May

27

2008

(0) Comments

NobodyOpen—NFL Communities

09:23PM by Hoc

We’ve been quietly beta testing a new community for the past couple of weeks, NobodyOpen.com, a NFL football community. The goal with NobodyOpen is to provide a place for fans of every NFL team to meet other fans, discuss football and read the latest team news. Both Phil and I are avid sports fans and we know a lot of other people are as well. Registration has been invitation only, but we’ve open it up for everyone today.

In case you’re curious, the name came from irreverent commentary on the seemingly majority of NFL teams—very few receivers open when the quarterback wants to throw to them.

There are a couple things we’re doing that are different from our pre-existing communities. We’re looking to build sub-communities within a larger umbrella NFL community. The sub-communities are delineated by individual NFL teams. Also, instead of building out each site for each NFL team, we’re asking users to pre-register. When enough people pre-register, then we’ll create the team sites. This process also allows users to sign-up as potential bloggers, moderators, and administers saving us some time in finding these people anyway. Users can register from any of our communities or sub communities. Once registered, they can visit and interact with any of our sites—one account, multiple communities.

To start, each team site will just be Forums and we’ll layer in Blogs and a Community Page. The main NobodyOpen site will soon have Social News. However, our platform affords us the flexibility to add or remove apps depending on the demand of each site.

Overall this method allows for a very organic growth. Prior to this, we were able to grow communities in three ways: more apps, more bloggers, and more features. Now we’re able to build communities within communities, each with their own branching growth paths.

Our General Counsel wants to add the following disclaimer to this post: NobodyOpen.com is not affiliated with the National Football League. All views expressed on that website are our own or of our community members.

May

14

2008

(1) Comments

Feature Slideshow

05:31PM by Hoc

We’ve added a new slideshow feature that highlights the more extraordinary content on our Ningin community. Since the new design, one of the things that seem missing with images. We’ve always been a very graphic heavy site mixed with minimalist design elements. The new design made our homepage seem text heavy. Well it’s been improved! Articles and post selected to the slideshow are generally things that are really popular on the community. So it’s the users that determine what appears there. On occasion, we’ll add things of lesser popularity if the editorial or moderating team feel it’s underexposed and worth more attention.

The community page is still not entirely finished. There are more apps and features we’ve yet to code or finish testing, but we’re getting there!

On a different note, we decided to stop using Google ads on our Ningin site. For some reason, we draw a lot of Asian dating and marriage ads. We’re not against those services, but that’s not what Ningin is about. 

May

7

2008

(0) Comments

Forum Visitor Stats & Blogging Notes

09:40PM by Hoc

Forum Visitor Stats was something on our to-do list for awhile since the forum was launched about three weeks ago. The delay was due to issues trying to separate visitors from our different communities. We didn’t think it would make sense to show Jetdrop or Ziggytek visitors on the Ningin site. In any case, that’s done so now you can see who’s online with our Ningin forums! Every site has more guest than users, but it would be really nice if you guests sign up and join the community!

We’ve also been busy adding bloggers to our Ningin community. It’s about one a week now, a pace I don’t expect us to continue, but great for now. The goal is to have a little of everything content wise without too much overlap. So far we have Alvin Lin for general Asian media and Asian American politics, Andrew Lim for Hong Kong gossip and Asian foods, and guest blogger Daron Jenkins for Asian film reviews. We’ve created an expanded blogger profile page to highlight all our different bloggers. One for Ningin, and one for Jetdrop. We’re still looking for a few more, so if you or your friends are interested, then this page is for you.

May

4

2008

(0) Comments

Sites Offline, Work in Progress

06:50AM by Hoc

All our sites are offline while we incorporate a new design and add feature enhancements. We expect this to take the majority of the day. Thanks for your patiences!

Beta testers can still access our sites during this process.

7:45am EST - Took sites offline, starting upgrades and changes.
1:10pm EST - Server is going offline for about 10 mins while we make updates.
4:50pm EST - Jetdrop and Ziggytek now online. There’s a good chance you need to refresh your browser. Beta testers, please focus on Ningin.
7:00pm EST - Ningin is online. Redesign done!

May

1

2008

(0) Comments

Network-Wide Design changes on Sunday 5/4

11:17PM by Hoc

All Mixr sites will be off-line on Sunday morning around 8am EST. We’ll be upgrading to a new layout for all three current communities, Ningin, Jetdrop, and Ziggytek. If all goes smoothly, we’ll have our sites back up by noon that day. For those of you keeping track, this is version #5 because we have a relentless pursuit of perfection.

This blog will be up and continually updated with near real-time progress (read, I’ll update when I can). Expect big design changes and a new application! Beta testers should still be able to login while we work. As always, we look forward to everyone’s feedback.