Late Theme Thursday!
March 16, 2013 in Updates
New themes, woot!
by WelshPixie
by WelshPixie
New Themes
March 3, 2013 in General
Ten new themes available! Find them by going to your blog dashboard and clicking through Appearance > Themes from the left menu.
by WelshPixie
Update & Changes
March 3, 2013 in Updates
Hey folks!
I’ve just updated efx3 to the latest version of WordPress (3.5.5) and the latest version of Buddypress. I’ve removed some features that weren’t getting used (groups, forums) and streamlined the site a bit by taking out inactive components. A few weeks back we also moved efx3 to a new server; it’s bigger, faster, and runs on a more stable network. Since moving, efx3 has loaded reliably faster and has suffered zero down time or those annoying ‘lags’ it used to get.
The WordPress and BuddyPress updates have changed the look of the dashboard a little. It’s more user-friendly but you may need to put aside a little time to get used to it.
If you notice any components not working, leave a comment and let me know. Some people might have broken themes; if your theme is broken, let me know and I’ll see if there’s an update available for it. If there’s NOT, you’ll have to choose a new theme and I apologise for the inconvenience.
I’ve also created a Facebook page to keep people informed of updates, scheduled maintenance, all that stuff. You can ‘like’ the page here - http://www.facebook.com/pages/EFX3/347690565347456 :)
- Pixie
by admin
Lotsa New Goodies!
September 10, 2010 in Updates
Been revamping efx3 a bit – initially intended to put just a couple of new things on and then the list grew so I thought I’d better make a post about them!
Two new measures in an effort to reduce the amount of spammers signing up to the site. It’s difficult – it seems the only spam registrations we get now are from genuine humans who can circumvent the capcha on the registration form.
Firstly, new registrations come to the admins for approval. Users can sign up, but to interact with the site they’ll have to get approved. Since there’s virtually always an admin around, nobody will have to wait very long to get approved and in the grander scheme of things it’ll cut back on the amount of spam appearing on the front page.
Second, the ‘flag’ button you’re probably seeing everywhere now. If you see a spammer that we haven’t noticed yet – either a profile, blog, or even a comment – flag it. We’ll get a notification and take action.
On to the more interesting/fun stuff!
Display your site profile in your blog sidebar – if you go to your blog dashboard and navigate through appearance > widgets, you’ll see a new widget that lets you insert your site profile into your blog sidebar. You can see it displayed at the top of my blog (http://welshpixie.efx3.com). You can choose which parts of your profile you want it to display. If you’re wondering how to get to your profile to edit that information – from the bar across the top of the site, hover over My Account, Profile, and then Edit Profile.
While you’re looking at your profile, notice the new ‘invite users’ link. This lets you send invitation emails to your friends for them to sign up on efx3; you can even suggest some groups that they might like to join when they sign up. Also within your profile, you can now manage exactly who can see each separate item in your profile; from everyone, to just your friends, to just you.
Activity Stream changes – a comment made to something in the activity stream will now bump that item to the top of the list. You’ll also see a ‘share’ button – click on that, and a little menu expands that lets you share that activity to sites like facebook, twitter, reddit, etc. or via email. Written something to the activity stream and hit ‘publish’ just as you spotted a typo? Fear not – you can now, within a certain timeframe, edit your updates. Hurrah!
Better pagination – it always bugged me that when you’re looking at, say, the member listing on the site, you can only skip pages at the top of the page. No longer! There are now pagination links at the top AND bottom of the page, and they’re bolder for easier noticing.
Simple Music – it’s only small, but we’ve added a little music widget that lets you showcase a song in your blog sidebar. Find it with the rest of the widgets (blog dashboard, appearance, widgets) and drag it to your sidebar for settings.
There’s another feature we’re possibly adding in, it just needs some tweaking to get it to work smoothly; when it’s working, you’ll be able to click or hover on a user’s avatar anywhere on the site and see a little pop-up balloon containing some of their profile information and handy links like ‘message’ or ‘add friend’.
Whew, I think that’s everything! Happy networking ^.^
by WelshPixie
Google ‘Buzz’ – is it really ‘all that’?
February 9, 2010 in General
The left-side column is an image taken directly from the Google Buzz front page (google.com/buzz). The right-side column represents the comparative efx3 features.
Well, you DO have to sign up if you’re not already a gmail user.
What else do we have?
Customer support. Every single member of efx3 can contact me or Rusty and receive a reply the same day, if not the same hour. Dr Dog sent me a message this morning asking for some theme tweaks and I did them for him as soon as I got the message. If I see a bug report from any of you, I respond as soon as I can and we fix it as soon as we can, unless it’s something we have to rely on an outside source for. Where else can you expect to receive this level of personal service?
Community interaction – if you want something, we do our best to implement it. We listen to what you want, not that many of you have requested much and seem to be quite happy with what we provide.
Here are some more things we don’t have:
We don’t claim to own your content. Anything you post to Google wave or any other Google service becomes property of Google.
We don’t take your private data and make it accessible to third-party spammers, malware and general ne’er-do-gooders. See Facebook. (Don’t believe me? – http://theharmonyguy.com/ – read the Facebook posts.)
We don’t use viral marketing – our budget is pretty meagre and relies on word of mouth to get new members ;)
We don’t have a big brand name like Google that inspires people to sign up to absolutely anything they put out ‘just because it’s Google’.
Is Google Buzz something new and fancy? No, of course not. Social networking exists in many iterations across the web and it’s whoever has the biggest voice that’ll come out on top. So before you go signing up to ‘the next big craze’, give a thought to what it’s offering you that your friendly neighbourhood efx3 doesn’t have.
