Top Features Include;

• Allow you and your members to sell items via the Store
  • You decide if just you or your members can add and sell items direct from your websites. Set options to approve items added for additional level of control over your store.
• Use the Social Store as a shopping cart, classifieds or e-delivery platform
  • With customizable options you can configure your store to as a place to sell items, ebooks or as a classifieds. Turn on and off payment options, item styles, e-delivery, location, stock number, etc in the settings area for this feature.
• Customize Categories
  • Similar to the video, blog, discussions and other features, you can customize your categories and sub categories for items listed in your social store!
• Geo Location Based Searching
  • By using the Advanced Social Store Search element you can allow buyers to search your store based on location.
• Integrated with PayPal, store tracks payments as they post. Making it easy for buyers and sellers to keep track of purchases
  • The system uses PayPal for all payment processing, this allows your member to customize there own shipping and payment features. Paypal makes it easy to keep track of customer and their information.

This new feature is free for everyone to use and carries no additional fees. However we have restricted the number of items you can have in the store based on your plan. 10 items on free, 50 on our starter plan, 500 for plus customers and Unlimited on the unlimited plan.

To add this new feature on your site go to Manage Site > Your Site > Add Page or Feature and select Social Store from the list!

Like any new feature there will be bugs and issues, it is very important to report problems you may encounter via support ticket. DO NOT POST issues in comments!

We hope this new feature will bring added value to your website. This feature will be expanded upon over the coming months based on the needs of users like you so feel free to provide us with your feedback! Enjoy!

Today you will notice on your registration and email forms a new numbered slider. The system works by allowing users to complete a form action by dragging the slider between a set of numbers in the numbered slider bar.

This will help foil bot programs as highly unlikely the bots can move the slider and complete the question. At the same time it should be easier for your users to register since there is no complex code or cryptic set of numbers and letters to figure out.

We have layered protect that rechecks users logging back into the site to re-complete the captcha system. Once they complete a the Captcha that should not be prompted again for quite sometime. This helps solve another issue where a users account is exploited on one website or a bot was able to get pass protection measures before.

You do have the option to turn off the captcha measures by going to Manage Site > Settings > Manage Settings > Login and Registration Settings

Like any new feature or improvement we will be making minor changes and collecting feedback. If you have problems or issues with this update please open a support request so they can be properly investigated.

We have applied an new update today that adds 2 new elements and adds a new feature to the member subscription module.

New Discussion Preview Element
This element displays information from the discussion system. Thus you can offer a sneak peek to your members of topics recently created within the discussion feature. 

Advanced Member Search Element
We have expanded the search features for members to include GEO Location based searching via our new Advanced Member Search. This element can be added to any page and allows people to search for members that have been GEO Tagged. Thus it is now possible to search for members based on distance. This feature will only display members that have been geo tagged. Current members will need to update their location to show up for GEO based searching.

One Time Member Subscription Payments
If you are taking advantage of our Member Subscription Module we have now added a new payment option. This option allows you to set a onetime fee for your sites subscription.

A Sneak Peak at what is in Development Now:

New Social Store! This feature will allow you and your members to post items for sale.

Features will include;

1. Allow anyone to sell goods, and services via your website
2. Secure E-Delivery Features (Great for Songs, EBooks, Etc)
3. Deep Category Support using our Standardized Category System
4. Payments processed by Paypal with Google Checkout Options coming in the future
5. Control the field options for items posted (Add/Remove fields such as Payment, Delivery Method, Weight, Etc.)
6. Geo location Searching! Making it easy for buyers to find sellers close to them!
7. Very flexible system, will be adaptable to use as a Store or Classifieds.  

This feature is expected to be completed by the end of this month!

We want to remind you that like all updates there may be problems or issues. DO NOT POST ISSUES IN COMMENTS. Please open a support request to report the issue so it may be addressed promptly. 

We have recently an update to your website that adds a few improvements.

1. Category Sorting - Next time you manage your category lists for discussions, blogs, etc you will notice a double arrow icon that by clicking on holding will allow you to re-arrange your category structure. By default categories sort by name.
2. Login as Member - Ever want to see how your site looks or functions from one of your members point of view? From the members profile page we have added a new option that allows the site creator to login as any user on the website with just one click, no emails or passwords needed. This function should come in really handy to better troubleshoot issues within your site structure and permissions as well as being about to walk a member through how to do something within your website! Due to the security sensitive nature of this function, this feature only works from the site creators account. 
3. Manually Add Members to a group - We have seen this as a common requested feature. This should make it much easier to structure out your groups and further expands the functionality for this feature. To add a member go to the group members section of a group and start to type the name of the member you wish to add to a group into the box on that page.

We have a number of new features in development planned for release in the next few weeks.

If you have problems or issues related to the improvements in this update please make sure to report them via support ticket so we can correct those problems as soon as possible!

Over the last few months, our focus has been on adding consistency to the features and capabilities of the platform; before we develop new features that will be released next year. Consistency improves the experience for you and your members. This update process started with our changes to the Member Administration, moving most member management functions to the front end where you spend most of your time.

In our latest round of development we have improved 5 key areas:

Groups
With groups we wanted to deliver more functional, yet versatile features. Thus we have made two exciting new improvements:

1. Group Events - Enabling group events from your Manage Settings > Group and Profile Settings page. Your Groups can create their own events. This should come in real handy for better organizing local or regional events.
2. Group Topics Element has been replaced with our new Discussion System. The discussion system (More Details Below) delivers the same features to groups as with the main discussions feature. Plus, when members of a group post topics or replies all members of that group will get an email. To get instructions on the transition to this system, check your Administration Announcements page in your website management bar.

Discussions (Brand New Discussion Feature!)
The new discussions feature will phase out using the Topics Element in groups and eventually replace the forums system. The goal with the new discussion feature is to provide an easy to use, yet versatile discussion platform. Some of the features this new system includes:

1. Deep category support. This expands upon the existing forums that only allowed for 2 levels of sub categories, by delivering the ability to add an infinite number of sub categories. If you prefer something more simple you can create topics without worrying about or creating categories.
2. Nested replies, shows the reply directly under the members post with up to 4 reply sub-levels. We find this method will allow users to follow topics more carefully and allow for sub conversations within a topic.
3. Subscribe to topics - When a member posts, the member has the option to be emailed anytime another member replies to the same topic or when using Discussions within a group, group members are automatically notified.
4. Lock and Feature Topics - As a moderator or group administrator you can optionally lock or feature topics. This makes it easy to post discussion category rules.
5. Approval options, allows you to get a notice when a new topic is posted and approve it before appearing.
6. Set the viewing level by category so that only users with the correct access can view and enter a category of discussions.

Downloads (File Sharing)
We have completely re-written the file sharing system to make it easier to understand and more flexible. Some features include:

1. Category support! You can now arrange your downloads by category, and you can set if you want your default page view to be a full file list or by category.
2. File Type Icons, your files will have an attractive icon telling what type of file is uploaded.
3. New options to control if you want comments and ratings enabled for files.
4. Uploading is much easier then before with on page file uploading and editing.
5. Approval options to approve new additions before the file displays on the website.
6. Ability to feature files.

Member Subscriptions
We have enhanced some of the management features to make it easier to update subscription date and cancel subscribers.

1. Editing and deleting of subscribers has been added so you can manually change the due date of a subscriber account.
2. We have made some minor changes to the subscription signup page to make it a little more customizable.

Categories
We have really made some cool changes here, by giving categories more uses for more systems. Some of the improvements include;

1. Most systems now offer a category view option (Wiki, Videos, File Sharing, Groups, Chat, Discussions). The category view changes the listing to show categories first rather then the list of items. This will help deliver more organization to your website.
2. Categories now include a description box and will soon offer a who can view this category selection similar to the discussion categories. 

In the near future we also plan to allow control over approving content by category. Thus you can have some categories where content is published right away and other categories that require approval of the topic before it is published.

Other improvements:

Email notification option on comment boxes! To improve the conversation on this feature, member can subscribe to all comment boxes, thus when someone replies an email will be dispatched.

We have also preformed a list of bug fixes and other improvements that should increase overall page load time.

We want to thank you for being a part of Spruz! If you have problems or issues related to this update please go to our support request page and open a ticket, this will help us track the issue better and allows us to collect more information about the problem from you.

Here is a brief list of improvements and changes;

1. Profile Moderators can now edit all profile information on an account. This includes moderating the Profile Questions entered.
2. Profile Moderators can also change Privacy and Notification Settings for members.
3. Banning of IP and Email Addresses has been added. You can customize this by going to Manage Site > Settings > Manage Settings > Login and Registration. On this page you would list IP's and Emails of accounts you no longer want to access your login or registration pages.
4. Self Deactivation of accounts has been removed. If a member wants to remove their account you must do it for them or tell them to turn off the notification settings if you want to keep the member in the database.
5. Member Accounts will be regularly purged for inactivate accounts that have not logged into your website for over a year.
6. When using the search members box, the search will also search in emails. Thus you can enter a users email address to quickly find a user account.

We understand this change will be an adjustment for some. However we are open to your feedback if we have left out a feature you might have been used to on the platform.

This update is part of a larger platform update in the works. This update will be rolled out in phases and should be completed by Christmas.

 Here is a sneak peak:

1. We are working on changing the permission systems in the platform for the old access level method, to using roles. Roles will add more flexibility in how you can structure your website moderation hierarchy, by allowing you to create your own roles for members and administrators
2. New Discussions system that will be far easier to use and navigate. This will also replace the current topics systems used for groups by giving groups their own Discussion categories.
3. Groups are being re-worked to better tie into the other features of the site. Including Events, Photos, Videos and Blogs. Allowing these systems to be categorized by the group member posting to them.

Like with any update, if you encounter problems or issues please report them to us via a support ticket!

UPDATE 11/11/11

Thank you for your feedback, we understand sometimes changes are released that do not agree well with some. Keep in mind that we release and make changes based on user feedback. While sometimes updates don't seem like an improvement, we must make changes to advance the platform.

In this latest change we see we under estimated the value of sorting members in the list. We have elected to return the backend member list. While keeping the management of members on the profile page.

This update has already been applied.

In our goal of improving Spruz we have removed Spruz Single Signin. Now when members register, they are only registered on your website and no where else.

By rolling this update we have added some new features that improve your administration over members.

1. Manually Adding of Member Accounts - Now from your member page administrators can manually add members. This should make things much easier for admins on private or invite only websites.
2. Manually Confirm Emails - In the past the only methods of confirming an email account where for the member to get the email and click the link. However we are aware sometimes spam filters stand in the way. Now the site administrator can manually confirm the email for the end user.
3. Reset Member Passwords - When viewing the member details of a member from your member management page you can now click the Reset Password link to reset the users password to an auto generated password.

Also included with this update are a range of other bug fixes and performance enhancements.

If you encounter issues, problems, errors with this update please report them via support ticket at http://www.spruz.com?page=support

We will not troubleshoot issues via comments!!! Comments related to problems or issues will be removed.

Member Photo Improvements and Changes
We have changed how member photos are handled to make the system easier for your members to use and for you to moderate. If you want to offer photo uploading and collections for your members you will need to have the Photos page added to your site.

• You can now turn on the option to Approve Photos Uploaded by members.
• Members no longer have to create a photo collection before uploading photos. We have added a default un-assigned collection for photos freshly uploaded.
• You can separately set who can moderate photos uploaded by members.

Chat Room Improvements and New Features
With the Chat Room you will see as the most dramatic change and was a big focus in this update. We have replaced the service we use for the chat room, added multi-room support and more. The chat room has also been changed to a pay feature and comes with any of our plans. Free users will have a 30 day trial of this feature.

• Now you and your users can create more then one chat room. Now Spruz is the only social website platform that supports user created chat rooms!
• The Chat Software is now powered by Skysa rather than Tinychat. Plus Spruz has been given the chance to use Skysa's new integrated video chat (which is currently in beta) before it is publicly released to Skysa users next month.
• Configurable chat moderation control allows you to set the access level required to moderate rooms created.
• Set the access for who can create new rooms. Room Creators are automatically moderator over the room they created.
• Setting to Allow Non Registered site members to join rooms. This will allow people to join a chat room without being a registered member of your site.
• Friends only setting that will create a room where only friends of the room creator can join it.
• Options to disable video chat on all chat rooms or by the room.
• Room Description Field for setting more details about a room, rules, etc.
• Customize your own bad word filters so make the language used in chat as clean as you want.
• Sharing Tools that make it easy for users to share a room.

Some of the other features of the new chat room include;

• User Customization Styling - A user can change their style of text and background of their messages in chat. Their style changes are remembered from across different chat rooms and sessions.
• Smilies - 25 fun smilies to use in chat.
• User Message Highlight - Hover over a user in the right column and all their messages in the conversation will be highlighted.
• Auto Linking - Paste in any URL into your chat message and it will auto link allowing other people to click and visit the location in a new window.
• Image URL Support - Paste in a URL of an image and the image will show up in your conversation and in the Media tab of the right column.
• YouTube Video URL Support - Paste in a URL of a YouTube video and the video will show in your conversation fully playable. Videos shared in chat also show in the Media tab of the right column.
• Out of View Message Notification - If you are scrolled up (perhaps viewing a photo or video) in the chat room and a new message comes in, the message and sender info will show at the bottom of the conversation area allowing you to keep track of what is going on.
• Audio/Video Chat - Use your webcam to chat with others in the room.
• Shared White Board - Start a shared whiteboard and allow other users in the chat room to join you for a fun and useful shared drawing experience.
• Shared Document Editing - Start a shared document editing session and you and other users can collaborate on documents in real time.
• Welcome Message - Set a friendly welcome message which everyone will see at the top of the conversation when they join the room.
• Go to Profile - Click on a user in the right column and have the option to go to their profile in a new window.
• Ignore - Click on a user in the right column and you have the option to ignore them. When a person is ignored all their previous conversation messages are hidden and no new ones are displayed. You can always un-ignore them too.
• @ User - Send a conversation message flagged for a particular user by clicking the @ button on a previous message of theirs. Your @ message shows up in the conversation with a label showing it is directed at that user.

Other improvements

• Activity Feeds now record all activity items. Example: If a user posted 3 discussions over a 60 minute period the activity feed used to only display the most recently posted discussion. This was done to prevent very active users from drowning out the activity feeds. However thanks to user feedback the feeds now record all activity as it happens with the exception of a 60 second delay filter.
• New Manage Features Admin Section. Under the Your Site manage menu we have added a new Manage Features option. This quickly lists the installed features of your site, show how many items are in each and if you have any items to approve if require approval is turned on. You can also quickly edit the options of each feature from this area. The goal of this addition was to add another more easy way to customize and control the features of your site.
• We have expanded the year selection when a user registers to leave it up to the site owners what to do with users under 14 years of age.

Like any update the introduces new features there is the chance of having bugs, issues or things that might be off. So please do not post issues in comments, open a support request to report a problem.

Word Filter Improvements!
We have completely overhauled this feature to make it more powerful. This change required us to start over from scratch, thus you will need to resave your customized word filters by simply going to your Word filter page and clicking the save button.

Some new features you will enjoy include ability to set case matching, and if you want to replace only whole words or not. You will also notice that the area to customize your sites word filters has moved to the Manage Settings pages.

New Advanced Options for Email and Default site domain!
We have new settings in the advanced options section of your website settings to give you more control:

Set a Default Domain: This feature is very handy in case you upgrade and add your own domain name but don't want to lose the traffic from your .spruz.com domain. You can select a domain name to use by default and our system will forward all your traffic onto the domain default. This is really useful to improve your site's SEO as well.

Customize your SMTP Service: While we offer basic email sending with all websites, in some cases you need more then that. You can now customize these settings to allow you to set your own SMTP service. Using an SMTP service can give you more options like email tracking, increase message deliverability, open/click rates and more with your email. One solution we recommend for this is Socket Labs.

File Manager Improvements!
Uploading in the file manager has been improved and simplified. Now, instead of having a "Finish Uploading" button, the current directory automatically updates to show the newly uploaded files after all of them have completed.

New Design Option!
A new design option has been added to allow additional CSS files to be linked to. The option is at Appearance > Advanced > External CSS on your site manage bar. One of the biggest things this option allows is a wider selection of fonts that are viewable to all your visitors. Find out how to use this feature to add custom fonts to your site here: http://my.spruz.com/pt/Using-Custom-Fonts-on-Your-Website/wiki.htm

Rich Text Area Improvements!
We have added support for copied image codes in the insert image tool in the editor. Now the insert image tool is able to detect an image html code that a user pasts into the URL field. If it detects this HTML code it will automatically extract the image URL without the user needing to do anything different.

We have added a loading preview placeholder for the editor. This way people with slower connections/computers will see the editor preview while the editor is loading instead of a blank space. Additionally, the editor now has live spell-checking turned on by default

Theme Library Improvement!
We have improved the styling and streamlined the theme selection process. As part of this change, the theme you select will now show in a live preview of your site behind the theme selection dialog. This allows a much better look at what your site will look like with that theme before you apply it without having to preview the theme in a popup window.

Bug Fixes!
As always we have corrected a number of bugs and issues reported by our Spruz website creators, like an issue with staying logged in when using a .co.uk domain, and corrected a problem where some RSS feeds were not loading correctly to name a few.

We have a number of different areas on the platform we are working on, features that we hope to see released by the end of June include new improved photo systems to make uploading and managing all image content on your site much easier, and more API Features.

As always if you encounter bugs or issues please do not post about it in the comments. Open a support request please!

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.

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.

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

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.

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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!

A slide show has been one of our most often requested features. As with any feature development we put a lot of time and planning into what implementation would make the most sense. Here are the key points:

• Simple to setup, just choose Slide Show as a View Type on your element.
• Does not use Flash, for the highest compatibility.
• Auto Sizing based on room available, it will fit to the correct width for where ever you place it on your site.

The Slide Show view option is currently available on the Member Photo Box element and the Member Box element. All other options on these elements work as they did before, so you can fine tune exactly what is being displayed.

Some features of the new Wiki Include:

• Control access to who can post and edit Wiki pages
• Set Wiki moderator access
• Page commenting and rating options, with further controls if you've enabled these features for your Wiki page
• Multi level category structure to make it easy to organize your wiki; categories can be set by adding the Categories element found under Feature Elements
• Track the edits made to a page and undo unwanted edits
• Optional settings to control editing and edit approval by the page
• Wiki tag based searching
• Friendly page URL's for better S.E.O.
• First system that will take full advantage of our new Content/System Templates system!

If you are using the old Knowledge Base system it will be phased out in the next 90 days, so we recommend moving content over your content to the Wiki.

To add the new Wiki Feature enter your site Management Mode and click on Add Page, you will find it listed in the feature pages section.

Remember! This feature is in beta, and may have issues. If you do find a bug, problem or other usability glitches please report the issue via a support ticket. We will be expanding the Wiki and spending more development resources on it over the next few weeks so make sure to watch this space!

Content Templates

As mentioned, this feature will be the first to have a method of fully customizing the System/Content template. See below example screen shot.

You will notice new content templates in your Settings > Content Templates section in the next week or so. We expect content templates to place a lot more power in the hands of website creators. You will be able to make use of our SPL (Spruz Platform Language), along with custom coding to add your own sharing features, like buttons, and more, which will open up a lot of added functionality.

We have also completed a range of recent changes you should be aware of:

• Videos and Photos now have a Rate It box so more content can be rated. This will also help expand functions for elements to see things like popular videos/photos and so on.
• New profile menu options to add optional links on a persons profile page that does a search of Blogs a member has posted or Groups they belong to.
• The Topics element for groups now has a reply box rather then a link to click, which was added to reduce a step when replying to a topic.
• We made text smarter, for example on paged when it should say 1 page it used to say 1 pages, the same applies to 1 minute used to say 1 minutes.

You will hopefully notice overall faster load times and pages should be more snappy.

Please comment to let us know if you feel things are running slower or faster as we continue to tweak our new hardware and configurations.

• The tags field on blogs has been increased in length by 3 times, allowing more room for tags.
• The Profile Blog Element on Member Profiles has a new View All link located at the bottom that does a search of all blogs posted by them in the Blogs page.
• New more Friendly Profile URLs! This was a top requested item for more friendly profile URLS within the site, when you click on a link to profile it will be /profile/membername/. The member name information was generated when someone first registered on account within the Spruz platform. If they want to update their profile URL have them go to change display name and just hit the submit button. The profile address is based on the members display name.
• When changing your account email address we no longer require you to re-enter your password to complete the process.
• New Option Section on profiles added,  we have moved the Add Friend and Message links from right below the member profile photo to this new section and added the links for Editing Profile Information, Settings, Changing Display Name, Etc. We had allot of feedback from people that found it difficult to add a friend or send message, plus makes the core account options and inviting friends easier to find and access.
• Featuring and Approving Member options has been added to the new member profile options block on profile pages, if you have admin access on profile pages you will see a feature and approval/decline option on account profiles. This allows your profile admins to approve member accounts now, thus there may be people you want to give access to approve members but you don't want them to have full access on the website.
• We have improved Language support with new Page Character Set option, the character set controls how a page returns the characters of a page. This is very useful our site creators from other countries as this helps with the displaying of text and symbols required by other languages. The character set can be changed by going to the Website Settings page and is the new option added to the very bottom of the website information tab.
• We have added style code to restrict the size of embedded video on the videos page. This way they all display in a uniform size.
• Plus we have fixed a range of bugs that people have reported via support tickets.

As always if you encounter a problem, issue or something that keeps you from effectively using your website with us, please open a support ticket to tell us about it!

Have a great weekend!

The Music Feature comes in 2 parts, a site and a profile music player.

To add the Website Music Player; go to any Element based page, enter management mode and click on Add Element. Next go to Stand Alone Elements and click on the Music player you will see in the list. You won't see the music player unless you have a website upgrade. Upgrade for only $9.95/mo to use the Music Player Feature .

To Enabled the Profile Music Player; go to your website Management Mode > Settings > Manage Settings. Next go to Stand Alone Elements and click on Member Profile Settings. On the member settings page you will notice an section that lists Available Profile Elements, Check the box that says Music Player and save changes. Now when you go to your profile and Add an Element you will have the music player. Upgrade for only $9.95/mo to use the Music Player Feature.

Top Features of our New Music Player

• Upload or Link to MP3 Files
• Share Music Across Players
• Drag and Drop Playlist Sorting
• Shuffle Playlist feature
• Auto Play setting
• Control Access Levels of who can add music
• Customize your players style with Custom CSS code.

As with past updates there may be unexpected issues or problems. Please use our support tickets to report issues encountered. 

We have added category support to the Videos, Groups and Link Directory systems and the category structure has been re-done to allow for unlimited nesting. This way you can better organize any of these systems that have a lot of content, by adding as many sub-categories as you need. When adding a blog category, for instance, you will now have a drop down tree menu for the category you wish to place it in, or it can be placed in the root to function as a top level category. Also we have made categories optional, so if you do not wish to setup categories you may have all the content placed in the root and not in a category.

Setting up categories is easy, go to your Add Elements in management mode and locate the categories element. From that element you can pick the Feature you want that element to control categories for.

We have expanded tagging to work on blog posts. When creating a blog post you have a field to type in optional tags to associate with the post. Categories and tags can be used together or independently now.

The final piece of this update is to expand how your site content can be used. We have added RSS feeds to the Site Activity and for Forums on your site. This allows your members to subscribe to the feeds to get updates, and also allows you to pull in the information to other sites if needed. You can see the RSS feed button at the bottom of your forum threads and activity feed element on your site; it looks like this:

As with any newly released update, there may be bugs that you encounter. The Support Ticket area is the place to report any that you encounter.