Pijoo Blog

A couple of minor issues have come up recently, which we’ve tackled in the way of new features…

First, since we added the ability to quote other peoples comments, we realised it would be even better to allow some way of tracking multiple conversations in the comments for a single post, so you’ll now see an extra link next to the ‘reply’ link, called ‘Thread’. Clicking ‘Thread’ on any comment will show only that comment, and any replies to it, so you can easily keep track of who’s replying to who.

Next up, was the issue of swearing/profanity in blog posts, which isn’t really a problem on Pijoo, but a minority of people like to use bad language to get their point across, which is absolutely fine by us, but some people might not appreciate it and our advertisers would probably be put off by it, so.. because free speech is important to us, we’ve added an optional ’swear-filter’ which can be turned on or off in your profile settings. Guests and logged-out users will have it turned on by default, and logged-in users have the option of turning it on.

Also, we’ve stopped private messages being sent out for every ’shout’ . Inboxes were filling up with 1000’s of shouts, which isn’t good for you, and it’s not good for our database. When you send a shout (broadcast a blog-post) your friends will still get an email (opt-in) and a message-bar.

Finally, we’ve added a tweak to the way comments with embedded images are handled. The potential issue is, that people can ruin a conversation with big, ugly or offensive images. If enough people vote that comment down, the embedded image will now turn into a link.

We mentioned the return of Pijoo Groups a few months back, this is still in beta, but we will be sending out more invites to try this out before we launch it to everyone, so keep an eye out for that.

Tags: comments, features, groups, threads

Just a quick update about a long-overdue feature we’ve just added. You can now quote a comment from another user on blog posts. Just click ‘reply’ next to the comment and the quote will be added to the top of your reply. More new features (big ones) are on the way, and will be rolled out over the coming weeks.

It’s not fully tested yet, so let us know if you find any problems with it etc..

Tags: comments, features, posts

Over the next week or so, you’ll start to see one or two blogs deleted and user accounts banned from the site. We’re always on the look-out for TOS violations, spammers etc.. and user submitted reports help us to keep the site relatively spam-free, but due to a bit of an increase in dodgy accounts etc.. we’re going on the rampage over the next few days and throwing out anything we find that violates the Terms of Service.

Things we’re looking out for:-

• Multiple user-accounts created to game the system. These will be banned, and blogs removed.
• Blogs created solely to sell a product or service (especially software downloads, pharma’ etc..)  - the exception being ‘corporate blogs’ that genuinely inform people with updates on a service etc.. these are OK
• Blogs linking to, or hosting torrents
• Blogs linking to, or hosting pornography (tasteful model shots, or fashion/celebrity blogs with partial nudity will be judged on an individual basis, and are generally OK)

If you want to help, you can do so by hitting the ‘report this’ link on anything that meets the above criteria, and we’ll take a look.

If your account is banned, you can appeal via the contact page, but the majority of users have nothing to worry about. We check all reports manually.

Thanks!

Big changes are on the way to Pijoo, in the form of band-new social features suggested by the community. We just added the ability to send ‘Broadcasts’ to all your mutual friends when you submit a blog-post. This means they will be notified by an alert message while browsing the site, informing them to check out your latest post.

They will also get a private message on their profile, with a link to your post, and users who opted-in to email notifications will get an email too. Broadcasts can be hidden away with a single click, and emails turned off from the edit-profile page, so these shouldn’t become annoying - especially since only your friends can send you broadcasts.

When you submit a blog post, you will now be given the option to send a broadcast to a maximum of 50 friends. This will ensure your blog post gets seen more often, and by the people that matter.

Each of your selected friends will then see something like this…

This feature was suggested by one of our members, kerendg, and we’re still looking to implement features from a growing list of new ideas from the whole community. Keep ‘em coming!

Also, another huge update is coming very soon, so watch this space!

Tags: blog posts, broadcasts, features

Just a quick note to say we recently identified and fixed a problem with the server that was rejecting some API requests from blogs using the Pijoo vote button. This was caused by new security settings which wrongly identified cross-site requests with certain keywords as hacking attempts, which meant the voting buttons weren’t showing up on some blog posts.

The problem is now fixed and everything should be back to normal.

Tags: API, bugs

Pijoo has a great community and 99% of users are genuinely nice people, but as the site grows, we’re bound to attract the occasional user who doesn’t play by the rules. We’ve had complaints about a handful of people sending spam via profile messages, which takes a while to sort out on a case-by-case basis, so we added the ability to block messages from anyone who’s doing your head in.

Just go to the profile of anyone you don’t want to receive messages from, and you’ll see 2 links in the ‘about me’ section of the sidebar. Here you can report a user (for anything serious) or block them.

This should be enough to keep the site spam-free, without having to ban people for minor infractions, and anyone who’s blocked by a lot of people will lose karma points.

We’ve also noticed some users abusing the reporting system, by reporting content randomly. All reports are checked manually, and this takes a lot of time to check each one, so it’s worth mentioning that people don’t lose karma, or ranking by being reported. It just flags the content or user for inspection.

You can also use the ‘report this’ feature to let us know about any dead links in the posts section, and we’ll either delete it or try to fix the link.

As always, thanks for the feedback, and keep blogging!

Tags: blocking, features, profiles, reporting, spammers

The ranking system for members on Pijoo has been changed to reward the most active users which means ranking on the members page now takes into account recent activity, as well as how popular you are with other users.

The site now gives you karma points for performing certain actions, like sharing a blog post, voting on another users post or comment, inviting friends and generally being sociable. You will not see your karma score (or anyone elses),  but those with more karma will start to notice a higher profile on the site, which means more attention for your blogs!

Things you will get karma for include..

1. Sharing (submitting to voting system) popular blog posts
2. Commenting on blog posts
3. Voting on blog posts (and blogs) that become popular
4. Voting on individual comments
5. Inviting friends, or anything at all that’s social in nature

So now there’s no excuse, if you want your blogs to rise to fame, you can now give yourself a boost by interacting with the community.

Tags: Blogs, features, karma, profiles, ranking

It’s hard to keep up with all the new features we’re throwing around on Pijoo, but people keep having great ideas and we just can’t help ourselves.  Technically only a minor change, but this could have a big impact on the way you use the site, so it’s worth a mention.

Member kerendg, wrote a post about Pijoo, and suggested adding a comment rating system, which we thought was a pretty cool way to go, so it went in. You can now click the + and - next to the comments on any blog post in the voting system, and rate each comment up or down.

Enjoy it, and as always with new features - bug reports to the usual address.

Tags: comments, posts, voting

Early in the beta phase of Pijoo, we had an experimental feature called Groups. This feature allowed users to create communities based on a common interest and manage a group of friends with like-minded interests.

Back then, our userbase was too small to benefit from the feature, so we dropped it in later versions of Pijoo, and very quickly had lots of complaints from members who wanted groups to stay. We’re now ready to re-introduce groups into Pijoo, which will allow you to build communities around anything you like, making it much easier to get your message out to a wider audience.

Over the coming weeks, some of you will be randomly selected to try out the groups beta, play around and really get a deeper involvement in the community. Keep a look out for the Groups tab - if you see it, you’ve been chosen to test this feature before we roll it out to everyone.

In a nutshell, groups will allow you to connect with users who share your interests, chat and share ideas based on the group topic, as well as create and manage your own groups based on any topic you like.

**Updated : Removed mention of sponsor accounts, as we only restrict site features that would impact on bandwidth etc.. in the long-term. We’re not yet decided how groups are going to work but they’ll definitely be available for everyone.

Tags: Blogs, groups

We’re pretty excited a Pijoo this week, with work beginning on our new offices. The city center studio/office space will allow us to streamline our operations, and will create a relaxed working environment for the development of Pijoo.Com.

We’ve got a little work to do, moving thigs in and getting everything set up. (Coffee machines, pool table, oh and desks/computers of course…), but we should be in and settled within two weeks. To kick off our new ‘Photo Blog’, pijoo.com co-founder Calvin will be snapping away with his camera to show you how its going. More news on our new Photo Blog soon.

Tags: blog, blogging, community, photos, pijoo, pijoo.com