All about the development of Panoiki
Panoiki dot Com is having a membership contest from August 12th to September 15th. The person with the most active friends signed up, and added as friends at the end of the contest wins a Nintendo® Wii™.
Invite all your friends, add them to your friends list, and try to win a Wii.
So we’ve been promising a new design and a contest, and you guys have been waiting patiently. Well, we are about to deliver! We will be launching the contest in tandem with the new design and that should be taking place VERY soon!!!
Just so you guys don’t think that we’re messing with you, here’s a sample of the new design:
I know it doesn’t give you much, but we want to save something for the unveiling!
As far as the contest goes, we have a HUGE prize awaiting the winner! Wii can’t tell you what it is just yet, but wii are really excited about it!!!
The details of the contest and the new design will be unveiled shortly. So stay tuned!!!
J & J
Sorry that it’s been a few days since we’ve posted anything new. John and I have been a little busier than normal with some other stuff, but we’re still trying to make as much progress here as possible…
John has been hard at work implementing the new design that I gave him. I do the fun stuff, and he gets to do all the nerd stuff….But seriously, it looks good! We can’t wait for you guys to see it. Should be up within the next few days.
Also, we will have new contest details posted very shortly. Yeah, we have not forgotten that we were going to have a contest, we just had to think of something new and cool to do and get the details hammered out for it. We’ve pretty much done that. We just have a few more things to iron out, but it should be up on the site in the next day or so.
In terms of new features, we are still working on getting the Bulletins feature up and running. We want you guys (and us for that matter, since we use the site, too) to be able to communicate with all of your friends at once without having to email everyone one person at a time. We have contacted a developer who has already designed one, and we should be hearing back from him fairly soon. So there is a possibility that the Bulletins feature could be up next week, but we’ll let you know for sure very soon.
We’re also looking into some other cool features that you guys would enjoy, so be on the lookout for that.
In the meantime, watch for the new design, and just know that we’re still working hard to make this the coolest place on the web to hang out with friends and family!
Thanks again for all of your input and participation!!! We would not be where we are right now without you!
J & J
Jerad, and I have been working behind the scenes on the design of the site. One of the first things people say is that it needs more color. I agree. The current design is actually a default that is ment to be changed.
Redsigning a site like this takes time. I takes a lot of planning, and thought as to how things will layout in different browsers, whats pleasing to people, whats easy to use. The list goes on and on. Once we have that considered, we code, and code, and then code some more. A little photoshop, a little html and css.
One of the big considerations is how much change are we going to make. Do we do a total overhaul and build something totally different, or do we make subtle changes here and there to add a little more color.
Hopefully by the end of this week, we will have a new looking site. Thanks for checking us out.
Well, we’re getting some pretty interesting feedback on the survey! If you have not taken the survey yet, please do so here: Take The Survey
We’ve had a pretty good response so far, but we still need more feedback from all of you. Again, we built this site for you, so keep telling us what you want, and we’ll do our best to make it happen.
Based on the data we’ve gathered so far, it looks like the top 5 features that we’ll be looking to add first are (in order from 1 to 5):
All of these scored greater than a 4 out possible 5 points. There were some others that were up there, but these are the only ones to score greater than 4.
Some of these may take a bit longer to develop than others as we deal with design issues and server space, but we are going to work hard on getting these features up and running for you guys as soon as possible. We’ll probably just knock out the easy ones first so that you can start using them right away.
Some of you may be looking for the features that you voted for on that list. If you’re a curious person like me, you might want to know what rounded out the rest of the list. Well, here you go (in order from most desired to least):
All of these ranked higher than 3, but lower than 4 on our rating scale. Now, just because it’s low on the list doesn’t mean we won’t be adding it, we just wanted to know where we should focus our attention, and you’ve definitely helped us to do that!
We are very excited about this site, and are tremendously happy that we’ve created a space that people are actually using! On Wednesday we had over 30,000 page views! For those of you that don’t know what that means, that basically means that people aren’t just coming to the home page and leaving, they’re using the site!!! 30,000 views is a lot for a site as young as ours, and again, we’re just happy that you all are enjoying Panoiki.com!!!
Keep the feedback coming! We love it!!!
John & Jerad
Welcome to the dev blog at Panoiki. Here we will talk about what we are working on in our lab. Like Mad Scientists, we are constantly thinking of new things we can do here. We will discuss them with you, and get your input as well.
We may also point you in the direction of some stuff we think is cool.
Right now, we are working on the design of the site. More on that later.
Thanks for checking us out.
Come Chat With Me!
You may have noticed a few new features as you were browsing around the site. We took some time yesterday to knock out a couple of “to-do” items on the list that you all have provided for us.
First of all, and most simply we have added a Comment Notify feature that will now allow you to see when you have a comment by notifying you on your home page. It should look something like this:
When you click on the notification, it will drop down and allow you to see who has commented on your page. You can then click on the date of the comment (below the person’s picture) and it will take you to your comment page so you can view the comment.
Keep in mind that this is only for profile comments and does not apply to picture or blog comments. We’re working on that!
Also, we have integrated a brand new Chat feature. This one excites us the most! John and I have used this thing like crazy over the past few nights, and it is a very cool and useful feature!
This new Chat feature not only features a fully customizable chat program, but also allows you to IM (Instant Message) other users in the chat rooms! So we not only added chat features, but an IM program, as well.
When you get time, go check it out. Be warned, there is so much that you can customize that you could litereally be in there for hours and not talk to a single person! Haha!
There are a few other things being added piece by piece…
We also added an Events feature, which allows you to post events that are happening and to notify your community of those events. It features a fully functioning interactive calendar, which is nice.
Also, we’re working on adding a forum and the bulletins plugin. It’s quite possible that both may be up before the end of the week, but we’ll let you know how that goes.
Finally, as John mentioned in the last blog, we are working on redesigning the site a little bit. I just finished the mock-up for it last night, and we are working on getting that integrated as soon as possible. We are both very excited about it, and real feel that it will make the site look more sleek and modern.
For those of you who fear change, be comforted in knowing that not much of the content will be moved around. You will still be able to find things where they are now, it’s just that everything will have a different backdrop behind it and the text colors will be different.
Again, we just really want to thank you guys for using and enjoying the site! It means a lot to us that we have created something that people actually use and enjoy doing so!
We hope you will continue to enjoy the growth taking place here right along with us, and keep inviting your friends!
Jerad & John