Vox Release: Better than a new car!
Vox Groups
We gave you a sneak peak at Vox Groups last Friday and we're pleased to say that, today, we've released this feature in Beta. Vox Groups is the sort of feature that will only improve once more people are using it and we can understand what works and what doesn't, so be sure to test it out and give us feedback (please use the feedback form in "Help").
A little information about Vox Groups:
Group owners can control who can view and post to the group: Groups can be public, invite-only or private. Want to set up a group but also want to allow others to help manage it? You can do that by giving others administration access. Additionally, you can allow others in the group to invite members (if your group is invite-only).
Share everything you share on your blog: You can share posts, photos, videos, books and music with your groups. The best part? Your content is your content, so you can post to your blog and then choose whether you want to share it with one of your groups. (If you choose not to include it in your blog, just set the privacy setting to "you" only.) Since your blog is the record of your life on Vox, it only makes sense that you have one central place to write all that you share.
Post to groups from the Vox application or from your own Vox blog: When you create content in Vox, you can choose whether you want to share with one of your groups. Want to quickly add your Vox content to a group? Once you join a group, you can simply click "Add to group" from your blog.
You can access Vox Groups from the Vox navigation strip. Additionally, you can browse groups that have been created in Explore.
We'll be posting a more in-depth tutorial to Vox Groups in the next couple days, but in the meantime explore!
New Themes
We've added four new cityscape themes to this release: Los Angeles, Austin, Nashville and Kiev (special thanks to LiveJournal user Natalie Malysheva for developing the Kiev theme!) Additionally, we've also made our Nokia themes available for everyone to use.
Oh... And One More Thing
Remember, last year, when Oprah Winfrey gave all the members in her audience brand new cars? And she just kept on saying "You get a new car! And you get a new car!" Well, I'll feel like that today when saying "You get your own custom banner! *You* get your own custom banner!" That's right, one of our number one most requested features is out today: Custom Banners!
To use custom banners:
- Create and upload your graphic to Vox. Do this the same way that you would upload any image to Vox.
- Go to Vox's design section and select "Personalized."
- Pick the custom palette (we've included 66 combinations and will be adding more in future releases) that works best with your graphic.
That's it!
You can create banners that span the entire width of your blog (940 by 200), or you can just insert a graphic that will appear flushed to the right. Play around with it and you'll get a better idea how it all works. To get you started, here are some tips about creating your custom banner.
We've set up an official blog at design.vox.com that will give you tips and tricks for designing your own banners, as well as user and official Vox-created banners that you can use as well. We'll also use this blog to spotlight particularly great headers we're seeing on Vox.
We hope that you love what you see! We've been eagerly awaiting this release internally for the past couple weeks and are so happy to finally share it with all of you!
Have fun!
Comments
Love it.
I want the cute flowery banner you have up right now!
But soooo yay about the custom banners!
Finally. New themes. But, I still have a problem. What happened to making themes using Georgia or Times New Roman as the font? I hate Arial. So, I will be sticking to my current theme. ):
Awesome! Looking forward to playing around with both.
Can we get a Philadelphia cityscape? And maybe, if you're considering a lesser city, Charleston, SC? That would be great!
one more small thing...could you allow us a little more control over our sidebars? like a custom links section. you keep building everything i ask for so i figured i would ask for that too :D You guys are awesome. even though i have my own domains with blogs, i cant let go of Vox.
the custom banners are MOST excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and this is one of the best releases ever.
Thank you, from the bottom of my internet journaling heart.
But great additions. Happy that we get custom headers now. :D Thanks!
don't stop now...
I love this new release but....
I wish we could post just to the group without having to have a bunch of draft entries in our main vox.
vox groups are amazing - i can't wait to see how they affect our blogging.
and custom banners . . . oh my, i think i may be in love.
[vox is good]
Although, I have some growing concerns with the new Personalized banner option, namely with copyrights and potential stealing. While I was exploring Vox banners to see other's creations, I noticed Team Vox's new banner and Vox's Design blog banner on several other blogs. I'm not sure if these banners are used with the creator's permission.
I know this is a new feature and that the kinks still need to be ironed out, but what steps should we follow if we come across stolen banners? Also, would there be a way to determine if the banner in question is used with permission before flooding the Vox staff with potential copyright violation notices?
Just being cautious. I know people can get a bit over zealous with this new (and amazing) customized banner option, and I don't want to see anyone being taken advantage of.
thanks!
It's a work in progress, bear with me ;D
Along with all the other new features I've noticed, I'm going to use it a lot more now. :)
(Oh, not to mention the LJ cross-posting. :D)
If you're the only host of your group, what happens if you accidentally clicked on "Leave the group" and end up leaving the group? Will the group be hostless? Or will the host have to designate another member as a mod/host before being allowed to leave the group?
Mixed feelings about the groups though... The posts clutter up personal blogs - how about a seperate 'posted to groups' area for us all, rather than cramming a load of irrelevant stuff into our blog archives?
The LJ cross posting feature is excellent - I love it, and it's certainly made the transition from LJ to Vox much easier. However, I'd love to see open user posting, in a similar way to that of Blogger (ie, users can either log in when posting comments, or can leave a name (and email address which isn't shown on the comment, but is logged along with an IP address). Something along these lines would cut out spam robots (via image verification) and encourage non-vox users to explore a bit more.