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Time's been flying by... Can you believe it's already February and the end of another week? Since it's the end of another week it means another Community Spotlight! This week we have four topics from the Idea Room for you to devour. If there are any that you thought should have been added feel free to post a comment in the specific topic.
We have two changes to the Owner's Community we'd like to make as well. The first is that a set of general rules have been posted. Please make sure that all your interactions on this website fall in line with it. It's our goal to maintain a friendly and supportive atmosphere, and we'll be able to do just that with your help. If a topic of yours gets deleted because it's breaking a rule we hope you don't take offense. The moderators of this community are just doing their job 
The second change is the addition of a "Quick Tips" element to the Owners' Community sometime in the future. The goal of the element -- which will be in the "global" side bar of this website -- is to help people improve their website and learn things about the Spruz platform with easy to use information. We want to know what tips or tricks you've come across in this thread.
Have a great weekend!
Disclaimer 1: Just because an idea appears on this list does NOT mean that the developers will be working on it. This list is provided just to help them chart out possible future updates and to get a general overview of what the members are saying. Spruz maintains the right to plan updates as they see fit.
Disclaimer 2: Only topics that have at least one community member other than the original poster comment and support the idea are featured in this list.
'Back to photo collection' & 'Back to photos' link needed
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Tainted_Zeal: When you click on a picture someone has uploaded it takes you to an enlarged picture, but doesn't have a link to go back to the page you came from.
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K. Hooper: It's a long standing request. Also annoying that you have to the main gallery page to view the categories.
Online Gift Store
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Tainted_Zeal: With the points system people will need to have something to spend the points on. A online gift store should be added to allow members to purchase gifts for each other with the points they've earned (example in first post).
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K. Hooper: Being able to spend the points is a great idea, but not everyone will want to give away novelty avatars and the other things mentioned. Being able to offer free memberships to your site or other things along those lines would be good.
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Josh Soderling: People should be able to buy access to specific pages without giving them higher access levels.
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Ms.J: The system would need to be automatic without the need of an admin to oversee every single step of the process.
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randya: Purchasing points should be an option as well, which will allow them to trade those points in for different gifts.
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Kirumiri: This would be a great way to boost site traffic. Points should be expanded into the online store system, allowing people to get free items for activity. Purchasing points could be tied in with the Wallie card.
Blog Category List
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The Angry Movie Dork: Create a new element that would display all of the blog posts in a list, with the date they were posted, hits they received and more (picture example provided in first post).
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Edvard_D: The question with any idea is how much value does it bring to the visitor. It might be better to add tags instead.
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The Angry Movie Dork: It would make it easier for users to see everything that's been posted.
'Reply' Option on comments
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Tainted_Zeal: We should be able to reply to individual comments made on our profiles, just like comments in the blogs.
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Seven other members agreed.
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As promised in last week's post "Community Site Revamp," I bring you our first ever Community Spotlight! For those that didn't get a chance to read the news post, the purpose of the Community Spotlight is to make it easier for both the developers and the community to interact with each other and improve the Spruz platform.
Because this is so new there may be changes to how it works in the future. For the time being you'll find the forum topic's name with a link back to the topic, along with a few of the main points brought up by either the original poster or other members. Feel free to stop by these topics and voice your opinion as well. If you have any suggestions for the Owners' Community website remember that you can post them in this thread.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Disclaimer 1: Just because an idea appears on this list does NOT mean that the developers will be working on it. This list is provided just to help them chart out possible future updates and to get a general overview of what the members are saying. Spruz maintains the right to plan updates as they see fit.
Disclaimer 2: Only threads that had at least one community member other than the original poster are featured in this list.
'Reply' option on [profile] comments
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Tainted_Zeal: It would be nice for us to have the ability to reply to comments left on our profiles like we're able to with blogs. This could also be added to pictures.
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Four other members stopped by to give their support.
Move pics in Collections & Choose cover pic
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Tainted_Zeal: It would be helpful to move pictures in albums, as well as select what picture we want to be the cover of the album.
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jay314431: Spent a long time naming and organizing their pictures before uploading, only to have them to upload in a different order. Wanted to upload them as a timeline so the reordering ruined their plans.
Users can rate the Blog Posts
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The Angry Movie Dork: Give users the ability to rate blog posts on a scale from 1-5 if they're logged in.
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Josh Soderling: It should be made a "standard" for all releases Spruz makes.
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randya: It shouldn't stop with blogs. Photos, forums, profiles and all the other systems should have this built into it. The ratings would all tie in together to give each user an individual rating to reflect their contribution to the site.
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Edvard D: Combining it with the future "Points System" might be a good idea as well.
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The Angry Movie Dork: The expanded ideas are good, but not everyone would want to use it. People should have a choice as to what systems are included. Why would we want to rate users?
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Edvard D: People wouldn't rate users directly, they would just rate the content they post. This encourages everyone to improve the quality of what they're sharing on your website.
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meuslix: There needs to be elements added to the system to show the rating.
Would you want to see the word "post" instead of "save" when you publish a comment/reply?
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kanoobi: It should say "post" when you make the initial post, and "save" when you edit it.
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Kirumiri: You get used to it after a while, but it's still awkward when you post something.
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The thread has received 16 votes for it to be changed.
File Manager Update
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AdamThiele: A major problem with the file manager is that it's impossible to move files around.
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kanoobi: Good point but may be difficult to add. Right now we have to re upload them to the correct file.
More topics coming next week! In the future we plan to expand the selection of forum topics covered beyond just the Idea Room, but we're going to take it slow to ensure everything's done correctly. This week's list is more or less a "test" to see what things we need to change in the future. Let us know what you think and what topics you thought should have been added to the list!
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Lately Spruz has been taking a careful look at the Owners' Community Website and brainstorming ways to improve it. It's been a multiweek process, the result of which is outlined in this news post. Read on to see what's changed today and what's planned for the future!
Community Manager
The first change is the addition of a "Community Manager" position to the Spruz team. The developers have worked very hard to make the Spruz platform what it is today, but a side effect is that they haven't been able to devote as much time as they'd like to in communicating with their loyal user base. The Community Manager will be in charge of ensuring everything on this website runs smoothly, as well as making the opinions of the Spruz development team known to the community and vice versa. Seeing as I'm posting this, it's probably a good bet that I accepted the position ;)
The first order of business will be starting a weekly "Community Spotlight" article that will be released every Friday (starting next week). The article will highlight specific threads that have gotten a lot of attention from the members. At the end of each week a copy will be sent to Spruz and posted on the Owners' Community. This will give the Spruz developers more time to focus on improvements to the platform, while at the same time giving members the opportunity to make sure their voices are being heard.
New Moderator
Because of how much the site has grown we feel it necessary to bring aboard another member of the community as a forum moderator. Kirumiri has been a huge help to the community at large, answering questions and resolving issues with speed and accuracy. As such it's my great honor to announce that she has accepted the position of moderator! Please remember that forum moderator positions are given on an invite only basis, and the number of moderators we have is only increased as we feel they are necessary.
Updated Home Page
The first thing you probably noticed on visiting is the new home page. Our goal with the redesign was to make it easier for new members to get active on the website, while still providing veteran users with an experience they're comfortable and familiar with. There are a few things that didn't get added this time around, but that we plan to add in the (hopefully) near future.
Reorganized Forum
The forums have been the biggest draw of the Owners' Community, but as always there are things that can be improved. We've restructured the forum categories, which included combining, renaming, removing and creating threads. It may take a little time to get used to, but we're confident that the new structure will be better in the end. Below is the list of the newly organized forums:
Owner's Lounge
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General Discussion
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Idea Room
Your Website
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Introduce Yourself
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Constructive Criticism
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Tips and Tricks
Support
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General Support
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Custom Coding
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Design
The Future
As stated earlier, there were things we wanted to add that we didn't have time to. We realize that it's always possible to improve on what we've done before. As such we're always trying to think of new ways to improve your experience both here and with the Spruz platform in general. Read on for a few things planned.
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Website of the Month
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"Quick Tip" section on the home page
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Member created guide using the future Wiki system
In Closing
We hope you enjoy the changes that have been made. Remember that this is your community, and without your interaction and input it wouldn't be what it is today. If there's something you'd like to see added to the website we'd love to hear about it in this thread.
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As some of you now know, we have been working on some improvements to the member system. This includes a few fixes and a bit better administration over users. In our latest round of updates we wanted to work hard to locate a troubling issue that continues to be reported, some members keep getting logged out. This issue has been a hard one to troubleshoot and repair because of our difficulty in reproducing the problem. However we think we have located the cause and overhauled the member registration system to get it repaired.
One other part of this update included some changes to your member management page. We have renamed the link Member List to Manage Members in your management mode and added some new functionality.
On your Member Management page you will see the green edit icon has been replaced with an eye glass icon  that now launches a micro profile with some improvements. When managing your member you can now view the files and file space that member is using, upload a profile pick for them, and if you are a premium member you will see their Email address and IP Address.
Thank you for your patience during this period as there were some unplanned issues that had popped up. But we worked them out and everything should be working good now. Remember if you see problems (BUGS) report them in a support ticket. Posting in the comments or forums will not resolve bugs.
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We will be discontinuing the integrated IM and the who's online features will revert back to a standard time out rather like other whos online systems. Those of you that want IM and Who's online features can use these features by adding the Skysa bar to your website.
Skysa is a website App Footer bar you can add to your Spruz powered website that features many different apps including live chat, IM, commenting, Facebook and much more. In addition Skysa will soon have a friends online messaging App just like the one that is currently on our IM bar. If you have a premium account before Feb 1st you can request a 1 year free branding removal from Skysa by emailing help@skysa.com with your account email address.
The reason for this is this allows us to focus development resources that would be spent on improving the current integrated IM bar and IM features on other features and improvements within the Spruz platform. In addition since we develop the Skysa bar, this makes it easier for us to centralized development resources.
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