Mizozo Blog

We are working hard to improve Mizozo

2010-06-29T05:30:00.000-07:00

While we have not been updating our blog too often, we have regardless of fact been improving Mizozo over the past few months. Our regulars have likely long ago noticed that our Advertising has been removed, and that we added Social Networking widgets to our Story Pages. This is merely the tip of the iceberg.

We have also updated our WYSIWYG editor to work better on iPhone, iPad and Android devices. This is something that we have been considering for a while now, but haven't had the time or resources to handle it. While we are not yet offering WYSIWYG support for these devices yet, primarily because the devices don't support WYSIWYG editors in a browser as of yet, we have made it easier to use these devices on Mizozo.

Another request that users often made was to keep them up to date with comments posted to stories that they have already commented on. We were originally hesitant, not wanting email servers to label Mizozo as spam, but enough requests were made for this feature that we decided to try it. So, if you want to remain up to date on comments posted after yours, simply check the box "Notify me" and emails will be sent after every subsequent comment posted.

We have also updated our handling of Images and our Gallery. Many of you have complained that we do not support high definition images on the site. Since this was repeated often, we decided to take action. Our story pages now support larger images, and when clicking on any of the images we will display it in its full glory as an AJAX popup. We hope that this pleases our users, it definitely pleases us at the moment.

These past few weeks have been spent on optimizing our site more. With traffic almost tripling in the past 6 months, we are noticing that our servers are experiencing severe strain. Some of you may have even noticed our server went down a few times when traffic suddenly spiked. We are working hard to fix this, but there is still much that needs to be done. Over the next few weeks we hope to have this problem fixed.

Of course, much has also been done on the back end as well. We now have in place spamming filters on our comments and stories, helping to automate the removal of spam as well as prevent individuals from further spamming Mizozo.

Please keep the suggestions coming, and please be patient with us. We are trying our best to provide a solid foundation for our big product coming in the not so distant future. Expect more social networking features, a faster page load and better publishing capabilities soon.

Site Optimization and Memcache Complete

2010-03-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

Mizozo has been growing steady for the last year, and now with 3000 articles in our database a little site optimization was required to keep our servers from crashing. Our latest attempt at optimization trimmed down our database, improved some of our functions responsible for database management, and most importantly we implemented Memcache to keep an even greater strain off our processor in general.

We are very happy with Mizozo's progress and are looking forward to more and more members joining the Mizozo community to bring the latest news stories to the world. Several bloggers have realized that Mizozo is also a great SEO tool for their site and a great way to drive additional traffic to their site. While this wasn't our initial intention, we are glad to see that the internet community is teaching us numerous other applications for Mizozo.

It is also unfortunate that our Beta product is dragging for so long. We had hoped to get it to full production long ago. Our hopes is to complete development well before years end and bring a sleeker, more social Mizozo to the world. Stay tuned, and thanks for making Mizozo what it is today.

The Latest Enhancement are Complete

2009-11-03T08:19:00.000-08:00

We at Mizozo are constantly striving to provide the most user friendly experience to our visitors and users. While we are still in the Beta phase, we are working hard to get all the little bells and whistles working.

We have just completed a small development effort geared at providing users more access to more content. For example, on the home page we have added 2 videos so that visitors will have direct access to our most popular videos. We have also aggressively pursued our SEO tactics, hoping to drastically increase our traffic.

Now that we have opened registration, our goal is to involve more and more people in the Mizozo Revolution. We want to see people commenting more, posting more stories and creating more Mizozos.

Unfortunately, we have decided to likewise place advertising on the site to help cushion some of the expenses involved in developing an application of this magnitude. We have tried to keep the advertising unobtrusive, but if people feel that it is ruining the aesthetic quality of the site, we will work hard at repositioning or possibly removing the advertisements from that particular location.

We have recently setup Mizozo Labs, currently hosted on mizozo.net. This is not to be used for publishing content, but for those that are curious what we are working on next, we invite you to check out the Labs and provide suggestions for improvement.

We hope you like what you see at Mizozo. Lets keep the articles coming, the comments flowing, and the arguments heated. Without you, Mizozo is a meaningless effort.

Registration Now Open

2009-10-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

After a short pause in development, we have started once more in enhancing Mizozo. We have done a small number of minor enhancements around the site such as the way our Photo of the Day works, Quote of the Day, and have done some minor tweaks throughout.

Two things that are immediately apparent, however, i the fact that Registration has now been opened to the public, and we have added a Share feature on all of our story pages. So, invite your friends and contribute to the next generation news source.

We are also working hard on SEO, so we are looking forward to many more visitors soon. There are many more enhancements coming in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Join the revolution ... Mizozo!

Advanced Search Feature is Ready

2009-05-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

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!

Mizozo's New WYSIWYG Editor and More!

2009-05-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Plethora of Mizozo Updates

2009-05-01T05:45:00.000-07:00

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.

WYSIWYG Problems, but many minor enhancements

2009-04-17T05:25:00.000-07:00

We are still having extreme trouble with the new WYSIWYG editor. Until we work out all the bugs, we will not be making it available on the live version of Mizozo. We are trying to tweak it in a way that makes things more comfortable for the Publishers, but in so doing we opened up Pandora's Box and are having trouble putting it back together again.

So, to keep the site moving, we made countless minor enhancements throughout the site. We have made our RSS feed public, and have modified the text throughout the site. We have revisited our Images and modified Alt/Title tags in key places as well. Other enhancements were also done like Tag Cloud CSS, Home Page Refresh, and the way we display Time Published on our Teasers.

One minor change to the site that may go unnoticed is the new distinction between Story and Mizozo. We have changed the "Post Response" button to "Start Mizozo" or "Continue Mizozo", depending on whether or not a response has been published or not. The definition of a Mizozo is an argument or discussion, so until a response is posted we are looking at an Article. However, once a response is posted, a Mizozo is born. This distinction will become more and more evident as time goes on.

Mizozo Beta is Progressing, but the New Server is Problematic

2009-04-11T09:04:00.001-07:00

This week there is very little to report. We have finalized our optimization for the time being, but we are still having extreme difficulties on our new server. While visitors will not notice, the time for each page load is extremely high and Tech Support isn't being too friendly. If we can not figure out the problem, we may have to switch servers again soon.

Otherwise, the WYSIWYG editor is almost complete, and we are hoping to squeeze in a few other additions this week. Once we finish, the next round will be a lot of updates that you guys requested. Most are very little, and hardly noticeable like ALT tags, but others are substantially larger, like a new Login module. We will keep you posted.

The New Server is Up!

2009-04-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

We are happy to announce that Mizozo's New Server is Finally working. This actually took a great deal more time than we originally expected because of strange glitches in the site the entire week. Because of the server move, very little was done otherwise.

We seem to have finished Optimization for the time being. For our regulars, you may have noticed a substantial speed increase. Of course, much has to do with the new server, but the Optimization also plays a key role. For Beta to attract more users, speed is obviously a major factor.

Now that everything is back to normal, we will begin working on the next phase of enhancements. Our WYSIWYG editor is almost ready, but still needs some tweaking. Once that is in place, we will have a large number of fast modifications to the site, so check back soon.

This Weeks Update - Site Optimization

2009-03-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

There is little to report on this week's update. As usual, we have fixed numerous issues within the site and made various minor design changes. The primary update we accomplished is optimization of various modules.

We have decided to optimize the site as a prelude to our new server. Next week we will be setting up Mizozo on a new server, so we decided that we should optimize the code before hand in order to get the maximum performance out of the site.

We have begun optimization, and have drastically improved site performance, but there is still much to do. We plan to implement a cache structure, and finalize some of our more common pages next week. With the new server move, optimization may take more time than we had expected.

To give a preview of our next major task at hand, we plan to rewrite our WYSIWYG editor for our Publishers. Many of our Publishers have complained about our weak editor, and we have no excuse. After careful deliberation, we have decided to completely rewrite it using TinyMCE. We hope you like it.

The New Publisher Profile Page

2009-03-20T01:34:00.000-07:00

Last night we released the new Publisher Profile Page. It is our goal to create the Publisher Profile page to be similar to a Blog. This will allow people to advertise their Profiles as they would their blog, giving visitors a recognizable interface. While the current version of the Publisher Profile isn't up to par with blogging software like Blogger or Wordpress, while this isn't our goal, it is also important to realize that this is our first version of the Publisher Profile page and there is still much in store for it. This will be the base platform for our social networking module, so its presentation needs to be familiar to users while at the same time functional enough to allow for easy social networking.

As usual, we have also done many little changes throughout the site like adjusting the Home Page images, comment submission, algorithm adjustments and various other details. There is one thing, however, that I am personally happy with, our new Admin Interface. We have been working with a very bland administration panel from day one, and I am happy to see our admin panel go through a quick design change.

This upcoming week will be spent optimizing the code to ready us for our new server. We plan to move to a faster server by the 1st of April, so we need to make sure that our code is running at optimal speeds to properly test the new server. This upcoming week may be very bug laden, so please bear with us.

RSS and Signup Now Available

2009-03-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

While we are trying to work quickly to provide as many features as possible for our Beta Publishers, this week's progress has been more back end and site details. Two larger features that we are happy to provide is our RSS feed and our Signup Feature.

The RSS link is very straight forward, http://www.mizozo.com/rss.php. Please take the time to add it to your RSS feeder and send it to all your friends.

We have also set up a signup queue for people that would like to Publish articles on Mizozo. Since we are still in Beta, we would like to control who has access to Mizozo's publish feature. However, we will lift this restriction once we are confident that it is in perfect working condition. If you would like to Publish on Mizozo, please signup and join the queue. We will be selecting a few new publishers every week. If you have a blog, or have published work elsewhere, please provide links so that we can review them. Those with good work will be placed at the top of the queue.

As a smaller feature, we have enabled Publishers to modify the Title and Tags of Response Articles. Admitingly, this was poor judgement on our part in the beginning.

Keep checking back for all the latest Mizozo updates.

Our New Home Page is Ready!

2009-03-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

We are very excited to announce that the New Home Page is ready. We have been working hard on coming up with a design that would properly display our stories in an easy to understand fashion. We have decided on this design, which should push us through the Beta stage completely. We may make some adjustments to it, depending on user demands, but we are very happy with it. Of course, modules will be added to it over time.

We have also updated our Logo and Slogan, which have been long present on this blog. Our new Slogan for the site "Your News, Argued by You!" This, we feel, reflects the essence of the sites goals. Seeing as how our mission is to provide the world a medium to not only report the news, but to find the truth behind the story through argument, we are also very happy with our Slogan. If you feel differently, we are always happy to hear what our users have to say.

As always, we have also fixed a few known issues, most important of which was our Main Menu update from last week. Our Main Menu is now fully operational with a nice new design. Likewise, when testing the Algorithm engine on our test machine it worked one way, but in a live environment it worked completely differently. We had to tweak numerous algorithm variables in order to ensure that stories are properly displayed. If you feel our algorithms push your stories asside, or you have some ideas on how to improve them, we are always happy to hear your thoughts.

This is an exciting time at Mizozo. With countless updates coming, we are very excited to be able to provide this service to the public. Good luck, and Happy Mizozoing!

Prepping for Beta

2009-02-27T03:01:00.000-08:00

Now that Mizozo Alpha is stable, we have added the next set of enhancements. The most prominent enhancement is the Algorithm Engine. We have also updated our revised Logo, and changed the way our Main Menu works. Several smaller enhancements have also been made but most of them are behind the scenes. Of course, we have also fixed all known issues.

The Main Menu change deserves a little explaining. At first glance, you will notice that we moved the Main Menu into the Search Area, making the menu smaller and freeing up a little real estate. We then completely removed all Sub-Menu items by the request of our users. It seems that the Sub-Menu was scattering stories too far from one another, making some difficult to track down. We hope that with a refined menu users will have a much easier time to find the story they are looking for. To make the menu smaller, we also renamed the menu items slightly.

The major change in this release is the Algorithm Engine. This engine is the workhorse of Mizozo. It is responsible for sorting our stories, linking them together, ranking users and a great deal more. With the Algorithm Engine now operational, the Mizozo experience will be more enjoyable.

As always, if you have any suggestions on how to improve mizozo, please contact us describing your ideas. We will consider every idea submitted carefully, and the ones submitted more frequently will get much higher consideration. Please be patient with us because our development process is in full swing. If you notice any bugs or issues, please report them immediately and we will address them in our next release.

Thank You
Mizozo Team

Launching Mizozo.com Alpha

2009-01-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

We are very excited at Mizozo.com. After a long and adventurous journey, we have finally got to a point where we have our first milestone - the first version of Mizozo.com. We have worked hard, long and literally our bottoms-off to get this point.

Mizozo.com is the next generation of news. A news that is "by you, for you and argued by you". With the evolution of Web 2.0, there is no need to be the mute reader or viewer to news as described by main stream media. Post a news article and argue it, to get the facts straight and right. Make sure that rumors are ignored and real stories are evolved.

We already have an overwhelming response to our first release and hopefully we will be able to get a lot of you requesting access a login as soon as possible. We take pride in doing things right, so currently we are scaling the site to make sure we have the right performance for you, so we add a fixed number of users (based on a complex formula made by our Algorithms Dev Team).

So, if you have not already done it, click on "Contact Us" and either put yourself for queue or send us some useful feedback.

The current version is a fraction of what we have in store, and we will adding a lot more functionality, usability and algorithms without compromising the website's cleanliness.

From all of us at Mizozo.com - Happy Mizozoing!