Affino 5.5.13 Release

This is one of the most exciting Affino releases to-date. It’s a point where a host of developments and refinements have converged to make a killer release. Most of the enhancements this month are on the community and publishing front, however their impact is likely to be significant on ecommerce engagement and conversion and on revenue generation for sites which are content-lead.

The biggest development is the introduction of Channel Topics and the effect it will have on the ability to automatically generate category pages and improve customer targeting and search engine optimisation.

Upgrade Guidance

This is a fairly seamless update from 5.5.12. When upgrading from earlier releases please check the release notes on the previous releases. You will need to look at the styling of your Groups, My Messaging, Search Channel, Recommendations, Message Boards and Wish Lists to ensure that they’re looking as good as possible.

It is recommended that you run through the complete update process starting with the Affino Updater, followed by the System Update, Re-Initialise Site, Design Element Update and Skin Update.

Key Enhancements

Automated Category Pages

This release sees the completion of the Channel Topics project we started on over a year ago. The latest phase has been the introduction of Topics on Channels, and new Topic filters on the key content highlight design elements.

In practice it means that you can create a series of channels which have numerous highlights design elements on them. Each channel is assigned key topics and then all the content is automatically filtered from key parts of the site or incoming feeds. The content can include articles, links, groups, blogs, media (including images, video and audio), live status updates and commentary, and products.

In terms of SEO and customer engagement this is a killer feature since Affino can now automatically ensure that your landing pages have the freshest on-topic content from throughout your site, and from the wider web (via feeds).

Site Search v3

We’ve introduced predictive site searching. Affino now provides search predictions (like Google) on what users are searching for when using both the site search, and searching within sections. It means users can click to be taken directly through to the article or page they’re interesting in without going to the main search results screen.

We’ve also completely re-designed the search results screen to provide a much simpler and more engaging set of results.

Microblogging / Status Updates / Live Commentary

Following on from the introduction of Status Updates and Microblogging in the last release, we’ve refined the experience in this version to allow for live commentary. The key developments are the new support for Hash Tags, i.e. #thebigmatch and new group filters on the Microblogging updates.

All the Microblog interfaces allow for live updates, which means that pages are continuously refreshed. When combined with tagging and filtering you could present a live commentary in the main part of the page, with fan commentary from community members running alongside it. It’s even possible (using incoming feeds) to pull in 3rd party live content.

We’ve also introduced Article Types for microblogs (to aid site searching) as well as outbound RSS feeds, which can be used by Twitterfeed to feed directly into Twitter. The main Microblogging screen now also streams the latest posts to guest users.

Recommendations v2

We’ve greatly improved both the main recommendations screen and the recommendations design element. The biggest changes are look-and-feel based, meaning that the presentation is greatly improved, and new styling options mean that the recommendations are much more approachable. We’ve also extended the recommendations by adding Group recommendations to the main screen.

Groups v3

Following on from the major updates to groups in the last release, we’ve made even more significant enhancements in this release. The key ones are: Group Notifications (daily or weekly summaries of group activities), a dynamic wall that you can instantly post to, and searchable message boards within the group. We’ve also greatly improved how groups work within Affino as a whole, in particular on the recommendations and highlights.

Groups now have settings whereby users can update their communications preferences for the group, i.e. who can contact them and how frequently notifications are sent. Other enhancements include improved group listing and enhanced security within the groups.

Messaging v2

We’ve completely re-worked the on-site messaging to make it more approachable, usable and familiar. We’re removed a lot of un-necessary options and refined the presentation. Every task is now much simpler and faster. We’ve added the ability to star messages, dynamically look up recipients and to instantly filter your view.

Stunts v2

This release sees the introduction of Takeover Stunts. These are promotions / information screens which in essence ‘take over’ the screen depending on a number of criteria, including: a member’s subscription running out (notifying them and encouraging renewal); changes in terms and conditions; special promotions; and introductions for beginners or when launching updates. The stunts can be configured to be presented just once, or a number of times, and set in order of priority.

CSS Main Menu v0.9

New Main Menu type which is fully dynamic and allows users to drill down through large hierarchies without the need for page refreshes. This is a true next generation navigation solution. The menu offers a lot of styling flexibility. It has been incredibly complex to develop, but is a joy to use. This is a Beta version of the menu so we are anticipating useful feedback to evolve it further for the following release.

Other Enhancements

Detailed Media Section – it is now possible to select multi-column media highlights, small change, but big impact; the whole design element is now also hidden if there is no media content, which is an essential requirement when doing personalisation

Detailed Standard Section – it is now possible to have multiple sort orders on the different tabs within a multi-tabbed detailed standard section, e.g. most viewed, latest articles etc.

Email Login Verification – email addresses are verified when users are attempting to log in, helps users transition from systems where they had a username / password login

Feature Scroller – new randomize option allows the slides to be shown from a random start-point so users don’t always see the same offers / highlights

Login – we’ve rolled an enhanced (and simplified) version of the login redirect, so that there are now two simple default options: take back to page / take to profile homepage; these are overwritten if the user is logging in to access specific content or do a specific task.

Media Drive – it is now possible to define separate media storage for the media library. This means you can use ultra high availability / high performance storage for the application and database; and lower cost storage for media, which in any case is mostly served via CDNs (Content Delivery Networks).

Message Boards – new message board search allows for searching within all message boards and also within individual message boards

Message Boards Highlights DE – only shows when there is highlight content available

Personal Tools – the number of new invites can now be displayed directly on the personal tools (navigation)

Photo Gallery Article – significant number of formatting improvements

Registration – it is now possible to make post codes required

Skins – when bulk updating all the skins, only ones which are in use are generated

Social Online Directory – now has teasers

Taxonomy / Key Words – we’ve integrated the back-end automated meta tagging with the new keyword tagging. It means that if users don’t manually tag content, then the content will automatically be tagged according to the taxonomy. We’ve also made adding and removing tags more usable.

Text DE – new Channel Name and Teaser auto text option allow for better Skin re-use for Topic based skins

Wish lists – wish lists are now more dynamic and it is possible to directly link to them using an auto-link on smart images.

Zones – it is now possible to assign a Google Maps API key to a Zone, and in turn use it for the analytics of the Zone

Fixes

Application Bar – it is now possible to edit Newsletter Items directly from the application bar

Carousel DE – new ‘inner width’ setting resolves alignment issues where design menus have a lot of spacing

eCommerce Checkout – the confirm screen no longer displays extra lines; added the Terms and Conditions to the single-page checkout;

FAQs – layout no longer warps when expanding on Chrome

Feeds – we’ve improved the formatting of feed content (removing additional line spacing)

Live Editor – resolved issues with the Copy function

Media – PDFs now work when selected as main multimedia on articles; updated the YouTube integration so that it works with the new YouTube API

Media Editor – no longer errors out when cropping images

Media Library – Regenerate Thumbnails link on the Media Library now does what it says; fixed document download link from the media library; Media Scroller fixed; it is now possible to select the number of media items listed in the media album; disabling embeddable videos on a media library profile now works; the media scroller now displays special characters (rather than simply escaping them)

Member Listing – invites now take you back to exactly the same screen as you were on previously

MP3 Player – black background displaying again on graphic equaliser

Newsletters – we strip out the dynamic menu code (again) when generating newsletter messages since most email clients don’t support JavaScript; no longer tracking calls to CSS files (they’re now called directly); now works for guest login

Personal Tools – fixed options to display as selected

Security – fixed issue whereby on user approval a user was removed from all previous security groups; fixed major issue where close group media and secured media were visible both in the main media library listing and in all the media highlights

Skins – it is now possible to make copies again

Style – fixed a number of instances where the link colours weren’t being pulled in from the Design Style / CSS

Video Player – now only displays the checkout links if there is something in the shopping basket

Who’s Online – no longer shows yourself when ‘show friends only’ is selected

Wish lists – multiple major fixes and enhancements to Wish lists which can now be used effectively and reliably