Thursday, May 28, 2009

Advanced Search Feature is Ready

Mizozo Beta is almost fully complete. With only a few more minor enhancements left, we feel very good with what we have done thus far.

The latest enhancement is the Advanced Search feature. Giving the user a few more options when searching, we hope that users will be able to find exactly what they want substantially faster. We have likewise changed the search teasers a little bit, allowing us to fit more search results on a single page with less scrolling.

Our next task ... Photo of the Day!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Mizozo's New WYSIWYG Editor and More!

After a long and grueling process, we have finally completed the WYSIWYG editor integration. While there may be some issues here and there, we are working our best to rid the application of them as quickly as possible. The new editor is substantially more powerful with many new features. If anyone experiences any problems, or would like any new features added, please let us know and we will do our best.

The other major change this week is the new and improved Gallery. While it isn't substantially different on the front end, it is very different on the back end. The Full Story Views now show the gallery pictures on the Right Hand column in bigger format to give viewers a better feel for the pictures. Likewise, all Publishers can add photos to any story regardless of relation. We are hoping there will not be abuse of this feature.

As usual, we have also fixed numerous small issues and made many small changes to the system. We are getting close to finalizing Beta and settling on a fixed version of the product. We greatly appreciate our user support thus far and are looking forward to new requirements from them.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Plethora of Mizozo Updates

Over the last 2 weeks we have been extremely busy fine tuning Mizozo Beta, the Next Generation News Source! Unfortunately, we hit a wall on the WYSIWYG editor, so we decided to delay its development to seek out different options. In the meanwhile, we decided to fix countless little details that have been plaguing the site.

While many of the fixes are minor and hardly noticeable if you aren't a very detail oriented regular of ours, others are somewhat substantial. One of the most obvious changes is the way we changed our Publisher Profile. Previously, Publishers had the ability to use their profile like a blog. Unfortunately, it wasn't very well organized. We decided to reformat the Publisher Profile page in order to provide their viewers with a much more detailed representation of the Publisher's work.

In the hopes of acquiring more search engine traffic, we have determined to put a lot of effort into our SEO efforts. While the majority of our work was concentrated on Google, we made sure to include different techniques for various other search engines. SEO is a tricky business, so only time will tell if we got it right.

We have also begun working on our new Gallery functionality. The current Gallery is sufficient, but it isn't very impressive. Not to mention, it isn't the most functional of Galleries. We have begun taking steps to drastically improve its usability and functionality. Keep an eye out on the gallery, it may soon surprise you.

Otherwise, things are moving smoothly. We are very much hoping to finalize the WYSIWYG editor soon, but until we overcome a few hurdles, it is hard to say when it will be ready. The Gallery is the next major change, followed by numerous other enhancements. We will keep you posted.