You can now see thumbnails of images posted to online groups topics, as in this example.
When you click on the thumbnail, you see a larger version of the image, with an option to view other images in the topic, or the full-sized original of the image.
A custom domain is now available on free online groups sites, with OnlineGroups.Net.
All new sites are created at a subdomain of onlinegroups.net (for example http://mysitename.onlinegroups.net).
If you own a domain, you can now use that domain on your online groups site, free. For example, if you own the domain mysitename.com, you could have your online groups site at http://mysitename.com).
OnlineGroups.Net is pleased to announce that GroupServer 1.0α is now available as a free download.
All OnlineGroups.Net sites and online groups are powered by GroupServer. GroupServer is available under an open source licence. This means that GroupServer can be downloaded, installed and used to power online groups sites, without licence fees.
Those who wish to use GroupServer, or to try out GroupServer's features, without installing and adminstering the software, can easily start a site, start groups, invite people and start posting with OnlineGroups.Net.
OnlineGroups.Net has released new pricing for online groups sites. Effective immediately, Free Sites can have as many public groups as you like, with as many members as you like. Premium Sites can have private groups and custom domains. For a limited time, Premium Sites are free, too. From September 2008, pricing for Premium Sites will start from US$10 per month.
The User Guide and the Frequently Asked Questions in the Help section have been improved.
Users can now get up-to-date answers to common questions, and guides to various ways of participating in online groups.
We are pleased to announce that mail messages are being processed again on OnlineGroups.Net.
Mail to and from OnlineGroups.Net is not being delivered, because the data-center that hosts our mail server is experiencing a denial-of-service attack. We will post a message to OnlineGroups.Net Administrators, and post a new notice here, when service is restored.
Update: really sorry, we realised this was a bad idea and revoked it. You can still start a site, and start groups there.
The system for registering new users has been extensively upgraded. New users can now register and join public groups, complete their profile, verify their email address, and set a password in a few short steps. When an administrator invites people to join a group, the process is even easier. As part of this, systems for resetting a password, adding an email address and editing a profile have also been simplified.
You can find more details, and ask questions about this in OnlineGroups.Net Administrators.
The following problems currently exist on OnlineGroups.Net.
* The Search feature is slower than we would like. Currently, searches which take a long time may "time out" (be cancelled before completion) and generate an Unexpected Error. We are looking into the optimisation of Search.
* The registration system has been unsatisfactory for a while. We have been working on changing this system for about five months now (more to come on this soon), but until it is finished, users may experience problems verifying their memberships. In the meantime, we recommend that users verify via email rather than via the web. (Update: fixed on 4 March 2008).
Updates on these problems will follow in due course.
The Chat feature has now been fixed after being broken for some time. Chat is used to conduct conversations in real-time, and is available to members of discussion groups.
Try out Chat in one of your discussion groups, or join the Demo Site Public Discussion Group (http://demosite.onlinegroups.net/groups/demosite_public_discuss) and try it there.
OnlineGroups.Net site administrators can now add paragraphs, headings, lists, links and graphics to the home page of their site. The new Site Introduction feature has bold, italic and numbered/bullet list controls that look similar to most editors, but uses preconfigured styles to ensure that formatting is consistent with the look of the site. This also ensures that the content on the page has good metadata so that it can be read by sight-impaired people. You can also edit the code, if you are so inclined.
The feature is available with thanks to an open source tool called WYMEditor (a "What You See Is What You Mean" XHTML editor). You can discuss this feature in the OnlineGroups.Net Administrators group.
OnlineGroups.Net sites were unavailable for approximately three hours between 12 noon and 3pm NZDT. OnlineGroups.Net apologises for this.
Online groups sites can now have a custom timezone.
The site administration interface enables the administrator to specify the location of the site. All dates and times on the site are then displayed in the timezone applicable to that location, taking daylight saving into account.
The OnlineGroups.Net Demo Site, for example, uses UTC, while the Comunity Sector Taskforce site uses New Zealand time.
The topic-index for sites and groups on OnlineGroups.Net have been improved: they are easier to read, contain more information, and give a greater impression of speed! These changes will make topics easier to find, and allow new users to get a better impression of what is happening on each site and group.
Each item in the topic index is formatted the same way as the search results, with the topic, group, and files posted to the topic clearly visible. Each item also shows the number of posts in the topic, as well as the author of the last post and the date that it was made. Associated with each topic is up to six keywords, which are automatically extracted from the topic; requiring no effort from the users.
All sites on OnlineGroups.Net have a new search system. As well as searching topics for keywords, search allows you to find all topics in a group, all posts in a group, all posts by a particular author, or a combination of the above!
Every post-search also has an associated Web feed so you can keep up with just your favourite author, keywords, or group!
Posting statistics for the online groups can now be accessed, such as the statistics for OnlineGroups.Net Administrators online group. There is a link to the statistics from the homepage of each group.
All sites started with OnlineGroups.Net automatically contain five trial groups.
- A Public Discussion Group that anyone can join to participate in discussions.
- A Public Announcement Group that anyone can join to receive posts.
- A Private Discussion Group that invited people can join to participate in discussions.
- A Public Announcement Group that invited people can join to receive posts.
- A Test Group that the site administrator can experiment with.
There is a new Demo Site that has examples of these groups, that you can join.
Files attachments in posts to OnlineGroups.Net online groups are now uploaded automatically to the Files area. The attached file is not sent out to the group members but a notification, with a link to the file, is added to the message, and links to the file appear in the "Topic" view as well as the Files area, just as when a file is uploaded via the Web interface.
This feature enables multiple files to be uploaded in one go, which is currently not possible via the Web interface.
Since Monday afternoon (New Zealand time), some people on the TelstraClear network in New Zealand have be experiencing problems posting email messages or files using the Web pages on OnlineGroups.Net. As far as we can tell, the problem is caused by a change to the TelstraClear network, where particular responses from the OnlineGroups.Net server are not being passed back to your client machine. We hope to have the situation resolved as quickly as possible. UPDATE: the network problem is resolved.
OnlineGroups.Net is looking for a quick-learning generalist for the entry level role of Customer Support Administrator, starting in January 2007. The job involves looking after sites and supporting customers. It requires Web awareness, top communication ability and a passion for learning and collaboration. There are opportunities to specialise in either geekery or wrangling as the business grows. For more info, check the job description.
The shop interface is now live on all OnlineGroups.Net sites (unless there is an alternative arrangement for the provision of the service). This means that you can create a site, create trial groups, add members to those groups and post to them, all for free and that you can increase the size of those groups by setting up a subscription using PayPal.
The OnlineGroups.Net start a site service is open for business. We hope that you like the pricing and that you give us feedback in the OnlineGroups.Net administrators online group.
Posted by Dan.
The interface that site administrators use for starting groups has been improved.
The email settings page for OnlineGroups.Net has be redesigned to make it easier to change your settings.
The message settings for each group is now accessible from within each group. The group message-settings is used to control how a participant in an online group is informed of messages to that group: one email per post, a digest of messages or no email messages from the group.
The message settings for each user controls the email addresses that are used with OnlineGroups.Net. It is accessible from the user's profile page, as before.
Links to OnlineGroups.Net's policies are now visible in the footers of all pages on all OnlineGroups.Net sites. They include the Privacy Policy, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Terms of Service.
OnlineGroups.Net now supports Unicode, using the standard UTF-8 encoding. This means messages can contain characters that are outside the normal English letters, digits and punctuation: you can organise a trip to a café, or even — if you are ambitious — to 中國 (China).
Metasolutions and OnlineGroups.Net have created a new look for the OnlineGroups.Net site, which will also be the default look for all the sites that belong to OnlineGroups.Net. The new site, resplendent in green, is clean and clear; it shows how flexible the appearance of OnlineGroups.Net sites can be: now many sites have a custom style, including doWire, APAPA Online, Local Government Online, The ABEL eCampus, GroupServer and RGPN Online.
We have made a small change to the page that is used to upload files. Now you have the option of not sending an email notification when you add a file: turn off the "Send Email Notification" check-box on the Add File page.
The Files area now has a "hide" feature. If you hide a file, it can't be seen by other users. You can display hidden files by searching for files with the tag 'hidden' and unhide hidden files, if you wish.
When searching for files, if you filter files by topic, the "tags" selector only shows the tags that apply to the files in the current search results.
Visitors to the OnlineGroups.Net Homepage will notice that we now are producing Atom Web feeds. Currently the feeds are known to work with Firefox, and Safari (and they should work with IE 7).
As with any new system, it may take a while to get all the service to a stage that everyone is happy. However, be assured, we are working on it!
This OnlineGroups site is now running on GroupServer 0.9, the latest version of GroupServer. Version 0.9 is significantly faster than its predecessors and has a completely redesigned Files area. It also has many small fixes and enhancements.