Sphinn - Sphinn: New Features Added

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Sphinn: New Features Added

Posted By: dannysullivan 708 days ago
Topic Type: Discussion
Category: Sphinn Zone

We have a wishlist of new features for Sphinn. Now we're granting wishes, so I thought it would be useful to have a topic where we post news as each new feature is available. Just keep watching this page!

14 Comments

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from dannysullivan 708 days ago #

Votes: 2 | Vote:

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The wishlist page is here

http://sphinn.com/story/125

For the record, a recap of what we've done to date....

July 14

Comment Permalinks Added. Use the # link after the time in each comment.

July 20

New categories for Usability & Domaining added:

http://sphinn.com/category/Usability/

http://sphinn.com/category/Domaining/

July 21

Hot Topics and What's New made top level tabs, so that you can easily jump back to them from any story. Comments tab added, showing comments from across all topics.

July 22

Greatest Hits tab added. This lets you see the most sphunn stories at Sphinn over time or within a particular category, if you drill down.

How's that different than Hot Topics? Hot Topics always shows the latest thing to go "hot" first. This will become clearer when we get a new addition to the story summary -- it will show the "Went Hot" date and time.

Greatest Hits is also our "All" tab -- want to see all things or everything submitted (except for spam, which gets removed). This tab shows you everything. Since we order it by popularity by default, we thought Greatest Hits was kind of fun. But you can sort by newest or oldest.

July 24

More social networks & forums added to social profile pages. Got more requests? Leave them here: http://sphinn.com/story/283

from dannysullivan 708 days ago #

Votes: 1 | Vote:

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Today, a new comment feed was added. You'll find it using the orange icon on the comments tab here:

http://sphinn.com/comments

Or via the Feeds page:

http://sphinn.com/feeds.php

Or go to it directly here:

http://feeds.sphinn.com/sphinncomments

Also as a reminder, people are constantly improving the buttons (and we'll return to work on them as well). I periodically update my running list of what everyone as done at the bottom of the tools page:

http://sphinn.com/tools.php

from TannerC 707 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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You all are doing a great job Danny. I think you're really giving us the things we not only want, but need from a social media site.

from todd 707 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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nice follow up to the launch... keep those new features coming.

from ViperChill 706 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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Nice to see the site wasnt just put up and left to get some extra impressions for those advertisers

Great that its turning into a serious social site, congrats and thanks for the changes

from g1smd 705 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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A URL with a space in it... not sure you wanted to do that...

http://sphinn.com/category/AllCategories/parent_name/All%20Categories

Every time I come back to this thread, all the comments are hidden, with a link to "- show/hide this comment". I have no idea why that is.

from dannysullivan 705 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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It's because someone has negative voted all the comments. Why, I don't know, since there's nothing odd about them. I'd guess someone was reading them and though the - sign meant to close the comment rather than vote them down. I voted three back up -- can't vote my own back up, though!

FYI, http://sphinn.com/category/AllCategories/ also works. There's an issue with how you get tracking added on to some categories when you navigate from the links. We're looking at this further down the line.

from g1smd 705 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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OK. I voted your comments up one and they re-appeared. There are several other threads like this on the site.

.

Another "bug" for you. Profiles and some other pages can be accessed both with or without a trailing "/" on the URL. I am guessing you'll want to supress that source of potential Duplicate Content soon.

Also, http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:sphinn.com is interesting to watch from day to day, to see what gets picked up next. I guess you'll be more interested in looking for inconsistencies as to which URLs are presented to search engines. :-)

from chrisbartow 705 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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Please Please Please look at improving the ability to make it easier to find an article that has already been submitted.

I tried to submit an article and it tells me the URL is duplicate. You then give me a link to search for it that doesn't return the actual article I'm trying to Sphinn.

from dannysullivan 704 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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OK, reminder. Wishlist ideas here:

http://sphinn.com/story/125

Bugs over here:

http://sphinn.com/story/124

This thread is mainly for me to tell you when I've added a new feature. If you add requests here, rather than the other place, I'm going to lose track of things :)

from dannysullivan 673 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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Some updates on features...

Stories that go hot, that hit the home page, now show a time and date for when they "Went Hot." We'll be making this more visible soon.

Comments now have a time limit. You can edit them for 15 minutes after initially made.

The Network page now has two tabs. By default, Hot Sphinners are shown, people listed in order of those who have had the most topics go hot. All Sphinners lets you see people listed alphabetically, and you can jump to particular letters of the alphabet from that page, as wel. Searches now search against first and last names (if someone provided those in their profile), as well as usernames.

If you submit an article already submitted, it's now fixed so that you get taken to the existing news story page.

Pages are now showing 25 topics at a time to speed the site up. Previously, we showed 40. We may go back to showing more when new faster software becomes available.

from dannysullivan 645 days ago #

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More features that have been added over the past two weeks or so:

Went Hot time stamp shows for stories when the make it to the home page. Stories appear there in order of when they Went Hot, newest on top.
Bulk Friend Management: Now you can add and remove more than one friend at a time.
HTML Comments: Now you can bold, ital, do lists and blockquote.
WebProWorld: Added to the profile page.
Contact Form: Now you can contact us more easily using this form.
Staff Page: You can se all the mods and admins on this new page.

from dannysullivan 591 days ago #

Votes: 2 | Vote:

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I'm way overdue to note these changes that were added in October:

Improved New Account Verification: I'm not saying robots can't get past the gates entirely, but it's a heck of a lot harder to use them to make fake accounts than in the past.
New Members Limited To One Submit: For the first week, to cut back on spam and encourage newcomers to actually read and get comfortable with the site before diving in with submisions.
Improved Software: Should be making pages load faster than in the past.

from dannysullivan 508 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

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More catchup on features that have been added.

Recent Comments & Top 10 What's New Added: We wanted a way for people to better understand all the commenting happening at Sphinn plus see the most popular stories in consideration at What's New, so we added new section to the right sidebar area of Sphinn to show these. Woo, look at all the changes round these parts... has more about this.
Save Feature Added: Want to save something special and not lose it among all you've sphunn? Just want to save something interesting that you don't think deserves a sphinn? We added a save feature allowing this. Sphinn: Sporting a New Save Feature has more about it.
Spam Reporting: A new feature allowing members to report and remove spam was established. Moderators review activity and have much better tools to remove spam, themselves. See New Spam Fighting Tool for Sphinn Users and Sphinn Spam Hunters - We Still Hear Your Calls for more about this.
Show All Comments: The underlying Pligg software hides comments that have too many negative votes. We've changed that so all comments show, no matter what. Our thought was that if a comment is in appropriate or violates terms here on Sphinn, then a moderator should remove it. Otherwise, voting lets people show agreement or disagreement, but everyone still should see what was said.
Desphinn: Now live, this allows you to vote against stories that you don't think deserve to hit the home page. We ask that members use it with due consideration, but we think it has a place here. Desphinn Feature Now Live has more about it.