I’m a little confused with SquidTop right now, but learning…..

The previous SquidTop help system was a little…inefficient, so we decided to set up a dedicated SquidTop help center where you may ask questions, post comments, and report bugs. This system is also used by several big companies and organizations such as Twitter and Mozilla.

Our support email address will still continue to work, but you’ll get an answer faster by using our new help system. The new help center can be found here, so please check it out and feel free to comment!

Today we had some more trouble with commenting that was due to trying out a new piece of anti-comment-spam software. It didn’t work too well, obviously, and the site’s comment system was out for a few hours today. Sorry about that. Guess we’ll have to figure out another way to fight off evil comment spammers!

Anyways, we have a new Bugs & Feedback form in the event of something like this happening again and we don’t notice it for a while. Feel free to report any bugs you find, ask any questions pertaining to the site, or just leave some feedback. We’d like to hear what you have to say so we can work to improve SquidTop and make it a fun and enjoyable Squidoo community. We just hit rocky places sometimes with the rapid growth of the site and dealing with new issues that spring up.

A link to the Bugs & Feedback form is also in the sidebar on the main site.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.

Just playing around with the main page’s theme a bit…let us know what you think and please feel free to offer some suggestions! Maybe we can come up with a neat-looking theme, or we can keep the old one if everyone prefers.

Looks like Google is recognizing Squidtop postings. I am signed up for a few google alerts and one of my posts came through this morning. I wasn’t expecting that and am quite thrilled to see Squidtop results so early.

Some people were reporting problems with comments being posted. I thought it was maybe just people weren’t approving them (comments go through a moderation queue that the owner of the blog has to approve), but that apparently wasn’t the case. After some frustrating time trying to figure it out, I discovered that there was a weird error going on with our spam captcha system (thing that keeps the spammers away).

I guess it wasn’t working right and comments were disappearing into oblivion. I’m really sorry if anyone was having trouble with this, and I’ll see if I can find these rogue comments somewhere but I’m not sure if it’s possible. Everything seems to be working now so comment posting is back to normal.

Once again, sorry, and thanks for using SquidTop.

Also, we have a support email address now, so if you’re having trouble with something on the site and need help shoot an email to help*at*squidtop.com (remove *at* with @).

Hello everyone,

The past few days SquidTop’s been bombarded by spammers and bots that have been taking over and posting their garbage.  We apologize for that.  It’s really a shame that people have to come in and spoil things for hard working folks like ourselves.  Fortunately, we’ve been fighting them tooth and nail, and have a system in place that (hopefully) will keep them away.

With this problem taken care of, we can go back to working on some of the other things that aren’t working completely right, and add more cool new features to the site.  Please bear with us.

Happy blogging!

Minor updates today, reduced the top tags and the ‘Fresh Squidtops’ lists as they were getting a little crazy with all the awesome blogging you guys are doing!

If you haven’t yet, make sure and add your e-mail address on your squidtop account to your account at http://www.gravatar.com so your own personal image shows up next to your comments and posts!

-The Captain

We’re All Winners - Mini Presentation

I was hoping with the new Squidtop, that I might be able to share a new Mini Presentation that I developed for the We’re All Winners page. Unfortunately it appears that the Squidoo ban on embedding objects extends to Squidtop.

The We’re All Winners mini presentation is available for viewing on .docstoc.

We’re All Winners

“We’re All Winners” was developed when my daughters were in preschool as an educational activity to let young children:

Enjoy and have fun being physically active
Participate in a non-racing, solo running activity
Experience the elation of winning

The main goal of the event is to create an environment in which each child gets to feel special, like a winner.

Each child goes home feeling and believing for at least one day that

“I’m a Winner!”

Yesterday was a busy busy day for me but I made sure that I got a quick post up about Squidtop at the Giant Squid Community Showcase.  I really love this place and I think it’s a great opportunity for all lensmasters, especially the Giant Squids.

And why was I so busy yesterday?  Believe it or not, I started yet another blog.  To be honest, this one should have been my first.  I have so many gardening articles from my days at Garden and Hearth that I can’t believe I didn’t think of doing this a lot sooner.  Some of those articles have already been turned into lenses but others were just laying around gathering dust so I decided to make a new home for them at  Fresh From Your Garden.  I’m not thrilled with the layout yet and I’ll probably end up changing the theme but please take a look and let me know what you think of the place so far.

I also added a post to Cabaret Squidoo.  This one is about my zucchini recipes lens.

A Lens at Last for the Squidoo Charity Fund

I finally got tired of looking for a resource on the Squidoo Charity Fund every time I created a charity lens, so I pulled together the available resources that I could find and created a lens for the Squidoo Charity Fund - Donate Your Squidoo Lens Royalties.

In case you don’t know the Squidoo Charity Fund was created for lensmasters who want to donate their royalties to charity, but can’t decide where to send them.

Charity Idea Virus

I caught the Squidoo Charity Idea virus* soon after joining Squidoo a year ago 2007 and began making lenses that benefit different causes. After catching the Giving Back Virus, I’ve gone on to create lenses that benefit many other charities, but always giving at least 10% back on each lens to the Squidoo Charity Fund.

SquidAid

In October 2007, the Southern California Fires hit my home state. The California Fires were the first natural disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.

Watching the news footage and by then a Giant Squid, I had the idea to harness the power of Squidoo to create lenses that could benefit the survivors. That idea turned into SquidAid.

A One Woman Charity Machine

I am honored to have had many of my lenses be the recipients of Janusz All4Care Awards both in 2007 and in 2008. I was recently been dubbed by Bonnie a.k.a. bdkz as “Squidoo’s One Woman Charity Machine!” and “a huge inspiration to the Squidoo Community.”

Make a lens or two or three to benefit the Squidoo Charity Fund. You’ll be glad you did.

Be sure to vote for the Squidoo Charity Fund on Lensroll.

_________

* According to Seth: An Idea Virus is a viable commercial concept set loose among those who are most likely to catch it, become infected and pass it on to others who might do the same.

SquidTop is now setup on MyBlogLog.  If you currently have a blog on Squidtop and would like to be listed as a ‘co-author’ on the Squidtop MyBlogLog Community -

1) Become a member

2) drop a comment here with your squidtop blog as well as your mybloglog name and we’ll add you as a co-author!

SquidTop is now setup on MyBlogLog.  If you currently have a blog on Squidtop and would like to be listed as a ‘co-author’ on the Squidtop MyBlogLog Community -

1) Become a member

2) drop a comment here with your squidtop blog as well as your mybloglog name and we’ll add you as a co-author!

 Comfortdoc’s New Lens: FreeRice - Donate Free Rice

The lens that I created yesterday was for the FreeRice project.

It is a fun way to learn some new words by playing the FreeRice Game and being able to donate free rice.

For each word you get right, FreeRice donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme.

I manage to get to a level where I donated 1000 grains of rice.

Comfortdoc Notes: Sidebar Widgets

I’m having fun customizing the Sidebar Widgets on Comfortdoc on Squidoo.

The Widgets I was able to find available for use were (listed alphabetically):

Amazon Shwcs. 1 (Allows you to feature Amazon Products)
Archives
Calendar
Links (Blogroll)
Meta
Pages (Links to permanent Blog pages)
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Recent Projects (Maybe the Recent Tags ?)
RSS
Search
Social Bookmarks
Tag Cloud
Top Commentators

The Widgets I decided to use, in the order listed were:

Recent Posts
Archives
Calendar
Recent Comments
Blogroll
RSS to My Top Lenses
Search
Meta
Tag Cloud
Social Networks
Recent Tags
Popular Tags

It looks like the widgets give us a lot of options for customizing the blog. I’d probably like to see being able to add our avatar, add an image and add HTML code (list where the blog is indexed).

Maybe this will go on the wish list.

Comfortdoc Notes: Sidebar Widgets

I’m having fun customizing the Sidebar Widgets on Comfortdoc on Squidoo.

The Widgets I was able to find available for use were (listed alphabetically):

Amazon Shwcs. 1 (Allows you to feature Amazon Products)
Archives
Calendar
Links (Blogroll)
Meta
Pages (Links to permanent Blog pages)
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Recent Projects (Maybe the Recent Tags ?)
RSS
Search
Social Bookmarks
Tag Cloud
Top Commentators

The Widgets I decided to use, in the order listed were:

Recent Posts
Archives
Calendar
Recent Comments
Blogroll
RSS to My Top Lenses
Search
Meta
Tag Cloud
Social Networks
Recent Tags
Popular Tags

It looks like the widgets give us a lot of options for customizing the blog. I’d probably like to see being able to add our avatar, add an image and add HTML code (list where the blog is indexed).

Maybe this will go on the wish list.

Welcome to Comfortdoc on Squidoo.

I’ve setup the Squidtop blog to keep you posted on the Latest New Lenses, News Updates and Notes from Comfortdoc / Lensdoc.

Squidtop looks like it is going to be a great new addition to the tools available to Squidoo lensmasters to help get the word out about new lenses and updates to our lenses.

A big thanks to Loyalis et al. on another developing another great Squidoo resource for the lensmasters.

News Updates

Learning about blogging and the blogosphere is one of my goals for the summer. I’ve been actively blogging on two blogs this month, both of which had challenges.

The first is Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD, the edublog that I set up in April, which thankfully is also in Wordpress, so I’m familiar with the format.

The second is My Green Doc Blog that I set up in honor of Earth Day.

I’ll be posting updates and new lenses as they become available.

Welcome to Comfortdoc on Squidoo.

I’ve setup the Squidtop blog to keep you posted on the Latest New Lenses, News Updates and Notes from Comfortdoc / Lensdoc.

Squidtop looks like it is going to be a great new addition to the tools available to Squidoo lensmasters to help get the word out about new lenses and updates to our lenses.

A big thanks to Loyalis et al. on another developing another great Squidoo resource for the lensmasters.

News Updates

Learning about blogging and the blogosphere is one of my goals for the summer. I’ve been actively blogging on two blogs this month, both of which had challenges.

The first is Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD, the edublog that I set up in April, which thankfully is also in Wordpress, so I’m familiar with the format.

The second is My Green Doc Blog that I set up in honor of Earth Day.

I’ll be posting updates and new lenses as they become available.

I’ve just joined Squidtop!

It looks like this is going to be a great way to ‘help showoff their newest lenses, and brag about their Squidoo progress.”

Congrats to Loyalis et al. on another great Squidoo product.

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

I’ve just joined Squidtop!

It looks like this is going to be a great way to ‘help showoff their newest lenses, and brag about their Squidoo progress.”

Congrats to Loyalis et al. on another great Squidoo product.

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

SquidTop has been growing like mad since it was launched about two weeks ago, and we’re very pleased about the progress so far (and we hope you are, too!) SquidTop is becoming a nice little Squidoo community–a place where lensmasters can showoff their newest lenses, and brag about their Squidoo progress.

And, that progress accelerates greatly when you blog about your lenses on SquidTop. From what users have said, lenses they have blogged about here are getting indexed by Google very quickly. It seems that Google absolutely loves SquidTop, and returns to crawl it several times a day!

Blogging, when combined with Squidoo lensbuilding is powerful, and even the folks over at Squidoo HQ agree. And SquidTop is the way to do just that.

Tweaked my SquidTop - drop by and see…

After much hard work and customization, sidebar widgets are now available! You can now customize your sidebar with a (growing) selection of widgets. To customize the sidebar, just head into your blog’s admin dashboard and click the “Widgets” link in the top menu. We plan on adding a bunch of awesome new widgets in time, so hang tight and we’ll have some pretty cool stuff going on!

By the way, within the past hour or so there may have been some page load errors while we were working. I sincerely apologize for any problems this may have caused anyone.

Thanks!

After much hard work and customization, sidebar widgets are now available! You can now customize your sidebar with a (growing) selection of widgets. To customize the sidebar, just head into your blog’s admin dashboard and click the “Widgets” link in the top menu. We plan on adding a bunch of awesome new widgets in time, so hang tight and we’ll have some pretty cool stuff going on!

By the way, within the past hour or so there may have been some page load errors while we were working. I sincerely apologize for any problems this may have caused anyone.

Thanks!

Made my first post now checking out other features here on Squidtop. About to inform my Twitter followers that I am on here.

SquidTop Rocks! It’s downright REMARKABLE =)

SquidTop Tip: Use HTML to embed links, for example <a href=”http://www.squidoo.com/basichtml”>HTML</a>

I just claimed my SquidTop on Technorati - cool :o)

Reading more about http://squidtop.com/about/ and how it works… (and getting a sneaky backlink in the process)