Starting with the Popular Posts page there are a few new enhancements. Overall the layout has changed hoping to add a little more functionality to the mix and make it easier to see what is happening. I have also added a Top Pickers module in the sidebar which ranks members who enjoy picking and runs for the whole month.

Below that is another module that offers a random array of posts that were published last month. Her's a chance to read a few that you may have missed.

The next major change has been with the actual Picks page. Daphne from Daphne's Dandelions asked for some more info on the blogger to be included - which only took me a few months to finally get around to implementing. Sorry Daphne...

I have also added the ability to Fave the Blog or the Member from on the same page as I try to tighten up how accessible the site becomes. Your Faved Blog and Member's pages will enjoy a few enhancements in the coming weeks as well.

And to top it all off, the Pick page has become a little leaner. When it first started, it actually incorporated 3 different pages to make it work whereas now it only uses one. In the future, my plan is to make this even leaner still be providing some Ajax functionality - for the layman, it's geek-speak for "very fast pages".

Notes on Feedburner

For those of you who think I've forgotten all about the Feedburner issues, please rest assured that I'm still working on them. It seems that Google, having bought Feedburner nearly 2 years ago, is now in the process of migrating these feeds across to their own servers - and having some real issues doing it (though we're not supposed to know that!)

Until this is sorted I can't offer those with Feedburner feeds any more suggestions. My only advice would be to search out the "Feedburner Migration" via Google and see if you can manually do it yourself - good luck! For those who want to try I am happy to coach you through the situation but you must do most of the leg-work - I've wasted too much sleeping time on this issue!

Apart from that, you could 'diss' Feedburner and Google altogether and get a Wordpress blog. It seems that this is the only guaranteed way forward. Or, just sit and wait it out....

I trust you enjoy the new features and look forward to your comments and feedback.

For whatever reason - go ask Feedburner Help (although I think that's actually an oxymoron - "Feedburner" and "Help") if you're looking for an answer - they simply have stuffed this great product. Why Google had to go and buy these guys out in the first place, I'm not sure either, but it has certainly created a ton of problems in the blogosphere.

Why are your feeds not showing up? I don't know. When will they show again? Again, I don't know. Why are other aggregators able to access your feeds using Feedburner urls? Still, I have no answers. All I know is that I'm tired of losing sleep over this pathetic situation and until Feedburner can get their act together I'm going to can using their links altogether.

This is deplorable and I apologise profusely to those who have invested so much time and heart-ache into trying to get their feeds on the Picks lists.

When I've had some time to think through the situation, I'll try and offer a few more suggestions. For the time being I'm off to throw a few hard-ones on the punching bag (I've renamed it "Feedburner").

While it has been a tumultuous month, the lessons learned will become valuable experiences for Blotanical's journey ahead. The learning curve has been exponential.

Needless to say, now we can move on and start working on some of your wonderful suggestions and ideas. Thanks all for your patience and I look forward to the continuing journey.

These two awards deserve the most accolades for they demonstrate the respect given by their Blotanical peers. Amongst nearly 1000 other blogs, Faire Garden (a relative new-comer on the garden blogging scene) stood-out amongst the blogging faithful as a blog of distinction. Whether it's the photos, writing, enigmatic style of owner, Frances - or a culmination of all three - Faire Garden is a worthy recipient of this inaugural title.

And, if Carol from May Dreams Gardens needed any introduction then you possibly haven't been around long enough. The creator of Garden Blogger's Bloom Day and the most sought after hoe specialist also took out the Best Blog Writing category.

Without taking anything away from Carol's win, it was a little devastating to see that Crafty Gardener missed out on the Blotanist of the Year, as I was sure that she would clearly take it. Crafty Gardener has been a stalwart of Blotanical since its inception and the fact that she is still miles ahead of anybody in points clearly illustrates her commitment and devotion to the site. Kudos Crafty and all the best for next year's awards.

As for the rest of the winners, place-getters and nominated finalists you can view them all here.

While this has been the first Blotanical Awards it is certainly not going to be the last and I'm still keen to hear your feedback about anything to do with the Blotanical Awards. BTW - it pays to suggest a category. Mr Subjunctive from Plant's are the Strangest People complained bitterly...lol :-)...that we introduced a Best Indoor Gardening Blog category which he she later went on and won - it pays to ask.

PS. I'm planning to get some banners out to the winners during the course of this week.

Blogger blogs
1. In your Blogger settings click the Site Feed tab.
2. Remove anything that is within the Post Feed Redirect URL field. It should now be completely EMPTY.
3. Click Save Settings.
4. Go to the SimpliePie Demo page and in the blue field type your URL and then click Read.
5. If successful, it should display your posts.
6. You will notice that where you typed your URL it has now changed to another URL. Copy this.
7. Now go to your Plot in Blotanical.
8. Click the myBlogs tab.
9. Click the Edit button under your blog details.
10. In the Blog Feed field paste the URL that you copied at Step 6.
11. Click Update.
12. Take two Panadol, wait for an hour and then write your next post. They should begin showing up again.

Non-Blogger blogs
1. Go to your blog and in your browser's menu bar click View > Page Source.
2. Towards the top of your page you should see a meta tag that looks like this - .
3. Copy the link within the href tag.
4. Go to the SimpliePie Demo page and in the blue field paste the link you copied in step 3 and then click Read.
5. If successful, it should display your posts.
6. You will notice that where you typed your URL it may have changed to another URL. Copy this or retain the link that you copied in Step 3.
7. Now go to your Plot in Blotanical.
8. Click the myBlogs tab.
9. Click the Edit button under your blog details.
10. In the Blog Feed field paste the URL that you copied at Step 6.
11. Click Update.
12. Take two Panadol, wait for an hour and then write your next post. They should begin showing up again.

Let me know if this still doesn't work for you.

For those who are still suffering with the Feedburner issue, can I offer my most sincerest apologies. The issue is in the hands of the Feedburner Team and we have been trialling solutions - to no avail - for the past week and a half. The issue is obviously fairly complex as even this team of gurus are unable to provide any satisfactory resolution.

So, it is time to take some control back and put some more options into your own hands. Here is a possible workaround that should fix those with Feedburner feeds.

Step 1
Login to Feedburner.com and go to the Edit Feed Details section.

Copy the url that you initially entered into the Original Feed field. In this example, mine would be - http://www.gardeningtipsnideas.com/index.xml.

Step 2
Then, enter it into the blue highlighted field at this address and push the Read button. If the link is successful then it should display your feed below all the links. If not, then you will just have to sit and wait until Feedburner can solve the problem.

Step 3
If it was successful then paste that Original Feed url into your Plot in the My Blogs section. You will need to click the Edit button and then paste the url into the Blog Feed field.

Click the Update button and your next post should start filtering in again.

If you have changed over to a Wordpress blog I will need to work with you individually to reconcile these as the archiving structure for Wordpress is a little different.

Have a great day.

No. The award goes to Feedburner, directed and produced by Google Inc., and starring every sadistic programmer this side of the Silicon Valley. I really should get some sleep!

In their wisdom, and lack of being accountable to anyone who may utilise any of their services (ie. you and me), they decided to change their feed urls to a new feed protocol. Are you ready for it? Instead of their feeds listing as http://feeds.feedburner.com/[Blog Title Goes Here] they are now being served via http://feedproxy.feedburner.com/[Blog Title Goes Here]. Did you notice the change? All that for nearly 2 weeks of frustration!!!!

One might have hoped that Google, in its ultimate aim to increase online users experience, might have shared that little snippet perhaps a week or two earlier.

Sorry...end of rant...for those who have feedburner feeds I hope you enjoy being public again.

There are x variables that could have caused the problem and I have been systematically calculating each one as to whether they were responsible. They are;

1. Feedburner - While this is a state of the art application, and still the preferred option for cleaning and publishing feeds, the publishers decided that it would now block aggregators from accessing their feeds. Why? I'm not sure but in their wisdom they have decided that this is a good thing.

   Therefore, aggregators such as our Picks list, have had to adjust our code to "pretend" that we are a browser picking up the feed rather than an aggregator. Needless to say, it's been a fairly worthless exercise on Google's behalf, and one that's caused a fair amount of angst amongst the online community.

2. My own code - this is always a possibility as I'm only human and as we all know human's make mistakes. However, in this case the problems occurred without any intervention on my behalf. The code has remained unchanged for the past few months and even though some have thought that it may be related to the Blotanical Awards I can assure you their code sets have nothing to do with each other. It was mere coincidence.


3. cURL and SimplePie - for many blotanists you can just switch off now or scoot down the page for solutions. But for those who are interested, the code we use to pick up your feeds utilises the SimplePie and cURL libraries. While I did initially assume that they were at fault, after much testing and discussion with their 'gurus' they have to be ruled out as possibilities.


4. My hosting service - the final option in this mess is my hosting service. After all the testing that went on it seems that the problem may actually fall in their laps. As they haven't gotten back to me with a response within the last 24 hours (they're usually very good at sorting out problems) my confidence that this is the case is growing. My guess is that they have made some changes within their structures that block certain applications and Feedburner is one such application.

So, where to from here?

I see that some of you have had enough with Google products, abandoning Blogger and Feedburner and relying on Wordpress instead. While this may be a short term fix, it may produce other problems in the long term and doesn't insulate you completely from further issues. Having said that, if I were to start blogging now I would certainly opt for Wordpress over Google products. But then again I use Movable Type which I think is far superior but is still suffering from a few issues itself at the moment.

For those with Feedburner feeds and Blogger blogs, I have included an alternate url that picks up your default blogspot feed. In most cases this seems to be working well but some are still producing errors for which I cannot correct.

Those who have Feedburner feeds but don't have a Blogger blog, I suggest that you comment below or email me and I shall update you with an alternate feed as well - where possible - until this mess is sorted out.

I truly apologise to those who have been pulling their hair out because of these issues. I am fully committed to fixing these problems and hopefully we can get through this as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Entries close on the last day of September and they must be original works. I will inform you of the winners via the News and also produce a list of all the entries.

Have fun with it.

I have been trialling some work-arounds, discussing with 'experts' and frequenting many forums in order to get some assistance but at the moment, this is to no avail. Many others have been noticing similar problems with their sites that display multiple feeds and some have even discussed issues with their feeds and Google Reader.

The problem that is occurring now and is not too dissimilar to the one we experienced several months ago with Blogger feeds. Interestingly, both applications are owned by Google. Coincidence? The jury is still out on that one.

Needless to say, until I can get some answers and possible ways forward Feedburner feeds won't be showing up on Blotanical for a little while. I would like to think that this might be fixed within a day or two but I am reliant on people answering my questions before I can proceed.

So while this may be extremely frustrating, both for you and for myself, please be assured that I am spending every spare minute trying to source a solution.

PS. Please no more messages on the Help Desk about this. I shall keep you informed along the way.

Thanks all for the heads up and hopefully we will have it back on track within the next few hours.

PS. For those who are noticing that the site is taking longer to load - the problem is inter-related.

Anyway, the inaugural Blotanical Awards are up and running. For the next 3 weeks - until Sunday 21, September (Busselton Standard Time) - the nomination form will be available for you. You don't have to complete it all in one sitting. You can leave and return at your leisure provided you click the "CONFIRM MY SELECTIONS" button (located at the bottom of the form) after each update. You can even come back and change some of your selections during the nominations stage.

Once the nomination period has expired, the voting phase commences and will last for only 1 week concluding on Sunday 28, September (Busselton Standard Time).

RULES

1. Your own blog(s), and member aliases, will be missing from the lists. This is to force everyone to vote for someone else's blog or membership rather than their own. Some of the network blogs may be available for some of the contributing bloggers but if these are nominated by them they will be discounted before final voting commences.


2. Apart from the Best Blog Post category which will have 10 finalists, all the other award categories will offer 5 finalists. In the event of a tie for 5th place, the blog or member who has been listed on Blotanical the longest will be awarded the voting spot.


3. For those bloggers who have more than one membership only one (randomly selected by me) shall be counted. Therefore, if you don't want me to choose which one should stay then it may be in your best interests to just nominate with the one membership rather than your multiples.


4. In the event that the timer expires before the subsequent pages are removed from further nomination or voting, any selections made after the final time shall be void and therefore deducted.


5. Gardening Tips 'n Ideas does not show in any of the lists to ensure the fairness of the competition

For this year, and perhaps future years, no prizes will be granted to recipients of these awards. I shall consider this for future awards but for the time-being I'm keen to 'walk' before we start 'running'. Award recipients will receive a banner for their blog, and possibly for their Plot, which they may or may not choose to exhibit.

I wish you all the best and look forward to finally awarding our very first Blotanicals. If you have comments or questions about these awards please leave them here rather than at the Help desk. I will endeavour to respond as soon as is possible.

So, I've been thinking; one feature that could be offered here is a feed that picks up all Plurks or Twitters or both. It would read much like the Current 200 List in the picks section with the name of the Blotanist and their Plurk/Twitter. All it would take to set up - from a members point of view - is to add your Plurk/Twitter nickname to your profile.

Or, we could start our own micro-blogging service that was just available to Blotanist members.

Opinions? Thoughts? Do you Plurk or Twitter currently? Keen to know your ideas on this possible feature.