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Etano Community Builder Blogs

• Things are Slowly Getting Back to Normal

  I finally got my internet connection here, in Germany. Team will be back to work on September 1st and then things should be back to normal.
  Meanwhile, I created 2 new custom fields: field skype and field yahoo. They show the Skype/Yahoo status of the user (if privacy level allows) and lets other users call/IM them.
  
  An AIM field is coming shortly but MSN, unfortunately, is not possible because MSN has no API to interrogate. I am thinking of some workarounds but we'll see.
  
  Alertpay is also on the way, I haven't forgotten about it, I know you all are waiting for ... read more
  Posted on 26/08/2008 07:46 AM by datemill in Development News

• Holidays

  For the moment I am in the process of relocating to Germany and the rest of the team has taken their holidays. Please excuse the lack of support and the slow answering time.
  Unexpectedly I have no internet connection here and it takes up to 3 weeks for them to come and connect me. I will try to find a hotspot to at least answer ... read more
  Posted on 01/08/2008 02:29 PM by datemill in Development News

• Version 1.13 of Our Networking Script is Released

  After a long wait we have finally released Etano Community Builder v1.13.
  It's a huge release and filled with goodies for you. We marked it as beta for now but I think it is pretty stable. We will keep testing it over the next few days.
  New customers can purchase either v1.13beta or the stable v1.12 from the purchase page.
  Current customers of Etano have already been given access to v1.13 so they could test it if they wanted.
  There's no automatic patch available to upgrade you from 1.12 to 1.13 yet but we will create it soon.
  So to download v1.13 just login into your datemill account (or go to your admin panel - package manager - check for updates) then click on the "My Licenses" link on the left then on the little P icon next to your license and there you will see the beta, ... read more
  Posted on 05/07/2008 04:38 AM by datemill in Development News

• A Review of the Previous Weeks

  There's been some time since my last development news so I thought I should bring everyone not involved in the forum up to date.
  
  We had a week of delay because my credit card was "hacked" and all money taken from it.
  Since I am such a control freak, development was slow without me around.
  
  To solve the problem of the private member items (photos, blogs, videos, etc) which is an underdeveloped feature right now I proposed a simple solution to our customers: friends should have access to private items, others should not. Of course, this lead to 3 pages of answers over 2 days and the discussion still going strong. Opinions are split but most appear to agree with a default simple solution which could later be expanded with an addon for Etano community builder. Social network ... read more
  Posted on 03/06/2008 04:21 PM by datemill in Development News

• Reaching the Critical Mass with Your Site

  Today I stumbled upon a very interesting blog post about "critical mass". While it doesn't tell you how to reach critical mass with your site - this is entirely up to you, it does help you better understand what you need to do and what to focus on in order to acquire and retain users. Also make sure you read the comments too, some are pretty insightful.
  
  There are many more interesting posts on this guy's blog, all worthwhile, I suggest you take a look.
  
  Update: I searched the net a bit and I found a couple more links on this topic:
  - A downloadable book about building online communities.
  - A facebook group for community ... read more
  Posted on 17/05/2008 03:43 PM by datemill in Development News

• Upcoming Features for Your Community

  Just wanted to let you know about what we've been working on lately:
  - I previously announced that we have video support in Etano in the form of "My Videos" - a feature like the existing "My Photos". Well, we've now added support for videos in comments and blog posts. We've created a new bbcode button which you can use to enter the video sharing code. I know some of you want this feature.
  - View the IP addresses used by members in their profile (in admin).
  - Alertpay integration is complete, we just need to test it a bit and we'll release it.
  - Unified cache system. There's only one cache folder now, independent of the skins. We had a cache folder in the root folder and then a cache folder for each skin. It was difficult to manage and not very scalable. Now, for those concerned with speed and optimization you can keep the cache folder on a separate disk or even ... read more
  Posted on 24/04/2008 01:31 PM by datemill in Development News

• Video support for Etano Community Builder

  We finished integrating videos into Etano. This feature will be released as a plugin after we release v1.13 of Etano.
  This video plugin allows members to post videos from Youtube, Metacafe, Revver (possibly more).
  Not only that but members can also upload new videos to Youtube directly from your site, with no need for them to ever leave your site. And they're not asked to provide their Youtube user/pass so no security concerns there.
  
  We are going to wait the release of v1.13 of Etano before releasing this plugin because that should add support for item sharing (share a photo/video/whatever with your ... read more
  Posted on 12/04/2008 06:47 PM by datemill in Development News

• Google Launches an Web Application Platform

  As you might know, Amazon offers some web services for data storage, virtual servers and database.
  From the research we did for a customer who wants to host Etano community builder on the Amazon platform, the virtual server solution works with no problems with Etano.
  The great thing about this is that the virtual server is "elastic" - you can add resources (disk space, cpu power, memory, etc) to it on the fly, no need to purchase another server and move your site to the new server.
  
  However, the prices for all services can be a little prohibitive if you start consuming too many resources.
  
  Until now Amazon was the only company to offer this kind of services (as far as I know). But this has changed. Google ... read more
  Posted on 08/04/2008 11:27 AM by datemill in Development News

• 3 Million Cities db Integration with Etano Community Builder

  One of our customers provided us with a database of 3 million cities in the world to integrate into Etano community builder.
  The database, available for purchase from geodatasource.com comes in a tab-delimited format.
  The gold edition which we integrated is 400Mb in size and seems pretty complete. The nice thing about it is that it contains the longitude and latitude of the cities which could enable users to search by distance anywhere in the world. Of course, the results will not be that accurate because for small distances all members from the same city as the member searching will be returned but hey, it's a start.
  
  The database does have its errors and it is pretty difficult to work with given the size and the inconsistencies but it is usable anyway. I didn't like the fact that there's no obvious way to tell which of the listed cities are actually states (or counties for non-US countries).
  Some of the states are listed as regular cities but ... read more
  Posted on 22/03/2008 04:31 PM by datemill in Development News

• A Script That Bad That We Won't Create an Integration Bridge for It

  I usually don't write bad reviews of the scripts we come in contact with but this one is so bad that it's just not worth messing with. I'm talking about V3chat instant messenger which they charge $55 USD for.
  
  As I said in my previous post we're integrating third party scripts with our Etano community package and will continue to do so.
  Obviously, instant messengers are high on our list and one of the requests was for v3messenger.
  
  At first I contacted v3chat to ask for documentation on integrating their messenger  with a custom database. As I said in the forum that didn't went well at all.
  Then one of our customers purchased it and asked us to integrate it for him. I still have nightmares about the mess that is their code.
  But ... read more
  Posted on 15/02/2008 04:06 PM by datemill in Development News