As the new website is live and stable, I am currently running through this blog correcting links to Smashingreads, rather than leaving them pointing to the old server.
If you are using the old widgets, please start replacing them with the new ones. The new versions have better character encoding handling, server side caching so they are more robust, and are faster. In a few cases there is also additional functionality.
We will be dropping notes to everyone we know about who is using the widgets, as well as announcements on the boards where we mentioned them.
One change I will mention: if you have not used the widget before, if Smashwords is down or can't provide the feed you may see an "Under Maintenance" message, instead of the previous blank feed.
This only occurs the first time because there is no cache for the system to fall back on. The system will continue trying to create the feed in the background, so try again in a few minutes. Once the widget is set up, if Smashwords goes down it will serve the cached version, meaning that images will still display and the widgets with third party links can still make sales on other sites.
Good to know that an alternative solution is available for this. For fresh ideas, you can just Click Here To Buy Blue Widgets and your just a short click away for more useful ideas.
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