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October 21st, 2009 Huddler Platform Version 2.2 Release

What's New In This Release?
Primary Focus Of Release

• New site-wide activity stream displaying recent content from all around the site
• Industry Insiders feature release
• Private content email subscriptions added
• Back-end software changes
  

User-Facing

• New activity stream displays content from around the site.
• Variations on the new activity stream display on the home page in place of the Recent Discussions and subscription modules, and on a user's profile in place of the former activity stream, and on the new brand pages in the new Industry Insiders feature
  
• A beta version of the activity stream is available to logged-in users as an alternative to the "classic" All New Posts page
  
• Content is pulled in from forums (like new threads and posts), products (new additions to the site and new reviews), Wikis, and user profiles
• Content can be narrowed down at any time to view a subset of those content groups
• Content can also be viewed either in a detailed view or in a simplified summary view
• Some action items can be expanded to display more information - for example, in the expanded view of a thread, you might see excerpts from the most recent few posts
  
• From the home page, logged in users can filter to view all recent activity on the site or just their subscriptions
  
• Icons identify content types
• User, timestamp, number of replies, views, and other stats are displayed accordingly with different action items

• Industry Insiders feature released to give our communities access to representatives from their favorite companies and professionals being discussed on site. Additionally it's a great opportunity for generating revenue.
  
• Users who are representing commercial interests within the community need to be recognized as such. This way, their biases can be known to the community, but also they can be recognized for being authorities within their respective industries. This type of structure participation for companies provides mutually beneficial value for users (getting "Insider Information") and for companies (understanding how and where they're being discussed within these influential communities.)
  
• Each brand/company associated with a product existing on the site will have a brand tag and brand page. 
  
• The brand page will include an activity feed of content related to this brand from all around the site; this will include recent community reviews about their products, threads and Wikis tagged with their brand tag or any related product tags, etc. 
  
• A basic page will be displayed for brands who are not officially enrolled in the program
• When a brand enrolls and elects to have an upgraded brand page, they can choose to display a banner on their page, contact details (contact name, email, URL); their most popular products will automatically be displayed on the page
• Brand reps can join the site and have their accounts affiliated with the brand - this will incorporate all their site activity on the brand page's activity stream.  Reps can also upload an additional profile picture as well as their name on the brand page.
  
• Reps can also have a special signature file which will set them apart in the community indicating that they are brand reps.  The signature file can have a small logo, up to 4 links, and 150 characters of plain text.  A brand can select to upgrade to use this signature file, without upgrading to a full Industry Insiders brand page

• Private content subscriptions are now included in email digests
• In this release, users with access to any private forums will now receive updates via email for any of their subscriptions.  As with other subscriptions, these will follow the user's global email preference

• Product ranking improvements
• Average star rating calculations and the overall product rank calculations within that category have improved significantly
• Ranking should be much faster, based on new reviews and review edits
  
• Users will be able to better sort by rating

• Forum expansion/collapse preferences are now saved as a user setting
• This is now a user setting saved based on user ID
• Regardless of what browser/computer the user is using, their setting will be saved
  

Moderator-Facing

• There were no major moderator-facing changes this release.

Categories: Platform Release Notes

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