As part of our application updates schedule, we've been quietly working on IP.Blog 2.3. Initially planned as a maintenance release, we've gone through the bug tracker and fixed a lot of bugs, but we've also expanded our plans for the release to include many of the things you'll come to expect from our product line. Here's some of what we've been working on:
1. You guessed it, "Like" and comments
We've implemented the new, centralised Like and comments systems from IP.Board 3.1.3, allowing us to remove all of IP.Blog's own commenting code, it's "blog tracker" and more. In IP.Blog 2.3, you can Like both blogs and blog entries, allowing you to follow not only new entries, but new comments too.
2. Notifications and Reputation
As a happy side effect of implementing the Like system in IP.Blog 2.3, we've also been able to implement support for the IP.Board Notifications system. You'll be able to receive notifications of new entries on your Liked blogs, and new comments on entries you've Liked.
Additionally, until now, you've only been able to give and receive reputation on blog comments, but not blog entries. We've added this in, so you can now give reputation on great blog entries, as well as the comments that follow them.
3. Cleaner, tidier look and feel
One area we always get a lot of feedback on is the look and feel of IP.Blog, and this is something we've started to improve in the next version. This isn't a dramatic change, or even a redesign, we've simply tidied up what was already there. We've moved things into more logical places, brought the font back into line with IP.Board itself, straightened things up. Here's a few key areas - but please remember that this is a work in progress and is likely to change more before release:
The blog homepage: 
An individual blog:
One area we'd like to highlight here is that, for individual blogs, you'll notice that the two column view has been dropped in favour of a date-ordered list of entries.
A blog entry:
As you can see, this screenshot features the new Like, commenting and reputation functionality. 
Blog settings:
The whole "manage blogs" area has now been moved out of the user control panel, into it's own section of the Blog application. We've started out by tidying up the settings page, but we'll show you some other areas of improvement in a later blog entry. 
We hope you like what we've done with IP.Blog so far, and we'll be showing you more in later blog entries. As usual, all feedback is welcomed in the comments below, let us know what you think.
By Guest