Writing Without Worries

It can happen to anyone: losing your to-be-published journal entry accidentily. Some examples:

• You click the ‘publish’ button, and your internet connection turns out to have died.
• You’re in the middle of writing a travel story. Suddenly, the power generator of the island you’re on decides to take a break and your computer switches off. (It might sound far-fetched, but it actually happened to me!)
• You accidentily logout without having published your journal entry.

Are you scared yet? Don’t be, because here’s the good news: You no longer have to worry about losing any of your journal entries. During the process of writing, your entry is from now on regularly saved as a draft. Should you happen to lose an entry due to whatever cause, the next time you go to ‘write a new journal entry’, the draft will automagically be recovered and displayed, so that you can continue writing from where you were cut off.

Generally, the only thing you will notice about this auto-saving feature is a small announcement, as you can see in the accompanying picture. But the most important thing is that you can now truly “Write Without Worries”!

Select your theme!

We’re proud to give you more options for personalizing your travel blog. In the Member Area under ‘Edit options’ you will now find the option to choose a new theme for your travelogue. At the moment there are two themes available: ‘Classic’ and ‘Fall’ (new!).

Feel free to give theme selection a try. After selecting a new theme you will immediately see the changes reflected on your site. And if you don’t like the new look, switching back is just as easy.

We hope to add many more themes for you to choose from in the future. If you have any suggestions for new or existing themes, your feedback is most appreciated.

Who are your subscribers?

On request from a curious member, you can now view the email addresses that are subscribed to your travelogue’s email notification list. See the Subscriptions page in the Member area. It also provides an easy way for inviting more people to join your travel journal’s mailing list.

May we have your votes, please?

Update: This information is extended by ‘Picture voting made easier‘.

Yet another new feature! A star rating system has been implemented on every picture page, which allows visitors to rate your pictures (from ‘Awful!’ to ‘Excellent!’). We hope this feature will provide you with some nice feedback on which pictures your visitors like best. Measurements have been taken to prevent multiple votings by the same person on one picture. Vote away!

(With thanks to Grow.)

Rotate this!

When uploading or editing pictures, you can now rotate the picture to get the right side up. Do note that this method of rotation will result in some quality loss of the picture, so it’s still preferable to rotate your pictures yourself before uploading them.

Search your location!

Update: This information is now superseded by ‘Finding your location‘.

To help you find locations (to add to a blog entry, or when plotting your travel itinerary), there is now an easy-to-use location search. Using it is simple: 1) type in your location, 2) click the ‘Search Location!’ button and 3) the system then tries to find the best matching location. Should your search fail, or if you’re unhappy with the results, you can still use the drop-down lists to select the correct location. (As an aside, your search can be phrased quite freely, e.g. searches like Eiffel Tower, White House, Uluru or Taj Mahal will in fact work.)

New features!

Together with the new domain, a number of features have been added to Fuzzy Travel, of which the most important are:

• You can now place your uploaded pictures in your travel diary entries.
• The journal entry writing and editing screens have been extended with text format buttons and a preview function.
• Pictures that you’ve assigned to a journal entry, are now all visible and browseable on that particular travel journal entry page (by using the ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons).
• Thumbnails are no longer cropped when you upload new pictures.
• All Fuzzy Travel blog entries and pictures are now searchable.
• Based on the route points in your itinerary, your map will now display your current location, and the distances you’ve travelled and still have to go (in miles or kilometers, you can choose).
• Visitors no longer have to type in a ‘word verification’ when leaving a comment. Instead, a spam filter has been put into place. See your Manage comments page in the Member area for more details.

Feel free to let us know what you think of the new features! Also, please get in touch if you have a request for a new feature or if you encounter any errors/bugs.