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 |  Announcements pertaining to Writing.Com! |
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| Hello! Thanks to everyone for your comments and posts on my last blog entry and in "Beta Tests: Comments"  . Various bugs were fixed and updates made throughout the day to continue fine tuning the newport system...  Just released, we've added a "new" Highlighted Items area for your Portfolio page that allows you to highlight up to 3 items from your own portfolio. It's shown just below your Bio Block and the items are added in that same area. Given the "new" highlighted items portfolio area, we've renamed the "old" highlighted items on the Biography page to Recommended Items. These can be up to 5 items from anywhere on WdC -- your items or those of other authors. For portfolio viewing, Show Details is now an automatically set preference. When you click it, the system stores your setting and keeps it until you decide to click "Hide Details". Problems with our InkSpot.Com system were corrected early in the day. Items that require reviews are now correctly showing ratings to the portfolio owner. Portfolio coloring was corrected to take into account member accessibility settings. Missing sub-item types for static items, books, forums and images have been added to the "Show Details" view and the "mouse over" on the item icons when details are hidden.Thanks again for all of your feedback! We're continuing to work to improve the updates. Best wishes, ~~SM |
| Greetings Members! I'm pleased to announce the release of our new portfolio and community system! Affectionately code named project "Newport", this very large update makes important changes to Writing.Com, and I believe it gives the site a huge leap forward as we near our 10-year anniversary in September. Newport is actually the compilation of many months of updates to Writing.Com. It includes a complete redesign of the Portfolio area, converting it to an up-to-date, fast and fluid system. It introduces tabs that add several new features including a Biography, a 'social' Notebook, Fans, a Community info area and a new interactive 'toy' called "Sliders". Here's a listing of the most exciting new features and changes: FansFans are a new way to share your Favorites with other members of Writing.Com. In simplest terms, a fan is a favorite made public. Both favorites and fans do the same thing; they allow you to follow the updates of the author/item you've favorite'd/fan'd. A Fan goes a step further than a favorite, making it known "to everyone" that you follow that author/item. (For example, you might follow "Writing.Com General Discussion" and want everyone to know; so you'd be a Fan. On the other hand, you might also follow some more private topics that you don't want everyone to know about, so you'd keep them private, as Favorites.) Checking out what your favorites have fan'd is great way to find new items and authors that you'll like too! You'll note the "Favorite" icons have been changed around. The StoryMaster    When you don't have someone or something as a favorite, you have a + icon. Click it to add the favorite. When it's a favorite, you'll see the favorite finger icon. When you're a Fan, you'll see our bullhorn icon. You can click the finger or fan icon to toggle from favorite to fan and back again. As always, you can delete a fan or favorite at your Favorites page. Portfolio Revised!The new portfolio system is super clean, slick and dynamic. You can open folders in-line within the portfolio, or follow a new window link to that page for an updated and clean folder view. All item details are hidden but accessible with a click of the "Show Details" link. Public and private portfolio views are now the same, with one expandable "Manage Items" area shown only to you when you're viewing your own portfolio. Click Manage Items to open the tool links for each of your items and reveal the bulk management tools. The bulk tools include: Reorder, Change Access, Move and Delete. Each of these tools are dynamic, much more intuitive, and self-instructing than our old portfolio manager. A Live Search now graces every portfolio just below the Bio Block. Start typing and the system immediately starts searching the title, description and keywords of every visible item in the portfolio (your own or another member's), showing results as you go based on what you've already entered. The Recycling Bin becomes standard for all members and is now found as part of your portfolio contents. The Recycling Bin is private and its presence is only shown in your own portfolio. Beneath the new tabs, your portfolio sports a new links line: Create Item || Tools || Folders || Stats & Info || Settings Create item opens a clean and easy item creation list. Tools gives links to tools for your portfolio. Folders gives you quick access to any folder in your portfolio. Stats & Info gives you information about your portfolio. Settings contains links for portfolio highlighting and Inkspot set-up. The Biography TabEvery member gets all tabs, regardless of paid membership level or type. In the Biography page, every member also gets to add a bio image! The biography area includes many optional personal information fields that should help everyone get to know each other a little better. Your Highlighted Items and most recently modified items have moved to the Biography Tab. Both of these area have increased from 3 items to 5. They're displayed in the 'Newport' format and folders within your own portfolio open in-line. (If you highlight another member's folder, that folder needs to open to its own view and will do so if clicked.) The Notebook TabA new social 'Notebook' has been added. Members can scribble in each other's notebooks and reply to the scribbles of others. Email notifications are optional and members can stop notifications from a link in each email. Notebook owners can remove, report and block members from posting to their notebook. The block utility is separate from our "account" block utility which still provides a "complete" blocking of everything, included all tabbed areas. In the future, the Notebook will gain additional responsibility to coordinate more updates from your account into one area for those who have you as a favorite or fan. For example, automatic update notices about edits of your items, changes to your biography and more will congregate in your Notebook. (Coming soon: An access restriction setting for your notebook, plus the ability to create a small custom header for the book with WritingML.) The Blog TabIf you have "My Blog" set up, all links to your blog now automatically redirect visitors into your new "Blog" tab, shown in your portfolio tab line. When someone views your blog from an item listing or a link, it takes them directly into the tabbed view, bringing readers of your blog directly into your port. Not only is blogging a good writing exercise, it's now a great way to gain more exposure on Writing.Com for your writing overall. The Fans TabThe Fans tabs shows you what a given member is a fan of and who's a fan of them. The Community TabThe community tab is a new page that aggregates a member's community achievements. It includes a Community Recognition breakdown, stats on ratings, reviews, posts and more. A merit badge summary, the most recent badges received and the most recent awards received are also highlighted on the page. The Sliders TabEach portfolio gets their own set of Sliders -- think magnetic poetry. You create the "Words", which can include phrases, emoticons and other "Small" writingML" -- like "item" and "post", but not "bitem" or "image"... and anyone can move them around! Like what you've created on the board? Take a snapshot and save it! Visitors to the sliders page can view past snapshots. You can reference snapshots with WritingML: {snapshot:#######} where ###### is the snapshot's ID number. The Sliders tab does not appear until the port owner has setup their sliders. To do so, just go into your sliders tab and add words. The portfolio owner can remove, report and block members from taking snapshots of their sliders. Like the notebook, the Sliders block utility is separate from the overall block which still provides "complete" blocking of everything, included all tabbed area. (Coming Soon: An access restriction setting for the Sliders tab.) The new Handle ClickYou can now click on a member's handle for a new menu. You can click on either "same window" and "new window" links in this new area to go to the member's portfolio, to send them gift points, or to send them a Merit Badge. Awardicon CounterNow when an item has multiple awardicons, the number of awards is shown on the highest value, most current award. For example:
MiscellaneousThere are a lot of other little changes buried in with this massive update. We've been working on the beta site for a few weeks making tweaks and changes in a variety of places. I've also finished and released a variety of other small updates that had been started but never completed. So, if you find something we didn't mention, you're welcome to post about it and let us know... we'll let you know if it's new or not!  We want your feedback! Like any new change to Writing.Com, we want to hear from you! This is an expansive update, so please be patient if you find a bug we did not encounter or correct during our closed testing. We look forward to expanding and improving on these updates with your help. I've created a forum for Q&A, bug reports, comments and suggestions relating to the Newport update...
I look forward to hearing from you!! Also, a special thank you to the Sr. Moderators and Moderators that helped with the beta testing of these updates. Extra special thanks to northernwrites for her extremely detailed feedback. And special thanks also to Legerdemain  , kiyasama, Joy  , Jeff  , TY and congrats Miss Potato!  , Davy Kraken  , Crys-not really here  and Erika . We are all getting a much finer set of updates thanks to the input these awesome individuals gave me!Thanks and enjoy! ~~SM |
SMs just redid our emoticons so they show up better on the off-white backgrounds used in some preview areas around the site. At the same time, she threw in 3 newbies for us! = {e:key} = {e:inlove} = {e:sleep} ~~SM |
The following winners for the March 2010 running of "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" were chosen from the 21 entries submitted. Each entry was judged based on the criteria provided in "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" . Congratulations to the following three winners: First Place - "Two Wise Women" by Prof Moriarty Second Place - "Librarians' Lib - 2nd Place, Quotation" by THANKFUL SONALI HAPPY WDC 24  Third Place - "A Circuitous Route" by Lee Thomas  Thanks to the judges and all of the entrants. ~Diane |
| The following winners for the February 2010 running of "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" were chosen from the 15 entries submitted. Each entry was judged based on the criteria provided in "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" . Congratulations to the following three winners: First: "Focusing On the Future" by Indelible Ink Second: "Natural and Casual" by THANKFUL SONALI HAPPY WDC 24 Third: "Invalid Item" by A Guest Visitor Congratulations to the winners and everyone who challenged themselves by writing to the prompt. Special thanks goes to the judges for their time.  March's Contest is: "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" ~Diane |
| Greetings Members, In "New: Beta Test - YouTube Video Embedding for Blogs" , we introduced the ability to embed YouTube videos into the entries of book items. We're now moving that out of beta-testing and calling it "official" functionality. At the same time, we're also opening up the feature for use by Upgrade Members and above!Here's a copy and paste of some info from the original post: Some Notes and Instructions: The new WritingML embed tag can only be used within Book Items (blogs, etc). It will not work anywhere else within Writing.Com. The tag takes 2 arguments, a "source type" and a URL. * The only "source type" presently available is youtube. * The URL is just a copy and paste of the URL that you provides under the video's info. It should look like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY Only one embed tag may be used per entry.An Example: {center}{embed:youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY}{/center}  Given that "youtube" is the only source type, the tag will basically look like this: {embed:youtube:URL} Now, for your creative entertainment, the above tag yields the following: Please let us know about any issues, suggestions, etc... Enjoy! ~~SM |
| Greetings Members, Back on 12/12, I posted "New Portfolio Mouseover! [Sorta-Beta]" about an update to our portfolio mouse over. While improving the way pages loaded and how copy and pasted text work, it was a bit slow and laggy, checking with the server for each mouseover. When I put it in place, I knew it was better than what we had, but not yet the best it could be... And now it is!The StoryMaster No loading.A fun place to check this out is on the "Authors" page... Run your mouse down that line of ports!  And while you're there, stop into one or two you've not read before and send a review!   As with any update, we appreciate your feedback. And, if the system doesn't seem to function as it should, please try to leave a "brief" bug report -- brief, but with as much detail as possible, including your web browser type/version and computer os/version.Write On, ~~SM |
| Greetings, Five new emoticons! {e:Peace} = {e:RainbowL} =  {e:RainbowR} =  {e:Shamrock} =  {e:Gold} =  The rainbow icons work great individually... But you can also put them together to create a full These new icons are all in the List of WDC Emoticons. Thanks The StoryMistress  ! ~~SM |
| Greetings Members! The Edit Preferences area has been revamped and cleaned up. If you find any problems, please leave a comment on this post and let us know. http://www.writing.com/main/my_account/action/edit_prefs We'll be making more changes and enhancements to that area in the future. If you have any suggestions for account preferences, please feel free to post them here in response to this posting... or in "Suggestion Box" . Thanks! ~~SM |
| Greetings! You can now set the default setting for the "Make this Review Public" checkbox. If most of your reviews are public, you'll want to set your default to have this box checked! There's a "Set Default" link next to the checkbox, but you can jump to the setting here: http://www.writing.com/main/my_account.php?action=ea_form&type=preferences#quick... Enjoy, ~~SM |
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