We implemented “zees” a month or two ago on a whim. We emulated Twitter on the notion that people in a community might share random thoughts. A zee is a quick thought, what’s going on, make a statement, or ask a question.

As the days go by, I’ve been witnessing some interesting behavior. Zees certainly haven’t taken off like twitter has by any stretch. The times that zees get used, usually turn into a short conversation. But the conversation gets stunted. This is probably because of the format. And like in Twitter, I find that I often want to reply to a previous post but I feel like it’s not really the purpose and I’d be just messing up the place.

Zees feel like conversations wanting to bust out. So who are we to stop that?

Therefore, I give you zees, version 2. Or zees on steriods.

Zees can now be replied to, and these replies appear under the zee in a message board like fashion.

You can view all Zees, only the zees in your communities, or in a single community.

You can post a zee in a specific community or in a general discussion area.

You can sort by date of entry or last reply date. You can search.

You can have fun. Go on. Post away!

Probably the oldest feature request on the BUMPzee to do list is was search.

We’ve launched a search page today. You can search entries, comments, blogs, communities, and members.

It’s actually a really fun way to hunt around and find new blogs and communities. You’ll notice some recommendations on the right side as you search.

The member search is username-only right now. We cannot allow search on any other info without permission. We’ll be looking at the best way to get there.

You’ll find the search box in the header, or via a link under the explore menu.

(Note: It’s NOT the search box on the right margin of this blog. That’s just the wordpress blog search.)

Here’s a link to the new search page.

We’ve added some brand-new features to the BUMPzee sidebar widget.
Cool stuff that tells you more about your own blog traffic.

Stats

There’s a new section at the bottom of all widgets, even without reconfiguring: Quick stats. Visible ONLY to the owner of the blog if you’re currently logged in to BUMPzee, are some simple stats for the page you’re looking at and your blog as a whole, comparing today and yesterday.

We’ll be launching this in all sidebar widgets soon, so keep an eye out!

This will appear at the bottom of every sidebar widget regardless of configuration. Again, it’s not visible to your visitors, only you. See over to the right, the green widget for this blog, no stats.

Top Posts

Let your users see the most viewed posts in the past 7 days. You can configure this to show up to 20 recent posts.

Visitors Online Now

See how many people are looking at your blog right now.

And the old stuff…

Recent Visitors

You can configure this to show a few or many visitors in a list or in a grid.

Top Entries

See the most bumped entries in all the communities your blog is included in. You can configure this to show as many entries as you want.

Widget Generator

Customize the widget to your hearts content with the widget generator. Choose colors, which items to show, how many in each. Make a big wide widget. Make a narrow one.

If you use the Wordpress Plugin, you’ll need to upgrade the plugin to version 0.21 to get the new features and use the widget generator. Download the new plugin here.

Or if you prefer to grab some javascript, you can get it right on the widget generator page in addition to the custom plugin function call.

Have fun! Pimp your widget!

We’ve just released a pretty major upgrade to BUMPzee. Here’s a quick overview of what to look for:

HOTSPOTS!

Hotspots are blog posts that are getting a bunch of traffic right now. Not necessariy related to BUMPzee, but from anywhere. So, for example, posts in your community that are getting dugg will shoot to the top, even without any bumps.

For example, in the picture below, the Darren Rowse entry at Chitika got dugg a few days ago and is still seeing residual traffic. A ShoeMoney post with hot women in it. Number 1 right now. Go figure.

Blogs must have a bumpzee widget to be tracked as a hotspot.

We’ve added this feature up near the top of the community homepage. Speaking of which, it’s getting pretty crowded, so you can now hide any of the major sections by clicking on the ‘hide’ link in the header. Give it a try, you can always get it back, and it remembers your setting across all communities and sessions.

Blog Statistics
If you have of the BUMPzee widgets on your blog, you now have access to visitor and page view stats. See the blog stats page in your profile, accessible from your Blogs tab.

In fact your profile has a whole new interface, so be sure to check it out.

Visibility For Your Blogs
Now when you add your blog, you get much more visibility, even if it doesn’t appear in a community. Check out the new blogs page and surf around. It’s available under the “Explore” menu.

Widget Updates
Be sure to get a widget for your blog and use the new Widget Generator to configure all the widget settings.

There are a few more widget features.

The widget can now show the number of viewers who are online right now.

Also, the widget now has customizable width. If you use the wordpress plugin, you’ll need to grab the new version 0.20.

The wordpress plugin has the added benefit of tracking your blog’s comments on Bz.

Navigation
BUMPzee is growing fast in features, and we’ve updated the navigation to make it easier to manage your blogs, view your stats, participate in your favorite communities, and find new blogs to read.

We hope you enjoy the changes. As always, please let us know if you have feedback.

We’ve made some small changes to the bumpzee recent posts widget that you may have noticed.

1. If you show top posts, the bump button no longer has a “halo”. This will look much better on those that have set up a dark background, like Dane.

2. We’ve tried to clean up some of the CSS, being more explicit on some of the settings so the widget doesn’t pick up too much from the site’s CSS and look funny.

We’ve got a few cool new things coming soon, like an online color configuratror, customizable width, and more. Stay tuned…