5-Jun-08 9:25 PM This is the largest and final new functionality release for Affino NX. We have fixed almost every outstanding issue and have made hundreds of improvements and usability enhancements. We have also rolled out eight new major features and have rolled out nine major updates for existing Affino solutions.

The sexiest new Features are undoubtedly the Affino Messenger and Incoming Feeds. The new Affino Messenger is an instant messaging application which can either run on the browser or can be a downloadable application which runs off the desktop. It enables real-time on-site communication and networking and has to be seen to be appreciated.

Incoming Feeds are a great enhancement for pulling in content. Feeds can be both content and media based and make it possible to pull content such as YouTube video feeds, FFFFound images, BBC Radio Podcasts, Engadget stories, Affino news and more. Affino automatically generates thumbnails and main images, cleans up the feed content and creates appropriately tagged articles which are instantly browsable and searchable.

The most significant enhancement in this release is the enhanced media management which has been completely rearchitected around new media upload and editing interfaces. It means that the media management process can now be tailored to a high degree to best fit the user community and to monetise community media. It also means Affino now works with embedded YouTube videos, MP3s and QuickTime videos.

We have a great set of help guides with this release and have reworked the in-line help to be more informative. You can find guides for all the key new technologies and features on Emojo.com Support.

Our recommendation is that since this is such a significant release that you must read the support documentation in advance of updating. Be aware that especially on the community aspects of Affino you will need to update settings. You will also need to run system, design element and skin updates. There is a small number of design elements (mostly community and media related) which will need updating as well. We have done extensive tuning to minimise any disruption in the update process.

This release has had the longest and most extensive quality assurance process of any Affino release with five pre-release versions and test phases. We recommend that social sites; sites with high email volumes: beta phase sites and sites under development should upgrade immediately to get the full benefits from this release, other users should wait one to two weeks should any critical issues arise.

What’s New

Media Workflows V1 - the biggest update in this version of Affino is the new Media Workflows engine which introduces complete media workflows to Affino for the first time. This replaces a number of separate media interfaces and creates a unified media workflow and lock-down. It means that you can add in automated content (text) detection; multiple levels of lock-down; confirmation screens; make bulk media uploads and YouTube video uploads available to end users; Affino now routes users intelligently depending on where they’re adding media, i.e. personal videos, into blog articles, to community areas or as a publisher creating a news story. We’ve implemented a live editor on the media items for a simple more approachable interface when editing associated descriptive content and Meta data.

Affino Messenger V1 - Affino Messenger is a new Air / Flex based instant messaging client which will replace the chat and conference elements within Affino. It is a completely new application which can be used either directly on the site for a Flash chat or can be downloaded and installed on the local machine (on PCs and Macs) and runs exactly as a traditional IM client. Users can chat with their friends, chat in groups via the conferences and see the latest incoming messages. Each instance can be fully branded.

Incoming Content Feeds V1 - it is now possible to pull in content directly from RSS feeds and Podcasts into Affino. These can be configured extensively to only pull in content, pull in content and refer to external media or pull in content and generate media with the Media Libraries. It means that rather than simply referring to external sites the content becomes integral to the Affino site and is fully searchable, tagged and embedded within the site. The content can include titles, teasers, body copy, thumbnails, main images, MP3s and Videos including YouTube videos.

Content Subscription Analytics V1 - following the release of Content Subscriptions we’ve now added analytics which allow you to track the most popular sections, overall subscriber numbers and drill down by Zone / Channel / Section to identify key content subscription areas on the site

Events Listing Design Element V1 - new design element for events highlights with multiple layout options and attractive calendar style dates.

Zone Domains V1 - we’re introducing Zone Domains which means you can apply a default domain to each Zone. This means that the correspondence from the zone will now refer back to the Zone Domain rather than the site one; needs setting up a domain on the Zone.

YouTube Videos V1 - it is now possible to embed YouTube Videos as distinct media items which can then be used throughout the site; the videos can have extensive information mapped on to them and are all searchable based on this information; allows for video profiles, casting, production details and more; YouTube video feeds can be imported into a section / media library to create YouTube channels on your website; it is now possible to set a video to be the member’s personal show-reel, this is displayed on their main profile page.

Google Sitemaps V1 - Affino will now automatically generate Google Sitemaps for each of the sites running on an Affino instance; only publicly available content will be contained in the sitemaps; channels will have a priority of 1 and sections a priority of 0.5; the sitemaps will be generated automatically overnight each night.

Flex Media Uploader V1 - we’ve developed our own Flex-based media bulk uploader; this is a highly usable and secure uploader which filters file uploads based on the member’s privileges and context including file size, file formats and file volume, and is intelligent in identifying these limits even when multiple variants are selected and uploaded.

Major Enhancements

Email Engine V2 - completely re-engineered the email engine; Affino can now manage 100,000s to millions of emails sent out on content subscriptions and newsletters; re-engineered system is more robust and able to withstand many more external issues; new Zone Domains to improve the sending process; extensively re-formatted content to display better across multiple email clients; increased personalisation in each email to reduce spam filtering; numerous design elements extended to offer improved email display options; Email Profiles introduced to provide easier management of outgoing emails

Campaign Management Analytics V2 - new campaign analysis engine offers two major enhancements: it is now possible to track down impressions and click-throughs by date ranges; it is possible to identify each user who has clicked through on a creative and export a report; for improved tracking it is possible to place a transparent link in front of Flash creatives so that there is no need to embed links within them.

Who’s Online V2 - major overhaul of Who’s Online so that it can be tailored to function horizontally, vertically or as a grid; show live users or simply recent users; show additional user details and specify icon size.

Content Subscriptions V2 - major overhaul on Content Subscriptions based on a lot of user feedback; there are many more formatting options for improved styling and usability; more information displayed such as geo location for certain content and made contributors clickable; improved bulk assignment for subscriptions; new analytics (see above); extended personalisation to reduce spam filtering; improved scaling and reliability with new performance monitoring

Comments & Ratings v5 - content originators are now sent a notification of any comment made on their content; closed a potential vulnerability in Comments & Ratings; resolved a small number of issues and improved formatting; it is now possible to delete comments; comments moderation re-worked to be more usable

Jobs & Classifieds V1.1 - resolved numerous issues making this a must have updates for Jobs Boards; improved formatting and layout for social content submissions; improved geo tagging and filtering

Showcase Design Element V1.1 - extensively re-written in Flex 3 / Cairngorm (for those who are interested); greatly improved performance; smaller footprint; improved transitions.

Friend Requests / Invites v1.1 - significant usability enhancements to invites make the process of inviting, tracking invites, re-sending and deleting them simpler and more seamless experience; resolved numerous errors;

Events V2.1 - now have embedded links; calendar grid now displays events from a Section (it is no longer possible to display all events irrespective of Zone), use Section hierarchies to display events from multiple categories; fixed numerous Event date related issues; improved formatting on print version; improved event listing; added new lock-down options on what fields are editable (visible) by contributors; new sort order options; no longer displays private venues; calendar only displays year in the past to two years in the future (prevents 10,000s of incorrect Google indexed pages)

Other Enhancements and Fixes

Community Lock-down - numerous new community lock-down enhancements which allow for both more community participation and more effective monetisation of community interactions

Sections - new ‘Default Article Thumbnail’ setting allows automated thumbnails on content including social content.

My Profile - signatures now allow HTML formatting; CVs extensively updated with improved formatting and internationalisation; now have option to display the wall on the user’s main page as well as the friends one

Member Listing - added new option to default list only members with a profile photo; now ensure that chosen filters are applied consistently to the search results

Polls - related polls display using new format; significantly improved usability on polls; resolved all outstanding poll issues

FAQs - new dynamically expanding FAQ format

Resizable Text - issues resolved with heading sizes

Newsletters - new User Profile filter for mass assigning users to newsletters; updated a number of the highlight elements to better display in Outlook; fixed newsletter export issue

Media Library - default images now displaying correctly; it is possible to hide media subsections (essential for community media libraries); new option allows contributor information to be displayed alongside media details; new media tabs can be enabled allowing the filtering of the media content by all / videos / photos / music & documents; resolved numerous MIME type issues

Locations - integrated with Google Maps (outgoing link); new improved layout; now have embedded links (from related content)

Message Boards - notifications now point to right Zone; resolved spacing issue on listing; it is now possible to relate a Message Board; no longer display deleted posts in Public Profile; improved pagination

Blogs - improved formatting and images now wrap consistently in Firefox; blog highlights with numerous new formatting options; blog posts can now have multiple images (up to 7); embedded links now enabled and visible in blog listing

Links - it is now possible to turn off the disclaimer for external links

eCards - numerous formatting and usability enhancements

Login Design Element - new formatting options

Tips - we’ve updated the design element to allow a more flexible presentation

eCommerce - reporting now includes items ordered and delivery address details; products / services bought links can now be icons

Social Bookmarkers - it is now possible to simply display the icons and specify the alignment

Dynamic Forms - can now have Captcha; can be accessed via secure link and login

Online Forms - can now have Captcha; improved the message formatting

Detailed Standard Section - now has new ‘Start at’ attribute to allow for more flexible highlights; new maximum title length attribute; new Design Menu option to frame the element

Publishing Workflows - improved the usability of the Inbox to better track down posters and duplicates; resolved a number of live / status issues and introduced more automation into the approval process; archived articles now removed from the workflows

Live Editor - improved editing of multi-step articles; resolved a number of errors including the caching issue when editing content.

Registration - improved Captcha; improved setup process

Control Centre - improved the Live User tracking on the Control Centre, now displays more accurately the live members, guests and bots.

Mobile - no longer errors out with events; improved multi-lingual capabilities and resolved display issue

RSS Feeds - removed duplicate items from feeds; improved geo tagging of feed items; private items no longer in feeds

Forums - numerous minor issues resolved

Detailed Media Section - resolved major issue which was causing it to fail

Design Centre - now display full Design Object tree when viewing the design object; new Back button available in the Design Style and will be applied throughout; removed slight indent for headings for more consistent formatting; it is possible to turn on and off link underlining site-wide; hover link colour re-enabled; resolved Main Menu copying issue; resolved cell copying issue; minor usability enhancements

Archive - improved archived article usability; resolved article restore issue; automatically archive existing content when archive profile applied to channel.

Community Management - improved user and group analytics now, faster and more consistent; added content subscription;

What’s New - what’s new channel is now Zone focused highlighting only the new content within the Zone.

Sitemap - it is now possible to have more than one Sitemap in a Zone, useful for 404 re-directs.

Internationalisation - essential update for multi-lingual sites; bounce handling working for multiple languages, i.e. not just English; internationalised date format in many elements; rolled out internationalisation to multiple components in Affino which were previously on in English; improved application translation tools; essential fixes for article attributes and content design; the profanity filter is now multi-lingual

Optimisation - application start-up optimised, uses less memory;

Content Delivery - more media elements now distributable via content delivery networks

Security - We’ve added Captcha options to Online Forms, Dynamic Forms and Comments & Ratings; new My Message Profile option to only allow messages to friends; disabled user accounts have all their subscriptions suspended; enforced privacy on all design elements which can contain private content

Scalability - many aspects of Affino have been made significantly more scalable, in particular email handling (outgoing and bounce handling), user management, and site structure management.

Inline Help - all inline help information updated and extended to provide more informative in context help.

Plus - hundreds of other minor usability updates to almost every aspect of Affino.

 

 

Markus Karlsson
CEO | Emojo | London | UK
Creators of Affino eBusiness Suite
www.emojo.com