Under the mixxtmas tree: A video module
In deed, you got it right! Just look what we put under the Christmas tree: the video module is online! Our new fragrant version “cinnamon” fulfils one of our community’s strongest wishes.
You can use our video module to add videos from the services YouTube, MyVideo, sevenload, Clipfish, metacafe, MySpace Video, Vimeo, Wrzuta.pl (Polish) and Izlesene.com (Turkish) to your networks in a fast and easy way and share them with other mixxt users. We have tried to integrate all popular services to give you a broader variety in choosing your video sources. Please let us know which services you still miss!
Playlists
To strengthen the community touch we added “playlists” to this module. They allow the network members to collaboratively create collections of videos they like best or that belong to a certain topic.
Needless to say that we added the common privacy settings as well. For each video you may decide who is allowed to watch it and who can add videos to the respective playlists.
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Sort forums, connect your domains and send group messages
Today, we have packed a few extra gifts to optimise our current “sleigh ride” version. We are glad to announce that we have marked three more wishes on our community’s wish list as “fulfilled” :)
Sorting in Forums and Categories
We were frequently asked for a sorting option within the forum module. Administrators can now sort forums, categories and threads in their favoured order. Clicking on “edit forums and categories” (top right in the forum main page) leads you to the sorting options:
You can move the respective forums/categories up or down by just clicking the green arrows in the “edit” area. This means they can not only be sorted alphabetically or chronologically, but be adapted to the individual requirements of your community.
A sorting within a category is possible as well: The “Thread sorting” allows you to even arrange the topics alphabetically, chronologically according to the topic’s creation date or to the topic with the latest reply:
A little hint: You may manipulate the alphabetical sorting by using special characters. If you want a topic to be always on top, just put, e.g., an exclamation mark or number sign in front of the title.
Connect your own domains
Actually, we’re offering the possibility to connect one or more of your domains to your network for quite a while. Now we added an appropriate menu in the “Extras” within the administration panel to make this option more clearly visible. Here you may decide whether the added domain(s) should serve as a forwarding to your network address or the network should be exclusively reachable via the new address. We would be pleased to inform you about these options via email. Just drop us a line.
Group messages
Up to now, group messages were by default sent to the selected target group via email as full text. Now we ask the sender to choose: Should the entire text be send in the email, or just the first 80 characters?
One advantage of the 80 character limit is, that it might arouse the members’ curiosity to read the whole text online in the network. And if a member once is logged in, they might post a new thread, some fancy images or get in touch with other members. This creates more activity in the network and thereby attracts old and new users. By using a clever and target group oriented introduction, this tool can support your community management in an easy but efficient way.
Have a nice ride!
On a Sleigh Ride together with a file module
“Christmas is all around…” was the subject of the email our developers sent to inform us about the successful mixxt update. The new version 0.15 of our community kit is called “Sleigh Ride” and comes along with some lovely gifts in November already.
No need to wait any longer: the sleigh carries the freshly packed and truly longed for file module! You can now use mixxt as a file management tool as well and upload your own files to share them with others. Administrators can activate the file module in the “Admin / Features” and specify who may see or upload files.
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A Quantum Update
Last weekend we added a few improvements to our mixxt system. If you look closely, you might have already noticed it:
- The public RSS-lifestream does not need http-authentication any longer.
- Invitation mails to new members can now be stored as templates.
- If the networks founder allows it, moderators and/or administrators may now moderate or delete other members’ blog posts.
- After accepting or declining the attendance of an event, the user is informed about his new status via pop-up notification.
In addition to these, we took our community’s feedback and tweets to heart, fixed some tiny bugs and made some wishes come true ;)
New options for design and moderation
Last night we added a another piece of harmony to our recent mixxt version.
Design & CSS
In addition to six new standard designs (with such nifty names as Blue Sky, Heaven, Shine or Winter), we optimised the custom CSS mode. CSS stands for “Cascading Style Sheets” and allows the administrator to customise the network design (such as fonts, colours or layout) individually. Yes, good catch, the custom CSS has already been implemented before this update, but is now much more comfortable to handle :) Another news: You can now upload images for using them in the CSS, e.g. as a background image.
Let’s get creative!
Moderation in networks
To make mixxt even better for collaborative work, we added some moderation settings. Administrators can now adjust the users’ rights to edit content more precisely. If the administrator defines it in the privacy settings, members holding a moderator status may now edit or delete other members’ events, forum posts or images. Shortly, this feature will also be available for blog posts.
This is particularly useful for networks which require an increased effort in moderation. The admin can assign some of his duties to the moderators and let them fully perform their respective tasks. If a member uploads an image which violates the owner’s copyright or writes a forum post which doesn’t comply with the community rules, the moderator can react independently and edit or delete this content.
And that’s not all: Keep your eyes and ears open, there will be another update in the course of this week! This update comes along with to be continued…
Some of the faces behind mixxt
At BarCamp Berlin 3 (which was also hosted by mixxt) some of you had the opportunity to meet & greet some members of the international mixxt team. Not only one of our four founders, Oliver Ueberholz, made his way from Bonn to Berlin, but also the Country Managers Turkey and Poland managed to visit this great web2.0ish event. For those who couldn’t come we took a nice picture to show what you missed ;)
f.l.t.r.: Şekip Can Gökalp, Nicole Ebber, Kai Uhlemeyer, Oliver Ueberholz und Jakub Górnicki (Image by kcu)
More harmony for our users
Last night we launched another update. Besides some bugfixes we added some nice features to our version called “harmony”.
Mulit Image Uploader
With our new multi image uploader, you can now upload several images to your photo albums at the same time. That’s comfortable if you for example took a bunch of great photos at an event and want to share them with your network without much effort.
Lifestream via RSS
All the network news and activities can now comfortably be subscribed via RSS. You may now easily integrate the stream into your daily Online-reading and remain up to date about what’s going on in your community. In addition, you might be glad to hear that we are working on the user activities lifestream as well and will launch this feature soon.
Invitation mails
Many users asked to improve the handling of the network invitation mails. We have taken this to heart: After sending these invitations to potential new members of your community an invitation screen will be prompted to show a summary of the recipients and the validity of the entered mixxt IDs.
New notification
We have also worked on the notification mails and made them a bit more fancy. The harmony of mixxt can now be directly transfered from your networks into your mailboxes :)
And again: Your feedback is welcome! Your desires and suggestions help us to make mixxt even better. Thank you!
