Blog Entries
Who wants to help test our new Member Profiles?
Category: Annoucements

We are currently seeking people to help us test our new member profile system that is launching soon. This will be to help test front end profile capabilities, including how member activity works, friends, and so on. We are seeking people that can provide feedback and help us identify bugs and other problems.

If you would like to take part in this and get an early peek at some new features please email grow@spruz.com, subject must say Profile Tester and your email should include your Spruz email address, your geographic location and some brief details about what qualifies you to help. Once selected we will reply to you with an website you will join to begin testing these features and we will be required not to talk or comment about the new member profile features outside the Member Profile beta community.

We will be selecting people to start testing early next week. We look forward to hearing from you.

Member System Update (Status Report)

We are within a couple of weeks of releasing our complete rewrite of our member profile system. This update has been running a little long for us due to the size and complexity of this update, there are also issues with handling of current member profiles and moving as much as possible over to the new profile/member system.

Here is a sample list of features that will be part of the new member system.

  • Each website member profile page will be unique to the given website.
  • Full admin moderation over profile comments, blogs, photos, etc.
  • Widget Box Gallery integration
  • Advanced website profile admin settings for using your own custom naming scheme for member friends, setting the default profile pic, custom member status settings, using your own Widget Box gallery account and much more!
  • Member or Admin Created Groups with full group profiles just like new member profiles!
  • Member Activity Feed and status updates
  • Customizable profile default elements and layout (Upgrade Only Feature).
  • Improvements to member privacy settings
  • Addition of setting the default viewing level for all profiles to make profiles viewing for members only on up. By default all profiles are public unless set other wise by the member. (Upgrade only Feature)

As part of this we have been updating other systems that tie into this update with some improvements as well.

New improvement added recently!

We have released an update to the deleting of site members. Now when a member is deleted it should delete all posts, content, etc that was added by that member to your website. For upgraded websites you can now ban them from joining again. This way once a member is deleted they will not be able to re-join the website easily. Plus, once the full member update is released when you delete a member it will also remove their profile, remove them from people that have added them as a friend and all files they have uploaded to their profile on your website.


I hope everyone is looking forward to this update as much as we are. This will be the biggest single release and change to the platform in almost 1 year.

The Spruz Story

Spruz allows anyone to create a social website about anything! Spruz launched in early 2007 and since then over 200,000 people have created socially enabled websites on the Spruz platform. The primary goal at Spruz, is and has always been to provide a free, highly customizable, powerful, yet easy to use hosted social website solution where anyone can come to create a socially enabled website. This is done by building an interconnected website platform where anyone can create, build, and customize a website with deep social interaction.


Spruz was founded, funded and programmed by it's founders Jay Roberts (President, CEO) and David Furman (Vice President, CTO). To really move forward and to keep the founders vision of what will be, the platform development was and has always been handled in house, you won't find any outsourcing here. Spruz is really made up of founder blood, sweat and tears as they say.


The story of Spruz really begins all the way back in 2002 with the launch of Clansitemanager.com a website creation portal with social features for Gamers (Clans & Guilds). When Clan Site Manager (CSM) was created, it's goal was to make it easier for gamers to build a website in order to help them form stronger groups, and as a result this would help shore up the gaming community as a whole for Mr. Roberts game related hosting company Art of War Central.com (AOWC). At the time it was a challenge for gaming groups to stay together, because there was not an easy and low cost way (Free) for gamers to build a site that offered good communication features. AOWC depended on gaming groups to use it's services. In the beginning of AOWC most gaming groups would fall apart within a few months.


AOWC was launched in 2001 to provide high performance multiplayer gaming to private groups of gamers (Clans) that played first person shooters. The plan emerged, shortly after the launch of AOWC to give gamers an on demand free website creation process allowing them to build a website that could help them strengthen their group, recruit members, and communicate. Long and short CSM helped gamers meet and attract other gamers that shared their same interests. Over time other types of gamers began creating websites on the CSM platform.


From 2004-2006 very little focus was placed on the CSM platform as other projects and obligations got in the way. In the spring of 2006 Jay Roberts partnered up with David Furman a very talented person and web designer by trade. At the time David was an employee of Art of War Central. In June of 2006, Jay made the decision to sell the gaming company in order to refocus on developing the website creation platform into a system for anyone to create socially enabled websites outside of the gaming market. Jay and David shared a vision of providing social solutions to people that wanted personal self branded social communities/websites. The goal of redeveloping the CSM platform into what is the Spruz Platform Technology was born in the Spring of 2006 and followed with the official launch of Spruz in March of 2007. Since then it has been a long road for the Jay and David, but well worth it as they have seen hundreds of thousands of users, create social websites on the Spruz Platform. Every day the team is working hard to bring features and improvements for new and old users alike.


One of the biggest benefit to users of a centralized platform like Spruz is the ability for the development team to roll out new features and improvements on demand without users having to worry about applying updates or websites on the platform being out of sync. This makes for an infinitely advancing website platform while still giving users an unmatched level of customization control to make truly unique social websites.


For the Spruz Team and its users, the Spruz platform is a growing, living machine, without the limits and bounds that users with stand alone websites often experience. Between the platform and the users that experience it, the future is a bright one.

Memorial Day
Today is a day to remember our fallen, we shall never forget their sacrafice for our country. God Bless America.

As with any US holiday,  our office will be closed. We do have staff on hand for any major issues should they occure.

Have a great day!
Private Site Settings for free site changes.

Previously all websites had an option to set a website to private only. When you set your website to private access only, only users that have registered with your site or have been approved access to your site would be allowed to enter, while site visitors would only see a login box or register options.


Effective Tuesday May 26th the private setting will be a feature only available to user that are upgraded to a Lite or Pro package. All free websites accounts (Non-Upgraded Websites) that have their website set to private will have their private setting set to a public website. If you want to keep your site private we request you upgrade by to our upgrade page and select a Lite or Pro package.

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