System Upgrade Completed
The system has completed its upgrade to Build 2.1, this is a compatibility release to allow us to advance our other websites and continue our plans to integrate all future sites together at some level.
The upgrade didn’t go as smoothly as hoped, but merely in a technical manner – there was no danger to data at any time and a complete system backup was taken the moment the system went down to begin the process.
Anyone who, from 23:58 GMT on the 20th October until about 02:00 GMT on the 21st October tried to get in and received an error or an incorrect password alert should try their details again as these issues have now been resolved.
What’s new in this release?
The only actual ‘Diary’ feature that’s new is the hotly requested ‘First Entry’ link. It works like ‘Newest Entry’ but it gives you the first one in the list. This will save your readers a lot of time if they decide they want to start at the beginning of your story!
The observant among our users will also note the new Look and Feel to the system, which has been worked on very hard by Steve over recent months. Note that the gradient on the top bar where it says ‘Dear Diary.NET…’ will follow whatever you have set the background COLOUR of your diary to be. This resolves the one big complaint we received about the pencil – it’s great until its colouring clashes with your design. This should alleviate those problems.
Some people have (already) expressed some pity at the loss of the pencil, if you share in this, drop us a note and let us know you would like to see it back and if we get enough requests to do it we’ll try and come up with a new way to put the pencil in this new top bar.
Another major new feature is the addition of a much needed Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) which you can get at any time by clicking on the FAQ button at the top of any screen. It should answer most questions that you might have and is compiled primarily out of the questions we have received to support since we started. If something isn’t covered in there then by all means contact us and highlight it to us!
The major reason for this intermediate upgrade however was to bring online our new ‘Atomic User’ mechanism. All Dear Diary accounts are now ‘Atomic’ accounts, this means that you can use your ‘Atomic’ account on any of the websites that we bring online automatically, without having to re-register. Where-ever you see our Atomic Systems logo (look in the bottom left on Dear Diary for example) you can use your Atomic account immediately.
Don’t worry, we haven’t been bought, taken over or otherwise – Atomic has always been there in the background, we’re just choosing to group the sites that we produce more formally under the ‘Atomic Systems’ banner now.
If you have any problems what-so-ever as a result of the upgrade or- as per usual – if you have any questions, comments, complaints, ‘constructive criticisms’ or anything else then drop us a note to the support address and we’ll do our best to help you.
As for me, it’s 02:50 on Saturday morning so I am going to go to bed now… The room is starting to do funky things 🙂
Matt.