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Release Notes
Posted on: 07.16.2009 16:28

New “Manage Content” and “Manage Members” interface updates – Released April 2009

Flux released improvements to the Member and Content Management tools, allowing Admins more control and tracking options for moderation actions in their community. The new features include:

•          “View Profile History” or “View Item History” link. This allows you to view the moderation history of an individual profile or content item by. It displays all flagging actions taken on the selected profile or item, and who performed each of the action(s).

• “Add Note” link. Click here to add a note to a member or content item. These notes appear in the Profile or Item History.

• Links to the Member and Content Management tools are available via the Community Manager homepage and Admin Quick Menu.

Click here for more information about Member Management.

 

FML Updates – Released April 2009

• New FML elements have been added to support context specific CSS or markup based on content type or category ID

• Support has been added to inject HTML into the <head> tag of the page

• Category IDs and content types may also be added to the current page dynamically

Click here for more information about FML

 

Special User Updates – Released May 2009

We released some additional features for our Special User functionality.

Special User Profile Changes

Each Special User Type now has a unique profile template with independently customizable ‘Community Column’ modules. Some of the notable differences from Regular User Profiles include:

• Relationship Controls: “Become a Fan” control replaces “Add as Friend”

• User Sub-Pages: Left column link to “My Fans” page

• Communities List: A “*” badge appears next to communities in which the user is Special

• ‘Community Column’ Modules: Displays community-customizable module shared by all SUs of the same type

Special User Activity Changes

Special User Type activity receives a unique visual treatment within the Feeds of Regular User Type fans:

• Larger profile avatar

• SUT Display Name above avatar

• Different share message ‘bubble’ color

Special User Administration Changes

New Admin page at Community Manager > Manage Special User Profiles allows the following administration actions:

• Create, edit and delete special user types

• Customize profile templates for each SUT

Click here for more information about Special User Types.

 

Other updates – Released May 2009

• Communities may control which 3rd party widgets (embedded flash objects) are granted script access. This setting is available within the Community Manager > Edit Moderation Settings > 3rd Party Widgets page. Click here for more information about moderating your community.

• “Digg” and “Stumble Upon” have been added to FShare. 

Posted on: 03.13.2009 13:50

No more downtime for DB backups

As a result of our recent database optimizations, it’s no longer necessary to stop production sites to make database backups required for the weekly staging environment restore.  Previously, this required 30-60 minutes of weekly downtime.  As of 3/10, Flux sites will not be stopped except in the case of full platform deployments.  Also, an added benefit is that the duration of these full platform deployments is now shorter.

New Member Search

On 3/4, Flux released a revised version of the Member Search functionality. This includes a redesign of the page in addition to the following new features:

  • Member Search page is now fully customizable via FML
  • Users can now choose to search only in current community or across ALL Flux communities
  • Users can search for a name, email address, or display name
  • Additional privacy features allow users to choose whether to be included in searches
  • Users can now send a message and add as a friend directly from search results page
  • Improved search performance

New Profiles, User Pages, and User Dashboard

On 2/18, Flux released new user profile pages, revised activity and share functionality in its new “Dashboard” module, and redesigned user subpages such as My Videos and My Friends. Community Admins currently have the choice to maintain the old profile styles, switch over to new profiles across their site, or to maintain old profiles with the ability for users to “preview” the new profiles. Some features of the new release include:

  • Dashboard is contextual to community the profile is being viewed on
  • Two profile views: user-controlled view and community-contextual dashboard view
  • Community Admin can customize and configure entire right column of dashboard view
  • Users can filter activity and shares by community, and can view activity of individual user or their friends
  • Redesigned UI for all “My” content pages, Friends and Communities

 

Posted on: 03.09.2009 17:44

On 2/18, Flux released its first phase of localization, making sites both language and date/time localizable. French is currently offered, and additional languages are to be released gradually over the next few months.  Additionally, new widget framework (coming soon) will implicitly handle localization of both language and date/time localization. When you specify a language for your site in localization settings, all non-customizable pages are automatically translated to the selected language and all visitors will see the non-customizable pages in that language, regardless of their location / regional settings. Text on customizable FML pages must be translated by the site’s developer.  The time zone and date/time format can also be selected via localization settings. For instance, you can choose to display time in format dd/mm/yy instead of mm/dd/yy. This change applies across the entire site, in both non-customizable and customizable FML pages.

Currently, localization can only be activated by a Flux Admin. In the future, the tools will be made accessible to all Site Admins in Community Manager. For more information how to localize your site, please contact your Flux representative. Questions or comments, please start a discussion thread.

 

Posted on: 02.23.2009 17:32

On 2/18, Flux successfully completed an overhaul of our content database structure. This was a large two-month project that consisted of moving our content databases from a distributed architecture, where each database contained only a subset of data based on community ownership, to a new model where all databases contain all data but perform specific functions – either read or write. As a result, you’ll notice that your Flux sites and widgets are responding much faster and you are enjoying a significant reduction in server errors and timeouts. There will also be less maintenance downtime, fewer restrictions on retrieving metadata in lists, and the improvements allow Flux to better improve content-specific platform functionality.

 

Content Database Restructure Benefits to Flux Sites and Developers:

o   Faster response time for pages and DAAPI.

o   Significant reduction in server errors and time-outs.

o   No longer necessary to stop the production databases and sites to perform weekly database back-up and restore to staging.  

o   Redundancy – since all databases maintain a full copy of content data via replication, if one database has a problem it can be easily taken offline and replaced.

o   Retrieving lists of content metadata.  Previously there were restrictions preventing full metadata being returned when accessing lists of content.  This limitation no longer exists, so all metadata available when requesting a single content item is now also available when requesting lists.

o   A large amount of refactoring of internal code was performed during this phase.  The result is that it is much easier to maintain and enhance content-specific functionality in future.

 

Questions about the Flux content database restructure? Click here to start a new discussion thread.

 

Posted on: 05.02.2008 19:11

Updated documentation has been posted for the Widget Developer Kit (WDK). It is available here. This covers the topic of advanced widget customization in more detail. Additional references are provided to make it much easier to understand the pre-existing markup and java script logic of the widgets and therefore allow easier customization.

 

Some sample customized widgets have been added to this site to demonstrate how to take default widget and using WDK customization, create a very customized UI or functionality. Check out the samples here. More examples will be added in the coming weeks...

 

Finally, one additional very useful piece of functionality is now incorporated into the WDK. This allows for asynchronous refresh of widgets on your web page. So, if building a site using the Flux API to login/logout users, you can now make a simple call to the WDK Event Manager to asynchronously refresh the state of all widgets as necessary. This subject is covered in detail in the latest docs.
© 2009 MTV Networks. All Rights Reserved.

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