New Release! Rad!
It's new release time (hello 13, aka Corddry) and as usual, this release has a theme: "Corddry" is all about communication.
We've focused on features that allow improved communication between you and your neighbors. And, we've thrown in a few tweaks to Vox to show that we're always listening to Voxers.
Onto the new features that enable improved communication:
Vox Private Messaging
The Real Big Feature of this release is Vox Private Messaging. Not all communication works best publicly on blogs and sometimes email just isn't the right tool to use. We wanted to make it easy for Voxers to be able to comment on posts privately as well as have the ability to communicate more easily with their neighbors. You have the option to be notified by email when you get a private message -- this notification can be turned off as well. And since we've added a little message icon in your control strip and application, you always know when you've got a new message.
What's even cooler is that when you see something on a blog that you want to comment on privately, "send private message" will also create a message with a subject line related to that content.
Comment Moderation
You can now moderate comments on your blog! Want to approve comments by the public before they appear on your blog? That's now possible. You can even moderate comments from specific groups (for example, if you know that you mom always like to embarrass you with anecdotes of your childhood).
Smart Comments
Want to reply to a specific comment on a blog post? We've made it so that you can now respond to someone in context. Not exactly comment threading and not exactly flat comments -- we wanted to make commenting to work with bloggers who are familiar with both methods. Because this is our first iteration of smart comments, we'll be definitely improving based on our experiences using them and your feedback.
Application Footer
Vox has a lot of features. And as we grow as a service, we want to make sure all of you guys are able to find things easily. To improve navigation, we've added a handy little navigation strip at the bottom of Vox.
Homepage Improvements
Communication isn't just about private messaging and comments. We definitely listen to our users and work to make Vox the best blogging product out there. So, we've listened and tweaked (and will be tweaking some more) the Vox homepage to bring back recent activity and remove the cycling through posts.
Want your feedback to count? Please remember to use the "Feedback" link, which is now located under "Help". While we don't like to delete comments that are off-topic on Team Vox, feature requests usually will be removed. And you know what they say about honey drawing more flies than vinegar? Well, that applies to comments too. That means, keep it constructive and DON'T USE ALL CAPS.
HTML Markup Translation
Additionally, we've listen to you guys about HTML in posts. We still believe that most of the people coming to blogging *don't* want to edit HTML but we understand that after years of being on the web, many of our users can't help but type an "href" time to time. So now when you enter HTML, Vox asks you if you'd like to translate it.
New Themes
We've begun to add themes that our awesome Vox community created for the Vox Banner Contest! We've been so happy with the results of the contest that we've been reworking our theme building process to enable us to add themes more quickly. So while we've only added a few of the winners in this release, a lot more should be coming real soon! Thanks to Julie, Jared, Gilbert and Michael for their contributions that are now a part of Vox!
We also have added themes created by PixiMix. They're a cool design/accessories company that calls themselves the "enemy of unfun." Definitely check out their work and their merchandise. And have fun with their contributions to Vox: Appley Rotten, Appley Rotten Lime, Appley Rotten Orange, Pixipets Cat, Pixipets Panda and Pixipets Robot.
Those are the highlights of lucky number 13. As always, there are little features here and there that I haven't mentioned. Explore, have fun and remember to invite your friends and family to Vox!
We hope, as always, you like what you see!
Comments
Thanks SO MUCH for bringing back the comments thing for keeping track of recent comments. I missed that thing<3
Also, you may want to know that in Internet Explorer the expanded version of recent comments freaks out. I can see the first set of comments, and then they all disappear.
Also, thanks for the HTML in posts. I love my HTML. And I need it. <33
Lastly, will there ever be allowed for us HTML/CSS inclined people to make our own templates for our own blogs? That would be amazing x 50^999999. =D
i love vox more and more every day~ haha
Oh, I love the new themes.
I tested the same code paste into a regular html file and it worked fine.
love it.
The only bad thing here is that when you send a so called "Private Message" your email address gets sent out too. I think the feature would work better if your email address remained anonymous.
Just a question - when you add someone to your neighbourhood, can they read your friends & family only posts?
Thanks.
The themes are fun too. I'll be excited to see if you ever come up with a "theme generator" that lets you mix and match elements from themes like colors and different background scenes.
Question: is it possible to disable the ability to mark your own post as your favorite? It's embarassing the number of times I accidentally hit "make this a favorite" as opposed to clicking on the number next to it to see who favorited a post.