I figured it was about time for Zoji to have an FAQ. There isn't a lot to put up yet (not saying there aren't a lot of frequently asked questions, just that I can't remember them all right now :), but we'll be adding to this list as we think of things.
- Why didn't my event's guests receive the invitation email?
- Why can I only enter plain text in blog posts, bulletins, and comments?
- Why does <insert Zoji feature or page> look funny or not work properly in my browser?
- How do I embed a YouTube video in my blog?
Questions
Why didn't my event's guests receive the invitation email?
We probably have over-aggressive spam filters (and hence, spammers) to thank for that.
People's email providers (e.g. Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, etc.) do their best to filter out spam from reaching their users. Unfortunately, sometimes their spam filters can be overaggressive, and flag legitimate emails (such as those from Zoji) as spam. These emails typically end up in users' spam or junk email folders. We've spent a lot of time and energy trying to solve this issue, but past a certain point, there's not a lot we can do about it. We hate it, it frustrates us, but it's the reality of email these days.
You can see if invitees have viewed the email or the invitation page itself by logging in to Zoji and viewing the event--if you're the organizer you should see a note beside the invitees that says whether they've viewed the email or invitation. If people are not receiving the invitation mail, one thing you can try is to resend the invitations. Click the "Manage event" link in the actions list below the event picture. You should see a popup and a link that contains a "Re-send invitations" link. Click it, then choose who you want to resend the invitation to and click submit.
Alternatively, you could email the invitees and ask them to check their spam folders for the invitation. We also recommend asking invitees to add "invites@zoji.com" to their address book or safe-senders list--this should prevent Zoji invitations from being filtered in the future.
Why can I only enter plain text in blog posts, bulletins, and comments?
Rich text editing on Zoji is currently only supported and tested on Internet Explorer 6.0 and above, and Firefox 1.0 and above. We've had some nasty issues with the editor on Safari, so we've disabled it for that browser, which might explain why you aren't seeing it. If you'd like to be able to enter rich text into your posts and comments, we'd recommending using the latest version of Firefox.
Other browsers such as Opera and Netscape should support the editor, but we haven't tested them, so we can't guarantee that. Please let us know if you encounter any issues using it on one of those browsers.
Why does <insert Zoji feature or page> look funny or not work properly in my browser?
It's probably because you're using a very old version of your web browser or it's a browser we don't support. Each browser and browser version has its own bugs and quirks when it comes to rendering web pages. It can be a very tricky and time-consuming thing to create a website that supports a wide variety of browsers.
Currently, Zoji supports Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7, Firefox 1.5 and above (1.0 should work OK too, but no guarantees), and Safari. According to our statistics those are the browsers most commonly used to visit Zoji. Naturally, we recommend using the most recent version of your browser that's available (that's IE 7 and Firefox 2.0 for those of you that are paying attention).
Honestly, we wish we could support every browser, but hey, there's only two of us, and we can't be spending all our time testing and fixing browser issues or nothing else would get done. So if stuff is looking funky or not working right for you, go here and fix all your problems. :-)
How do I embed a YouTube video in my blog?
It's pretty simple. On the YouTube/Google Video/whatever page, you should see a box that lists some HTML code you can use to embed a video. It should look something like this:
<object width="425" height="350">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_2S68tw7JSA"></param>
<param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_2S68tw7JSA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed>
</object>
Copy the code. Create a new blog post, and in the rich text editor, click the "HTML" button. This should bring up the HTML source view for your blog post. Paste the HTML code into the window and click "Update". You should now see a big yellow box in the editor. This represents the video player that will appear in your post. Edit your post as you normally would, then click Submit. Voila, you should now have a video embedded in your post.
Enter the "Go to Friend" box! Give it a try: click on your nifty "my Z" menu in the upper left. Now click on the "Go to Friend" box. Now start typing the name of a friend--if all goes well you should see a nifty little autocomplete dropdown displaying your friends whos names match what you've typed. Select one with the arrow keys and hit enter (or use the mouse). Bam, instant profile.
Neat?
The other main feature rolled out tonight is something many people have asked for--previously when you clicked on a picture notification, it'd just take you to that person's photo albums. I now admit, it was rather a pain in the butt to find the new pictures from that view. OK, ok, I heard the complaints. Now when you click on a picture notification, it'll take you to a virtual "all pictures" folder--a flattened view of ALL of the person's pictures ordered from newest to oldest. If you still have trouble finding the new pictures with this new scheme, sorry I can't help you, and it's doubtful anyone can. :P
Among the other minor fixes:
- Added a javascript debug output window for figuring out those pesky Now Online and IM bugs. A free beer for the first person who can figure out how to activate it. ;-) I'll give you a hint: you can access it from any Zoji page.
- Fixed an IM issue where you could see a duplicate of a message you sent.
- Fixed some visual issues with the Blue Skiez and Zojiriffic skins.
- Fixed the hidable event info toggle on the z-vite page so it works properly in IE.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes you wouldn't get a picture notification for a friend's new pic.
But anyway, looks like things are back up and running. Big thanks goes to Flora who even stayed home from work to help me get things going again. For that we're making her an honorary member of Team Zoji. :-) (On the other hand, a couple of suspicious looking guinea pigs were found near the scene of the crime...)
Oh, and I forgot to mention, last night I had this nightmare that for some reason the FBI showed up and confiscated all the computers at Zoji HQ...I was trying to figure out if it was a symbolic premonition of the problems that happened today, or if that's just the next thing that's going to go wrong...
Before logging into Zoji today, you may have noticed a major city or region (like Seattle, Hong Kong, or New Jersey) in the upper-left corner. There's some pretty sophisticated location detection happening here which is not infallable, but hopefully the city displayed corresponds to a major city near you. If it doesn't, please give us a comment and let us know, I'm especially curious about those of you who are not in Seattle.
Anyhow you guessed it, with last night's rollout, we're laying down the foundations for partitioning Zoji by Cities. Why would we want to do this?
- We want Zoji to appear instantly relevant even to a newcomer, and one way to do that is to narrow the scope of the site to a geographic region. It's nice to see blogs, groups, events and other stuff local to you, written by people you know are all nearby. A community needs scope to define itself, and geographic location is definitely a biggie.
- While Seattle will always be where Zoji sprung its roots, we'd like to be poised to launch Zoji services in other major metropolitan areas.
- In the next few weeks, you'll some new types of local content on Zoji, stuff that will be accessible and relevant to Zoji-users and non-logged-in-users alike. Once everything is considered, Zoji by cities is pretty much the only way things will make sense.
While it's nice to have a local view of Zoji, it can be limiting. For example maybe you're in Seattle but you like reading a blog from an east-coast blogger. In "local only" mode, you wouldn't see the blogger on the feature blogs page. And since when does Zoji place limits on what you can do? So we decided to let you switch out of "local mode" and into "all stuff" mode, where you can view all of Zoji's content regardless of location. Right now, the only thing the switch really affects is (1) the Zoji People box, and (2) featured/latest blogs. Play around with it and you'll see how the switch works.
Other tidbits and bug fixes:
- You can now view Zoji Bandz without being logged in. This was more a missing feature, stay tuned for more band feature polish. (dan)
- Bug fix with viewing an event when you're not logged-in. (kevin)
- Allow users to remove their blogs from Featured Blogs. (kevin)
- Z-vite info on the top is now collapsable, if all you care about is the responses. (kevin)
- Improved, clearer explanation and upsell of what Z-vites are all about, on the front page "Send Invitations!" (kevin)
- Bug fix with updating documents. (kevin)
Props to Kevin for another successful deployment while I'm in Hong Kong! And for keeping cool through all the weird server problems that of course only surface if I leave the country :| -dan
FYI, something's wrong with email right now, and anything that relies on email (e.g. sending a friendship request, creating a z-vite, etc.). It's not affecting zoji-to-zoji mail; that manages to go through before the error happens. When zoji tries to send mail to an external address is when it bombs.
I'm going to head over to Zoji HQ tonight to see if I can fix it. If Zoji goes down until Dan gets back, you'll know why. :-)
I'm curious, why do you have the ability to disable the debugging? Is it a performance hit to keep it running?
Deborah, you may have seen the pictures but you never dismissed the notifications (because you never got them before). Just ignore them and you won't seem them again.
Oh and Ray, you got it. Various javascript components might spew debug output to this window continuously, so it will consume memory. It's off by default, but if needed we can have people activate it and send us the spew.