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We want to wish everyone a Happy and Safe 4^th of July! Independence Day is more than a chance for family and friends throughout our country to gather for barbecues and fireworks displays, it is an annual celebration to commemorate the courage and faith of our founding fathers in their pursuit of liberty.

One of the many benefits our users have with the Spruz platform is the frequency we roll out new updates and improvements.

We have applied an update today to all sites that bring back member controlled styling to member profiles. With the new styling feature members can set background color and images and change their profile box color and background. This combined with Style Accents really gives you a great deal of control over how your members design their profiles.

To access the profile styling option first make sure you do a manual refresh of the page because we have updated a number of client side files in this release. Next go to your profile page and click the + icon, in the drop down list you will see Add/Edit Style. Clicking on that will load the editor options for customization. One really cool feature about the new style controls, you can see your changes in real time!

We have been working on new ways for you to make money from your website. As part of this effort we have rolled out a new member subscription system. This allows you to charge a small monthly fee that is paid directly to you via PayPal for higher levels of site access for your subscriber. The system is fully automated so when you get a payment in via PayPal the users subscription due date will be adjusted properly.

You can access the new member subscription configuration by going to the Green Community tab in your site administration/manage area and click on subscriptions.

Last but not least we have fixed a few user reported bugs and problems.

As with any update that has new features there are bound to be problems and issues. Please report any issue you find directly to us through support ticket. We hope you enjoy these new improvements.

You may notice some new changes today on your site. We have been working on improvements to increase the retention of new users and these changes add some additional functionality for everyone.

There are new edit options for elements and pages on your website. We have now added the ability for site administrators to edit element options and edit HTML pages from the front end. This was done to make it easier for you to make quick changes and see how those changes look right on your website.

So you will now see an Edit Icon on all elements to change options quickly. On the Static HTML page type you will see an edit option as well to quickly edit the whole page.

The new edit options are only displayed to members that already have access to the sites administration content builder and design editors.

Here is a brief list of features we are working on right now that will be released real soon!

• Member Subscription Module - Member subscriptions allow you to charge a small fee for higher levels of site access and adding benefits. This module keeps track of all your subscribers and helps automates reoccurring payments, This will allow you to display subscription options when a member visits a page that is set to a level that matches a subscription you setup for them to sign up with. Subscription payments are paid to directly to you via PayPal.
• Member Profile Style Options - We are bring back member controlled styling to profiles by popular demand. This new styling feature will allow members to set backgrounds and change a few colors.
• Photo Tagging - This will be a feature on member profiles that will have a selection box that you can place over different targets in an image to tag them as your friend or an name an object.

Please keep your suggestions and feedback coming. We are looking at adding new elements and making improvements to activity. We want to see your suggestions on new elements we can add or small tweaks that can be made to make our social website platform a better place for you to live.

Obviously, a big piece to our success as a community building platform is in making the first experiences of new users to this platform simple and friendly. To that end we have added a new section to the Help & Information system called "Getting Started".

The Getting Started section walks users through the common tasks that the may want to do after creating a site and it starts to get them familiar with the interface along the way.

Another addition to the Help & Information system is Interactive Help, which is currently available on the Admin Area Tutorial in the Getting Started section of the help. Interactive Help goes further than video, actually showing the user and talking them through specific steps.

You can access the Getting Started section of help directly from your Welcome page by clicking the Help button in the upper right of the page, near the Announcements.

Growth of your community with us is very important. That is why as part of our commitment to the new member profile system we are now adding new improvements. One of these new improvements is the ability for your site members to post their status updates directly to their twitter accounts.

How this helps you is when the status update is posted the status update has a URL back to that members profile on your site that is then displayed to there many followers! We hope this will be traffic magnet for your website, provided you and your members take advantage of this feature.

To post a tweet when posting your status there will be a small TweetIt check box next to the status update box. By checking this and providing your twitter account details enables our platform to directly post your tweet to your twitter page.

We hope you enjoy this small addition.

As for fixes, we have corrected a problem where Group Admins could not remove members.

All websites have been updated on the Spruz Platform with the new Group system that is part of the new Member Profiling system update released last week.

Member groups allow you and/or your site members to create groups on any topic they desire. Here is a brief list of features that the group system includes;

• Set the permission level required on the group members element to control what member access level is required to create a new group.
• Group Deletion Options for the site owner.
• Members can fully moderate the group they create as well as the site administrator.
• Full group profile page that is designed using the same technology for the member profile system. Thus group profiles can be highly customizable with different elements, and widgets. Groups also have a personalized group image.
• Groups have several integrated elements that can been added to the group profile.
  • We have a few elements that carry over well from profiles that include; Shout box, Custom Text Box, Member Element.
  • New Topics element that creates a mini-forum with full permission control over who can create topics and who can reply to them.
• Member assigned group administrators. Group Admins can fully moderate the group, including the ability to delete topics, approve members and so on.
• Groups can be created as private or public and can decide to manually approve members or allow anyone to join.
• There are many other great features in this update that you can explore!

To enable groups on your website, go to your Content Builder, Click new page. From the page list select Member Groups.

Like anything new, there maybe bugs, problems, or issues. Please report them using the support ticket system so we can make sure they get addressed quickly.

We will be continuing to add to the Member System and Groups on an ongoing basis, based on suggestion volume and features we are planning to add over the coming months.

In addition to the group system release there are a number of issues that have been reported by our users that we have corrected in this update.

1. Profiles display a not configured message. This was caused when the site profile settings had been changed to remove both core elements that are created when a profile is generated (Shoutbox or Friends Box). This has been fixed to show the profile box and not relay to the page not configured message.
2. Sometimes when images are uploaded they do not take or display a broken image. We have located this as an issue with our Image Processor that handles the re-optimization of images uploaded by users. This should be corrected.
3. Profiles where the Admin or the User had never visited would show a profile not configured message. To make the new profile system we use a new database structure and when the user or admin visits a profile for the first time since the update our backend system transfers profile information and content over, thus if your members had friends on their list and those friends have not been back, then their profile would not be configured. This has been adjusted so that anyone visiting a profile will regenerate their profile content. Thus giving everyone full profiles that have elements in place as they are visited by members.
4. To make new inbox messages more apparent, we have made two changes. We made the welcome line message count bold, also we only show the count if you have new messages. This should make new messages much more obvious at a glance while not being annoyingly persistent.
5. We have made a number of other smaller adjustments and fixes. If you have problems, please report them.

We hope everyone enjoys the new grouping and member system. As time moves along you will see many more improvements added to the member system as a whole. We want you to be successful, lets grow together.

Well, day one has past of our new member profile system (Phase 1 update) and just like we had anticipated there were a few issues. First I want to thank everyone for your patience with us as we worked through issues with this major advancement on the member profile system. We have worked long and hard to address problems and issues people reported using the support tickets. I would like to list the major issues we have seen, and address some of the problems.

Friends not fully copied over

The most major issue of the day is not all friends are being copied over when a user visits their new profile. The friends will reconnect friends on a profile where the member is still a member on your website. But for some users friends were not copied over. We have added a new link to the friends page on your members profile that says "Missing Members? Click here to check" If they do have missing members have them click that link and that should fix the problem. We will be removing that link in a few days to give people time to get friends not transfered over. This issue has been corrected for members that have not visited their profile since the update and they should not have issues with this.

Member Blogs are Missing

In the new member update the old member blogging is gone and replaced with tie ins to your website blog. If you want users to post blogs then set the element for the blogging on your blog page to allow members level 1 to post. If you want to disable member blogging go to your new site profile settings page and uncheck the box for member blogs.

We have created a URL so your members can go and view their old blogs to copy information from them.

Example URL: http://spruz.com/page/member_blogs/mguid/208793/rss.xml

URL Format: http://[YOURDOMAIN]/page/member_blogs/mguid/[MEMBERUID]/rss.xml

You would replace the Yourdomain with your domain name or you can access it with ours. The MEMBERUID is the UID number that of the member. The UID number can be found on your site members page under your green community tab in the administration area.

Member About Boxes

This information was replaced with profile information you can customize from your profile settings page. Thus no information could be copied over. You can customize your questions then have your users fill out the details. The member about box should tell your users what to do.

Member Photo Gallery

We have corrected a few formatting issues here and expanded the max file size to 5MB for uploading. In addition on some themes the add images button on the photo confirmation page was blocked by some of our overlays making it unclick able. All of this should be corrected now.

 We have also corrected an issue with Internet Explorer 7 and earlier that caused the Add Photo option not to work in the Photos page of the profiles.

I can not drag and drop, the text editor boxes are not different or do not work, etc

We can not say this enough. Most browsers cache what's known as JS files that are downloaded from our server when you visit your webpage. The JS files store a large amount of the client side coding for things like drag and drop, text editors, and so on to work, when we update these features those files on your computer need to be updated as well. When a file is cached you need to ether manually refresh your home page by holding CTRL and pressing your F5 Key or Delete your internet temporary files and history. New visitors to your site or visitors that may not have logged in recently will not notice an issue because their browser will download these files again to update them.

We have had alot of great suggestions on what your needs are, if enough people agree with you then we will more then likely add your suggestion sooner rather then later. Please use the suggestion box to post ideas and such on what you would like to see soon. We have a number of things we are still adding to the member profile system as a whole in time, but the suggestions also help us determine if we should push something off or not .

Remember if you see something that does not look right, read over our news first then open a support ticket to tell us about it. Support tickets are access from your site administration area in the top right corner from the Support Link.

Our primary method of communitcation with you, is through our news, to subscribe to our RSS feed so you can stay informed about updates that may affect you and your website! http://spruz.com/s/53188/rss.xml or follow us on http://twitter.com/spruz.

As part of this member system update we have completely redone the way custom styling works on the member profiles. The new system has many key advantages that make it better than it was before and also better than any other social network has to offer currently.

The new styling system, which we are calling Element Accents in the profiles, is based on the very powerful Custom CSS Modifier structure and is tied to and saved with your website theme. This means:

• The styling possibilities are very diverse.
• You choose what styling options are available to your members.
• You can make sure that the styling options match well with your site theme.
• Theme creators can build in Element Accents when creating themes, making accents available to you automatically when you install the theme.

Here's how they work:

1. You add some special Custom Modifier code to your theme in the Design editor that defines the Accent Name, Unique ID and Style Code.
2. When a member edits an element on their profile, they will now get a drop down menu at the top of the edit window called Element Accents. They can choose an accent for that element, the preview of the element shows in real time, they save and they and everyone else can see that element with that accent style applied.

You can add as many Element Accents as you want to your theme.

Adding an Accent is really easy (You don't even have to know CSS), here's how:

1. Go to the Design Editor
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. At the top right of the Custom CSS Modifier Editor click the Member Accent Adder button
4. Fill in the Accent Name (This is what your members will see in the Element Accents list)
5. Choose the Element Part you want to add a style to
6. Choose the type of style you want to add
7. Fill in the styling options (Go here to get color codes http://www.colorpicker.com/)
8. If you want to add another style to your Accent click the + Add Style button at the bottom of the dialog. Add as many as you want to that Accent.
9. When finished customizing your style, click the Accent Finished button.
10. Save your theme

If you know CSS you can customize the code even more to add your own unique styles for your site members.

For questions regarding custom modifiers and accents please post in the Owner to Owner forum in your site admin.

The time has finally come; after months of planning, development, testing and more testing; we have released the first stage of the highly anticipated member update. We actually made it before the start of summer as we said we would!

Before we get into the details let's go over a few very important things. First off, as with any update and especially with an update this large, there will be bugs. Please ONLY post bug reports/problems in a Support Ticket that is directly accessible from your website. Do not post about bugs or problems in the comments or forums. Next, we are happy to get your feedback and suggestions (in the suggestion forum); however before posting any suggestions fully explore the new profile and member features on your site and read through our news posts about it. That way you are less likely to suggest something that is already available in the update. We will be closely monitoring comments, forums and support tickets; your help by posting things in the appropriate areas is greatly appreciated.

For an extensive list of features that are in this update please visit this news post by clicking here.

We want you to be aware of some important things:

Your browser my retain some files still from the old system. To make sure that you are seeing everything as you should, go to your main page of your site, hold down your CTRL key on your keyboard, and press the F5 key. Pass this on to your site members too, so that they can fully see and use the new updates.

We have added a lot of site administration options for the profiles, allowing you to really customize how they are used on your site. To edit your Profile Settings, first click on the Community tab of your site administration, then click the Profile Settings button in the member toolbar. I you have questions about what a field does, hover over the blue info icon next to it.

With an update this large and to give you features that blow the old ones out of the water, some old content is unable to be converted over into the new system.

Friends - You may not have as many friends as before this is because your friends list only shows friends that are on your website and not others, we will be adding options in the future based on feedback to allow for all friends from all websites to be viewed on member profiles.

Gallery Images - Hugh overhaul on pics, how they are stored, etc. as a result no profile gallery images could be carried over. But I am sure you will enjoy the impressive new photo features with multi image uploading and more.

Style Me Options - The Style me customization has been completely replaced with a new method of style control that allows you to add choose what styles (Accents) are available to your members when editing their elements. Full details on using this feature will be posted shortly.

We want to thank those of you that helped us test this update and give a special thanks to Randy for the incredible amount of time he spent working with us on testing the member update over the last 4 days.

As we mentioned in the last post, the second phase of the update should be out in 7 to 10 days. We have many great additions still in store for you in that update as well. So stay tuned!

This update will be a major change for some, thus we ask you to properly evaluate the member system before posting your feedback on it. Remember to post your issues, questions and concerns to us via support ticket so we can individually address your problems. If we delete your post, and you want to know why please enter a support ticket. We will delete posts that are support related or that are quick to judgment on this update.