Summer Site Updates

We've been busy this summer with several site updates and working on next year's BiggerVegas 2011 event. The updates have introduced some great new features as well as enhanced existing ones.

We've got more in store and look forward to bring you additional updates this fall.

Summer Features:

• BiggerCity Mobile
• City Radar (mobile and regular site)
• Matchmaker
• Traveler's Feature
• Increased Limits on Friends, Enotes, and Flirts
• Profile Updates (Travelers and Social Media/Gaming)

These are some of the other updates that have been posted:

9/18

• My Profile: Added Social and Gaming section. You can now add your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, PlayStation Network, Xbox, and Word of Warcraft IDs to your profile.
• Gift Subscription link now available on Join page.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks.

9/10

• Mobile: Standard site now features a landing page where mobile users can select from Mobile site and Standard site.
• Enotes: Bulletin feature removed temporarily while we work out some bug fixes.
• Friends: Limit expanded from 200 to 500.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks.

8/29

• Mobile Site: Now open to select supported BlackBerry and Symbian mobile devices.
• New Travelers Feature: You can now add your future travel plans to your profile as well as let others know what community events you are planning to attend. A new “Visiting My Area” button is now available to check who’s planning to visit your area.

8/11

• Matchmaker: Updated and moved to Citizens section.
• New City Radar: Now available on the web site, this feature allows you to geo-locate citizen profiles in your area and display them in a map view.

8/1

• Mobile Site: Added City Radar feature to geo-locate citizen profiles by distance around you and show a map view with pins.

7/26

• Flirts: Limit increased from 20 to 100 per day.
• Enotes: Limit increased from 100 to 1000 for Basic, and 500 to 5000 for Premium.

7/20

• Site spam filter updates.
• Mobile site released.
• Updated TOS.

6/3

• My Profile: Now required to be completed before My Home and Enotes can be accessed. Text changes.

6/2

• Enotes: Styling tweak and fixes for iPhone/iPod/iPad.

Site Update (Build 618)

A new update was posted this morning. These are some of the fixes and modifications for this build:

• Enotes: Fixed bugs introduced with previous build code that prevented users from switching folders and sorting their Enotes.
   
• Enotes: Added a new "Actions" panel that shows up on the right side of the page when one or more Enotes are "checked". The actions panel provides quick access to the Mark Unread, Mark Read, and Delete functions.
   
• Forums: New "ignore" feature. Premium citizens can now block other users with the "Forums" flag to ignore (hide) any posts made by that user in the message forums.
   
• Forums: Thumbs-up viewer and manager. Forum participants can now click on the "thumbs-up" icon below each poster's thumbnail to see who has given thanks to that poster for his participation in the message forums.  If you click on your own "thumbs-up", you can also remove entries from your list.
   
• Mini-profiles: Styling fixes for Firefox and WebKit browsers.
   
• Site: Code consolidation, cleanup and tweaks for several modules.

Please remember to try the new features and report any issues or problems, by going clicking "Support" at the bottom of the site's page and selecting the "Contact Us" option.

Site Update (Build 606)

A new update was posted this morning. These are some of the fixes and modifications for this build:

• New Mini-Profile view. All site listings of citizen profile thumbnails (e.g., birthdays, search results, who's online?, etc.) now offer a new mini-profile display. This is an alternate display method from the standard thumbnails. It shows the listing with thumbnails plus a the text description of the citizen's Personal Ad or Info. This view also includes buttons to Enote, Flirt or Bookmark the citizen. The extra display gives a deeper look into someone's profile than the standard thumbnail view.  To enable mini-profiles, look for the "view:" drop down on the upper left hand side of the citizen listings.
   
• Mathcmaker: Now does strict matching on Ethnicity and Status (single, partnered) criteria. Before these were matched against all options and ranked accordingly.
   
• Profile Photo: Now requires the photo not be smaller than a defined minimum size.
   
• Contest: Cash prize revealed: $500 USD.
   
• Database: Service maintenance and optimizations (on going).
   
• Site: New filter updates and features for security handling.

Please remember to report any issues or problems, by going clicking "Support" at the bottom of the site's page and selecting the "Contact Us" option.

Site Update (Build 584)

A new update was posted this morning. These are some of the fixes and modifications for this build:

• New Matchmaker module. The Matchmaker is a new feature that allows you to define what you are looking for on an ideal match. The criteria selection is broad and includes physical appearance as well as personality and lifestyle. The criteria is saved with your profile and used to match you with other citizens and all matches are ranked by compatibility. The Matchmaker is an opt-in feature for those looking to make connections on the site. This feature is available to all registered citizens, but only Premium citizens can list their matches. You will find the Matchmaker tab in My Home > My Profile, and your matches in My Home > My Matches.
   
• Personal Ads are back. The concept is the Personal Ad has now been re-introduced. Premium citizens now have the option to enable their Personal Ad on their profiles and display a custom headline and description. Profiles with a Personal Ad will be identified by a special tab, and in the future will be given priority listing (top) on site searches. You will find the Personal Ad tab in My Home > My Profile.
   
• Site: Updated upload control to fix issues with Firefox v3.6.3 that prevented this browser from selecting files during the upload process.
   
• Site: Miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks to the code.

Please remember to try the new features and report any issues or problems, by going clicking "Support" at the bottom of the site's page and selecting the "Contact Us" option.

Site Update (Build 461)

A new update was posted this morning. These are some of the fixes and modifications for this build:

• Contests: The new BIGGER Contest 2010 is now open. Be sure to join in and participate!
   
• Blocks: Limits have been doubled. Premium subscribers can now block up to 100 citizens.
   
• Enote: Fixed issue where clicking on the user's profile link from an Enote reply window would incorrectly open the profile within the same popup window.
   
• Galleries: Added soft watermark backgrounds to Photo/Video sub-tabs to visually make the tab switching more noticeable.
   
• Chat: All BiggerChat requests are now routed to our primary support email account.
   
• Forums: A proper TOS notice will show in place of any moderated/removed posts.
   
• Profiles: Fixed a few sorting issues so that Premiums and citizens with photos will always have priority on the listings by default.
   
• My Photos: Fixed sorting of photos. Now listing in descending order with most recent photos showing first.
   
• Listings: AJAX thumbnail and listings will now automatically scroll to the top when navigating from the bottom pagers.
   
• My Profile: Fixed two bug that would cause a server error under very rare circumstances and for select users.
   
• Profiles: Added new optional City field to location searches. Works with partial matches (keyword).
   
• My Home: Added new search icon "New Citizens" which will list all newly created profiles (with photos) in the last 14 days.
   
• My Home: "Who Fav'd Me?" icon moved to My Favorites page.
   
• Photos / Videos: Popup viewers now include a link to the owner's profile in the Info section. This will help those with bookmarked photos, find the photo owner's profile.
   
• Photos / Videos: Upload page now offers alternative upload method for users who currently have issues with the multi-file uploader. If the Select button is disabled, you can click the link below it to go to the alternate upload method (single file).
   
• Profiles: Fixed issue with standard Yahoo IDs and the Instant Messenger link. It now shows correct online status and can be clicked to send IMs.
• Site: Additional logic to handle remaining issues with down-level mobile browsers and the Rich Text Editor.
   
• Site: Several tweaks to web server configuration to continue optimizing for the user load (on going).
   
• Site: Fixed several styling issues. Including issues with popups, and non-IE browser display issues.

Again, thanks for all great feedback. 

Please remember to report any issues or problems, by going clicking "Support" at the bottom of the site's page and selecting the "Contact Us" option.

Site Update (Build 457)

Thanks to everyone for reporting bugs and issues since the release. As with any mayor update, there are always unforeseen problems that come up with a new site launch. We’ve been very busy these last two weeks working on resolving the bugs and fielding your support questions.

Your feedback has been amazing and we appreciate all the compliments and excellent suggestions we have received. We’ve gotten hundreds of emails since the new site’s launch, so please accept our apologies if we have not responded to your request yet.

Here’s a list of issues that have been addressed since the launch on January 18th:

• My Photos: Webcam snapshots now properly save photo dimensions.
   
• Profile Search: Fixed problem that prevented certain international area codes from being used.
   
• Site: Added new code to detect mobile phones and automatically disable the Rich Text Editor (which does not work properly on most mobile platforms). The code detects over 90% of current mobiles. If you still have trouble sending or replying to Enotes from your mobile, you can manually disable Rich Text Editor from the My Home > My Account page.
   
• Site: CSS popups are also now disabled for mobile browsers by default, in favor of standard popups.
   
• My Profile: Fixed display issue where Zip/Postal Code field was displayed for non USA/Canada locations.
   
• Site: Added instant and dynamic unread Enotes counter to all page titles throughout the site.
   
• City Messenger: Fixed issue “Who’s on CTM?” popup where profiles were loaded on the same popup window and window was automatically shrinking over time.
   
• City Messenger: Fixed issue where some users would incorrectly get orphaned/missed IMs from canceled accounts.
   
• Profiles: Updated all Yahoo IDs to include the base domain (@yahoo.com) which is now required for the Instant Messengers section. Check your Yahoo ID and make sure it has the complete domain (e.g., yahoo.com, ymail.com, etc.)
   
• My Videos: Fixed problem where Video Recorder clips were getting deleted by the server after a few minutes of being properly saved.
   
• Favorites: Merged old “Personal Ad” favorites into “Citizen” favorites and removed all duplicates from the listings.
   
• Profiles: Fixed problem where profile index photos copied from the My Photos gallery were not being transferred properly if the source photo was smaller than 200 pixels.
   
• Forums: Fixed problem where Quote/Reply on any thread page after the first was not working properly.
   
• Forums: Fixed problem where jumping to the last page of a thread could prevent the user from paging back to previous pages on that same thread.
    
• Forums: Replying to a thread or post now places the user on the last page and post location after the post is submitted.
   
• Enotes: Corrected issues with automatic enote expiration settings that affected some users under certain situations.
   
• BiggerChat: Added joins and parts to the public message window.
   
• BiggerChat: Removed default 3 hour limit for Basic citizens.
   
• Visitor Log: Now automatically removes entries of a newly blocked citizen.
   
• Site: Re-configured certain aspects of the web server to correct issues with some of the new AJAX elements of the site.
   
• Site: Miscellaneous layout, styling and spellchecking corrections.

We still have a long list of items to complete in the coming weeks. Please keep emailing us any issues or problems you encoutner on th site and stay tuned for more updates.

Welcome to BiggerCity v5.0 and the Developer Blog!

We're very excited to release our new version of the site; BiggerCity v5.0 (Build 441). The new site brings many new features and enhancements, many of which come directly from your suggestions and requests. BiggerCity v5.0 is the fourth mayor revision of the website since it was launched 10 years ago.

We're committed to continue developing and enhancing the features the site has to offer. To that end, we are now publishing this development blog to keep you up to date with fixes, service status updates, new features, and enhancements.

Please remember to check here regularly to keep up to date with developments. You can follow or subscribe to this blog with your Favorite RSS reader, or feed service.