The good news is that we’ve just deployed a fix and no comments were lost in the process.

Any comment activity will trigger the cache to reset and all of the approved comments will appear.

Have a great night and do check out our new lens theme!

We are currently experiencing lens loading issues on some lenses.

We’re aware of the problem and Gil is working quickly to get things back up and running.

Thanks for your patience!

Update – As  of 7pm EST the problem has been resolved. If you continue to have problems please file a bug report. Thanks!

Unfortunately we’re having some difficulty with ebay reporting and we are aware of the problem.

The good news is that we’re working with ebay to  resolve the issue.

Thanks to everyone who filed a feedback report.

On the flip side we also sometimes pay late. Unfortunately this is one of those months. Because of a PayPal glitch (which they are working to resolve) and the fact that the 15th falls on a Sunday we’re not going to be able to get payday in until after the weekend.

We’d love for you to have your royalties by Monday the 16th but we can’t make a promise on that. So we’re asking that you hang in there…payday is coming next week.

As always we appreciate your patience.

The bug was first encountered at 7 am today and we fixed it soon thereafter. If you were one of the people affected by this bug please check your e-mail for more information, if you didn’t receive an e-mail then then you were not one of the lensmasters affected.

The good news is that our password system is more secure than it has ever been.

Thanks (as always) for your patience while we got everything back up and running.

We’re working to resolve it and will post about a fix here when we have one.  To those of you who were able to file a bug report, thanks for the details.

In the meantime, rest assured that all your lens content is a-okay. It’s there waiting for you once you can get back in to work on it.

Stay tuned! And thanks for your patience.

However traffic stats will continue to be recorded and will be imported after the upgrade is complete.

Thanks in advance for your patience while we complete the upgrade.

UPDATE 3/16 6:30pm EST – The upgrade is complete and we are now importing the traffic that came in during the down time, this could take a little while. Squidgaming is also now back up and running. Thanks for hanging in there with us.

Today we’re updating the way you manage your lens tags in the Workshop. For those of you not intimately familiar with lens tagging, the basic purpose of tags is to help your lens get found inside and outside of Squidoo, and in some cases they can help us match relevant ads to your lens.

The tool you use to manage your lens tags is in your Workshop sidebar and up until now looked like this:

And today, the same tool now looks like this (notice some small changes?):

The standalone Primary Tag field is gone.

What’s the reason for this change?

From time to time we’ve received bug tickets from lensmasters who were having trouble updating their tags. And in practically every case, the problem was that there was a problem with their primary tag. The error message we were showing in that event simply wasn’t guiding these users in the right direction, and bam!, bug ticket.

The primary tag concept still exists, and it will simply be the first tag in your list. You do need to have at least 1 tag! If you try to remove all of your tags, you won’t be allowed to save, and will instead be asked to add one. But don’t stop there. What are 5 or 10 more tags that accurately describe your lens? What would you imagine someone typing in to Google when he goes looking for information on your topic? Make that a tag.

Finally, for the time being when you create new lenses you’ll continue to see the old “Primary Tag” field in our lensbuilding Wizard. Just think of it as your first chance to assign a super relevant tag to your lens. Then remember to add a few more…

We hope this makes lens tagging the tiniest bit easier for everyone.

Thanks for sending in those bug reports. We’re working quickly to get the problem resolved.

Thanks for your patience and have a great Monday!

UPDATE – This problem along with the ebay API issue has been resolved.

You may have been seeing the error, “Oops! I’m sorry, but we’re confused about some things above. Look for red,” but were baffled when you couldn’t find an actual error to fix. Baffling indeed.

This bug has been fixed!

Now’s a great time to review your Profile Settings. This is where you can change important settings like:

• Your Squidoo password (always good to update it from time to time!)
• Whether you want readers to be able to contact you via your bio page. If this is on, people will be able to email you (they won’t see your email address unless you reply back to them, though).
• Update your lensmaster photo and short bio. This is important for maintaining an authentic reputation on your lenses. In a way, the bio you run on your lenses is as important as the Introduction itself!
• Configure your Profile page with links to your Twitter or Facebook accounts or blogs and shops you run. Go ahead and round up your reputation online.
• Manage global settings for how you receive comments in your Guestbook modules. Hint: We recommend moderating these by requesting email alerts for new comments. Just so you know what’s coming through.
• Doublecheck or update your PayPal address (so you can get paid!)
• Change your default payout settings. Cash or charity? Have you seen all the cool charities we support these days?
• Change the payout settings on all your existing lenses, all at once, in just one click.
• Manage settings for Points and Trophies you earn.
• And more!

Think of it as 5 minutes’ worth of end of the year housekeeping. Without the spiders and dust.