News

We are thrilled to announce the release of webNetwork 2.0! All of the features were based on your requests, and we thank you for being so helpful in building the best social networking software available. A full list of features is included below. The latest version is available to download from the customers area. For existing customers, an upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0 will be made available within 2 weeks.

New Features

• Address book importers (for Gmail, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail)
• Privacy settings
• Newsletter and mass mailing
• Convert all videos to Flash
• Groups improved
• Group music uploads
• Group video uploads
• Group events
• Group comments
• Custom themes for groups
• Revamped videos section
• Free trial periods
• Simple Windows-based installer
• Easily create new pages through the admin area
• Short profile URLs
• Easily upload profile photo
• Improved profile creation process

We hope you enjoy these great new features, and we look forward to your feedback!

We’ve added a bunch of new WebBoxes that make it simple to add new interactive elements to your site. For those not familiar with our WebBox system, a WebBox is a simple widget that you can place anywhere on your site with a simple tag. For example, simply insert a tag called {WEBBOX_COOLPEOPLE} and the software will replace the tag with the table below. It’s as simple as that, and with all of the different WebBoxes we have, you should be able to make your site even more interactive in minutes!

Here’s a complete listing of all the new WebBoxes:

We’ve added many smaller features that are a great addition to the software. A small portion is included below.

Creating new pages

Creating additional pages to the software can now be done right through the administrative area. You can select which section each page is associated with, and flag if the page requires member registration for viewing. This allows you to adding new pages to your site a breeze!

Short profile URLs

We have no added support for short profile URLs. Members can now go to something like http://www.yoursite.com/customer_username to access a profile. No more long and messy URLs!

Default Photo

When members upload a photo in a photo album, and don’t currently have a profile photo, that uploaded photo will automatically be added as their profile photo. This removes the extra step of forcing members to manually associate an uploaded photo as the profile photo.

Profile Creation Process

The profile creation process has been improved. Customers were facing confusion when clicking the “Next” button didn’t automatically change their settings. This has been modified to save any changes made to the profile.

We’ve been looking for a way to make the installation and upgrade process of webNetwork even easier than it already is, and have found a great solution. In webNetwork 2.0, we will be introducing a Windows based installer that will remove the need to use an FTP client to upload your files. With a few simple clicks, this installer will take care of uploading your files, setting the permissions, and getting your software up and running in no time!

For those of you who are charging for the site (or parts of it), we’ve had a feature to allow a trial period being requested many times.

In version 2.0, you’ll be able to set how many days you’d like to offer the trial period for, and associate a trial with a specific membership level that you’ve already defined. This is a great feature to allow your members to test drive your site, and convert them to paying members afterwards!

We thought that the Videos Home page looked a little dated, and didn’t offer enough user interaction, so our developers threw in a nice fresh look, along with 4 categories of videos that your members can quickly browse. The Videos Home page now lets members view Featured, Most Recent, Most Viewed, and Top Rated videos with the click of a button!

For this new version of webNetwork, we’ve totally revamped the Groups sections. In 1.0, groups could only have photos uploaded. We’ve expanded this to include music, videos, events, comments and themes.

• Music uploads allow members to upload a music clip, and embed it into the group page.

• Video uploads allow the same functionality as the videos, with our new Flash player embedded as well.

• Group events allow the moderator to alert members of new group related events about to happen.

• Comments allow members to post comments to the group, just like they do now within profiles.

• Groups can also have their own custom themes, just like members can have custom profiles.

This should make the Groups section a much more attractive part of your site that your members will love!

Converting videos to Flash, and playing them back in a Flash video player has been one of our most requested features. This new addition allows your members to upload a video clip in virtually any format supported by FFMPEG (required for the video conversions), and automatically convert the video to a Flash format. In addition, our software will also automatically grab a frame from the video which will be used as the video thumbnail. This removes the step of having to upload a thumbnail for each video. Included below is a screenshot of the converted video, embedded in our new Flash video player. Let us know what you think!

One of the most commonly asked questions about webNetwork that we receive is “how can I contact all of my members to make an announcement?”. We haven’t had a great answer to that question, until now.

webNetwork 2.0 will feature a Newsletter feature which will allow you to email large groups of members. You can email all members at once, or to specific profile types. For example, if you want to encourage musicians to upload new music and sell their songs through our webStore software, you can select “Musician profiles” and easily send out a quick mailing. The newsletter feature supports HTML emails, and you can optionally export the entire list of members to a tab delimited file which allows for easy importing into other applications.

One of the most important surrounding emerging social networking sites today is privacy. Members want to be able to make sure their data is kept protected from strangers, and control what content unknown browsers see.

For this reason, we are excited to announce that we will be releasing a new privacy feature in the upcoming webNetwork 2.0. This will allow your members to configure various aspects of their content and set specific privacy settings for each. Let’s take a quick look at what the new feature has to offer.

As you can see, there are four areas where privacy settings can be configured.

Personal Information - This allows your members to hide their name, address, etc and only display it to friends.

Additional Information - This includes sections such as their education, employment information, and pretty much anything else that’s filled out during the profile creation process besides the Personal Info.

My Content - Control if the public can see your blog posts, photos, videos, etc.

My Profile - Make your profile available to the public or friends only.

We’re really excited about this feature, and hope you are too. Let us know what you think and leave a comment!