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Submitted by mauzenne on
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All,

As you may have noticed already, we rolled out a few more changes to the website.

Avatars - At your request, avatars are back!  If you had an avatar on the old site, Kreg was kind enough to populate your profile with your previous avatar.  Of course, if you don't want it, feel free to go to your profile and change it.

My profile - You'll find a significant change to your user profile (now "My profile" on the navigation menu).  In addition to managing your email address, you'll find a list of more "standard" forum items like: AIM, occupation, web site, send email on private message (yay!), etc.   Profiles also display the recent activity of the member on the site. [Please note: although all activity going forward will be visibile going forward, all historical activity is NOT available. At some point, we may be able to go back and capture old activity, but for now you'll find activity starting a week or so ago).

Public Profiles - In addition to viewing/editing your profile, you may view the public profile of other members (along with their recent activity).  To find a specific user, click their username in the forums or comments, or look in the user list ...

User List - You may now view a list of users or search for specific users ("User list" on navigation menu).

My subscriptions - Link to manage your subscriptions (premium content) in the navigation menu.

Recent site activity - Another option to view site activity.  Unlike "Recent forum activity", "Recent site activity" displays ALL activity (forums, blog comments, posting of new blog posts, etc.). 

A big thanks to Stephen and Kreg for making this happen!

Best Regards,
Mike

bug_girl's picture

 as a visual learner type, you don't know how much I missed the Avatars. I am so happy they are back!

Thanks--these are all great changes!

:)

jhack's picture

Stephen, Kreg and Michael,

Thanks.   Much appreciated.  Recent site activity is my favorite new feature. 

John Hack

stephenbooth_uk's picture

Excellent!  I really missed the avatars as well.  The profile page is also way cool. 

Could I suggest a change to the IM types in the Contact page in the profile?  Add Skype and, maybe, GoogleChat  (I don't use AIM, YIM or ICQ but do use Skype and GoogleChat) or possibly, rather than having set labels replace them with a drop down box so people can pick the services they use and enter their ID.

Thanks

Stephen

asteriskrntt1's picture

Holy smokes, what an upgrade!

Stephen and Kreg, great job.  I have no idea how much time and effort this took but I am guessing more than a few hours.  Thanks very much.  I echo John.  The recent forum activity is very helpful.

If you can't find all the things Mike lists in the Profile section, please just click on the EDIT tab.  Everything is in there, just not on that first screen.

If there is no current field for your comunication choice, perhaps you can just add that info in the about you section or in your signature field.

*RNTT

 

BJ_Marshall's picture
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Outstanding work!

Stephen, Kreg, and Mike: You are the best!! I love the recent site activity, and I love the "My Activity" feature.

- BJ

mauzenne's picture
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Stephen,

Thanks for the great suggestion ... one could argue that the current list of Contact ids is somewhat dated. :-)

As you suggested, GoogleChat and Skype are now listed as a Contact type. And, just for Mark, I added Twitter as well. ;-)

Best Regards,
Mike

stephenbooth_uk's picture

Mike,

thank you  very much.

Stephen

 

--

Skype: stephenbooth_uk

Experience is how you avoid failure, failure is what gives you experience.

Mark's picture
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If you want to follow me, it's mahorstman.

It won't be about "me".  It will be about management.  I'm boring, unfortunately, most management isn't.

Laugh it up. ;-)

Mark

[It's unlikely I will follow everyone who follows me.  That may not be the norm for the medium, but I see Twitter as a way to share content and ideas - that's the value proposition for us. - H]

AManagerTool's picture

Was wondering when or if lumberg would make it back to the boards....

stephenbooth_uk's picture

 I've noticed in recent days an upswing, albeit a small one so far, in the number of spammy entries, mostly made from user accounts that had been created only minutes before the post and promoting one website or another.  Could I suggest as a tactic to minimise this, if it is possible as an automagical feature of the software?  That is that new accounts be barred from posting for a short period after they are created.  I'm not talking about a long period, an hour or two would probably be enough.  I've seen a similar tactic work well on other fora.

 I realise that this might seem like overkill and I'm on a hair trigger here, but I've seen a lot of really useful forums and mailing lists disappear under a flood of spam.

A delay of an hour or so between creating an account and being able to post should be at worst a minor irritant to a genuine forum poster.   For a spammer or web SEO trying to increase the Google rank of a site they are promoting by linking to it from well respected sites it increases the cost in time to have to visit a site to create an account then come back later to make a post.   For a bulk based business like spamming and black-hat SEO a small increase in time cost can really hit RoI and provide a disincentive to spam a site.  Deleting accounts after the fact does little to resolve the problem as spammers rarely reuse the same accounts (in rare cases they might try the account and if it's been deleted create a new one).  Manual approval and moderation of accounts is costly in time so would be likely to really hit MT's RoI for the site.

Stephen

--

Skype: stephenbooth_uk

DiSC: 6137

Experience is how you avoid failure, failure is what gives you experience.

mauzenne's picture
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Stephen,

Thanks, I think that's a reasonable tactic for reducing spam (something we're ALL interested in). I've participated in forums that became so spam-laden, only the spammers participated. I'd hate to see that here. ;-)

I'll have someone take a look and see if that is easily possible. In the meantime, please continue to let me know when you see something "spammy" and I'll address it.

Best Regards,
Mike

stephenbooth_uk's picture

 Mike,

thank you very much.  I'd hate to see this forum lose much of it's usefulness by getting loaded down with spam or for it to become too costly to police for you to be able to run it.

Stephen

 

--

Skype: stephenbooth_uk

DiSC: 6137

Experience is how you avoid failure, failure is what gives you experience.

430jan's picture

Nothing profound, thank you for taking the time to make the boards more effective. It's nice that you care to share your expertise. I'm sure many are thinking it, just taking a minute to express it.

Janet

jhack's picture

Has anyone else noticed how the home page is re-organized, making key info easier to find? 

Kudos to everyone behind the scenes making it happen... 

John Hack

Peter.westley's picture
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John;-

Yes I noticed! And now there's a new header picture every time you reload the page.

I hope I don't start missing the old one now.... ;-)

Nice touches guys. Thanks.

-- Peter

DISC: 2564