HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY SCENEKIDS.COM

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013 – 10:13 AM

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of my third (and most successful) relaunch of SceneKids.com

We’ve been through a ton in just the last few months let alone the last two years. Tomorrow we’ll issue some SK badges for anyone that logs in today.

Cheers!

Unexpected Server Maintenance Completed

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013 – 4:51 AM

Sorry about that, I couldn’t sleep, figured it was a good time to perform the server migration that our hosting company Linode requested. The end result of the downtime is that our database server now has 8GB of RAM (up from 4GB) and some more HD space and our Content Delivery Server went from 1GB of RAM to 3GB and added some more HD space to that one as well.

Generally speaking, we were approaching our non-peak usage time and IMO it was better to do it a little earlier than later so that it didn’t affect the morning rush.

As you were.

Your updates on your dashboard!

Thursday, May 9th, 2013 – 2:12 PM

It’s been requested quite a bit to have your own updates appear on your dashboard and now they are. The default is to show your own updates as well as your friends but there is a setting for it (click that gear in the upper right-hand corner, scroll down to “Dashboard”). Don’t like it? No biggie, just disable it.

This is just a small part of some of our upcoming enhancements to the dashboard. In the next week we’re planning on giving you access to more items on the dashboard, “show more” functionality and some tweaks to how images and questions are displayed!

Please note that when you toggle between seeing your own updates and not seeing them that the change is effective immediately, but not retroactively. If you disable it, old stuff from you will still show up, nothing new though. If you enable it, old stuff won’t show up but everything new will. Get it? Good.

Thursday, May 9th, 2013 – 12:31 PM

TumbleChat - Free chat site that uses Tumblr for authentication

Ask Me Anything!

Saturday, May 4th, 2013 – 12:11 PM

We have just launched a new section for asking and answering questions on our sites! Your answers are pushed out to your friend’s dashboard (the latest one shows up, don’t want any “answer bombing” ;) and the latest answer is posted right on your profile.

Don’t like it? That’s cool, you can disable questions from the settings page (that gear in the upper right corner). You can optionally allow anonymous questions to be asked as well (there is always a risk when doing so, so we shall be tracking who’s asking anonymously just in case ;)

The fun part about the new questions system is that you don’t have to be friends with someone to ask them a question (for right now at least). So feel free to ask away!

Oh BTW, there’s no way to delete questions once you’ve answered them. We were so excited about the new feature we rushed it out and forgot about adding that. Expect that function in the very near future. BTW#2, the dashboard’s a bit longer now. We’re planning on expanding it a bit more and adding auto loading as you scroll down (probably last 100 updates to start)

Coming soon: Badges are getting a refresh and more badges are going to be added (more once a year badges as well as badges for the Q&A system)

New Messaging System

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 – 12:00 AM

Very pleased to announce our new messaging system. The changes to the system are the first steps in creating a more integration instant messaging experience. Because we were able to right some wrongs of the old system, moving forward we don’t plan on purging any messages and overall, performance with the new system is improved (not to mention inboxes are a lot cleaner). If you are having issues or concerns with the new system, feel free to click “Help” on your site of choice and send us some feedback!

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 – 3:37 PM

Network Maintenance in All Datacenters: April 30 and May 1, 2013

Sunday, April 28th, 2013 – 4:51 PM

The return of the leaderboard, tonight at midnight!

Sunday, April 28th, 2013 – 1:05 PM

If you’re a true SK original you remember the old leaderboard that was the primary driver of how users were sorted on the site (and you could earn the King of the Hill badge). Since then, we dropped the leaderboard, added a points system (and raffles) that had a leaderboard and since then dropped the raffles entirely due to a lack of interest.

As the subject states, the leaderboard is coming back and the points system is getting a refresh. Since we are no longer doing weekly or monthly raffles we are going to drop the daily cap (but that doesn’t mean that we won’t be monitoring for scammers). Points were always a metric of how active you are on the site, so we shall be adding a leaderboard for the “most active” users on the site.

In addition to this the old “most viewed” (or “most popular” as we liked to call it) leaderboard will be coming back in all of it’s glory. To help limit scamming of the system we’ve reworked how we track views to your profile. Only users that are logged into the site will be counted and even then, they are only counted once per day.

The reason we got rid of the leaderboard to begin with was due to the number of complaints we received because some users felt the system was rigged (it never was, that would have taken more work on our part ;) To help keep the sore losers at bay, we are not planning any sort of bounty whatsoever. No badges, no way to redeem points. Just bragging rights.

The 2 new leaderboards will be broken out into 3 periods: Today, this week and this month. Days start at 12AM EST. Weeks start on Monday at 12AM EST. Months start on the 1st of the month at 12AM EST. We shall only be showcasing the top 10 for each and your rank will be displayed as well (even if you’re not in the top 10).

As always, the leaderboard is not something you have to worry about. Some users love the competitiveness, other users could give two shits. We love everyone the same, regardless if they want to partake :)

Also on the horizon, the new messaging system nearly has all of the kinks worked out so we are still planning to flip the switch on May 1st. A bit further on the horizon, a question and answer section where users can ask each other questions (with an anonymous option) which will be displayed on your profile and syndicated out to your friend’s dashboards.

We’re hoping to close out the month of April with a bang!

BETA: New messaging system

Friday, April 26th, 2013 – 4:03 PM

Our redesigned messaging system is now live and ready for mass consumption. Here’s some bullets to help you understand what’s changed:

• Instead of individual messages, there are now conversations.
• Conversations contain all of the messages between you and a friend.
• Conversations can be used in real time like a private messaging system or the traditional way of just sending a message.
• Our flavored markdown for italic and bold are now supported in messages (wrapped in double __ and double ** respectively).
• Conversations are updated and when a new message comes in on a conversation there is a audible water drop sound (assuming you have a browser that supports HTML5).
• There is no longer a sent box as all of your messages live in the conversation. Subject lines are now obsolete as well
• Conversations can be removed from the inbox but will reappear when the conversation becomes active again (either party sending a new message)
• This is still a beta, so there may be some bugs. We will be working out all of the bugs before switching over to the new system entirely.

The new system will replace the old system on May 1st, 2013. We urge you start using it immediately.

Note: If you’re running into the issue where the new messaging system’s notification (the yellow icon) isn’t clearing, try doing “select all” on the first page of your inbox and select “mark as read”. That should get everything flushed out and working correctly again for you. Totally our bad on that one.

Note: You can still switch back to the old system until May 1st by adding ?v1 to the end of the URL for the inbox.