Zoji Support's Blogs http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs Zoji Support's Blogs http://www.zoji.com/fEw0hX3TeNpe1U9reS72eZDcvt16BoB5* Zoji Support http://www.zoji.com/support What's New box redesign http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/80045 Kevin We just rolled out a redesign of the What's New box.  We tried to streamline it a bit, and make the individual items small enough to fit 10 on your homepage so it's easier to see at a glance what your friends have been up to.   We also decided that the tabs that used to be at the top of the box were probably not that useful to most people, and perhaps contributed to a cluttered look, so we removed them.  We're planning going to add back notification filtering...
We also decided that the tabs that used to be at the top of the box were probably not that useful to most people, and perhaps contributed to a cluttered look, so we removed them.  We're planning going to add back notification filtering soon though (but in a different form), so if you did use the tabs, don't worry.

Anyway, let us know what you think of the new design.  Hope you like it!

Team Zoji
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/80045#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/80045 Fri, 1 Aug 2008 01:42:00 PDT Introducing...Forums! http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79990 Kevin Ah, the trusty old blog post.  You can use it for so many things...telling a funny story, posting pictures of your vacation, ranting about something that irks you to no end.  And until now, it was the primary way that Zoji group members would communicate with one another.  You want to see if there's interest in a poker game tomorrow night?  You post to your poker group's blog.  You want to ask a question about Zoji?  Post to Zoji Talk's blog.  And...
Aside from the fact that this falls somewhat outside the scope of what blogs were meant for, it also had some drawbacks.  The group page would only display the latest post--if there was an interesting post, it could go unnoticed if someone made another post right after it.  It was hard to go back and find a post if it was beyond the first page of the blog, and you didn't remember when it was posted.  If someone replied to an old post, nobody would see it unless they were subscribed to comments on that post.

Team Zoji to the rescue. :)  Tonight we just rolled out Group Forums.  Forums, if you've never used one on the web before, are essentially what group blogs should be, for how people have been using them.

You can post a message to a group forum in much the same manner as posting to a group blog.  This message now becomes the first post of a thread.  Other people can now post replies on the thread.

The group page's Forum box displays the 5 threads with the most recent posts:



Click a post to view the thread, or click "view all threads" to see a list of all of the threads in this group's forum:





The forum page lists all of the forum's threads in order of most recent activity.  There isn't really the concept of when the first post was made, as there is with blogs--the threads with the most recent replies will always be at the top.

Check out the Zoji Talk group for an example of forums in action!


Converting Your Group Blog to a Forum

"That's pretty cool," you say to your computer screen.  "But what about all those existing blog posts in my group?"  Well, first off, I hope you're not expecting a response from your monitor, because that would be weird.  But anyway, yes, we thought of that too.  In your group's "Manage group" menu, you'll find a link that says "Convert blog to forum".  Click that link, and in a couple of minutes, voila, all of your group's blog posts are now forum posts!


Hiding Group Boxes

Also in tonight's deployment is the ability to hide boxes on your group pages that you may not be using.  Groups can serve a wide variety of purposes--people can use them to organize events, share pictures, post blogs (like this Support group), discuss topics (like Zoji Talk), etc.  Most groups don't need all of the features Zoji provides--for instance, this Support group has no need for an events box, pictures box, music box, etc.  The Zoji Talk group really needs only a forum.  And so forth.

Well now you can customize your groups how you want to by turning off boxes you don't use.  You'll find it under the Layout & Appearance section of your group's settings.

Anyway, those are the two biggies we rolled out...there's been plenty of other stuff since our last blog, including a new Electronics category for reviews, "taglines"/subtitles/pithy quotes/whatever you want to call them for your profile and group pages (you'll find these in your group and profile settings, respectively) that appear under the page title.  Probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting, but I'm too lazy to look it all up.

Have at it!
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79990#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79990 Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:24:00 PDT Group skins are back http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79887 Kevin As mentioned in a previous post , we had temporarily disabled designer skins for groups until we'd finished updating them for the new group page design.  Well, we're done with that, so they're back, along with some nifty new skins courtesy of Josiah ! previous post, we had temporarily disabled designer skins for groups until we'd finished updating them for the new group page design.  Well, we're done with that, so they're back, along with some nifty new skins courtesy of Josiah!
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79887#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79887 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:39:00 PDT Group Privacy Changes (& request for feedback) http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79841 Kevin If you've ever created or administered a group, please read this.  I'd like to hear what you think of this before we move ahead with it. We've recently been looking at improving the group organizer experience.  One of the changes we've been looking at is to simplify the group privacy options.  As they are right now, they give you very fine-grained control most every aspect of your group's privacy.  The downside to this is that there's a lot of...
We've recently been looking at improving the group organizer experience.  One of the changes we've been looking at is to simplify the group privacy options.  As they are right now, they give you very fine-grained control most every aspect of your group's privacy.  The downside to this is that there's a lot of overlap between settings, and they can get pretty complex.  Here's the list of settings right now:
  1. Who can see this group? (anyone, anyone on Zoji, members only)
  2. Who can see this group's blog and calendar? (anyone, members only)
  3. Who can invite people to the group? (anyone, admins only)
  4. Can people join the group without an invitation? (yes, no)
  5. For people without an invitation that want to join, is your approval needed? (yes, no)
  6. Who can post messages, music & photos to this group? (anyone, members only, admins only)
Like I said, they give you a lot of control--however, our feeling right now is that that level of control is not needed by probably 95% of the groups out there, and for those 95% of groups, they just tend to make things more cluttered and complicated than they need to be.

Here's our proposal to simplify the privacy settings while retaining the amount of control that most groups probably need:
Eliminate options #2, 3, 4, and 6.  Basically we'd be left with two options: #1--group visibility, and #5--admin approval of new members.  We feel that #1 basically covers #2 and 6.  #5 covers #3 and 4.  Still with me? :-)

The new behavior of the eliminated settings, and our reasoning behind why they can be done away with:
  • #2: anyone that can see the group can see the group's blog and calendar.  If you don't want non-members seeing the group's blog and calendar, is there really a reason for the group to be public in the first place?
  • #3: anyone can invite people to the group.  This setting overlaps with #5--if you don't want people joining the group without your knowledge, you can turn on admin approval.
  • #4: yes, people can request to join the group without an invitation.  If a group is public and people can view the group, it seems odd that you wouldn't be able to request to join the group.  If you don't want people requesting to join, why not make the group private?  If you want the group to be public, you can still turn on admin approval to control who can join your group.
  • #6: only members can post content to the group.  Why should non-members ever be able to post pictures, messages, etc. to a group they're not a member of?  And are there many cases where an admin wants the exclusive privilege of posting to the group?  I can't think of any.
I feel fairly certain that this makes a lot of sense and is the right thing to do.  However, there are some groups that make use of these settings in such a way that making this change would make parts of them more public and parts of them less public than they were before.

For example, a group that is visible to anyone on Zoji, but whose blog and calendar are currently private--after this change the blog and calendar would become public.  A group that's set so only the admin can post messages, pics, etc., would now allow group members to do so.

The number of groups that fall into this category, though, is small.  We can mitigate any problems with #3 and 4 by turning on admin approval for any groups that have restricted membership.  I would not want to automatically make public groups private just because they have a restricted blog though, so this is where it becomes a little sticky.

Anyway, if you have any problems with this, do speak up.  I don't anticipate anyone will, but it never hurts to ask. :-)]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79841#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79841 Tue, 10 Jun 2008 02:39:00 PDT Group page redesign http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79817 Kevin We just rolled out a redesign of group pages, something similar to what we did to your Zoji homepage a couple of months ago.  Basically we rearranged what column various boxes appeared in, and gave a new look to the side column.  We figured it would make more sense to move all of the group content (e.g. events, photos, blog, etc.) to the larger main column, and all group information (e.g. description, members, admins, etc.) to the gray side column.  With our increasing focus on...
One side effect of all these major layout changes is that all of our designer group skins are...er, well kind of broken.  So for the time being, designer group skins are disabled, until Josiah can finish updating them for the changes (have fun with that, Josiah! ;P).  Once that's done, we'll turn them back on, but for now, if you were using a designer skin for your group, it will appear unskinned.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Anyway, hope you like the new layout.  Let us know if you have any feedback!
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79817#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79817 Mon, 2 Jun 2008 03:13:00 PDT International Character Support (Unicode) http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79781 Dan Guten Morgen! Up until now, we've only supported the Latin character set, which supports English and most European languages.  The vast majority of Zoji users have been writing in English, so this has worked out just fine. However, we've noticed an increasing number of non-English and bilingual speakers using the site, which is great!  Except for the fact that if you're, say, Chinese, and enter some characters, you'd quickly find out that Zoji garbled them all up,...
Up until now, we've only supported the Latin character set, which supports English and most European languages.  The vast majority of Zoji users have been writing in English, so this has worked out just fine.

However, we've noticed an increasing number of non-English and bilingual speakers using the site, which is great!  Except for the fact that if you're, say, Chinese, and enter some characters, you'd quickly find out that Zoji garbled them all up, displaying a bunch of question marks. Not exactly the most friendly user experience, in fact, outright annoying!  Especially considering there are technologies and standards for handling this ... so there's really no excuse for us not to get on the ball.

So for the past couple weeks, we've wrestled with getting international character set support working. The technical name for this all-encompassing character set is Unicode, which you may have heard of.  To get Unicode to work, it took some figuring out on our part:  How to convert existing stuff in the database without garbling anything, how to transmit information through all the layers of software we run, and how to ensure that data YOU enter gets stored properly on our end.

After some pretty drastic changes, including upgrading our web server, we're happy to say that we finally got things to work.  For most of you, this probably won't make one iota of difference.  But for those of you who have been dying to write in other languages, things should be way smoother now.

Vielen Dank,
   沈华仁
a.k.a. ShennyD

P.S. If you're running Windows and have trouble seeing Asian language characters, you may have to go to start->settings->control panel->regional and lanugage options ->languages tab -> install files for east asian languages.]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79781#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79781 Thu, 22 May 2008 02:14:00 PDT Favorite Groups http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79719 Kevin It's been a while since we've blogged, so I'd figure I'd shoot one out to satisfy the throngs of people who have been clamoring for our next post. :P You might have noticed a new box on your homepage titled "Favorite Groups".  Assuming you're in a few groups, choose the ones that you're most interested in.  They'll appear in on your homepage, and you can use it as a kind of bookmark/shortcut to your favorite groups.  The other neat thing is...
You might have noticed a new box on your homepage titled "Favorite Groups".  Assuming you're in a few groups, choose the ones that you're most interested in.  They'll appear in on your homepage, and you can use it as a kind of bookmark/shortcut to your favorite groups.  The other neat thing is that whenever the group is updated, e.g. a new member joins, someone posts to the group blog, sends a message to the group, etc., you'll see it in your Favorite Groups box.  We think it'll help you keep up with your groups better than just plain "What's New" notifications, which often scroll off the screen if you haven't logged on in a few days (shame on you!).



Let's see, what other interesting things have we rolled out since our last post...
  • Completely redesigned the front page (props to Josiah)
  • Reorganized the account settings page to make it more user friendly (and prettier)
  • Added a new category of "What's New" notifications: Friend Updates.  These currently include notifications for when your friends add friends and join groups.  The new friend notification replaces the "New Friends in Your Network", which we thought was kind of a waste of space for something that didn't change much.  If you're the secretive, paranoid type, feel free to turn these notifications off in your account settings, and your friends will be none the wiser when you join a group or make a new friend.
  • Groups are now included in the Search box autocomplete list, so you can use it as a quick way to get to your commonly used groups (but come now, why haven't you made it a favorite group?)
Enjoy!
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79719#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79719 Wed, 7 May 2008 02:30:00 PDT Custom Status Messages http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79494 Dan Tonight's roll-out includes the much-anticipated feature of Custom Status Messages, a feature that has been heavily-discussed in the Zoji Suggestion Box .  Thanks to Kev 's good work, you now have the ability to conveniently jot down a short note describing what's on your mind, your current mood, pretty much whatever you want (how much you love Zoji? :)    Your short note can be seen by all your online friends. You'll also notice an overall redesign of... Zoji Suggestion Box .  Thanks to Kev's good work, you now have the ability to conveniently jot down a short note describing what's on your mind, your current mood, pretty much whatever you want (how much you love Zoji? :)    Your short note can be seen by all your online friends.

You'll also notice an overall redesign of the Now Online box -- with the additional UI elements of custom status messages, it made sense to condense certain links into icons, and move other elements around.  Hopefully you'll get used to the new arrangement quickly.

Now that you're able to vent your mood swings online, I fully expect all of you to be noticeably more pleasant in your daily person-to-person interactions :P

-Dan

]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79494#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79494 Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:26:00 PDT New Friends List View http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79385 Dan If you go to Profile -> Your Friends, you'll notice we rolled out an updated view of your friends list that's quite different from what it used to be. The original idea for this came from one of our own Zoji users a few months ago (thanks Nikita !)  His complaint with other social networking sites was that there was no compact way to display all the pertinent information about your friends on one screen, and also no easy way to export the information.  And he's right,...
The original idea for this came from one of our own Zoji users a few months ago (thanks Nikita!)  His complaint with other social networking sites was that there was no compact way to display all the pertinent information about your friends on one screen, and also no easy way to export the information.  And he's right, for some reason, having an efficient address-book view of your friends is just not in fashion, from everything we've seen.  Well, it made sense to us, so we did it, and hopefully it makes sense to you as well.

But what about friends that you barely know?  In some cases you don't want them to know your phone number, for example.  That brings us to our next feature.

Friendship Classification

You can now classify your friends into 3 categories: acquaintance, friend, and close friend.  This is specified at friending time, but can also be changed on Your Friends page.  Acquaintances will only be able to see your e-mail address, friends and close friends can see your phone number and address (if you entered them in Edit Profile).  Don't worry, your classifications are personal and your friends will not be alerted to them.  For those of you with a lot of friends that are acquaintances, stay tuned for more features related to this.  We intend to make it easier to invite friends and close friends to events, so you're not forced to sift through a bunch of acquaintances.

As always, any and all feedback is appreciated to steer these new features in the right direction.

-Dan

]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79385#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79385 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:02:00 PST New homepage http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79352 Kevin Just a little blurb about the new homepage design...It occurred to us that the previous layout was kind of random.  Two columns of equal width, with boxes placed in either column seemingly without any real rhyme or reason other than to keep the columns roughly the same height. :-) Well we decided to give some rhyme and reason to it, and put the "important", dynamic stuff (your events, and your "What's New" notifications) all in the main, larger column, and all of...
Well we decided to give some rhyme and reason to it, and put the "important", dynamic stuff (your events, and your "What's New" notifications) all in the main, larger column, and all of the less important, supplemental type stuff in a sidebar.  Hopefully you'll find the new layout more intuitive.
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79352#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79352 Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:49:00 PST Navigation redesign, stage 2 http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79286 Kevin Tonight we just rolled out a redesigned navigation system.  Replacing our old tabs, subnavigation menu, and "My Stuff" menu are a single set of menus that should hopefully give you easy access to all the most important parts of Zoji.  We think this new nav setup is more convenient, intuitive, and simple than our old system, where the distinction between the tabs and My Stuff menu was not clear, and many people didn't even realize the My Stuff menu was in fact clickable. ...
The new nav system pretty much merges the tabs and My Stuff menus into a single set of logically-organized menus: Events for accessing your calendar and event list; Profile for viewing/editing your profile, and getting to all of your stuff--your friends, groups, pictures, etc.; Inbox for viewing your Zoji messages; "New...", a handy menu for creating a new...well, anything; and More to get to global Zoji content--featured blog posts, reviews, etc.

Hopefully you find it easy to figure out.

Other stuff we've rolled out in the last week:
  • Dan overhauled the Edit Profile page to make it easier to find your way around.  Rather than one mammoth page, it's now broken down into sections.
  • You probably noticed the new Helpdesk section in the Now Online box.  Dan figured new users would appreciate having a friendly face they can ask questions.  Well ask away, Dan loves helping new users. ;-)
Enjoy.
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79286#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79286 Fri, 8 Feb 2008 04:15:00 PST Navigation and Homepage Changes http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79227 Dan In case you hadn't noticed, on Friday night we made some significant changes to the navigation and layout on the home page -- hopefully for the better.  First of all, this is a work in progress, and we consider this just the first of many steps and tweaks towards a better UI, so if things aren't working for you, please shout, we will work out the kinks. The motivation behind all this is largely in reponse to newbie complaints of "too...
The motivation behind all this is largely in reponse to newbie complaints of "too many links" and "navigation is too confusing".  And after some thought, we realized that yes, they are right, for a newbie there is quite a lot of stuff to digest on the home page.  We don't want Zoji to seem overwhelming.  So we hid some stuff, moved other stuff, and deleted some stuff.  Having trouble finding a link?  See if you can find it with the new layout, and if now, leave a comment here.

Thanks,
-Dan]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79227#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79227 Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:44:00 PST Zoji E-mail Changes http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79187 Dan Some of you may be aware of the huge problem that spam has posed for Zoji in recent times.  It's always a shame when the actions of a few rogue individuals spoil the fun for the rest of us, but that's just reality I suppose. Maybe you've already been affected, maybe you haven't, but due to the seriousness of the spam problem, we've been forced to take action.  We hate to cut features, especially those we've worked hard to do, but this is in the interest of... recent times.  It's always a shame when the actions of a few rogue individuals
spoil the fun for the rest of us, but that's just reality I suppose. Maybe
you've already been affected, maybe you haven't, but due to the seriousness of
the spam problem, we've been forced to take action.  We hate to cut features,
especially those we've worked hard to do, but this is in the interest of protecting all you
Zoji users.  We are not in the business of cluttering your personal inbox with
spam.

That being said, we've unfortunately had to make some changes to Zoji's
messaging capabilities this week.  You will no longer be able to have persons
outside Zoji reach your Zoji e-mail address, and thus, they will not be
able to spam you.  Zoji-to-Zoji messaging functionality will
remain completely intact of course, there are no changes to that.  People you
message will still receive system-generated e-mails notifying them of new
messages in their Zoji inbox.  

If you have any questions, please do leave a comment here, or e-mail us
at support @zoji.com.

Thanks!
Dan]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79187#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/79187 Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:42:00 PST Introducing...Chatterbox! http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/78961 Kevin Tonight we rolled out a feature known in these here parts as Chatterbox.  What an odd name, you might be saying to yourself, and it is.  However, the name actually makes perfect sense when you learn that a Chatterbox is, to put it simply, a box where you can chat. Chatterbox is a merging of two of our major features--it's basically a ZIM (Zoji Instant Messenger) window embedded into an event invitation.  Any guests who are currently viewing the z-vite are able to participate...
Chatterbox is a merging of two of our major features--it's basically a ZIM (Zoji Instant Messenger) window embedded into an event invitation.  Any guests who are currently viewing the z-vite are able to participate in a group chat with everyone else who is viewing the z-vite.  We hope this will add a new level of interactivity to z-vites, and make the page a place where invitees will hang out and shoot the breeze, rather than stop by, read the event details, and surf away.

It's just one of a number of things we've been doing to better integrate z-vites with the other rich functionality of the site.  We've got all these other pretty neat features, might as well use 'em, eh?

How does one go about adding a Chatterbox to their event?  It's quite simple, you just go to the host toolbox (a minor UI reorganization we also rolled out today) of your event, and click "Add a Chatterbox to this page".

To see an example of a Chatterbox in action, check out our little fake sample event.

Being such a new feature, there are plenty of things we plan to do to fill it out, including the ability to add a Chatterbox to a group page, letting you pop out the Chatterbox into a separate IM window so you can surf with your main browser window, viewing the complete chat history, letting you start private chats with other event invitees and more!

Anyway, hope you like it.  And now, time for bed...
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/78961#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/78961 Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:01:00 PST 'tis the time of year to give thanks... http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/78937 Dan to some new Zoji features!  Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend. If you've created a Z-vite recently, you may have noticed the new Manage Invitees feature.  This is a page specifically for the event organizer to perform guest management tasks, such as responding on behalf of guests, removing guests, filling-in names for guests, and marking guests as having paid for an event.  You can also sort the list by name, RSVP response, and paid status -- handy for larger...
If you've created a Z-vite recently, you may have noticed the new Manage Invitees feature.  This is a page specifically for the event organizer to perform guest management tasks, such as responding on behalf of guests, removing guests, filling-in names for guests, and marking guests as having paid for an event.  You can also sort the list by name, RSVP response, and paid status -- handy for larger events when you need to generate a final guest roster.

There are now more granular controls for messaging event invitees.  Now when you click "Send message to invitees", you get to choose whether you want to send to guests responding Yes, No, Maybe, and Undecided, or any combination of them.

Previously, Zoji would automatically send e-mails when and event's time/location changed, and when you cancel an event.  There are now more messaging controls -- you can choose not not send e-mails in these situations if you don't want to.

These are features that you may or may not ever use or notice, but several Evite-to-Zoji converts have made mention of the fact that Evite still has a few minor features that Zoji lacks.  And you know our ego here at Zoji, there's just no way we can stand for that.  So we're pounding them out.

You may have noticed some new cool skins from Josiah ... he's busy cranking these out to fill out the Designer Skins library.  One-by-one we increase our selection of classy skins.

Restaurant and Bar popularity searches should be working correctly now.

Stay tuned for a really cool real-time Z-vite feature Kev's been at the grind with...

-ShennyD
]]> personal rants http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/78937#comments http://www.zoji.com/support/blogs/78937 Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:14:00 PST