Blogg-X 2.11 Manual
Blogg-X is a cross platform (Windows XP SP2, Apple OSX 10.4.3 and Linux) content management utility for web sites based on the Joomla! Open Source Content Management System (CMS). Blogg-X is written in Java, which provides the ability to work with a variety of systems with Java runtimes available and installed. Blogg-X eliminates the need to log into your Joomla! site using your internet browser. Once Blogg-X is configured your settings are remembered and posts, including images, can quickly be posted, modified and deleted without using the Joomla! interface. |
Index
Additional Software used within Blogg-X
So you have your site settings configured (if not click here) and you’re ready to easily post content using Blogg-X. Follow these simple steps to begin:
1. Select the site you wish to post to. See item 1 in the image above.
2. Enter the “Title” for the article/post. See item 2 in the image above.
3. Select the “Section” that contains the category you want. See item 3 in the image above.
4. Select the “Category” to put article/post into. See item 4 in the image above.
5. Enter the “Intro Text” that you wish to show on the site. From here you have all kinds of options for creating the text. See the example below.
6. Once you have the “Intro Text” section complete you can OPTIONALLY enter text into the “Main Text” area by clicking on the tab. Again you can apply all the text formatting options in this area as well.
7. So you have the post ready for the website. Click on the “Publish Action” dropdown as illustrated in the image below:
Here you have three options.
1. “Unpublished” – this will store the article/post on the website, but won’t be displayed.
2. “Published” – this will store the article/post on the website and it will be displayed in the specified section and category.
3. “Published Frontpage" – this will store the article/post on the website and it will be displayed on the frontpage.
8. Once you select a “Publish Action” the article/post will be sent to the website and after successful completion you will receive a window and then Blogg-X will return to its original state ready to start another article/post.
9. You have now successfully used Blogg-X to manage content on your Joomla! site!!
Items highlighted in GREEN are OPTIONAL.
Items highlighted in RED are required for posting.
“File” Menu
- “Save Post”
- Saves the “Title”, “Intro Text” and “Main Text” fields to a file on the hard drive. The fields are saved into an “.xml” file.
- “Load Post”
- Loads the selected file into Blogg-X. Blogg-X will only load “.xml” files saved from within Blogg-X.
- “Exit”
- Exit Blogg-X.
“Edit” Menu
- “Undo”
- Performs an undo of the last operation when related to text fields. Has no action to remove posts.
- “Redo”
- Performs a redo of the last “Undo” action. Use this if you have used the “Undo” function and wish to redo it.
- “Cut”
- Cut the selected text from the document.
- “Copy”
- Copy the selected text to the clipboard.
- “Paste”
- Paste data from the clipboard into Blogg-X. May be used in any text field as long as the cursor resides within the text field in which you want to paste.
- “Paste Special”
- Paste option with additional parameters. Setting the “Paste Special” options are located in the “Options” window.
- “Select All”
- Selects all the text within the field where the cursor is.
“View” Menu
- “Top Buttons”
- Show/Hide the top row of buttons.
- “Text Fields”
- Show/Hide the “Intro Text” and “Main Text” fields.
- “Publishing Settings”
- Show/Hide the additional publishing settings at the bottom of the main window.
- “Status Panel”
- Show/Hide the status bar at the bottom.
“Font” Menu
- “Bold”
- Change the selected text to bold.
- “Italic”
- Change the selected text to italic.
- “Underline”
- Change the selected text to have an underline.
- “Strikethrough”
- Change the selected text to have a strikethrough.
- “Superscript”
- Change the selected text to superscript.
- “Subscript”
- Change the selected text to subscript.
- “Size”
- “Smallest” – HTML <font size=”1”> tag
- “Smaller” – HTML <font size=”2”> tag
- “Small” – HTML <font size=”3”> tag
- “Regular” – HTML <font size=”4”> tag
- “Large” – HTML <font size=”5”> tag
- “Larger” – HTML <font size=”6”> tag
- “Largest” – HTML <font size=”7”> tag
- “Font Color”
- Change the color of the selected text.
“Format” Menu
- “Align”
- “Align Left”
- Align the selected text to the left.
- “Align Center”
- Align the selected text to the center.
- “Align Right”
- Align the selected text to the right.
- “Align Justified”
- Align the selected text to be justified.
- “Heading”
- “Heading 1” – HTML <H1> tag
- “Heading 2” – HTML <H2> tag
- “Heading 3” – HTML <H3> tag
- “Heading 4” – HTML <H4> tag
- “Heading 5” – HTML <H5> tag
- “Heading 6” – HTML <H6> tag
“HTML” Menu
- “Insert <BR>”
- Inserts an HTML <BR> tag into the document, causing a line break.
“Tools” Menu
- “Account Settings”
- Add/Change/Delete all account settings. This window is used to set all account settings from within Blogg-X. See the “Account Settings” section of this manual for more information.
- “Options”
- Modify the global Blogg-X settings. This window contains the fields for setting up the proxy server configuration, disabling the Java skin, toggling the update notification and setting the paste special options. See the “Options” section of this manual for more information.
“Help” Menu
- “About”
- Provides information about Blogg-X.
- “Homepage”
- Links to the Blogg-X homepage at http://www.iobinary.com
- “Release Notes”
- Link to the latest release notes.
- “Check for Update”
- Provides information about Blogg-X.
- “Show Documentation (PDF)”
- Opens Adobe Acrobat to view the Blogg-X manual.
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Load Post |
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Underline |
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Save Post |
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Strikethrough |
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Undo |
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Font Color |
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Redo |
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Text Font (incomplete) |
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Cut |
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Align Left |
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Copy |
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Align Center |
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Paste |
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Align Right |
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Paste Special |
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Align Justified |
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Clear all Fields |
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Insert Image |
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Remove all Formatting |
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Insert Hyperlink |
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Help |
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Toggle HTML/WYSIWYG Editor |
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Bold |
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Bullets (incomplete) |
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Italic |
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Numbered Bullets (incomplete) |
Dropdown 1: List of all the configured sites within Blogg-X. Select the site that you wish to work with via this dropdown. On Blogg-X launch, if you have configured a default site in the “Account Settings” window, it will automatically select the default site. Note: Will be empty if no sites are configured.
Dropdown 2: “Load/Delete Posts…” Provides options for the number of previous posts (those already on the server) to load into Blogg-X. Also provides the ability to move posts into the trash. Moving a post into the trash from Blogg-X works the same as Joomla!. The article/post isn’t deleted just removed from the site and does not show when selecting the number of posts to load. To view the articles/posts that are in the trash select “Show Trash” from the dropdown. When viewing the titles of the articles in the trash you can select an individual article to load into Blogg-X for republishing, you will also have the option to permanently delete the post via the “Delete Permanently” button. Note: Once a post has been permanently deleted via this menu it cannot be recovered.
Dropdown 3: “Publish Action…” Provides the following options:
· “Unpublished”
o Submits the article/post to the server without publishing it.
· “Published”
o Submits the article/post to the server and publishes it into the selected section and category.
· “Published Frontpage”
o Submits the article/post to the server and publishes it into the selected section and category and makes it displayed on the site frontpage.
Note: After loading a post via the “Load/Delete Posts…” button the title of dropdown #3 will change to “Update Action…” but will still have the same options and actions as the “Publish Action…” button.
Additional Publishing Settings (located at bottom of Main Window above the status bar) All these are completely OPTIONAL and not required.
- “Access Level”
- Provides the three options from Joomla!
- “Public” – Visible to all users.
- “Registered” – Visible to all registered site users.
- “Special” – Visible only to Joomla! backend users (Administrators, Super Administrator, etc.)
- “Author Alias”
- Use an author alias rather than the user name.
- “Change Creator”
- Change the original creator. Will only be populated with available users from your Joomla! site after a post has been loaded from the server via the “Load/Delete Posts…” dropdown box.
- “Override Creation Date”
- Change the creation date of the article/post. Originally filled with the current date and time.
- “Start Publishing”
- Date when the article/post should be automatically published. Note: An article/post sent to the server with an unpublished status will not be published using this option. Note: This date is also generated from the local system date and time of your system, if you are having articles that don’t appear to be posting on your website, please check that your Joomla! site is set to the same time zone as your system.
- “Finish Publishing”
- Date when the article will no longer be published.
Note: The FTP settings are OPTIONAL.
Each step in the “Add Site Wizard” will explain the settings required in each field. If you don’t plan on using the image support functions then the FTP settings don’t need to be entered. Remember that once the wizard is closed that the settings can still be changed in the “Account Settings” window.
Most of these settings will already be filled in after completing the “Add Site Wizard”. Changes can be made to the settings here, just click the “Apply Changes” button to save the changes.
“Media Directories” Explanation
- These settings are used in the “Insert Image” function from the main window. This is the area to give Blogg-X information about your site regarding where images are stored. For example all Joomla! installations have the folders “images” and “images/stories” on the server. If you enter only those two folders into the “Media Directories” section then when inserting an image you can browse the existing images within those folders or if uploading new images they can be stored in these folders. You can have as many “Media Directories” defined as you need for your site as long as they correspond to existing folders on your site. Setting a folder name here that does not exist will cause errors during the image browse and uploading functions of Blogg-X.
Buttons
- “Add Site…”
- Opens the “Add Site Wizard” to help set up a new site.
- “Set as Default”
- Sets the currently highlighted site to the default site to be selected when Blogg-X is run. To change the default site highlight a different site and click.
- “Remove Site”
- Removes the currently highlighted site from Blogg-X. A confirmation dialog will popup to verify your selection.
- “Ok”
- Saves the settings and closes the window.
- “Apply Changes”
- Saves the changes and keeps the “Account Settings” window open.
- “Cancel”
- Cancels all changes and closes the window.
- “Verify”
- Verifies the settings. Either the Joomla! settings or the FTP settings.
- “Edit…”
- Make changes to the “Media Directories”
“General Options” tab
- “Disable the Synthetica skin…” – defaults Blogg-X back to the Java standard look based on your system type. Skins are like clothing outfits for programs. Changing the skin of a program is the equivalent of changing your clothes, essentially providing the same program with a different look.
- “Check for updates when launching Blogg-X?” – Turned on by default at installation to provide information to the user when an updated version of Blogg-X is available for download. Unchecking the box will disable this feature.
“Connection Options” tab
- “Direct connection to the internet”
- Default Blogg-X setting. Use this for normal direct connections to the internet.
- “Manual proxy configuration”
- Settings to configure to allow Blogg-X to work behind a proxy server.
- “HTTP Proxy” – Address of the proxy server.
- “Port” – Port number for the proxy server.
“Paste Special Options” tab
· “Remove All Formatting (line breaks are preserved)
· “Remove All “<” Characters”
· “Remove All “>” Characters”
· “Replace Double Spacing After “.” (replace with single space)”
· “Remove All Single <br> tags”
Following are some before and after examples using the “Paste Special” options individually. Remember that all, some or none of the options need to be enabled.
Before “Remove All Formatting”
After “Remove All Formatting”
Before “Remove All “<” Characters”
After “Remove All “<” Characters”
Before “Remove All “>” Characters”
After “Remove All “>” Characters”
Before “Replace Double Spacing After “.” (replace with single space)”
After “Replace Double Spacing After “.” (replace with single space)”
Before “Remove All Single <br> tags”
After “Remove All Single <br> tags”
1. After installing and launching Blogg-X you will see the window below:
2. You now need to setup your site for use with Blogg-X. This can be started with the “Tools” “Account Settings” window.
3. Once in the “Account Settings” window it will not have any sites configured, so click on the “Add Site…” button to start the configuration.
4. The first step in the add site wizard is setting up the address for your site.
Notice that the “http://” is automatically used by Blogg-X and you don’t need to enter it. For example if your Joomla! site is at “http://www.site.com/joomla” then in Blogg-X in the “Site Address” field you would enter “www.site.com/joomla”.
5. Next you need to enter your Joomla! username and password. The Joomla! userlevel must be an “Author”, “Publisher”, “Administrator” or “Super Administrator”.
Clicking the “Verify” button will check the entered username and password with your Joomla! site. Once the user is verified you will receive the following window:
6. The next step (“Add Site Wizard – Step 3 of 3”) is for setting up the FTP settings. The FTP settings are completely optional and only needed to support the use of uploading images in the posts from Blogg-X. These settings can be left completely blank.
The “Base Path” field for most sites will be either “/” or “public_html/”. If you are unsure of the right setting it can be determined by running your FTP program with the username and password and making note of the location that the login defaults to. That path is what would be entered in the “Base Path” field.
7. After clicking the “Finish” button from the “Add Site Wizard – Step 3 of 3” you will return to the “Account Settings” window. You will see your account listing and clicking on it will display all the settings and will look similar to the picture below.
8. If you have entered the FTP settings you will also want to set up the “Media Directories” section as well. This section tells Blogg-X where your images are stored on the FTP server. To start click the “Edit…” button as shown below. This section is completely OPTIONAL.
9. Once in the “Edit…” window it will look like the image below.
In this example the “images” and “images/stories” folder created by a Joomla! installation have been entered. If you have other folders where you have images stored on the server enter them here. For example if you have a folder titled “photos” on your server in the root directory you would enter “photos” into the window above. This will allow you to browse the images stored on the server and reuse them in your posts. When you are finished click the “OK” button.
10. Once you have the site settings configured and any optional items configured you are done setting up your site. If you want to add settings for another site just repeat the process. Clicking “OK” will return you to the main Blogg-X window.
Before installing Blogg-X be sure that you have the appropriate Java JRE installed for your system. Blogg-X checks this during install and won’t proceed if it can’t find the Java installation.
1. Install the Blogg-X application on your system. The installer is a standard installer and does not perform anything out of the ordinary.
1. Please ensure the Java JRE 5.0 the first Java environment. This can be changed in the "/System/Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0" folder buy running the "Java Preferences" application and dragging "J2SE 5.0" in the "Java Application Runtime Settings" box so it's on top of "J2SE 1.4.2".
2. Install the Blogg-X application on your system. The installer is a standard installer and does not perform anything out of the ordinary.
Linux (to be added)
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1. Install the mambot on your Joomla! server. The Blogg-X mambot is installed the same as all other mambots in Joomla! via the administration interface. The mambot is located in the Blogg-X installation directory on your computer. It is also available as a separate download at http://www.iobinary.com.
2. Ensure the Blogg-X mambot is published in the Joomla! administration interface.
3. Check to make sure the “blogg-x_2_0” folder in the mambots directory has permissions of 755, if not change it.
4. Check to make sure all files in the “blogg-x_2_0” folder has permissions of 644, if not change them.
- J2SE(TM) Runtime Environment 5.0 - Windows/Linux Version
- J2SE(TM) Runtime Environment 5.0 - Apple Version
- Joomla! website
- Tested on Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Mac OS X 10.4.3
- Control unlimited Joomla! sites
- Do you have multiple Joomla! sites? Add the settings into Blogg-X for each site and you can control them all via Blogg-X. You can also set a default site so when you start Blogg-X it will automatically select that site.
- Built in WYSIWYG editor
- Using a built-in WYSIWG HTML editor you can see how your post will look before posting onto your site. (Note: template .css files may change some attributes).
- Ability to toggle between WYSIWYG mode and HTML source mode
- Prefer to view the HTML code? Click the HTML toggle button and you have full access to the generated HTML code from the WYSIWYG editor. Changes made to the HTML code are then reflected in the WYSIWYG editor.
- Section and Category selections available
- Allows you to choose the specific Section and Category in which to post the content. Helps keep your site organized.
- Load previously posted articles and content
- Did you post your article and realized you made a spelling error. Use the “Load/Delete Previous Posts” option in Blogg-X to retrieve the article, make the corrections then re-publish the article. Imagine all the time you have just saved versus using the Joomla! interface.
- Delete posts and articles from your site
- Have some articles or posts you know longer want stored on the site. Use Blogg-X to easily remove them.
- Simpler image support
- Blogg-X has a built in FTP client allowing you to upload images onto your server. Also the ability to browse and preview the images stored on the site and re-use in any article or post.
- Notification of unpublished articles and posts
- Do you have “Authors” creating content for your site that you have to approve? Blogg-X shows the number of unpublished posts in the status bar and via the “Load/Delete Previous Posts” option you can load individual unpublished articles and then make changes and choose one of the publish options.
- Proxy server support
- Are you working from behind a proxy server? Configure Blogg-X with your proxy server settings and begin posting away.
- Joomla! user level support
- Blogg-X can accommodate “Publisher”, “Administrator”, “Super Administrator” and “Author” user levels set within your Joomla! configuration. “Authors” will only be able to publish content for approval, and will only be able to load posts that they have created.
- Save and load posts to and from your hard drive
- Are you using Blogg-X on your laptop at the airport when you realize you don’t have wireless access? Save the post to your hard drive and when you have an internet connection load the file and upload the article or post onto your site.
- Additional Joomla! publishing settings
- Want to create your article or post now but not have it displayed until later? Blogg-X supports some of the additional Joomla! publishing settings like “Start Publishing”, “Finish Publishing”, “Access Level”, “Author Alias”, “Change creator”, and “Override Creation Date”.
Blogg-X communicates with your site via Apache XML-RPC. The Blogg-X application works as a client on your system while the included Blogg-X mambot, once installed on your Joomla! site, acts as the server. Blogg-X has limited interaction with the Joomla! application itself, mostly for configuration settings. Both the Blogg-X application and the mambot are making changes in the database that Joomla! creates and runs from. At first this may sound dangerous but this is the same way that creating content from within Joomla! works. Both Blogg-X and Joomla! are just providing a user interface to perform database tasks.
Both Blogg-X Free and Blogg-X Pro are released under the GNU GPL. Information on the license agreement can be found in the Blogg-X installation directory or via the web at:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
As required by the GPL all source code will be provided upon request. To request the source please email support@iobinary.com.
Additional Software used within Blogg-X
- Synthetica - http://www.javasoft.de/jsf/public/products/synthetica
- Synthetica is the “Look and Feel” that Blogg-X uses to render a more appealing GUI than the standard Java GUI.
- The binary file is included in the Blogg-X installation directory along with the license file.
- Synthetica is licensed using the GPL.
- edtFTPj - http://www.enterprisedt.com/products/edtftpj/overview.html
- edtFTPj is providing the ftp functionality within Blogg-X used for the image upload support.
- The binary file is included in the Blogg-X installation directory along with the license file.
- edtFTPj is licensed using the LGPL.
- Apache XML-RPC - http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/
- Apache XML-RPC is providing the client/server support for communication between the Blogg-X application and the Joomla! site.
- The binary file is included in the Blogg-X installation directory along with the license file.
- Apache has granted iobinary.com the right to use the term “Apache XML-RPC” both on http://www.iobinary.com and in any documentation.
- Apache XML-RPC is licensed using the Apache License, Version 2.0.
- Browser Opener - http://ostermiller.org/utils/Browser.html
- Browser Opener is providing Blogg-X the ability to open the default system internet browser when clicking on the “Homepage” link in the Blogg-X “Help” menu. Used primary to help with the cross platform (Apple, Windows, Linux) launching of the internet browser.
- The binary file is included in the Blogg-X installation directory along with the license file.
- Browser Opener is licensed using the GPL.
- Light Development XML-RPC Extension - http://www.lightdev.com/page/105.htm
- Light Development XML-RPC Extension is used in Blogg-X to extend the Apache XML-RPC to support proxy servers.
- The binary file is included in the Blogg-X installation directory along with the license file.
- Light Development XML-RPC Extension is licensed using the GPL.
- Commons Codec - http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/codec/
- Commons Codec is needed by the Light Development XML-RPC Extension to help support the use of proxy servers.
- The binary file is included in the Blogg-X installation directory along with the license file.
- Commons Codec is licensed using the Apache License, Version 2.0.
- oo.o ikde icon theme - http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=30987&forummode=2&forumpage=0&forumexplevel=2
- oo.o ikde icon theme is used for the button images throughout Blogg-X. The buttons in Blogg-X are based upon the theme, but nearly all have been modified by myself to better fit into the GUI.
- Please email support@iobinary.com to request an “.eps” version of the modified icons.
- oo.o ikde icon theme is licensed using the LGPL.
Error: “URL incorrect or mambot not loaded”
Possible Reason 1: You may have the URL for your site incorrectly entered in the “Account Settings” window. Be sure that it is in the following format: www.iobinary.com and NOT http://www.iobinary.com. Blogg-X already knows that the prefix to your site will be http:// so entering it again will cause problems.
Possible Reason 2: The mambot is not correctly loaded on your Joomla! site. Verify via the Joomla! administration interface that the Blogg-X mambot states the current latest version. Both the Blogg-X application and the mambot will carry the same version numbers to eliminate confusion. For example if you are using Blogg-X 2.0 then the server should state that the mambot is version 2.0.
Possible Reason 3: You may be behind a proxy server on your local computer and this is preventing Blogg-X from communicating with the mambot. If you are behind a proxy server you will have to determine the settings and enter those into Blogg-X via the “Tools”, “Options” window. For more information see the section titled “Options Window” in this document.
Error: While in the intro text or main text fields sometimes the highlighting doesn’t work correctly or the last line seems to disappear
Reason: This is a known bug in Java 1.5.0.5 and above when dealing with Synth user interfaces, which Blogg-X is using. Bug reports have been filed with SUN by myself and the developer for the GUI that Blogg-X is using. I will post notification on the website when the issue has been resolved.
Error: Blogg-X fails to load at all after installation, just sits at the splash screen indefinitely
Possible Reason 1: This will most likely occur to users that had a previous version of Blogg-X installed (0.85 beta or earlier) and installed this version to the same directory. With all the changes implemented in Blogg-X 2.0 the “settings.xml” file that Blogg-X is using is incompatible with the older versions. When doing an uninstall of a previous version of Blogg-X it will keep the “settings.xml” in case Blogg-X is installed again, saving you the need of re-accomplishing the settings. To fix this problem, uninstall Blogg-X using the uninstaller then manually remove the Blogg-X folder from the “Program Files” directory or the location that you installed it. Reinstall Blogg-X and the error should be gone.
Error: Blogg-X shows a bunch of “*******************” in the password field on the “Account Settings” window
Reason: This is not an error but a correct action by Blogg-X. The password as you entered it into Blogg-X is stored as an MD5 hash and not as plain text. This is a small security mechanism for Blogg-X. The “*” characters that you are seeing are representing each character in the MD5 hash of the password.