BUMPzee Upgrade. What’s New?
We’ve been working like crazy on the redesign and relaunch of BUMPzee. It’s finally done. You’ll immediately notice a new look. Still not big budget design, but I hope you like it.
There’s been so many changes in the past few weeks that I’ll probably forget some, but here’s an overview of the important stuff.
Communities
BUMPzee now supports multiple communities. We’ve organized the site into a “global” or “root” area and community areas. Each community header will have a different design (color for now) to help distinguish them from each other. BZ has the potential to grow very large, so we’ll be expanding how we make the communities unique.
In the root area, you’re looking at a global context, across communities. When you visit a community, you change into that community’s context. When in a specific community, you will only see entries, comments, and friends that are in that community.
You can jump between your communities by using the droplist in the header.
Blogs and entries may be included in multiple communities. When you’re looking at an entry that is included in other communities, you’ll see cross-links to those communities where other discussions may be going on.
All existing members are automatically subscribed to the Affiliate Marketing Community and the BUMPzee Community. You may join (or leave) as many communities as you want. There aren’t many communities yet. We’ll be creating new ones as demand dictates through interest and blog submissions.
The BUMPzee Community
We’ve created a separate community for BUMPzee. The BUMPzee blog entries will be included there and that’s a perfect place to create entries to ask questions and give feedback.
Submitting Blogs
NOTE: If you have already submitted a blog in the old platform, you don’t need to do anything. It’s already in there and either approved or in the queue for review in the ‘affiliate marketing’ community. You’ll see that status reflected in your profile. You may submit your blogs to other communities where it may be a good fit. We developed a backlog of reviews during the redesign and will be working through them as quickly as possible.
When you add a blog to BUMPzee, it gets added to your global profile where it is visible on your BZ dashboard (to you and other users) and is available for you to submit to communities.
To submit a blog to a community, you must first join the community. Then visit your profile on that community page and submit your blog.
When you submit a blog to a community, this does a few things:
- It makes the blog appear in your community profile.
- If you want, it is submitted for automatic-inclusion in that community. Blogs submitted are reviewed by the community manager before they’re included.
What if my blog doesn’t fit in a community?
If your blog doesn’t fit into an existing community, go ahead and add it to your global profile. We’ll be looking to add new communities based on demand, so when you add a blog, that’s a vote for a community that it will fit in. Please don’t submit it to a community where it doesn’t fit. We’ll notify you when there’s a community where we think your blog fits.
I blog about many different subjects…Can my blog go into in multiple communities?
Yes. We understand that as a blogger, you probably write about different subjects. We also are trying to provide communities with the most relevant content from blogs around the world. We are in the process of implementing a feature that will enable us to only show specific categories of your blog that fit best/belong in a community. You can exclude or include categories from your blog as follow:
- go to one of your communities;
- click on “my profile”;
- click on the “edit” link next to your blogs
- follow the instructions to include or exclude categories
My Dashboard
In the global area, your homepage is a “dashboard” where you can see all of your blogs, friends, messages, and the newest entries from any community that you’re in. From there, you can edit your profile and contact information in a new profile editing interface.
Messaging
If a member sends you a public message, it will still appear in the community in which they sent it. All messages, public and private, go to your Messages area. You’ll see a link to it in the header. If there’s a red (NEW) indicator, that means you’ve got new messages. You may need to clear your ‘unread’ messages. There’s a link to do that on the top of the messages page.
RSS Feeds
There are a number of new RSS feeds that have been introduced to various BZ functions.
- Global new entries – show all new entries on BZ, in all communities.
- Community new entries – show all new entries in a specific community.
- User’s communities new entries – show all new entries in a specific user’s communities (you’d typically want to see your own)
- User’s bumped entries – show all entries that a user (typically you) has bumped.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten something but this is long enough already. We’ll create some entries in the BZ community where you can post feedback and ask questions.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
If you have any questions or comments, post here or in the new BUMPzee community.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
[...] off the presses, my favorite mashup, about to kick Digg’s collective buttBUMPzee, has officially opened its doors beyond the beta affiliate marketing community, and added a community for search engine marketing. Oh yeah, and they have a semi-new [...]
March 7th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Wow.
Great stuff!
Love the RSS!!
March 8th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Hmm, how do widgets work if a blog is a member of multiple communities?
It would be good to have a way to copy existing blogs, I have actually been chasing around trying to refind the link to add my blog to the SEO community - did it get removed?
Great on the RSS, anyone want a Technorati ping bookmarklet? Seem to be missing auto-discovery in most places.
There is one annoying problem, which is where Bupzee seems to always open a new window replacing an existing window in Firefox. I am not sure why that happens.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:31 am
>> multiple communities?
You mean where does it link to? it’ll link to the global page for that widget.
>> link to add your blog to the SEO community
it seems to be missing from that community. bug. fixing…
>> open new window replacing existing window
I open a new window with a named target. That way I open two windows and browse from the BZ window and the other window gets updated with the blog post I clicked on. If you leave it open and go off and do something else with it, yeah, BZ will re-use it. I guess that can be annoying.
Give it a try like I describe and see if you like that.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Andy, you twittered…
“Jangro has totally interrupted my work pattern with the new Bumpzee features”
Can you elaborate? You mean I changed something that you formed a habit around? I tried to keep things the same within the community, but I’ve been immersed in the new platform for so long, I may have inadvertently changed something.
Or you mean you’re just interruped by checking it out?
March 8th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Just because of checking out
March 8th, 2007 at 12:42 am
The way I work with multiple Firefox tabs is to open lots of windows and then work my way through them.
Even with ctrl click, Bumpzee will overwrite the window contents next to it.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Great stuff Scott.
Man - do us clowns ever stop working?
March 8th, 2007 at 1:00 am
>> Even with ctrl click, Bumpzee will overwrite the window contents next to it.
I see. I’m using standard stuff, a named target window. Is it not opening the window that it previously opened? Or does FF just not handle that well?
Trying it out in FF.
When I just click, I get a new window. Another click uses that same window.
When I control-click (command-click, actually, on a mac), I get a new tab. no overwriting.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Everyone, thanks!
This clown can’t wait to go to sleep.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Andy, the submit link is working now. Go to the My Profile tab in the community, in this case:
http://www.bumpzee.com/seosem/users/home/
sorry about that.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Ok added plus affiliate blog corrected a typo
I will work out what is happening with the clicking and see if I can pin it down to exact behaviour.
It is annoying when it happens and it overwrites a page with a half written comment in it - back button works if you don’t close it by accident
March 8th, 2007 at 3:08 am
Fantastic
Well done Scott!
March 8th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Looks great Scott, but I for some reason I am unable to edit tags. It gives me the option and when I type in the additional tag, it refreshes the screen but doesn’t save it against the relevant post? Not sure if its just me or other affected too?
March 8th, 2007 at 7:34 am
Scott,
If your blog belongs to two different communities let say Affiliate Marketing and SEO, but you post a post that is only related to SEO can you exclude that particular post from showing up in Affiliat community?
What a great update. The fact that you joing multiple communities will draw attention of many bloggers. But they may have the same questoion that I wrote above.
Great Job!
March 8th, 2007 at 8:06 am
>> vlad - exclude/include posts per community
not yet, that’s planned.
>> frostie - tags edit.
I tested this yesterday. checking it out. thanks.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Tags edit is fixed, thanks.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:14 am
[...] several times a day to read or participate in an ongoing discussion. After checking out the latest upgrade it is clear to me that communities within BumpZee! are becoming more focused (a missing aspect of [...]
March 8th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
It’s taking me some time to get used to the new format, but I am. I got used to the old format real quick. I came here the first time after and was like a deer in headlights for a couple of minutes.
Not sure how it’d be done, I know it’s based on bumps, but I think a thought should be given on limiting posts for topical “top entries”. Right now everything is ASOS, well I don’t need to read 20 different posts to gather an idea on the subject. It starts becoming redundant and just makes me not pay attention anymore.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
I’m getting used to it too, and now that I’m using it for real am finding that I end up in places where I’m sort of lost. Specific feedback on usability would be very much appreciated and we’ll be working on making things more intuitive.
If you do just stay in one community, it’s just like before.
As for the ASOS thing, I think this is just something that can happen with this format. My knee-jerk reaction was OMG, it’s taking over the site. But it’s a big deal today to a large percentage of the members.
Trust raised a great point in another thread that LMI would have done the same thing if BZ was around last June.
So I say embrace it. BZ is a stream of what’s going on right now, and ASOS is filling the stream today.
March 11th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Sweet! I just noticed I can delete/edit my BZ comments. That’s such a good feature. I often want to say something right after I hit submit. At the same time, Miller Lite makes me say some things I want to take back after I hit submit.
Now, if you can be rid of the horizontal bar, I’m quite a happy guy.
March 11th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
The horizontal bar?
March 11th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Oops, forgot scroll. The horizontal scroll bar in my browser. Both in IE and FF running at 1024×768.
March 11th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Hmm, I was seeing it in other places. I only seem to be seeing it here on this blog for the moment. And the edit doesn’t seem to extend here either. :p
March 11th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
ah, the scrollbar. been meaning to fix that.
you’re catching me mid update… fixed everywhere except the blog now. The fix breaks the menu here. will get to that later.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:13 am
I searched pretty hard but I still can’t seem to find the link or button to submit my blog to my community (already joined).
Can someone help out here?