Major Additions - Zoints LOCAL. Social networking, enhanced profiles, blogs and MUCH more

Zoints Local 2.0 - Enhanced profiles, social portal, networking, blogging, and more

Zoints Local is now Gold!

Before installing, we encourage you to make backups and take the appropriate cautions that you would with any significant addition to your forum community.

We would also like to encourage developers to share hacks with the community at dev.zoints.com . Your improvements and enhancements are helpful and appreciated.

What is new to Zoints Local? What makes 2.0 worth the wait?

We know that many of you have waited patiently for this much anticipated update and we love you for it. Let's discuss why 2.0 is just plain awesome and why your forum users would want the creativity and connection it provides.

Zoints Local still brings truly customizable and unique profiles, unlike any free system out there, and is simple to install but let's check out the bullet points of new features for 2.0.0.2 RC1.

Community Central by Zoints - Your Forum's Social Hub

To develop a well connected and devoted user base, members need a personal connection to your forum. Community Central ties members together by creating personal connections and curiosity. Think about it like a community portal for your members and everything they do that isn?t posting a thread.

Activities on non-forum based aspects of a site are often lost or go un-noticed. Community Central is the hub for your users: to see who has updated their profile, to know who is interacting with others, to read the latest blog entries, to find popular tags on profiles/blogs/threads, and more. Community Central shows what?s going on in your community and encourages more connections, more community, and more fun. And, Zoints Community Central is completely controlled within your vB Admin CP!

Community Tag Pages show for each popular tag who is tagged with it, what blog entries are tagged with it and what threads are tagged with it (threads tagged by Zoints Thread Tags.) It's almost as if it is the ultimate search on an accurately and frequently tagged forum and brings content not found through any other function to connect it all.

Community Central is completely controlled within your vB Admin CP for easy access to manage it's system, templates and so on.

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Completely Overhauled, Total Blogging Solution

Another great addition to Zoints Local is its totally revamped blogging system. No longer will you need to seek out expensive paid alternatives to find a full feature blog for your forum. The blog page itself is now a block page with AJAX drop and drag technology, which means users can add relevant (and of course irrelevant) blocks to their blogs' content. Users can now create multiple blog categories for all of their entries which allows for improved organization of a user's entries and easier search for content. All blog entries can now be tagged with entry moods and entry tags, so if this was a blog entry on my page likely my mood would be Teary (tears of joy) and my tags could be Zoints Local 2.0 - vBulletin.org - ZL etc. There is also now RSS Syndication with the blogs so guests or other users would be able to easily subscribe to a user's blog and creating another path to your community. As far as new blocks; there is the blog panel, blog archive, blog tag cloud, recent blog comments, blogroll, and a blog categories list. When you put it all together, the blog is vastly improved and will offer a more rewarding experience to users.

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Activity Blocks and the XPSF MP3 Player

Other new blocks added to the profile page, include the Network Activity Block, Personal Activity Block and an XPSF Music Player. The activity blocks increase the chances members will continue to network with one another. The Music Player adds depth to the user?s profile. These additions are a huge addition to any community and help create and foster a need for members to return to your forum.

vB Product Improvements

The vB product has also seen a few changes to help further integrate Zoints into your community and improve the likelihood of profile interaction for your members. Member profiles now show within the postbit the last date they were updated and can be highlighted if they were updated on the same day you see their post (to encourage members to view updated profiles.) Also, you can display recently updated/created or random profiles on forum home. So whether you want to see the active and updated profiles getting the attention or for your new members to get a few warm welcomes, this will help.

Tighter 3.7 Integration

With the 3.7 version, there has also been integration with new features from vB 3.7. Both on Community Central and on individual profile blocks, there is use of the new 3.7 Social Groups and Photo Albums (including displaying a user's albums if the profile block for it is enabled.) You can see both of these in action on various screens in this thread.

What is Zoints Local?

Installed on your forum and under your control, Zoints Local is what you want it to be for your community. If you want to provide your members with a homepage they can personalize, you can. If you want members to share more about themselves via greatly enhanced profiles, you can. If you want members to have access to a complete blogging solution, you can. Networking? Resumes? Photos? Video sharing? No problem. Via Zoints' page and block management system, you can do what you want, how you want, with ease. Learn more about pages and blocks.

Zoints Local takes your forum's basic profile and turns it into a portal where a whole new world opens up, all on your website. As you can see below, your members can have everything from a personal homepage to an enhanced profile, blog, network, pages to show off their vehicle and anything else that can be dreamed up. And don't worry, we even include a page that shows the entire default vBulletin profile if you want it.

The key to Zoints Local is that the power is in YOUR hands. We know that today?s forum member is looking for something beyond a basic layout that they can find on any forum they joined powered by the same software, it?s just not worth their time to invest in creating a profile that many on the forum will overlook. Zoints Local 2.0 addresses this issue by expanding on the connectivity to provide you with a social networking solution that will make your dedicated members even more committed to your forum. Through measures such as our new central page, new activity blocks and postbit profile update indicators, your members will have a reason to check out other profiles, make new friends and get to know their current ones better. In a world where forums now have to compete with so many other time competitors online, forums need more than just content to drive members back, they need a true community aspect. By building a connected community, your members will not just remain loyal but they will be much more likely to recruit for your forum as they have such a positive affinity for the community. Zoints Local will help to provide the tools to make that possible.

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Some sites using Zoints Local
Hundreds of forums are currently running Zoints Local. Here are just a few:

Forum: http://www.strike3forums.com/forums/
Zoints Local: http://www.strike3forums.com/forums/z/missionhockey21/

(If you would like your forum featured above, please contact Doug)

What will Zoints local bring to my forum?

Zoints Local brings a new level of possibilities to your community development and overall website appearance. There are so many features and options that it?s impossible for us to list them all here. As a community based platform that allows forum owners to share blocks, the opportunities to expand your site with Zoints Local continue to grow every day ? there?s just no telling what feature, block or idea will come out next. At the Zoints Development Forum you can download blocks posted by other community owners and developers. This way, if you own a writing forum, a software forum, a nursing forum, or a forum dedicated to any other topic, you can contour pages and blocks to specifically fit the needs of your community. Learn more about sharing blocks.

A few of the blocks and pages packaged with Zoints Local:
About Me, My Activity, My Discussions, My Links, Instant Chat, XSPF Music Player, My Media, My Photos, My Interests, My Communities, My Network, My Network Activity Quick Comments, Ratings, My Blog, RSS Feeds, Social Actions and many more. Virtually any existing "widget" shared on the internet can quickly be converted into a block, many in just a few minutes.

What else does Zoints Local offer?

Zoints Local is a state of the art product with all sorts of amazing features that go beyond the normal forum profile.

Drag and Drop technology - Do you want to move a block from one part of your profile to another? Do you want to change the order of your pages? No problem, just drag and drop! It's that easy.

Social Networking - Forget just friends, Zoints Local allows your members to create as many "Groups" as they want. We all have friends, family, colleagues, forum friends, and various other people in our lives.

Comprehensive privacy controls - Your members can create a variety of groups and show each group different content on a page by page basis. Zoints allows you to show what you want, when you want, to whom you want. Learn more about Zoints' Privacy Controls.

Style Sharing - When your members create custom styles, they can easily share them with other members of your community via the Styles Database.

Global Search - Zoints Local includes a global search that bridges communities and creates a virtual freeway between forums on the internet. Searches conducted through Zoints return results from every community that uses Zoints Local. Think of it as Google, for people. Google sends you a lot of traffic, and so can Zoints People Search.

The best part about Zoints Local is that you pick what to let your members use and what not to let them use.

What sort of administration options exist?

The Zoints Local system gives you extensive control of how your Zoints profiles should behave. You can turn features on and off, determine if you want your members to be able to edit/create/manage styles of their own, define default styles, define the default block layout, default pages, edit block options and much more.

Zoints Local 2.0 now implements a file-based phrasing system which will allow the system to be ported to other languages in a much simpler way. If you create a language system, please share it with us so you can help out other forums in need of the same one! Also with 2.0 is improved Module API and block management, all of which are detailed in the links below.

Zoints Local 2.0 also brings new user control options to your forum. You can login in as a user or edit their options from one click on their profile page. If a user is deleted or banned, their Zoints Profile account is closed. You can list reasons as to why an account is closed in case other members are curious. And you can now view comments left by each user in case you had a troublemaker or a spammer that you need to quick seek and destroy all traces of.

You can now find zAdmin by simply accessing your vB Admin CP and going to the Zoints Profile Settings section. If you are in a panic, in a rush or new to Zoints, all of your settings can be found from this simple area.

Here?s a couple screenshots from the admin control panel:

How do I get started? (Installation, Support, Update Instructions, Changelog)

Getting Zoints Local running on your site is a quick and painless process. Just follow the simple steps below and you can have your site running Zoints Local in a matter of minutes. Once you have the system setup, it?s completely up to you to decide how you want things to work. Customize, add on or leave the system exactly as it comes out of the box ? Zoints Local gives you the power to choose!

Step 1 ? Download the attached zip file.

Step 2 ? Upload everything under the "upload" folder to your forum's root.

Upload the /z/ folder to your forum's root directory (one of the below examples should fit most setups):

yourdomain.com/z/ or
subdomain.yourdomain.com/z/ or
yourdomain.com/forumdirectory/z/


Step 3 - Run the installation script found at /z/install/index.php and follow the directions

Step 4 - During the installation you will need to register your forum with Zoints to obtain a token and authentication key

Step 5 ? Once installation is complete, log in to your vBulletin Admin Control Panel and upload the plugin product file found in the /products/ folder

Step 6 ? Configure Zoints as you see fit! The new Community Central feature can be configured under the Zoints Local vBulletin options.

Promoting your forum through Zoints

Along with all of the features, tools and added functionality Zoints Local offers for your site, the Zoints is also interested in bringing you more traffic. Here?s how:

1. Add your forum to the Zoints directory at http://zoints.com/communities after you install. More information can be found in this thread.

2. The Zoints network will include your site in searches and other relevant results bringing you qualified traffic without any additional effort.

3. If you install Zoints Local on a Big-Board, please email us at big-boards@zoints.com with your url so we can get you added to the Zoints Enabled directory on BigBoards.com

Support

Due to the scope of this software, we ask that help requests be submitted at http://network.zoints.com in this specific forum so we can provide quick, efficient support.

Changelog

The full (and very lengthy) changelog can be found in the download.


Upgrade Instructions

Zoints Local 2.0.0.5 RC1 & RC2
============================================

Please note: Do not upload the following two files:

/z/install/index.php
/z/install/detail.php

STEPS:
* Download: Zoints Local-2.0.0.5RC1-vB3.6.x.zip ... that is all that is needed for 2.0.0.
1.0.4b .zip is available for archive purposes.
* UPLOAD THE ENTIRE CONTENTS of the /upload/ folder found in the
zip.
* After uploading the new files, access the following page in your browser:

http://yourdomain.com/forum/z/install/manager.php
(Replace "http://yourdomain.com/forum/" with your forum's URL)

And select to upgrade Zoints Local
* Import Zoints Profile vBulletin Product titled product-zointsprofile-2.2.3-3.7.x.xml and make sure to select the "Overwrite" option!
* Alter the Zoints Profile vBulletin settings to configure the new Social Portal via the vBulletin AdminCP

You're done!


***System Requirements***

Zoints Local requires the following:

- A linux or windows based webserver. Windows in ISAPI mode is not currently supported.
- vBulletin forum software (additional platforms will be added soon).
- PHP 4.3.3 or greater.
- MySQL 4.1 or greater.
- Your server must allow port 80 post and get requests to be made to Zoints.com
- Safemode is not currently supported.



*** Zoints Local 2.0 does not support Autonomous mode.

That's it!

[DannyITR]

Originally Posted by pokerie

Just one thing, when you told DannyITR that Zoints Autonomous provides everything he asked for, does this include getting rid of /z/ that he mentioned too? I thought this wasn't possible?

I wasn't aware of the autonomous system and I'll definitely look into it. Yes getting rid of the /z/ is paramount or at least using wildcard domains so I can have username.domain.com. When I registered at zoints.com the first thing it said was that my profile is now dannyitr.zoints.com so obviously its possible. It wouldn't make sense for zoints to use that system and not offer it to its users. I'm sure DChapman just forgot to mention how we can do it.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by cfspinner

I installed zoints, but can't seem to find how to get to it, and now, when i click on my name to get to my profile, i get file not found!

HELP!

It sounds like you turned on the mod_rewrite option and didn't upload the .htaccess

In the zip file we provided, there is a folder call "rewrite". Upload the .htaccess file in there to /z/

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by pokerie

DChapman, I think we all respect what you are doing with Zoints I do anyway But when you compare it to the likes of a Virtual Highway with interconnecting routes, everyone knows that the towns people like to see business coming into their community, but not going out of it. For you, the government (lol) you want to give your people the freedom and become economically sound, but as with real life, the oul corner shop just wont be able to compete with the big Supermarket that has just opened 500 metres down the road.

The big supermarket in this case is MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc. How do you compete with huge entities like Wal Mart, Home Depot, and those enormous supermarket chains you're referring to? You band together in a loose affiliation. For instance, there is a carpet and tile store down the street from me. There's no way they could compete with Homedepot on price if they went at it alone. But because they have joined into an organization of like small tile/carpet stores across the country (I think it's called Carpet One or something like that) they get the buying power of the huge affiliation and can compete on price.

Originally Posted by pokerie

The customers start to go to the bigger shops where they can get everything that was in the smaller, specialist shops but it's more convenient because it's all under the same roof.

Sometimes, yes. That's why MySpace now has over 120 million members and most forums are seeing flat activity rates despite increasing numbers of registrations.

Originally Posted by pokerie

This relates to traffic being taken away from the smaller sites with zoints and probably ending up at a bigger site with a broader range of forums where people can get responses to their questions quicker and everything else that a bigger site has over the smaller guys, by just using the one account to log in to.

It's about carving out your niche and differentiating yourself. If you start a forum that is exactly like 35 other (and larger) general discussion forums on the net, then you're likely going to fail with or without Zoints. But if you create a general discussion community that is somehow different and offers what others do not, then you have a chance to succeed. Zoints isn't going to make or break anyone. In the end, that rests with you and you have nobody to blame but yourself if you fail and nobody to congratulate but yourself if you succeed. We're simply trying to increase your chance of success by providing solutions that are designed to solve the three problems you WILL face: member acquisiton, member retention, and profitability. Anyone can write a hack, but nobody else has identified the exact issues forum owners face and is actively working to resolve them.

Originally Posted by pokerie

We're not putting the time, effort and money into our sites just to end up sending everyone off to the big sites, even though it could benefit the internet population as a whole, even still, there's just no point in it for us.

Why doesn't everyone live in the big cities of the USA? Why aren't all 300 million of us in New York, Los Angeles, etc? Because not everyone likes that life. For my "home community" I personally prefer a smaller forum where everyone knows me and vice versa. And then I head off to a dozen other sites each day that cover other niches I am interested in.

Originally Posted by pokerie

If you want to look at it in extremities, Zoints could also one day be void because it's job has been done, it's brought everyone together, all the smaller sites are no more and the bigger sites can now advertise and there will be no need for Zoints or for smaller, specialist sites. This is of course an extreme but could eventually happen if things went absolutely to plan.

So I don't think this would be good for any of us.

It's pretty simple. Hundreds of communities are utilizing the free autonomous system with quite a few more joining per day. I am deluged by requests from phpbb, invision, smf, and other communities running various software requesting to utilize this system. Many people love and share our vision. Everyone has their own preference and should do what they feel is best for their community. Zoints is innovating. We're not interested in sticking with the status quo. Here is a good read by a VC / startup expert who I respect a great deal. How many of those can Zoints check off?

Originally Posted by pokerie

Just one thing, when you told DannyITR that Zoints Autonomous provides everything he asked for, does this include getting rid of /z/ that he mentioned too? I thought this wasn't possible?

With the autonomous license, you can rename /z/ to whatever you want without trouble. You just can't have domain.com/username otherwise the system will break. username.domain.com is theoretically possible with a load of modifications to server settings and .htaccess, but we don't support it or guarantee it will work.

[Chadi]

I did not see these info in the original post:

Administrative Options:

Can I have any member side changes put in moderation queue first?
Can we enable per usergroup(s) of choice instead of globally?

[cfspinner]

Originally Posted by DChapman

It sounds like you turned on the mod_rewrite option and didn't upload the .htaccess

In the zip file we provided, there is a folder call "rewrite". Upload the .htaccess file in there to /z/

No luck. Uploaded the .htaccess as instructed and it still gives me file not found errors when trying to get to any user profile.

[DannyITR]

Originally Posted by DChapman

With the autonomous license, you can rename /z/ to whatever you want without trouble. You just can't have domain.com/username otherwise the system will break. username.domain.com is theoretically possible with a load of modifications to server settings and .htaccess, but we don't support it or guarantee it will work.

Huh? What about when I joined zoints.com.

http://dannyitr.zoints.com

Why can you do it but leave other sites to fend for themselves with no help? BTW I currently have usernmae.domain.com working for my VB right now. I wonder if installing zoints will affect it or not. Anyways mabye I'll give it a shot.

[pokerie]

Hi again DC,
You provided valid points in all your replies. It's obvious we both want what's best, both for ourselves and for everyone. And yes, about the "niche" community, I fully understand, we are a poker site, I'd say almost every one our members knows of twoplustwo.com, the biggest poker forum on the net, but I'd say a lot of them post on poker.ie more, it's Irish and it's a small community, which as you know, some people prefer. There is also the extra hustle and bustle of city life on the larger forums, you can't keep up with topics because there are so many replies etc.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it a task some times to catch up on a topic when you log back in and see it has loads of replies.


I'm just expressing my fears of losing the small community that I have.

I'm just not sure if connecting with others would give me more "buying power" in the same sense as the tile shop. I wouldn't consider my site in any way in competition with myspace/youtube etc, they are just completely different. Are you saying you want to band all forums together so Zoints will be up there amongst the likes of myspace and youtube? I respect your ideas and goals, but again, I'm worried about the small guys.


Regarding the /z/, would it not just be a case of excluding the likes of sitename.com/contactus from the list? Talking to SirAdrian from vblogetin.com, he is making it possible to have blog URLs at www.sitename.com/username or www.sitename.com/blogtitle by making exceptions for all content currently at a .com/content address. Would it be possible to make an addition to the software to allow sitename.com/username or username.sitename.com so there would be no need for additional hacks etc?

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by chadi

I did not see these info in the original post:

Administrative Options:

Can I have any member side changes put in moderation queue first?
Can we enable per usergroup(s) of choice instead of globally?

Neither of those are features at this time, sorry.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by cfspinner

No luck. Uploaded the .htaccess as instructed and it still gives me file not found errors when trying to get to any user profile.

Go to /z/zadmin.php > edit install settings > uncheck the mod_rewrite box and save. See if you're able to access profiles at that point.

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by DannyITR

Huh? What about when I joined zoints.com.

http://dannyitr.zoints.com

Why can you do it but leave other sites to fend for themselves with no help?

The code on Zoints.com isn't the same as Zoints Local. We haven't tested username.domain.com because that isn't how Zoints Local is designed and even if it does work, the process of setting up those subdomains is not easy for most people (and most shared hosts wouldn't even allow it). It would turn into a support nightmare. If we had infinite resources and time, sure, we'd love to help with it. Nobody likes telling other people no.