Zinepal Blog

Zinepal now supports Asian, Arabic and other Unicode languages

frank — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 03:40:15 +0000

Just a quick note to let everyone know that Zinepal now supports creating PDFs with Asian, Arabic and other Unicode characters. To use this feature you have to select the "Arial Unicode" font when creating your eBook.

Only the "Arial Unicode" font contains characters for these languages. The other fonts are limited to characters in the Latin alphabet. In the future I'm going to add some functionality to automatically detect the language and select the appropriate font.

free preview and improved signup process

frank — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 05:40:48 +0000

There have been a few changes to the eBook preview and account signup process.

All features of Pro Accounts are now enabled for all users during the eBook preview phase. This enables new users to easily preview all of the Zinepal features, without having to first sign up for a free month of Pro Account usage. To enable this new preview functionality all PDFs generated during the eBook preview phase have a "preview" watermark. The watermark is visible on all pages of the PDF and is only removed once the eBook is finalized.

Kindle/Mobipocket problems resolved

frank — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:55:39 +0000

Just a quick note to let everyone know that intermittent problems with Kindle/Mobipocket eBook creation have been resolved.

This problem only occurred for very long eBooks or eBooks with a lot of images. It is fixed now and there should be no problems creating Kindle/Mobipocket eBooks of any size.

new Zinepal website now live

frank — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:17:01 +0000

If you've visited Zinepal in the last week you will have already noticed, but now it's official. The new Zinepal website has finally launched!

update is coming (soon)

frank — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:06:28 +0000

I haven't written a blog entry for too long, so here is a quick update. I'm busy working on re-designing the Zinepal website to make it look more professional and also address a number of usability issues. This is a pretty big job as I'm starting from scratch and cleaning up a lot of bad web design. Because of this I also can't release parts of the re-design once as they are done, it has to wait until the end when everything is finished. I'm getting close, so hopefully in a few weeks the new site will be live. Stay tuned!

database problems

frank — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 04:34:46 +0000

There were some problems with the zinepal.com server earlier this evening. I had to roll the database back to an older backup from 12 hours ago. This means all zines that were created, new users that signed up or any other changes that were made in that time frame have been lost. Everything is ok again now and it should not happen again. My apologies for the problems, I hope this did not cause anyone a major inconvenience. If a zine that you previously created is now missing, then that explains why. Unfortunately you will have to re-create your zine if that is the case.

affiliate program and other tidbits

frank — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:04:27 +0000

Over the weekend I launched the zinepal.com affiliate program. The program allows you to earn a commission for new Pro Account users that you refer. It's very easy to use and all you need to get started is a free zinepal.com account. Check out the affiliate program details to find out more.

I've also added a few new features recently, the main changes are:

customizable page size and orientation
customizable number of columns
improved ePub output with proper table of contents listing

interview with zinepal.com founder

frank — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:30:47 +0000

Hyperlocal101.com has posted a nice interview with me. If you have time give it a read and post your comments here.

new backend now live!

frank — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:38:30 +0000

Over the last few weeks I've been hard at work cleaning up the zinepal.com code and making it more robust. This work was completed last week and the site is now running on the new backend. The transition went pretty smooth with only a small hiccup affecting the delivery of recurring zines. This has now been fixed and everything should be back to normal.

Happy Holidays!

frank — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:39:54 +0000

Just a short blog post to wish everyone happy holidays. It's been quiet around here lately as I've been busy working on some new features. I hope to have them ready for launch sometime in January. I recently also moved zinepal.com to a new server. The move went quite well with only a small hiccup during the process. The new server seems to perform a lot better, so I am happy with the result.

That's it for now. Happy holidays!