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

Today we have released a new publish that carries with it a number of visible changes and improvements.

Blog Improvements

1. New Blog Preview when adding or editing a blog entry. This allows you to see how your blog post will look on the page after saving it!
2. Save as Draft button, now you can come back later to finish that next great blog entry. Drafts will store on the site for 30 days and has a visible link at the top of the blog so you can access your drafts.
3. Blog Scheduling, you can set a date and time for your blog entry to post to the public, very handy for planning holiday greetings and such.

Profile Changes

1. We have renamed the Add Elements link to Apps. The link displays a list of elements (now called Profile Apps) a users can add to their profiles. This should make it easier for users to understand how to add things to their page. Now from the Apps pages there is also an Add More button to access the Widgetbox App Library.
2. Add Widget has been moved the the Profile Apps page under the Add More option.
3. My Home has been phased out and replaced with My Feed, My Feed will take the users directly to their Activity Feed while keeping them within the profile wrapper.
4. Add/Edit Style has been renamed to Profile Designer

New Social Integration Settings Page
To access go to Manage Site > Settings > Manage Settings
This new settings feature has been put in place to make it easy to configure features and settings that may rely on 3rd party social solutions such as Twitter.

1. Configure your own Twitter APP information. This information is now required if you want to allow your users to post to twitter when they update there status on your website. As some of you know the Tweetit feature was broken because Twitter had removed the feature we were using for your users to update there twitter feed when posting a status update. This publish solves that problem but you will need to configure via http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere.
2. Share Content Template customization. We have standardized the sharing feature, by default you will have a Twitter and Facebook Like button on content like Blogs, Videos, Photos and Events. But you can change that template to use AddThis, ShareThis or customize your own. You would use values of $item_title and $item_url to pass the Page Title and/or Page Url to your sharing solution.
3. The Settings for configuring single signin powered by RPXNOW has been moved to this page. We have made it easier to configure this as well by providing a separate API key and Realm boxes.

Other Changes and Fixes in this update

• Link Directory - We have developed our own Website Thumbnail solution to generate previews of sites from the links. In the past we used 3rd party solutions that had branding and were somewhat unrelaible. This will fix the broken images you may have seen in your link directory over the last few days.
• Email Form Captcha Feature, if you are using the #draw_captcha()# SPL function in your email forms, the Pick an Image has been replaced with a more standardized Captcha method that is powered by ReCaptcha.
• Plus a number of other less noticeable bug fixes that effected a very limited number of our users.

We hope you enjoy these updates, we have a number of other items still in development that we hope to have released in the next few weeks.

With any large update like this, there may be bugs or other unforeseen issues, DO NOT POST ISSUES IN COMMENTS! Please report bugs and issues via a Support Request.

Yesterday we rolled out an update which we have been working hard on for last few months. Along with working on new features we knew it was very important to make sure everything worked well for the final release of Internet Explorer 9 (which just came out a couple days ago). Additionally, we know that load speed and performance of your sites is of the utmost priority. With all that in mind we structured a plan of action to re-write and re-structure almost every aspect of the platform to optimize performance, decrease load time and have great compatibility with all modern browsers (including the very latest).

We are pleased to inform you that we have accomplished our goals. In our side-by-side speed test comparisons, the updated Spruz platform loads pages as much as twice as fast as before the update! Also, the Spruz platform is now completely compatible with the new IE browser and should work great in the new Firefox browser when it comes out in a couple months. During this process, we went through all our code written over the last 5 years to optimize and bring everything current with the latest technologies in mind. This opens the door for new and exciting future development.

We also recently completed a new Content Template section for deeper site customization: Email Templates. Now you can customize each of the email types that your site sends out to members. You can fully tailor each one with full HTML support to fit the needs of your site.

Note: This update required many resource files to be updated. Even though we have taken all possible measures to try to force your browser to get the latest version of the updated files some browsers may ignore that. In this case, you may expirence problems or errors on your site. The solution is to clear your cache and restart your browser to correct your issues.

As with any major update, there may be a bug or two which we missed. If you encounter any problems, please let us know in a support request and we will address it.

Today we have published our new revamp to the member subscription module. The focus of this update was to update the look, add expanded currency options, and allow for new billing terms!

Our Subscription Module Features:

1. Setup of page and feature access for people that have purchased a subscription
2. Integration with PayPal payment processing that only requires you to have a verified PayPal Account to accept payments
3. Support for setting up subscriptions using Days, Weeks, Months and Years
4. Currency Support for US, Canada, Euro, Pounds Sterling and AUD
5. Automatic permission assignment; once a member subscribes they will be granted subscription level access to your site within 5 minutes
6. Customizable Subscription Description and Title
7. Subscriber report to see all your active and expired subscribers
8. Free Trial support to offer subscribers a way to try your service before payment; this requires the subscriber to cancel if they do not want to be billed further

We have also posted 2 new Wiki pages to help you further with configuring Membership Subscriptions.

What is the member subscription module?

Setting up Member Subscriptions

Also included with this update;

• We revamped the profile comment element to change some of the structure, to include the persons name next to the photo, and to offer previews of the first 30 words of a post in activity feeds. If a profile is marked as private, activity will not be posted to the main site activity feed.
• Plus, a number of user reported bugs have been fixed.

So you are aware, we have a number of cool new improvements in the works to finish off this year! Remember, if you have issues or problems please open a support request at http://www.spruz.com?page=support

We have applied a new update today that improves the group invite functions, allows you to turn off the friends feature and more!

Here is a list of features and improvements this update brings to the platform;

•  Group admins can set who can invite new members to the group, (Admins Only or Members)
• When someone starts an Invite they can ether invite their friends from within your website or send out an email to all their contacts
• Invited people automatically join the group regardless of the Approval option for the group.
• Group Invite Messages are fully customizable.
• Improved Group Box Element, before we used the same element that was used for the Groups page, however we now have a dedicated Group Box element you can place on other pages with it's own set of options.
• The site setting page that controls the features of profiles has been renamed from Member Profile Settings to Profile and Group Settings
• A new option has been added to the site group settings that allows you to set the viewing level for groups separately from profiles. Thus you could setup your groups to require a subscription and leave the profiles open for everyone.
• The Friends Profile Feature checkbox on the Profile and Groups Setting page now turns off all friend related features. Thus if you wanted to have a network were everyone is each others friend you can do so.
• We have added a captcha box on the Join site page for a member that is already registered on the Spruz Platform but has not joined with your website
• The Profile Settings page have been improved by add Change Email, and Change Display name to that area. Thus all profile related functions have been added to a structured account settings page, this is handy if you wanted a one click account link rather then a drop down list.
• You can now add a captcha code to the Email Form Element by using #draw_captcha()# anywhere in the editor for customizing your form.
• New Blog Options to turn off comments and sharing on a blog post. You will see a new option block when you add or edit your blog entries.
• TinyChat Now supports seeing admins as moderators.
• We have applied a number of adjustments to the platform for the upcoming Member Subscription Module update that will be released Friday afternoon.
• We completed the adjustments needed so that users in Ireland and Australia will not see a message that requires them to upgrade their free site. As part of our updates to phase our free services in countries outside the US, Canada, Great Brittan, Belgium, Ireland, and Australia. Read the full post

As mentioned earlier we do have a number of improvements coming to the Member Subscription Module, some improvements include ability to set a range of payment terms and support for other currencies. We are completing the changes for the improvements to that system, plus new Comment Box settings for release by this weekend!

With the large number of adjustments, please report bugs and issues via support tickets, if you have comments about our changes to free please post go to our blog post about it.

Recently we have made a number of improvements to the groups to make them easier for you and your members to use.

For starters we have made some adjustments in the way of usability, these adjustments include;

• In the group menu we have relabeled the tabs as follows: Home to Group Home, Members to Group Members and we replaced the My Groups with Join or Leave Group to make it easier for the member to tell if they are a member of that group or not.
• On Profiles the My Groups element has been expanded with new customization options that allow a member to set how many groups to display that they are a member of, change the sort order of the groups and includes a new View more link at the bottom that does a search on your site groups page of all groups that person is a member of.
• In your Profile and Registration Settings you have 2 new navigation options you can add to Profiles that includes a Blogs and Groups link, by enabling these options will add 2 new links to a members profile menu that does a search for the Blogs they have created or Groups they are a member of.

By popular demand you can now message all group members if your are the creator of the group! This is a good example of how the Idea Room Forum here on the Owners Community works for you. This was one of our popular idea room posts that made sense for us to add. You will find this option in the Group Options on any group you created.

Other minor changes include;

• We change the label of the Management Bar Appearance Menu option Choose a Theme to Load a Theme, because you can load a theme you saved or from the theme library. Thanks to your feedback Choose just did not make sense
• The Anywhere uploader icon you see in most places were a single photo or file can be uploaded has been changed from an Arrow pointing up to the word Upload. Many users did not know clicking that is how you upload a photo, instead of using an URL.

We hope you enjoy these changes, we have a number of other items in development based on demand from the Idea Room Forum.

As always, if you encounter problems, or issues please open a ticket on it via Support Tickets. If you have a suggestion on something that will make the platform easier to use or can enhance its features take it to the idea room!