For those of you who aren’t constantly monitoring the InfoBarrel forum, I’d like to introduce to you a bunch of changes and updates we’ve done to the site.

This week has been very busy here and we have plenty of cool new things to announce. So without further adieu, here is what we’ve done.

UserVoice Feedback Button – Gone
After a year of complaints about the Feedback button on the side of the site either interfering with functions of the site or slowing the site down we’ve decided to remove it.  Between our community forum and our contact us form, we feel there is more than enough options for providing feedback.

Navigation Bar
We’ve received a lot of feedback that having the expandable navigation bar at the top of the site made it difficult for new users to figure out how to post content.  To rectify this, once you’ve logged in, the navigation bar will now stay open.

Forum Speed
The forum was running kind of slow before so we tweaked a few pieces of code to dramatically speed it up.

Forum Post Count
Interested in knowing how many times you’ve posted on the forum? We now have a  statistic to show you exactly how many posts you’ve made.

Duplicate Image Titles
Previously when uploading an image to the site, if a similar image with the same title existed, you would have to reupload your picture with a different title.  This feature has been updated so even if an image exists with the same title, it won’t stop you from creating another.

Category Functionality
In the past, people were having issues finding the correct category to publish their articles in.  The method we employed to hunt down you category was just plain difficult to use.  We’ve implemented a new method that shows you your category structure in a treed out view.  We’ve also provided a search function that will give you numerous suggestions if you type in a keyword.

Auto Tweet
One of the keys to making money on any web site is exposure.  Our goal at InfoBarrel is to supply our contributors with the absolute largest arsenal of tools to maximize the traffic and revenue to their content.  Our latest feature allows you to authenticate your Twitter account with InfoBarrel and whenever you publish an article, InfoBarrel will automatically post a link to your article with the article title on your Twitter page.  This might only take a minute or two to do by hand, but we believe the more time we can save you in the promotional department, the more time you have to focus on creating great content.

Hey Guys,

Thought I’d give everyone a heads up, we’ve changed how articles track viewers.  There was a lot of confusion when comparing our view numbers with the numbers on Adsense or Analytics, so we came up with a new system to record article views. Here’s how it used to be and how it is now:

Before

Any and all views of the page increased the view count.
- This meant that if a search engine bot looked at your article (which happens quite a bit) or someone refreshed the page a bunch or a viewer stopped or left the page before the article finished loading, your article view count would go up by one.

Now

Only viewers with Javascript enabled increase your view count.
- This keeps out the bots.

Only one view is counter per IP (essentially per computer) every 12 hours.
- This will remove the refreshing issue.

The view is counted much later in the article load.
- This should cut down on the partial loads increasing your view count

Hey everybody,

I just wanted to chime in here and let everybody know that after we moved servers last week, we had an issue with our mail server which resulted in no emails coming through to us.

We apologize for the issue, and hope it didn’t cause anybody any problems.  Aside from the mail not working, the server has been running great and we are close to reaching numerous milestones which we are all really excited about here at Infobarrel.com

So, moving foward you should no longer notice any issues sending us any emails.

If you wrote a blog post and wanted to get in on the Blog Buzz we started, please re-email us!
Thanks!

Ryan

There was a bug in the system from some changes we made last week to the draft system that was preventing drafts that were created using the blank article template from be able to be published.  This has been fixed now.

If anyone still has an issue with publishing a draft or any article for that matter please send us an email using our contact form.

Hey all,

Over the weekend we were having some issues with the drafts not saving.  This has been fixed now.  If you still are having issues send us an email with the contact form.

You may or may not have noticed that InfoBarrel was having issues with a lot of the special characters that MS Word uses.  I’m happy to say that this should be fixed now! If anyone notices some characters that are displaying wierd let us know where they are by sending it to us via the contact page.

Thanks Everyone!

Hey everybody,

I mentioned a few days ago that we were having issues with Google Adsense.

Well, I am happy to announce the issue has been resolved and the ads are back and running.

We know that some of you lost a bit of money of the last few days, so in order to make it up to you, we are going to be giving you all of the available Google Adsense impressions from March 6th, to April 1st.

We also have some pretty sweet contests up our sleaves, so check back frequently!

Thanks

Ryan

We are having an issue with Google Adsense today if you haven’t already noticed.

We are working with Google to get this resolved as fast as possible.  Check back here for more information.

We had noticed that the site was running abnormally slow for logged in members for the last week or so.  That problem should now be fixed! So you should be able to get around at good speeds now!

Thanks for your patience.

Updates – Feb 25/09

Fixed a small bug in the related content section, where users without display pictures default graphic never showed up.

Using Drafts

In other news, there was a request via our feedback form to explain how to use the draft function better.  I’ve whipped one up for everybody to help out, but before you complain about my stuttering, I improved the video to get it out quicker so I apologize in advance for my fast talking and spuradic stutter.

You can view the video here