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Written by Mike Feng
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Friday, 17 October 2008 |
The long awaited ParaInvite 2.0 has just been released for the public! However, do note that I am still working on the detailed documentation, which should be available by Monday. Before purchase, please make sure you've read and understood the details on the product description page!
Purchase and pricing information is available in the Shop.
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Written by Mike Feng
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Tuesday, 30 September 2008 |
I have been away for the past 4 days on personal matters over the weekend (26th Sept - 29th Sept) and have just returned. I will try to reply all outstanding emails as soon as I can, but I ask for your patience. I came back to find out that my main workstation crashed. For some reason, the battery (it's a laptop) leaked and that must've somehow damaged the hard disk, which means I'll have to send it to the customer center to get it fixed.
My top priority will be to go over all licensing issues by tomorrow. I'm terribly sorry for this inconvenience.
On another note, I'm sure many of you noticed there have been some major changes in ParaInvite. I understand I promised version 2.0 to be released by October, but due to the personal matters, compounded by this &%#@#$ laptop problem, this will have to be delayed to approximately the 2nd week of October. However, I have entered into a long term partnership with Octazen for the contact importing scripts, and we're currently ironing out the details. Users can look forward to stable contact scripts functionality on top of the features provided by ParaInvite. Before the partnership details are finalized, please do not purchase the Octazen licenses first.
A brief description of the functionalities in the new ParaInvite and ParaInvite Pro.
ParaInvite:
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You can choose to work with or without the contact scripts. If without, users will manually enter the email addresses instead. Octazen's scripts are sold separately, with Octazen being the company responsible in providing support and updates for the contact import scripts. If you do purchase the scripts, all you need to do is upload them to a designated folder. ParaInvite will automatically recognize and enable the importing feature.
- Front end component view. This is something not available in the previous ParaInvite version, but I figured it doesn't make sense for people to purchase the Pro add-on just for this, so it's been included in the standard package.
- No more CB plugin frontend display. The "Invite Tool" is now the component frontend. The invites history is now available as a separate component page (looks much better too). Everything about ParaInvite is designed to work just like how friends inviting work in Facebook™, but with certain improvements.
- The backend went through a major MAJOR overhaul. Now there are better statistics display and easy configuration. Viewing profiles from the backend also got a brand new look. In the next update, I will be adding export functionality in the backend, to export email addresses that are added. I will also be trying to create a demo site so users can test drive the component's backend (this won't be soon though)
ParaInvite Pro add-on:
- Many of you know about the namecard functionality in the previous version. Now, ParaInvite Pro came with badges. The difference lies solely in this: Namecards are links that points to a user's namecard, which provides a link to register (thus accepting the namecard). This works a lot like LinkedIn™. What's more, users can edit their namecards right from the frontend, via AJAX, or by editing their profiles. Do try it on this site.
- Badges, on the other hand, are links that point straight to the registration page. In both cases, your users can place the "badge" on forums, blogs, websites etc, and you can give points/karma (based on your forum or the karma CB plugin) based on the referals they send to your site.
- In both cases, a cookie is created in the visitor's browser to identify him/her, so that the invitation will remain valid even if they close the browser or surf to some other pages before they register (this is course the same as normal email invites).
- Badges management is finally available! This is probably the most requested upgrade. Many of you may remember that in the previous ParaInvite version, there is only 1 lousy "badge" for your users to use. Now ParaInvite Pro comes with a badge management system that allows you to create unlimited number of your own custom badges. You can also choose to add a description (eg the width x height of the image) and to show the description to your users.
- Invite-only registration is still available. You can restrict registrations to only valid invites to make your website exclusive.
- This should get most of you excited: a renewed/revamped registration process feature. The previous registration process is lousy; users have to confirm their email, log in, then begin to invite their friends. With the new ParaInvite Pro, the users are sent to the invitation page immediately after submitting the registration form (available only with CB 1.2's advance API)! So now your new users can start inviting their friends while waiting for the confirmation email to arrive. What's more, you can choose to "force" the invitation process by redirecting the user back to the invite page whenever he tries to navigate away. Try it on my site to see it in action!
- So what happened to the previous "registration process" feature? It has been given a new and more suitable name: the "Reminder" feature. Want to ensure that your users send out a specific number of invites? Set a minimum invite requirement, and ParaInvite Pro will redirect your users to the invite page if they did not fulfill the requirement. You can choose this whenever users login, or for every page view.
Top Inviters Module:
The Top Inviter module now allows you to select top inviters based on specific time frames (this week, this month, last week, last month, last X number of days) to facilitate any "contest" you may wish to set up based on user invites. You can create multiple copies of the module to display different information. Example, you may have a module display current month's top inviters for your monthly contest, and another to show top inviters for last month to show who won.
Licensing Changes:
ParaInvite and ParaInvite Pro (version 2.0) will be released with a per domain/per site license. Existing customers need not worry! All your licenses will be converted to the bulk license, and the previous license agreement is definitely honored. You will still be able to install version 2.0 on multiple domains which you explicitly own (whois information of your domains display the same registrant). And as usual, the upgrade is provided free to all existing customers.
What can you do to prepare for version 2.0?
ParaInvite uses index2.php extensively. You can start by creating/designing your own template's index2.php (this Joomla forum post provides some tips), or the invite popup will not look good. TIP: create a php file index2.php and place it inside your template's folder (together with the template's index.php). Copy and paste the contents of index.php, but strip away the left / right / top / bottom / banner / user panels etc such that only the main area remains. You can choose to include the top (such as on my site. Click on the import contacts button to see how my index2.php looks like). IMPORTANT: you must include everything between the <head> and </head> tags of your original template. The stuff you should be stripping away are the module positions.
ParaInvite 2.0 also requires Community Builder 1.2, so you should upgrade now to prepare for its release.
The latest working version of ParaInvite (with the Pro add-on) is already installed on my site, so feel free to try it out. As always, ParaInvite is a Joomla 1.0 component and will work in Joomla 1.5 with legacy mode turned on. It also requires Community Builder 1.2.
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Written by Mike Feng
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Saturday, 09 December 2006 |
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The products sold here are installed on this site. To view a demo, simply register and surf around the site, especially your CB profile . Some extensions comes with their own modules, and a demo can be found on each of their respective Product Description page.
To view a demo of how the AJAX CB Connections module (Commercial full version) work, simply add as many connections as you want. I have set the CB configuration to allow connections without requiring mutual consent (ie, connections is set up immediately without the need for approval)
To see a list of members, click here.
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