JoeUser Updates for the week of Sept 19th

Site Titles, Blog Groups, Site Info, Custom Audiences, Site Specific Channels and Links

from JoeUser Forums

Site Titles
You can now have set a Title and Description for you Blog Site.  The Site Title will be displayed at the very top of the page in the main title bar area and the Site Description will show up on the Site Info page.  You are limited to 40 characters for the Site Title a and 255 characters for the Site Description. Visit the account page on your site to edit the title and description of your site.


Blog Groups
We've done some re-tooling with the way we are handling Blog Groups and the way data is displayed.  When you visit a Blog Group, like http://stardockdev.joeuser.com, the articles that were displayed on the site automatically showed every article from the sites that are associated with that group.  That's not the way it works now.  In order to view the article the site admin of the Blog Group must feature an article in order to have it appear on his Blog Group site.  So if I see an interesting article on joe.joeuser.com I then need to feature that article before it will show up on StardcockDev, where previously all articles Joe posted showed up.

Right now in the right bar you will notice categories like Newest Articles, Top Articles, etc.  We are going to duplicate those sections but they will be site specific.  So when you visit draginol.joeuser.com or stardockdev.joeuser.com you will have a top articles and newest articles sections that are specific to the site you are on.  To support this there is a new feature in the Blog Group Manager that allows you to select only the channels you want to monitor.  As an example for StardockDev I have selected on the "developer" channel.  So when the Newest Group Articles section is implemented it will only look for articles that are posted to the developer channel/categories on the sites associated with my group.

Site Info
You will notice a new yellow box at the top of the right bar.  This box will give you specific info about the JoeUser.com Blog Site that you are visiting.  It's in real basic form at the moment.  In time you will be able to change the logo in that box and add your own links.  But the main item in there now is the Site Info link which takes you to pretty much a blank page right now.  On the site info page there is a link to join a Blog Group if that site is a JoeUser.com Blog Group.  Before only the admin of a Blog Group could request for another site to join, now you can request to join that group.

Custom Audience
We have tweaked the interface for adding Custom Audiences or Private User Groups.  When creating a new article you have the option to have your article posted so its visible for Everyone, Just You or to a Custom Audience(s) that you have definied.

Site Specific Channels and Links
When you visit a Blog Site the channel listing now is site specific.  It will only display the channels that have been used for that site.  I still need to update the channel index page though as that still displays channels for the entire site.

Next Week
That's about it for this week.  Next week we hope to finish up a few of the items I mentioned above and also add a referal system so you can see links to other pages/sites that link to your articles.  Also we hope to add in the ability to create your own links in the right bar and maybe the ability to create custom pages as well.

 

3,889 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
How do you create a blog group? I clicked on accoutn and there's nothing there to create or manage a blog group.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
You know, I was thinking about the blog groups. It's been said that you'd like to have a filter of sorts to only show posts to specific channels show up in your blog group.

I think a better idea would be to say that if my Blog belongs to a blog group named "Foo"....i get a new channel named "Foo" that I can post under. This way it's easy for people to post in a general fashion or to "Foo".

What this actually becomes is sort of a user-method of creating new channels on their own. There would be "channels" which is the typical catagoies a blog post would fall into, maintained by the amins....and "user channels" that would function almost exactly the same. So the channel index would show as it does now, but "user channel index" would simply list the current blog groups without the last-5-posts layout. This also serves as a way for people discover new people's blogs simply by looking through this list.

In any event one thing i'd like to see is the ability to set a chanel to be "open" or "invite only". So lets say I started a blog-group for a community-DesktopXTheme. (which would be a great way for people to log what they're doing and get feedback) If someone saw the blog-group and wanted to make an object that matches the theme, they can hop right in an blog their work. Where as StardockDev is an invite only blog-group because you only want stardock developers to post in it.

I should also stress that I dont think blog-groups should always be readable by everyone. Read restrictions can be dictated by the blog owners user groups. Allowing blog-groups to be unreadable by default kinda pushes it into the realm of a private message board and away from blogging.

Just my late-night thoughts on the matter as I see it forming.
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
Was typed wrong:

I should also stress that I -=-= DO =-=- think blog-groups should always be readable by everyone.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
That is an itneresting feature. Have an option for only members of X blog group be an audience.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
Those are some good ideas. We will definitely give them some thought.