Exciting site updates and announcements
beingzoe 3 months ago // Potluck CoTradeCo news, comments, and requests

NOTE: This was “originally posted on TopSportsBets.com in the “Gibber Gabber (general discussion/offtopic) community blog topic . The Potluck CoTradeCo news, comments, and requests community blog topic does not exist on that site so I am making an exception to the no double posting rule here. We will be looking at ways to avoid this in the future. Thank you.

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As smaller companies, CoTradeCo Trading Post & Community and TopSportsBets.com cannot always implement and get to every thing we would like as quickly as we would like. Nonetheless, we are committed to the continual improvement of our services.

There were many recent exciting changes and additions to the online communities and our sites in general. Below is a quick list for those of you with A.D.D., and below that you will find more detailed explanations of what it all means and how it might affect you.

All CoTradeCo partner communities

1. Formatting toolbar added when posting to blogs and other forms
2. Added ability to embed SlideShare presentations
3. Added display_name to SPOT account info (controls what is displayed when posting)
4. Improved layouts and presentation (especially related to posts and communities)

TopSportsBets.com specific

1. Added even more tools under Odds, stats, matchups, & more
2. Reinstated “Gibber-Gabber” blog topic for off-topic and misc. discussion
3. Service play snippet added to formatting toolbar

New CoTradeCo sponsored blog launched

1. HappyCamperBus added as a blog sponsored by CoTradeCo with our community and social networking technology

All CoTradeCo partner communities

1. Formatting toolbar added when posting to blogs and other forms

One problem we had been seeing early on was that since we disallow html for security reasons when posting to the site, people weren’t formatting their posts at all. On longer posts this can become unwieldy and result in difficult to read pages. While we have included a formatting tips tab on the post pages explaining how to use the Textile markup syntax we use, it was evident that apart from geeks, nobody was going to read and learn how to use it.

Finally adding a formatting toolbar made it the top of the todo list. Now you can use the convenient formatting buttons to make headers, bold and italic text, include images from your websites or image sharing services (such as Flickr or Photobucket) and even make links quickly and easily to anything you like.

But even cooler are the “template” and “snippet” drop downs on the formatting toolbar.

Templates

These are preformatted layouts for common formatting you might use. They include everything needed for a clean and well formatted post. We have only included two simple options so far, but will be adding to them in the future as we see how people use the posts (and of course with your suggestions).

Templates would be used to get started with a post. Click the template you would like to use and the layout appears in the textarea. Simply replace the prompted text with our own and you will look like a pro.

Snippets

These are preformatted “chunks of layout” to stick in the middle of post as you need it. Snippets are like an email signature, but far more powerful.

When you click a snippet to use, most of them will actually prompt you with questions to answer, and then put the formatted text into your post.

Example 1: Add a link to someone’s MySpace page

When you click this, it will ask you for the Permanent MySpace name you would like to link to. Then when you press OKAY it inserts a live link to that MySpace page.

Example 2: Service play

This is for you TopSportsBets folks who like to share plays and picks. Under the snippet menu click “service play”. You will be asked what sport is being covered. Then you will be asked what division is being covered. When you press OKAY it plops in nicely formatted headers and you can type your report in the suggested spot. Covering various sports or divisions? Just press it again and answer the questions for each area you are covering.

As with all features added to the site, we want to your feed back and suggestions. If you have an idea for a template or snippet that would save you time and make it easier to post, let us know.

2. Added ability to embed SlideShare presentations

It has been less than a few weeks since we added the ability to embed videos from YouTube. Today we added the ability to embed SlideShare slide shows and presentations. If you are not familiar, SlideShare is an online service to upload PowerPoint, OpenOffice.org, and PDF presentations. While maybe not as exciting as a YouTube video, SlideShare brings whole new opportunties for tutorials, information sharing, and even simple image galleries.

Have any other service you use that you would to be able to share here? Let us know.

3. Added display_name to SPOT account info (controls what is displayed when posting)

When we launched the communities less than 6 months ago, we had the idea to not use a display name at all and only use people’s real first and last names with posts. The hope was to inspire more real world interaction and honesty in the online environment. While this is still a vital concern, it became evident that many people did not want to share their real name with the entire world, and were entering bogus first and last names.

In an effort to make people comfortable with adding their real first and last names and to provide better security in the long term, we have implemented the concept of the display name.

The display name is what shows up when you post on the site. This can be edited in your SPOT under the “account” tab.

Where we started using your login name as your display name in place of real first and last names, the login name will become completely private in the next week or so.

Quick explanation of how “names” are used on the site

• Display name = What is displayed when you post publicly.
• First and Last name = What we use internally for transacting business with you
• Login = Your private and secure name for logging in to your SPOT

And we will be adding some kind of “Address name” in the future that will be used as your permanent address to your SPOT.

4. Improved layouts and presentation (especially related to posts and communities)

In general the community and especially the posts pages have been improved for presentation and readability. As we add new features and functionality the layouts will be necessity continue to evolve. Some of the specifics are covered below:

Browse and view community blogs by ACTIVE and RECENT

On the home page and on the community home page, active posts are displayed by default.

When browsing community blog posts, recent posts are displayed by default. However, you can now resort to either according to your preference.

Active and Recent sorting explained

• Active posts are the newest posts or responses by date of last activity
• Recent posts are displayed in the order of the date the orignal post was made

Both are extremely useful. Use active sorting to see where everybody is already posting. Use recent to see what new items have been posted and to browse through the history of posts.

Private message link added to posts page

You have been able to send private messages to people through their spot for a while, but we added that functionality next to the authors name when reading a post.

RSS feed to individual communities added

If you are into modern information exchange you probably already have an RSS reader. If you do or would like to try one out, why not subscribe to the RSS feed of your favorite community?

Accessing the feeds

In your address bar you will see the univerasl RSS feed icon. Clicking on it will drop down a list of all the community feeds you can subscribe to. From there what happens depends on your particular RSS reader.

Alternatively you will see the RSS icon near the title of the page when viewing a post. Clicking this will subscribe you to the particular community that post belongs to.

Responses now show bigger picture and were formatted for easier reading

Along with a variety of layout and stylistic improvements, the author’s image and information for a post has been moved to the sidebar.

As well the responses section at the bottom of every post has been redesigned to provide optimal ease of reading and scanning. And in the process everybody got their avatar bumped up in size.

When browsing posts, the number of responses now includes how long ago since last response was made

Now that you can sort posts by active or recent, it only seemed helpful to not only show how long ago the post was made, but how long ago the last response was submitted.

TopSportsBets.com specific

1. Added even more tools under Odds, stats, matchups, & more

The odds and props have been there for a while. Now with the new matchups tool, you can access everything from detailed stats, schedules, more weather, specific matchups, trends, scores, and more.

Check it out.

2. Reinstated “Gibber-Gabber” blog topic for off-topic and misc. discussion

This is intended for off topic discussions (which is half the fun of a forum :)

This change was not discussed with TopSportsBets prior to implementing, and I think it might have had something to do with the name of it. While CoTradeCo and TopSportsBets share technology and communities, our sites are themed and branded very differently. CoTradeCo is themed on a trading post and TopSportsBets is more hip and modern. Thus when we attempt to name shared concepts between the sites we run into some difficulty.

If any of you good folks had some thoughts on what we could call the “off-topic/misc” topic/thread/category besides “gibber-gabber” that would work on any style of site I think we would all love to hear it. I am partial to more fun and snappy names instead of the simply calling it “off-topic” or “general”. So put on your creative ball caps and help a brother out!

3. Service play snippet added to formatting toolbar

This is discussed at length above under the new formatting toolbar.

New CoTradeCo sponsored blog launched

As part of our mission, besides building extended networks of communities such as between CoTradeCo and TopSportsBets, we have a fun and philanthropic side. Some friends of ours have abandoned the monotony of the work-a-day world and have endeavored to take a 60’s style journey around the country in a VW bus.

They are seeking sponsorship from VW and other sources, and we offered to design and host the blog of their adventures. The site still needs some more work but you can follow the adventures of the HappyCamperBus at their new domain sponsored by CoTradeCo.

In the next few months we will be adding another sponsored blog for a new organization called “Starry Night SD”. This is a group of folks (my sister and supporters) who are working to get San Diego county involved in the Earth Hour project and turn off their lights for an hour. While the Earth Hour event is focused on bringing awareness to power conservation and global warming which my sister is sympathetic to, her Starry Night SD group extends to her original vision of having an hour when you could actually see the stars without having to leave the urban environment.

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Well that’s the update from Lake Woebegone, er the developers here at TopSportsBets and CoTradeCo. As usual we would love your thoughts and comments about how we are doing and how we can do better.

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New Mexico image used under a Creative Commons License courtesy of wolfgangstaudt at Flickr