugins from Dan Wolfgang that we use. I have not had time to modify either plugins. Both have Lite versions, but the "pro" versions offer much more, which is why we are using them.

With PPC I can attach a poll to an entry, and I can modify the code template for making the poll itself. By default the chart is made using the Google Charts API, which is fine but not great.

Share allows me custom code a template for sharing links. So the sent email has the look and feel of the blog it came from. Pretty slick stuff.

Both of these plugins will be customized for BG Views Network by the fall semester.

One Note: I had to rebuilt the blogs (like this one) that are using a poll, otherwise it does not work. This is going to take a long time for the Sports Blog, as that is our largest site.

If you look at the home page, or on this page, you will see a new search box. This is for Google Custom Search, and it is set to search bgviews.com, bgviews.com, bgvewssports.com, bgviewsnetwork.com, and bgviewsevents.com. Not only is it potential to bring in revenue, it off-loads the work of searching the database of every blog on this site.

There is even a custom results page that I setup. Go ahead and check it out.

Using Google Apps for BG Views has been great. Since they launched Labs in GMail I have been waiting patiently until they would distribute it to Google Apps too. Well, as of today, now BG Views users can use Google Labs in their email.

I also notice they updated the basic theme to that of the new "Default" theme in GMail, but alas, no Themes support in Google Apps yet.

They roll these updates out at different times for different sites it seems. The Google Apps account for Blogcritics has had Labs available for a couple months now, even though I have "New Services and Features" turned on in the Google Apps admin, we just got this feature today.

For some reason, the Google Maps marker for BG News was out in the corn fields (honestly that is not that surprising, this is North West Ohio after all). But the marker was an entire two miles off. So I went to the Local Business Center and fixed the location, and added some stuff to the listing. I need to add more but will later.

The thing that irks me is that they have to send a postcard to verify now. That takes "two to six weeks?" When I added my business listing, they allowed you to verify by phone, what the hell happened to that option?

So I guess in two to six weeks our location on Google Maps will be accurate.

UPDATE: Some yahoo put markers for BG News on Poe Road and clear out next to Bishop Road. I have requested these duplicates be taken down, I wonder how long that will take.