Site News & Announcements

--> Writing.Com's new portfolio & community tools!

Greetings Members!

I'm pleased to announce the release of our new portfolio and community system! Affectionately code named project "Newport", this very large update makes important changes to Writing.Com, and I believe it gives the site a huge leap forward as we near our 10-year anniversary in September.

Newport is actually the compilation of many months of updates to Writing.Com. It includes a complete redesign of the Portfolio area, converting it to an up-to-date, fast and fluid system. It introduces tabs that add several new features including a Biography, a 'social' Notebook, Fans, a Community info area and a new interactive 'toy' called "Sliders".


Here's a listing of the most exciting new features and changes:

Fans
Fans are a new way to share your Favorites with other members of Writing.Com. In simplest terms, a fan is a favorite made public. Both favorites and fans do the same thing; they allow you to follow the updates of the author/item you've favorite'd/fan'd.

A Fan goes a step further than a favorite, making it known "to everyone" that you follow that author/item. (For example, you might follow "Writing.Com General Discussion"  and want everyone to know; so you'd be a Fan. On the other hand, you might also follow some more private topics that you don't want everyone to know about, so you'd keep them private, as Favorites.) Checking out what your favorites have fan'd is great way to find new items and authors that you'll like too!

You'll note the "Favorite" icons have been changed around. The StoryMaster
When you don't have someone or something as a favorite, you have a + icon. Click it to add the favorite. When it's a favorite, you'll see the favorite finger icon. When you're a Fan, you'll see our bullhorn icon. You can click the finger or fan icon to toggle from favorite to fan and back again. As always, you can delete a fan or favorite at your Favorites page.


Portfolio Revised!
The new portfolio system is super clean, slick and dynamic. You can open folders in-line within the portfolio, or follow a new window link to that page for an updated and clean folder view. All item details are hidden but accessible with a click of the "Show Details" link. Public and private portfolio views are now the same, with one expandable "Manage Items" area shown only to you when you're viewing your own portfolio.

Click Manage Items to open the tool links for each of your items and reveal the bulk management tools. The bulk tools include: Reorder, Change Access, Move and Delete. Each of these tools are dynamic, much more intuitive, and self-instructing than our old portfolio manager.

A Live Search now graces every portfolio just below the Bio Block. Start typing and the system immediately starts searching the title, description and keywords of every visible item in the portfolio (your own or another member's), showing results as you go based on what you've already entered.

The Recycling Bin becomes standard for all members and is now found as part of your portfolio contents. The Recycling Bin is private and its presence is only shown in your own portfolio.

Beneath the new tabs, your portfolio sports a new links line:
   Create Item || Tools || Folders || Stats & Info || Settings
         Create item opens a clean and easy item creation list.
         Tools gives links to tools for your portfolio.
         Folders gives you quick access to any folder in your portfolio.
         Stats & Info gives you information about your portfolio.
         Settings contains links for portfolio highlighting and Inkspot set-up.


The Biography Tab
Every member gets all tabs, regardless of paid membership level or type. In the Biography page, every member also gets to add a bio image! The biography area includes many optional personal information fields that should help everyone get to know each other a little better.

Your Highlighted Items and most recently modified items have moved to the Biography Tab. Both of these area have increased from 3 items to 5. They're displayed in the 'Newport' format and folders within your own portfolio open in-line. (If you highlight another member's folder, that folder needs to open to its own view and will do so if clicked.)


The Notebook Tab
A new social 'Notebook' has been added. Members can scribble in each other's notebooks and reply to the scribbles of others. Email notifications are optional and members can stop notifications from a link in each email. Notebook owners can remove, report and block members from posting to their notebook. The block utility is separate from our "account" block utility which still provides a "complete" blocking of everything, included all tabbed areas.

In the future, the Notebook will gain additional responsibility to coordinate more updates from your account into one area for those who have you as a favorite or fan. For example, automatic update notices about edits of your items, changes to your biography and more will congregate in your Notebook.

(Coming soon: An access restriction setting for your notebook, plus the ability to create a small custom header for the book with WritingML.)


The Blog Tab
If you have "My Blog" set up, all links to your blog now automatically redirect visitors into your new "Blog" tab, shown in your portfolio tab line. When someone views your blog from an item listing or a link, it takes them directly into the tabbed view, bringing readers of your blog directly into your port. Not only is blogging a good writing exercise, it's now a great way to gain more exposure on Writing.Com for your writing overall.


The Fans Tab
The Fans tabs shows you what a given member is a fan of and who's a fan of them.


The Community Tab
The community tab is a new page that aggregates a member's community achievements. It includes a Community Recognition breakdown, stats on ratings, reviews, posts and more. A merit badge summary, the most recent badges received and the most recent awards received are also highlighted on the page.


The Sliders Tab
Each portfolio gets their own set of Sliders -- think magnetic poetry. You create the "Words", which can include phrases, emoticons and other "Small" writingML" -- like "item" and "post", but not "bitem" or "image"... and anyone can move them around! Like what you've created on the board? Take a snapshot and save it! Visitors to the sliders page can view past snapshots.

You can reference snapshots with WritingML: {snapshot:#######} where ###### is the snapshot's ID number.

The Sliders tab does not appear until the port owner has setup their sliders. To do so, just go into your sliders tab and add words. The portfolio owner can remove, report and block members from taking snapshots of their sliders. Like the notebook, the Sliders block utility is separate from the overall block which still provides "complete" blocking of everything, included all tabbed area.

(Coming Soon: An access restriction setting for the Sliders tab.)


The new Handle Click
You can now click on a member's handle for a new menu. You can click on either "same window" and "new window" links in this new area to go to the member's portfolio, to send them gift points, or to send them a Merit Badge.


Awardicon Counter
Now when an item has multiple awardicons, the number of awards is shown on the highest value, most current award. For example:

Quorilax  [13+] #541052 "The size of your body does not reflect the magnitude of your soul." by Kraken through the Snow

Miscellaneous
There are a lot of other little changes buried in with this massive update. We've been working on the beta site for a few weeks making tweaks and changes in a variety of places. I've also finished and released a variety of other small updates that had been started but never completed. So, if you find something we didn't mention, you're welcome to post about it and let us know... we'll let you know if it's new or not!


We want your feedback!
Like any new change to Writing.Com, we want to hear from you! This is an expansive update, so please be patient if you find a bug we did not encounter or correct during our closed testing. We look forward to expanding and improving on these updates with your help. I've created a forum for Q&A, bug reports, comments and suggestions relating to the Newport update...

FORUM

Beta Tests: Comments  (13+) A forum for discussion of beta updates within Writing.Com... #1667262 by The StoryMaster

I look forward to hearing from you!!


Also, a special thank you to the Sr. Moderators and Moderators that helped with the beta testing of these updates. Extra special thanks to northernwrites for her extremely detailed feedback. And special thanks also to Leger~ , kiyasama, Joy , Jeff , Brooke , Kraken through the Snow , Crys-not really here and Erika . We are all getting a much finer set of updates thanks to the input these awesome individuals gave me!


Thanks and enjoy!
~~SM