Jeff Westover
05-04-2008, 11:51 PM
We're pleased to announce many new enhancements to the Merry Forums. Over the coming weeks and months, you will see many of these new features integrated into other areas of My Merry Christmas (http://www.mymerrychristmas.com) so that we gain even more interactivity from the millions of visitors who come here each year.
Here is a comprehensive list of what is new:
** Profiles -- go to your user control panel (http://www.mymerrychristmas.com/forum/usercp.php) and take a look at your new profile page. Everything about you on the Merry Forums is summarized on this page -- who you are, who your friends are here on the Merry Forums, blog posts you have made, groups you have joined -- it's all new. What's more, you can customize this page -- change the colors, tweak the look -- anything you want to make your profile truely yours. I believe we're all going to know each other a LOT better due to improvements in our profiles and I predict the profile pages will become more popular than ever.
** Blogs -- every member can have their own blog here on the Merry Forums. Why would you want to blog something versus just putting it into one of our forum topics? Blogs are great for longer entries -- if you have a story to share, expertise to showcase or have other lengthy information to post use the blog feature in your user control panel. Blog articles are easier to find than buried forum posts and get showcased via a special blog-only headline area of the front office. Blogs are also useful for our new social groups feature and we anticipate that group users will make more use of blogs than anyone. To access the blog area, go to either your user control panel to look into your personal blog or click on "blogs" in the red navigation bar at the top to see the homepage for blogs on the Merry Forums.
** Groups -- You can now set up a special interest group for people who have similar interests. For example, say you want to form a group about Christmas Collecting. Go to "groups" on the red navigation bar above and form that group. Announce it in the Group Registry and start recruiting members. When you get enough members (just 5), you can create your own forum area for group discussions. Group members not only can message other members of the group on the group page but they can have group only photo albums, add group events (like chat) to the calendar, and engage in group only discussion in the group forums.
** Tags -- When you add or edit a new post there is a small box below the input area for what is called "tags". Tags are words that summarize what your post is about. For example, as I write this post I will tag it with the words "new features" or "forum enhancements" or something similar. As you post, we encourage you to post tags. If your post is about Santa, tag it. If you post is about Christmas movies, tag it. Why? With each tag comes an addition to something called a tag cloud. On the forum home page down at the bottom all the tags from all the posts that people enter will collect. The more a word is used as a tag the bigger that word appears on the cloud. Over time, this builds an effective new way to search the forums. For example, if over the course of several weeks we have people talking and tagging the words "Christmas tree" someone who comes to the forums can see the cloud and just click on the tag to go straight to the posts all about Christmas trees. It's a new thing you're seeing all over the web and it makes things on our site easier to find.
** Photo Galleries -- Share your pictures here with us! Via your user control panel you can access an area called "Pictures & Albums". Prominently displayed on our forum home page is a display of recently added photos. On your profile page, your pictures and albums are accessible to the visitors to your page. Of course, you can always link to your albums in your forum or blog postings.
There are many, many "little" features added during the upgrade process that we're sure you'll discover over the coming weeks such as thread prefixes, reciprocal friendships, public messaging in profiles, inline editing of profile fields, and the attachment viewing lightbox.
We have also re-arranged some things to accomodate new features and to make our forum homepage easier to review. At the top, we have consolidated the "What's Going On" area to just who is online and in chat. We have taken the full box that used to be at the top and moved it to the bottom -- there you can see who is online, who has been online today, who has posted today as well as upcoming forum events from the calendar and general forum stats. We have kept the user photo addition banner at the top as this appears to be a very popular new feature.
Please let us know what is or is not working. What we are finding so far is that the newness of some of these exciting features raises quick questions. We're happy to help you discover the answers! (We're learning a lot of this ourselves).
Here is a comprehensive list of what is new:
** Profiles -- go to your user control panel (http://www.mymerrychristmas.com/forum/usercp.php) and take a look at your new profile page. Everything about you on the Merry Forums is summarized on this page -- who you are, who your friends are here on the Merry Forums, blog posts you have made, groups you have joined -- it's all new. What's more, you can customize this page -- change the colors, tweak the look -- anything you want to make your profile truely yours. I believe we're all going to know each other a LOT better due to improvements in our profiles and I predict the profile pages will become more popular than ever.
** Blogs -- every member can have their own blog here on the Merry Forums. Why would you want to blog something versus just putting it into one of our forum topics? Blogs are great for longer entries -- if you have a story to share, expertise to showcase or have other lengthy information to post use the blog feature in your user control panel. Blog articles are easier to find than buried forum posts and get showcased via a special blog-only headline area of the front office. Blogs are also useful for our new social groups feature and we anticipate that group users will make more use of blogs than anyone. To access the blog area, go to either your user control panel to look into your personal blog or click on "blogs" in the red navigation bar at the top to see the homepage for blogs on the Merry Forums.
** Groups -- You can now set up a special interest group for people who have similar interests. For example, say you want to form a group about Christmas Collecting. Go to "groups" on the red navigation bar above and form that group. Announce it in the Group Registry and start recruiting members. When you get enough members (just 5), you can create your own forum area for group discussions. Group members not only can message other members of the group on the group page but they can have group only photo albums, add group events (like chat) to the calendar, and engage in group only discussion in the group forums.
** Tags -- When you add or edit a new post there is a small box below the input area for what is called "tags". Tags are words that summarize what your post is about. For example, as I write this post I will tag it with the words "new features" or "forum enhancements" or something similar. As you post, we encourage you to post tags. If your post is about Santa, tag it. If you post is about Christmas movies, tag it. Why? With each tag comes an addition to something called a tag cloud. On the forum home page down at the bottom all the tags from all the posts that people enter will collect. The more a word is used as a tag the bigger that word appears on the cloud. Over time, this builds an effective new way to search the forums. For example, if over the course of several weeks we have people talking and tagging the words "Christmas tree" someone who comes to the forums can see the cloud and just click on the tag to go straight to the posts all about Christmas trees. It's a new thing you're seeing all over the web and it makes things on our site easier to find.
** Photo Galleries -- Share your pictures here with us! Via your user control panel you can access an area called "Pictures & Albums". Prominently displayed on our forum home page is a display of recently added photos. On your profile page, your pictures and albums are accessible to the visitors to your page. Of course, you can always link to your albums in your forum or blog postings.
There are many, many "little" features added during the upgrade process that we're sure you'll discover over the coming weeks such as thread prefixes, reciprocal friendships, public messaging in profiles, inline editing of profile fields, and the attachment viewing lightbox.
We have also re-arranged some things to accomodate new features and to make our forum homepage easier to review. At the top, we have consolidated the "What's Going On" area to just who is online and in chat. We have taken the full box that used to be at the top and moved it to the bottom -- there you can see who is online, who has been online today, who has posted today as well as upcoming forum events from the calendar and general forum stats. We have kept the user photo addition banner at the top as this appears to be a very popular new feature.
Please let us know what is or is not working. What we are finding so far is that the newness of some of these exciting features raises quick questions. We're happy to help you discover the answers! (We're learning a lot of this ourselves).