batBack Keeps Rolling Along

We've been working on batBack and we thought you would like to know what new features are available.

Over the last month, a lot has changed! The biggest addition is the new batBack Sidebar. You can see it over on the right there. It shows the most popular articles on the entire batBack system, and the most popular articles on your blog. It also shows the latest voters on the entire batBack system, and the latest voters on your blog. That means that your articles can get exposure to hundreds or thousands of people simply by your voting anywhere. The more you vote, the more exposure you get. And the better your articles, the more people will come and read them. We're hoping this will increase your link rating on sites like Technorati.

Just like before, installing the sidebar requires copying and pasting one line of code into your template.

If you're a member and you've lost your email, you can find your script to add batBack and the sidebar on our new preferences pages. We've redesigned the preferences system to make it look more polished. We hope you like it. If you have any comments or questions, please let us know.

A big new feature for people who enjoy playing with technology is you can now add your own buttons to batBack. At the bottom of each voting box is a button that says "Action". Clicking on it expands a gray box to the side. You can do a lot with this box! More exciting features related to this are on the drawing board now!

There are two types of action buttons: your personal buttons and your blog buttons. Your personal buttons go with you to any blog you visit that has batBack. Blog buttons are available to everybody who visits your blog, whether they have registered for batBack or not.

These buttons are fully programmable and you can set them up on the preferences page. There is a catalog of buttons for non-technical folks. Only two buttons are currently available, but more will be designed in the days and weeks ahead. You simply select an item from the catalog, look at it, and click to add it to your action bar. Technical folks can write their own JavaScript program for the buttons.

There's really no limit to what these buttons can do. If you want a button to take folks to a contribution page, it's very easy to do. We've had a charity ask us about having a button to take readers to a donation or team-building page customized for that blog article. One person was interested in making a button called "link explosion" -- how many times do you read an interesting article with a bunch of links in it? Wouldn't it be nice to click one button and have a new window open up with all of those links? These pages could load in the background while you read the article, then you can check out all the background material easily. How about taking the text of the article, automatically starting your blog program, and pasting the text into a section where you can comment on it?

We'd be interested in hearing some of your ideas for buttons to help bloggers and readers. We'll take the best and put them in the catalog.

We've also made it easier to add your friends to your quick list. With one click, you can send a quick email to your friends telling them about a neat article you are reading. All without switching context -- no more copying the link from the top of the browser, starting up an email program, and remembering your friend's email address. Just one click while you're voting and your friends get an article recommendation from you. You can even add a short message if you like. Like always, we will not share your friend's email addresses with anyone. Hopefully this button will also help drive readers to your blog, and it makes telling your friends about good articles a lot easier.

We're also starting on the advertising system. If you know anybody who would like advertising, this would be a good time to get into the system! The number of eyeballs is constantly increasing, and if the news media comes by to look at batBack, it would be a nice treat for you to have your ad on it when they visit. Just send us an email if you are interested.

Our main goal, however, is always to make your blogging and reading more enjoyable and easy. You guys are the reason we're here, and we want to take your blogging to the next level. If there's anything about the system that you'd like to see, please let us know! And thanks for giving us the opportunity to serve you!

Here's the batBack sign-up page for those who haven't joined yet. For those of you who don't know, batBack is the #1 serverless blog toolkit on the internet today. It has a one-line installation into your template and works on all major browsers and blog engines. It's also completely free.