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At Spruz by far our top requested feature is more themes. In fact as a social website provider you can never have too many theme choices, being able to offer enough theme variety for everyone is a huge challenge and lets face it, the look of your website is a very important part of the decision process in selecting Spruz as your home.
In order to solve this huge problem and facilitate the demand, we are very happy to announce the official launch of our Spruz Theme Hub.
The Spruz Theme Hub is a new section located on our Owners Community (my.spruz.com) that has been designed to offer some really amazing benefits for Web Designers and Spruz Creators alike.
Web Designers will enjoy;
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Centralized Theme Publishing - A Centralize place to publish your themes creations that is easy for our Spruz Website Owners to use.
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Exposure - Every time a user views your theme creation users will see who created the theme, a bio about you and your website address.
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Distribution - When a theme is published and approved, Spruz creators can preview and install the theme from our Theme Hub page or from the Theme Library that is easily accessed from within any Spruz powered website.
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New Revenue Stream - Designers can list themes for free or optionally set a purchase price of $9.95-$49.95
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Support Structure - We want to help you grow with us! We will have help resources you can access to help you improve your techniques and learn all you can about customizing Spruz Social Websites.
Designers that want to register as a Theme Designer can register for the Theme Hub by clicking the Register link located on the Theme Hub page.
Spruz Creators will enjoy;
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Selection - Variety is key, as more designers join our the theme selection will increase. The Theme Hub will feature only themes designed by 3rd party Designers, while our Theme Library will still show themes created by Spruz and 3rd party designers.
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Quality - Every theme submitted is manually reviewed for quality. Just because someone slaps together some graphics does not make it worthy of our theme hub.
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Affordability - While Designers will offer Free themes for more exposure, they have the option to set a price. We are able to set a standard of pricing that will range from $9.95-$49.95 per theme install.
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Trust - When paying for a theme from the Theme Hub or our Theme Library you make your payment on it to Spruz, and Spruz pays the designer. This helps eliminate bad theme purchases and helps keep you happy!
An Overview of Theme Hub Features;
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Only themes created by our community of Designers are displayed.
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Tag based searching that helps you find the theme that is right for you with expanded search and filtering features coming in the near future
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Preview theme feature that has a drop down of all websites you own so you can quickly preview your theme in real time before you purchase and install the theme. (Like putting on an outfit and seeing how it fits you)
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Install and Purchase themes easily within the Theme Hub for free or purchase themes using your account balance or PayPal.
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Meet the designer, each theme includes details about who made it and their bio.
Donation Element Changes
While this update will add to the number of Free themes you can install onto your website, designers will have higher quality themes for purchase. To help with this we have revamped our Donation Element and renamed it to Website Donation Fund. This element displays the last few people who donate to your website and the current fund balance. Donations can be used to purchase themes, site upgrades and other Spruz related services. Plus we cover all transactions fees!
We really hope you enjoy this update and can see the value behind it. Like with any new feature, if you encounter issues please open up a support ticket to report the problem.
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We are currently looking to fill several remote staff (Work at Home) positions for Live Chat help & Support
Job Requirements:
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You must already be familiar with using the Spruz Social Website Platform
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You are eager to learn new things about the Spruz Platform
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You perform well working with a team and can follow and give instructions effectively.
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You must be over 18 years old
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Reasonable Grammar/Spelling Ability
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You have a reliable computer and broad band internet connection
Job Benefits:
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Flexible Schedule, 15-25 hours per week
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You can work from anywhere in the world
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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
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We have just completed our latest round of updates, at Spruz we work hard to
receptive to your feedback and act upon it for the good of everyone.
New Site Activity Log has been added
The next time you are in you management mode click on Your Site, then Site
Activity. We have added a new feature that is focused on showing site changes,
not to be confused with Member Activity. The new site activity log is designed
to show you when admin related functions are used. This was put in place to help
sites that have more then one administrator. The log should show when a new page
is added, elements deleted, forum topics are approved and so on. We hope this
helps make it easier for you to track what Admins are making changes to what.
This is a new feature will be improved on over time thanks to your future
feedback, but keep in mind this feature is not designed to track member related
actions.
Email Notifications Changes
This week we have been working hard on reworking our email notifications so
your website communicates better with your members. Some areas we have improved
in the first of our series of changes to email notifications;
- Forums Subscriptions - Now when a person posts a topic or reply to a
topic in the forums they will be automatically subscribed to that forum
thread. We have added the option to turn on and off the Auto Subscribe
Feature
- Group Notices - Groups have a few new options this week. Members of
groups can control email notices by the group. If the member has email
notices is turned on for a specific group they will get email updates on
things like new members, topic posts and replies, etc.
- We have fixed an issue when someone joins with an account already
registered it would not send an email notice.
We still have more improvements that remain in this area that will be
completed through next week.
Other changes include;
- Fixed an issue with adding images with UPPER case file extensions in
several areas of the Appearance tools. This should now work fine in all
areas, as well as when you preview your theme changes, which used to also
exclude any images that had their file extension in caps.
- Fixed a problem with previewing theme background images added in
modifiers or in CSS mode (and seeing that part of the theme when in manage
mode at all) if the image url had quotes around it.
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Corrected a bug with moving the position of some things in the appearance
tools. Right Header Image and Login Menu had an error when you tried to move
them in some browsers.
- We added the ability to set your sharing method on the Blogs. Facebook
Like is the default setting
- When clicking on the comments link on blog entries it
should scroll to the comments section.
- The Shout box/Comment box on profiles has been changed to
move the field for posting a comment to the top.
- Corrected a display problem with our comments box on the
downloads system. The box displayed at the top of the file information
instead of below it.
- Plus a number of other small adjustments.
We hope you enjoy these updates! As mentioned in our post
The
Ning Push! Updates are coming, we have more things on the way. Like with any
major changes, please tell us about problems or bugs using our support tickets.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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!
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We are currently looking to fill several remote staff (Work at Home) positions for Live Chat help & Support
Job Requirements:
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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.
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You must be over 18 years old
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Reasonable Grammar/Spelling Ability
-
You have a reliable computer and broad band connection
Job Benefits:
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Flexible Schedule, 15-25 hours per week
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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
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