Archive: Site Developments
The latest release notes are now posted on the boards. Enjoy, and thanks to everyone that provided valuable feedback so that we could address the items in the release today.
The notes for the latest release of SocialSpark can be found at the Izea Boards following this link.
We made a new release of SocialSpark yesterday addressing a number of bugs and concerns our users found recently.
The full release notes can be read at our boards, along with the notes for previous releases we have made.
It's been gnawing away at you this afternoon hasn't it. You definitely noticed it, but you didn't want to say anything just in case you were the only lucky one out there. It just wouldn't do to draw jealous attention from all the other posties, so you just sat there and enjoyed it, hoping it wasn't some accident that would go away in the near future.
PayPerPost.com is now a heck of a lot faster for everyone. There's a bunch of other people out there that have been thinking the same things you have been thinking today I'm sure. Trevor and Larry have been working tirelessly for the past 2 weeks on a massive rewrite of the segmentation engine to speed the site up and cope with PayPerPost.com's continuing meteoric growth, and today we deployed it.
The end result is, of course, a snappier, happier and all round more pleasant feeling PayPerPost.com than ever before.
Well done guys!
In the past we used to validate the presence of tracking images within a post at the time it was submitted for an opportunity that required it. The old validation was very rigid and allowed only one possible match to pass the validation. You had to have precisely matched character for character the <img> tag embedded in your post in order to be able to successfully post to an opportunity. This caused problems for bloggers who used certain blogging platforms - (I can't remember which ones off the top of my head). But several blogging platforms would reformat the image tags when you published your post to the web. In an effort to prevent these false negative validation problems, we removed this validation and trusted bloggers to embed the image with the honor system.
Now we have a new problem, the tracking images are being left out of some posts or are not being embedded properly. This is a big deal to an advertiser who is paying to have that tracking data. The integrity of all of the tracking numbers are taken into question when just a few posts don't have correct data. We have seen an increase in this phenomenon lately. How can a post have five clicks on a tracking link and zero views? The answer is the tracking image is either left out or not entered correctly. On the customer love side, we have already started reaching out more actively to bloggers who do not have the image embedded correctly and have asked them to fix the post. Also, on the development side, we have implemented some more robust validation that will ensure the image is embedded correctly while making sure we don't fail a validation if the image tag has been slightly reformatted. This new validation is going to go live today. If you get a validation error regarding the missing tracking image when you try to post on an opportunity, please try to move your tracking image somewhere else in your post. The validation will only fail if the image is missing or embedded incorrectly. From now on, simply be sure to add the tracking image whenever the advertiser requires it. Thanks!!
I am pleased to announce that we have released an application for all of you Facebook users out there. This application will allow you to link your Facebook account to your PayPerPost account. There are a variety of features for both Advertisers and Posties, we will have a video tutorial posted early next week. If you are an early adopter and want to check it out before we give you the video click here. One important thing to note. You PPP Facebook account is tied into the PPP affiliate engine for Posties (Blogger accounts only). If someone signs up and starts blogging for us based on your referral you are eligible for the same $15 you would have gotten if they signed up through your blog. What are you waiting for!?!? Get it going and start inviting your Facebook friends.
I am relatively new to Facebook and looking to make some Postie friends. If you want to be my friend click here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=757025231
We also have a PPP Group on Facebook here : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2334228052
I am pleased to announce that we will be moving our blog to TypePad on Monday. We will be splitting this blog into five blogs: Posties, Advertisers, Developers, Community and a summary that includes everything wrapped into one. I am really looking forward to all of the features that Typepad has to offer, most specifically trackbacks and categories.
Some of you may or may not know that when we launched PPP Direct we also launched a special PPP Direct TypePad widget that makes it really easy to install our code. The team over at Six Apart has been great to work with. They are very understanding of Blogger desires and are open to new ideas.
If you haven't checked out their platform and you are considering a switch click here to check it out.
