Major Upgrade to Blue MauMau
LEXINGTON - Blue MauMau has just performed a major upgrade to its daily news and community website. Besides the new look, the site has been upgraded to offer a more user friendly interface to find content, faster speeds and a number of member social networking functions.
The site was upgraded last night while North America slept. The site will be further configured today and for the next few days. Readers will see the far right-hand column change during Wednesday as the site is quickly built up. Your patience is greatly appreciated as we work hard to bring up this much more robust platform up to full speed.
Here are the five coolest new functions:
- Members can set up their own private social networks
- Members can see their own log of activities
- Easier navigation, with pull down menus, expanded reading area, bigger text, search functions and more
- Improved Weblinks to bookmark interesting small business web sites. Members can share and categorized by free tag for all to see and enjoy.
- Improved video embedding and display for remarks and postings
Honorable mention should go to a greatly improved forums. Besides forum remarks, now polls, quiz forms and more can also be posted in forum discussions. Oh, and this is neat too. For you power writers, there is a new teaser sentence function that are easier to seperate in blogs as well. And there's much more.
What will come next is a series of videos on how to use Blue MauMau’s many, MANY community functions.
Why have we done this?
Because our mission is to "unleash social media tools to inform franchise investors." Honest answers are hard to find in investing in a franchise or small business opportunity. This site is aimed to provide all those neat Web 2.0 tools, that is to say social media technology, to help readers network online with experts and front-line practioners so that readers can make better informed business investment decisions.
I hope that readers will benefit by receiving freely from the wealth of information on Blue MauMau as well as by freely giving - contributing comments (guests) or even blogging (registered members) in the fashion of the new model of citizen journalism for the benefit of all. At a very minimum, give an article that you read a one to five star ranking (the tool is located below every article) to let the authors know if they are on track or not in providing good information.
- Franchise topic:
We have been adjusting the new server settings today. We apologize for any inconvenience if it has been sluggish. It's even gone down a few times. Please have patience as we figure out how to get the settings just right to make the site blazingly fast.
Can you put (new) comments on the stories? I can never remember how many comments there were on a story the last time I looked at it, and when I come back it is nice to see if there are any new comments.
Thanks.
And what about the "notifications", what is that all about?
Michael Webster, a franchisee attorney in Toronto, Ontario, publishes a website on business opportunities and franchises called "The BizOp News"
Sorry folks I have to write this here as access to my inbox is denied.
Mr Blue Mau Mau,
My inbox says 0 messages ( i do have mail! I saw it briefly yesterday!) and that "access is denied."
Just want to be sure you are aware of the problem.
Anyone else have this trouble or just me?
I think I like the new look...but my brain is not coping very well with the change.....(come on brain you can do it.)
Thanks for the heads up on the messages not coming through to your internal email account. It's working now.
The internal email system is for only registered members (free). Actual email addresses are not passed onwards. It should be noted that the member simply gets an email from Blue MauMau that they have an email awaiting them in their Blue MauMau email box. Or when you come to the site, you'll see a red number next to your inbox in the top menu (MyMauMau).
Couple of quick observations.
Cons
1. Rich text editor seems busted.
2. Old stories are clearly not formatted, odd fonts also are distracting.
3. Love the idea of being able to look up my contributions on my home page, but it doesn't seem to work.
4. Like to have the comments being shown as read or unread.
5. Search by company doesn't work, in chrome.
Pros
1. Layout seems less rushed.
2. Like the new comments threads.
3. Like the more feature, which seems to work better than before for news/experts.
4. Seems a lot faster.
5. Like the feature of being able to comment directly on a press release.
Michael Webster, a franchisee attorney in Toronto, Ontario, publishes a website on business opportunities and franchises called "The BizOp News"
Michael,
Appreciate your comments on the new site.The WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what-you-get) text formatting editor is now fixed. Registered members have a choice of an MS Word-like bar at the top to help them format text. It even works well for Mac users.
The odd formatting has now been cleaned up.
Your other points are being worked on right now. In regards to your personal postings, you have guessed exactly what I had in mind.
I apologize to all for the site going down for a few hours -- depending where you lived. In one night we switched from our old server to a virtual server. While the computers of the world took took six to twelve hours to perpetuate our DNS, the site was down -- depending where you live and work. The Southeast U.S. seemed to come back the quickest.
Blue MauMau not only changed servers, but it upgraded the whole platform. And then its theme was upgraded. That's a lot of things to be upgraded all in one swoop.
For some that have gotten quite used to the old site and its looks, I would just say that you will find that this site has much more. Please explore it.
look at Mike Webster's mug every time I read one of his posts?
Mr. Mufflerman is clearly a high ranking member of the Obama Administration who cannot show his/her true visage because of security reasons.
Please keep this in mind when replying to Mr. Mufflerman, a clever alias if I have ever heard one.
Michael Webster, a franchisee attorney in Toronto, Ontario, publishes a website on business opportunities and franchises called "The BizOp News"
Are we going to have to look at an avatar or picture?
Mufflerman, are you Joe Biden in disguise? What's missing in your photo is the now famous train heading back to hometown Scranton, PA.
BTW, Nice upgrade to Blue MauMau. I like it.
payment or two. I was expecting him to call trying to sell me his AAFD award. I'm happy the print is larger, as my childhood delights may finally be taking their toll on me eyesight. I hope everyone loves seeing my picture as much as I do.
Richard Solomon, FranchiseRemedies.com, has over 45 years experience with franchise litigation and crisis management. He is a graduate of The Citadel and The University of Michigan Law School
No payments were missed. Although you bring up a good point; namely, this is one of the top franchise news sites with the highest number of people interested in franchise issues. Advertisers are certainly welcome.
One of the new functions is the ability to create your own private group. For example, a lawyer could invite friends to discuss the finer points of franchise law (boring). New franchise investigators could form a group to compare notes. Accountants could talk FASB. Or franchise owners in certain sectors, say hamburger QSRs, might want to firm up what they know about their brand or sector. After all, sometimes remarks are better said in private among friends than in public.
The person who creates the group is the moderator.
None of the comments, forum, remarks, videos, blogs or group wall postings are public. Depending on how poorly you know the persons in your group - or maybe how well, information can certainly leak out.
I will publish a video on the new private social network function. But I challenge some of our power users to find it and explore it first.
I love the private groups function!
I get pages of errors when i set it up or edit the group but it still functions anyway so far.
An excellent addition I must say. I have invited my first member and I'm quite excited about what these private groups could achieve.
is the cutest.
Maybe now Granville and 'guest' will start being real nice ...
Twice this morning I have attempted to post a press release with comment without success. Perhaps I am doing something wrong navigating the new format, perhaps the implied link to the Obama administration has resulted in the muzzling, maybe Don just isn't awake to review and approve...
Please let me know if the error is on my side or yours, Mr. MauMau. I applaud the new look and additional features.
Mufflerman,
Both of your blog postings were successful. But a blog does not appear on the front page unless it is moved there by the editor (me). When you post a blog, go to the category that you posted in and you will see it immediately in that news section. I try to move a wide variety of member contributed news pieces on the front page but not all of our news goes there.
Your interesting piece on Midas appeared in the "service" section (see News menu on top, and click Services). That's Services, like as in personal like car repair services. B2B services is also included in the Services news section because I tried really hard to come up with just a few super encompassing categories for the 80 or so industry sectors where franchises exist.
Our readers really should make it a habit to visit the news section of the sector that interests them -- hoteling, services, restaurant, retailing, etc. That way if you are a car repair shop owner, you don't have to read all about restaurant and hotel news -- things like a finger found in chili bowl and its ramification to a franchise owner. What auto shop owner wants to read about that?
Mr BMM; does anyone know when 'hulu' videos will be available to international readers?
I am having a few problems with 'groups' and will get back to you in a couple of days. The revamp is great - click and learn - organised. And has anyone mentioned how great it is that now continually added comments don't eventually end up at the right of the screen and 3 miles long eg
Rich
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is a
You get my drift.