Spokt’s New Face
What a couple weeks these last two have been! We had our major update almost finished when we heard the news that MyFamily.com would be shutting down in September.
Below are the details of our newest version of Spokt.
New Home Page– Just look at it. We love it and hope you do too. We hope our users are proud to come here everyday.
New Simplified Look–Less Design; More Content. Larger photos & text. What you say matters most!
Meta Nub– Your posts and comments used to be cluttered by links that were only sometimes important. You’ll find these links inside what we are calling the “Meta Nub.” It’s in the lower right of posts and comments. Click on it to see a list of users who have viewed your post “Viewers”, edit your post or delete it altogether. If a photo is posted sideways you can also rotate images here.
Simplified Replies– The nesting of comments was confusing as often as it was helpful. Our mobile site never displayed indented replies and our users liked it. It simplified the experience so much that we decided to pull that enhancement back into the main website.
Hide Posts Older Than MM/DD/YYYY– If you invite a new member to an old hub she can get overwhelmed by how many posts she’ll have to “catch up on.” Not anymore: Users will be able to hide news older than a date they specify to stay current. If she feels like catching up on the past she can simply browse the archives or change the date.
Speed BOOST– We optimized our database to provide a faster Spokt. Every page should be faster than yesterday.
Faster Search– (especially in large hubs): Seconds have become milliseconds. Hooray!
Fixed Search bugs– Users reported not being able to search for photos or other strange behaviors. These should be resolved now.
Larger File Uploads– We previously allowed 500MB videos and 100MB files, now those numbers are doubled!
We’ve turned payments back on so now that you know you love Spokt, feel free to make it official by paying for your subscription.
I don’t mind replies not being indented but I do mind not being able to reply to individual comments. For this to be really used for conversation threads, like we did on myfamily, you must restore that feature. My group of myfamily refugees was just about ready to declare this our new permanent home but we are seriously reconsidering after this update, and mostly because it makes it much harder to really converse with the replies all out v of order.
Hi Eileen, I’m sorry but I caused some confusion by my earlier responses. Getting rid of the ability to reply to specific comments should not have occurred. We’re working to repair this error.
I tried to clarify in the latest blog post.
Yay! Thanks.
I am impressed by your quick actions and responsiveness to users’ requests. It sounds like you are meeting the needs of many and allaying our fears of nowhere to turn and loss of data that resulted from MyFamily pulling the plug. My next move is to set up a site for my High School Class of ’63. Many thanks Dan.
Gary
Thanks Gary! Please let us know if you need anything! You can contact us either here on the blog or on our contact form (http://spokt.com/inquiries/new)
I really like the crisp, new look. Navigation seems easier. And the new speed … very nice.
Coming from MyFamily here, so far so good, love the simplified look, no frills, just easily readable text and photos from my family (just as I’d like it) but with all the options for uploading media and content still available.
I cannot interpret the comments and want to make sure, but for clarification:
Are you adding ability to reply to specific comments, and include and intent for “nested” comments within the thread???
That ability is the #2 most useful feature on other comment type forums (MyFamily) Second only to the “whats new” or the “unviewed” feature.
So far so good. I’m enjoying the new experience, you’ve made the switch bearable, even if it was against our choice 🙁 and 🙂
Great to hear you are liking Spokt, Drew. Yes, you are correct — we launched seven years ago with feature to reply to comments that are added to a main post. We wholeheartedly agree that this is an integral feature to Spokt, and we have no plans to remove it. However, with the new rollout we encountered a hiccup that temporarily disabled this feature.
The ability to respond to individual comments in the middle of the conversation will be restored shortly, and we’ll let everyone know once it’s active again. Enjoy Spokt!
how do you delete a hub
Hi Dave,
Let me know if this doesn’t answer your question: http://spokt.com/faq#delete_hub
We were on myfamily from the beginning and have 300 people in our HUB and are enjoying everything. Some people have found their invites in the spam mail but we notified everyone of this and they are not having any problems. We have 5 people that used the test hub and our finding all the questions of the new people and we are happy about the amount of Storage we have. I think the team at spokt are doing a wonderful job putting everything in place.
Thank you so much for putting this site together
Bless you Vernon! Thank you for taking time to share your positive experience with us. We’re so glad you found Spokt and hope to make your years here very enjoyable!
I think you are doing a fantastic job in answering our questions!
Is there going to be a date posted under each post/reply and not just 4 days ago or last week? Sometimes dates get to be important.
Hi Janet, now if you linger for a second with your mouse cursor over the “4 days ago” you’ll see a tooltip that tells you exactly when it was posted.
Awwww, Dan…..you guys are SO great with your upgrades. We MyFamily members are to be sure, VERY happy with your sites! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Is there a way for two or more people to sign on with the same e-mail? Example husband and wife useing the same e-mail address but wold like to each use their own name.
Hi Roger —
Currently Spokt requires each user to have a unique email address. I’m not sure if you’ve considered this, but you can create a free email address with a number of services. I’ve listed a few below.
Apple iCloud Email (this is our personal recommendation – see instructions here and choose your device (Free. iPhone, Mac, or PC – you may need an Apple device to get the account configured initially)
Google Mail (Free. Ad supported.)
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
RJ, please ask the developers to add admin controls for what the members can do. I just tested out remove from a test account and found that they can remove any invited members. This is not acceptable. Unless you are an admin you should not have rights to this. Also the admin should be able to block a member(s) from inviting if abuse is detected. Thanks Greatly appreciated.