Spruz Owners' Community For owners of websites powered by the Spruz Platform

Today we completed our update that brings new expanded customization to profile questions. While we hoped this update would go smoothly we had to take down the networks for about 30 minutes today in order to free up data resources to update accounts with a new data structure.

On your website you can add custom questions that people can fill out as part of the registration process and/or customize on their profile page. To customize this improved feature go to your Site Settings > Manage Settings > Member Questions.

Highlights of the improvements;

1. 3 new field types (Check Boxes, Calendar, and Web Address)
2. New Options to set if a question is Publicly displayed on a persons profile, Required, And Ask at Registration
3. Ask as registration is a new feature that replaced the old system of Custom Registration Questions. Now information you ask at registration can be displayed publicly on a persons profile or viewed by Admins only for referencing additional details.
4. Custom Questions are exportable when exporting members
5. We have improved the over all data storage structure for the custom questions. You can now freely change questions without the possibility of resetting everyone's answered questions.

We hope you enjoy this feature improvement. As mentioned in previous posts much more is on the way!

As a reminder, posting problems in comments will not fix an issue. Please report problems you encounter in a support ticket so we can fix the problem for you and everyone eles.

We have just released a large update that includes improvements based on a lot of feedback we have been receiving. Here’s the breakdown:

Groups Discussion - We have added edit and delete options to group discussion threads, as well as a full structure re-design to make it easier to use. We have also added a paging system to the discussion topics as well, so you can view all topics on posted in the groups discussions. Along with this we have also updated the style and structure on the profile shout box to have the same look and feel as the new group discussions.

Commenting - All plain text commenting sections have been updated so that they auto-link URLs and turn image and YouTube URLs into Thumbnail Images and Playable Videos.

Design – We‘ve added some new design controls allowing you to change the position of the Welcome/Login line at the top of your site, and change the font and font size of element headers. If you change these options and you don’t see any change you may have a design modifier that is controlling the setting on your theme. To manage modifiers you can go to Appearance > Customize > Theme Modifiers on your site manage bar.

Additionally, we have updated the rich text editor used throughout the sites. The update includes a large number of functionality tweaks and bug fixes.

Other fixes and improvements include:

• Fixed an issue with setting the member start page.
• Fixed an issue that caused the e-mail not to get sent notifying of members waiting for approval.
• Added a more helpful and friendly message for users that tried to register that already had an account. (giving them an easy route to login)

Tomorrow we should have out updated completed regarding the new member registration and profile questions customization system.

As always, if you encounter problems please let us know by opening up a support ticket. We welcome your throughts, suggestions and feedback!

At Spruz we understand the concerns former Ning users have about using another free DIY website platform. Community centered website platforms will always have a huge advantage over open source, self hosted CMS software or static HTML pages. Spruz provides an ease of use platform while offering a central support structure,  server side security, a community with a wealth of knowledge, and technology that's kept up to date in real time. Spruz adds new features and improvements regularly and on demand, all without you having to hire a tech guru to setup and operate your site.

Allow us to explain exactly how the Spruz freemium model is sustainable as compared to other providers in the market. This information is vital to understand how we're able to offer the value we do to both free and premium users.

The fate of Ning did not come as a surprise to Spruz, we just didn't think it would happen so soon (I guess $120 million doesn't go as far as it used to). We've watched this same scenario play out many times in the past; a business promises the world in free features, only to one day announce that its users should pay or leave. Many startups today raise a fortune of investment dollars based, but the problem is it's all "theoretical dollars"; a gamble if you will. The prevailing mind set is, "Let's get as many people as we can on our platform and worry about a revenue model later." This has resulted in more startups failing than one can keep up with, and creates an environment that where it's hard for compaines with real business models to compete.

The Spruz revenue model is solid and simple. We're able to say this because balancing the free and premium portions of our service has always been a priority. At Spruz we know the key role free websites play, and believe that free site owners should be able to keep their website for as long as they desire. The reason for this is that it allows our clients to grow a community on a limited budget, while at the same time providing us with a relatively low cost marketing mechanism. This is why we have the trademark "Grow Yourself ®".

We understand if you're still a little warry, allow us to outline exactly what makes Spruz sustainable.

• Spruz is self funded and profitable. We take the old adage "Slow and steady wins the race" to heart. The fact that we're 100% free of external investors provides us with some advantages that we wouldn't give up for the world, in that we aren't pressured into making moves we feel would harm the community. Compare this to Ning, which raised and spent $120 million dollars. From an investor's perspective, Ning needs to bring in $100 million a year to sell at a price that would allow a reasonable return on investment. Right now Ning is $95 million short of that milestone.
• Video Uploading/Downloading is a premium only feature. Our video features rely on You Tube for free websites, which is important to ensure we can sustain our offerings for free websites. Video is very expensive to host and very difficult to monetize. A quick example: if you have a 10 minute 80MB video and 1000 people view it, that would use 78GB of transfer (a whole sale cost of $6.28 to serve the video). This would mean on free plans a website provider would need to find advertisers willing to pay more then $7 per CPM for advertising on videos. This isn't realistic by any stretch of the imagination since a website provider such as Spruz can not find ad buyers for individual networks.
• Free sites have two advertisements per page. The additional advertisement makes a big difference on over all revenue. We provide very reasonably priced upgrade packages so they can be removed, giving you the ability to add your own so you can monetize the website yourself.
• We have a page limit for free accounts. DIY Social platforms store page info in a database and serve them on demand. The more pages that are in a database the more resources required to display a page to a website viewer. By having these limits we encourage more people to upgrade, thus feeding our premium module and keeping free sites from becoming too costly.
• We delete inactive/low traffic websites regularly. Even sites that sit unused cost resources. This is why we delete sites the sit for long periods time without member log-ins (no logins for 30 days) and/or low traffic (less than an average 1000 page views per month).
• Free Tiered website file space. File space is one of the most often abused areas in web hosting. We are able to control this by doing 2 things: we have a file size upload limit of 10MB per upload on free accounts (500MB on premium accounts), and your file storage is Tiered. This rewards websites with traffic growth by giving them more file space as they need to continue their growth, while at the same time preventing people from abusing high file space limits.

Keep in mind, this balance did not come on it's own. It took trial, error and some sacrifice to find a balance that works. Millions from investors can never replace practical application, and the story of Ning proves just that. Our formula allows us to ensure free websites will always have a home at Spruz.

Spruz's goal is to provide great features, superior support and growth potential for your website, be it free or premium. Grow yourself with Spruz!

At Spruz we are thrilled that so many people from Ning are making Spruz their top choice for a platform to switch to. We want you all to know we have a whole list of improvements we are working on right now! We are rolling out updates daily to the platform to address issues, add new functions, make things easier and improve old features.

Updates we completed over the last few days include;

1. New Member Invite Page. We added importing from your favorite email programs like Gmail and Yahoo, a new invite link you can share with other, and made the page much easier to understand
2. Group Improvements. Group featuring was implemented, group admin options now display under the group description, and the Groups Element now has an option to change the default sorting of groups. But it doesn't end there, we are working on several other things involving the Groups system.
3. New Member Photos & Seach Page was added. This page lists member collections, searching photos and allows for photo featuring. To add this page click on New Page > Members Photos page.
4. Plus we have smashed a number of small bugs, and made some performance tweaks.

Here is a quick peak of  major updates in development right now and should be rolled out to the community over the next 6 weeks.

1. Customizing System Text. This feature will allow you to customize system text on elements, pages and other systems, you will also be able to share your System Templates. This should help open up the platform for other languages as well.
2. New Custom Registration Questions/Profile Questions. This is a replacement to the current system of custom registration questions. You will be able to make questions public or private and they will all be exporting.
3. Member Featuring. Will allow you to feature your best members
4. Web Ring. This is a new element that allows you to automatically trade links with other networks on the Spruz platform.
5. Admin Log. This will display activity like when a page is changed or something is removed by an admin.
6. Email Notification Improvements. Based on feedback from our new new friends coming over from Ning, we are making corrections to some things missing with email notifications on the that we are working on improving.

Coming from Ning? Do you have suggestion for us that could make something easier for you, or maybe a feature you miss? Let us know in our Idea Room forum.

We are currently looking to fill several remote staff (Work at Home) positions for Live Chat help & Support

Job Requirements:

• You must already be familiar with using the Spruz Social Website Platform
• You are eager to learn new things about the Spruz Platform
• You perform well working with a team and can follow and give instructions effectively.
• You must be over 18 years old
• Reasonable Grammar/Spelling Ability
• You have a reliable computer and broad band connection

Job Benefits:

• Flexible Schedule, 15-25 hours per week
• You can work from anywhere in the world
• Advancement opportunities

This is a contract labor position, meaning you must report your own earnings.

If interested or have questions about compensation email jobs@spruz.com with the subject line "Remote Staff Position", include with your email a resume with Education, and Work History along with 3 References. Please also include URLS to your Social Spaces (Facebook ,MySpace, YouTube, etc) and hours in EDT that you are available to work.

Thank you,
Spruz Team