Saturday, May 31, 2008

WordFrame New Features and Release notes

We have implemented a couple of new things on the current v1.0 of WordFrame Community Platform in the last few months. This, of course, does not change our plans for major update to version 1.5 in July of our so-popular social media online application.

We are publishing this post as more of a reminder for some of our customers and partners who are quite familiar with the system but does not get to visit the WordFrame Help WIKI often – this way they lose the opportunity to check our monthly release notes based on all upgrades and updates we do in the course of each calendar month.

We strictly list all major improvements and bug-fixes but we certainly miss to mention some of them for one or another reason. Please, feel free to contact us for more details and information regarding all issues that you might have with the system. Sometimes we do miss to inform our fans and customers for various new things we are implementing.

Here is just a short list of some of the things we have implemented lately:

1. New report: "All Users" - The report presents full profile data for all users who have fully completed the login process. It does not include imported users who have not been logged in the WordFrame system yet.

2. Import Users / Extended Import Function - New Extended Import is now present in Admin -> Users -> Import Users. It helps you to import much more detailed information about the users.

3. Community Statistics - The Statistics shows the number of all community members, who have been logged in the system at least once.

4. Email notifications – Email alerts for comments. The users can now be notified, whenever a new comment is written on a post they have created or discussed.

5. Post Publish Date - The posts can now be published with a past date. (we know – even WordPress has had this for ages…)

6. All Posts Page - The post filter in “All posts” page now includes all categories in the current group.

7. Change Email - The new functionality enables users to change their login email.

8. New Admin Section: Wiki Home Page Content - New admin section is introduced in the Content Tab called Wiki Home Page Content. It is used for adding description, which will be displayed on Wiki Home page.

9. New Admin Section: Document Home Page Description - New admin section is introduced in the Content Tab called Document Home Page Description. It is used for adding description, which will be displayed on Document Home page.

10. New Admin Section: People Page Description - New admin section is introduced in the Content Tab called People Page Description. It is used for adding description, which will be displayed on People page.

11. Category Description - The new functionality is used for adding description, which will be displayed on the top of page when users review the posts in the current category.

12. User Notification Module - This Module notifies users when they receive new messages or invitations.

13. New Admin Module: Private Group Landing Page - New admin section is introduced in the System Tab called Private group landing page. It is used to set and manage the landing page description, which appears when a user, who is not a member of the current private group, navigates to it.

14. E-mail Campaigns - Saved or pending newsletter campaigns can now be edited.

15. Inbox - Email alerts on private messages can now be enabled from the Inbox

All WordFrame Community Platform Release notes are available on the WordFrame Help WIKI home page at:

http://help.wordframe.net/index.php/Main_Page

Startups and WordFrame

We had several nice meetings and business trips this month to close a number of customers as well as to work with several startups needing somewhat different customer/vendor type of relationship.

The very interesting fact, which two of those companies (future WordFrame users) observed and shared with us, was the type of reception they had got from some of our direct and not-so-direct competitors. The two companies, the first one based in Dallas and the second one based in LA, told us that the companies they approached before us were in fact targeting larger and more established enterprises. Fact – in some cases – it was almost impossible to talk to those guys over the phone or organize a meeting, let alone direct access to a project manager or live phone support. Well, we were told something that we had already known but it was anyway nice to hear that our efforts really gave great results not only for us as a company. It was good to know that our productive management and work was also making other people happy.

It turned out that most of the companies they had approached, really wanted to deal with bigger, both in size and volume, customers. Some of those companies believed that it was not economically viable to deal with communities featuring less than 10,000 users.

Well, welcome to WordFrame - we are happy to take care of customers of any size. Another interesting fact - both companies I am having in mind are actually well-funded (they have enough to pay their bills as well as to request customizations) and money is not an issue – service is.

Personal approach towards each customer alongside with clear identification of responsibilities, proper business attitude and care about all our customers is a primary goal and concern in WordFrame.

Facts like these make us wonder why others do that, but also make us really happy that we deal differently.

WordFrame update

It has been almost a month since our last posts in the WordFrame Blog. Well, our absence both on the blogging and the Twitter arena was not without a reason. We were mainly engaged with business development and with WordFrame partner network enlargement, sales, demos and most importantly - the WordFrame Enterprise v2.0 planning and development.

We got a handful of new customers and partners and this kept us busy quite a lot. I will be happy to announce a couple of our new customers in the next coming weeks as well as all our new partners, together with some of the more significant projects powered by WordFrame. Some of the new ones - great communities and social media networks, include Synergy3’s Edu1World.org and bellaSavio, alongside with the blog site for Content Management Connection and GreenBlogosphere.com .

Another very important event was the latest update and upgrade of our CMS. The CMS is called PageTypes and we will be finally launching its website, featuring full-blown online help and documentation. The interesting fact is that when we had it ready for its first official release last year we were planning to call it WordFrame - but for one or another reason, after we split from our previous venture in the end of last year, we decided to use that name for our Social Media platform.

Anyway, the faith knows its ways better than us, as we are now implementing the fully-functional PageTypes CMS into the WordFrame Enterprise to create something really unique and powerful. David Terrar and I will be posting regular updates on our sites about PageTypes CMS and WordFrame Enterprise v2.0.

By the way – the PageTypes CMS should not be considered being the main or the only functional and structural addition to the new WordFrame v2.0. There is much more hidden up our sleeves to surprise you with.

I will be posting some more news in the next couple of days about events that were and still are part of our busy and happy month of May.

Think twice before getting serious with Facebook

This is another post inspired in some way by Robert Scoble. He wrote a post and uploaded a recorded conversation with a guy who was kicked out from Facebook without a real reason. There are several comments that are valid and set the real situation - all the people are certain that people should not be banished like that while one of the comments done by Mike (no last name or a link unfortunately) points out properly that besides the fact that this is not right, Facebook owners and editors will not lose sleep over it nor this fact (which definitely is not the first occasion) will be a front page news piece. So far so good/bad … what is kind of important here, though?

These type of social networks must have some kind of spam prevention services or tools that really work, that is for sure. What the real deal for me is can be described like that – these type of managed /hosted publicly available and monitored/explored hosted social networks cannot be really trusted and used for serious business or important personal activities. They can get you down at any point. Absolutely. Sometimes (as in this case) without any real reason. They can always shut you down with the simple explanation that they do not like you. Since you “are not paying” anything, you cannot complain.

I do not want to diminish the value Facebook brings to the online community nor do I think it is useless. On the contrary, almost all WordFrame personnel have Facebook accounts and we also have a WordFrame group there. What I would like to point out is that one should have more than just warning lights lit when he/she plans to use Facebook for serious and important business or personal stuff.

There are at least a dozen companies that will help you create the proper business social network (WordFrame is one of them, (sorry, could not resist the bragging)). Some of the companies have business social networking tools for free, others have great offers for the software, plus the hosting or the maintenance after that. The software apps are different in type, functionality and usability - at least a couple are open source, some built on java, some on php, some on .NET/C# . The most important part here is that one can have a contract with any of these companies, and if anything happens – there is someone to take the responsibility.

Well, too bad for that guy, I really feel sorry for him, but he was supposed to think twice when he trusted an online social networking solution which clearly states that it cannot be blamed for almost anything when it comes to their free services.

Probably, it is high time for the people that need social media apps or social networking software tools online and they are planning to use them heavily, to realize that there is no free lunch. If you are cheap enough not to even pay for the hosting of a free application that will do similar things – well, please do not complain in such a loud voice. If you want to do some serious work, both business and/or personal – be careful and expect to be treated differently compared to the way the paid solutions will treat you.