Update:  This issue has been resolved. 

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 We are aware of an intermittent issue causing some sites and API requests to respond slowly or not at all.  We are working to resolve this and will update KickDeveloper when we have more information.

We will perform a release the morning of Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 3AM ET (7AM GMT).  The release will last approximately three hours during which your KickApps community will operate in read-only mode.  Included in the release are a number of changes and tweaks to the Widget Studio and some behind the scenes performance enhancements.  Here are the ones you'll probably notice:

 

Widget Studio enhancements

Custom List Designer
Update 7/2:  We want to give this feature a little extra love, so we're going to move it to the release following the 7/7 release. Stay tuned!
The new Custom List component enables you to design completely customized lists using text, image, and any other components.  You'll have complete control to add whatever components you want in a list cell, as well as layout, styles, and formatting, and the design you create will be replicated in every cell of your Custom List.  Used in conjunction with the new Feed Parser, you can populate the components in your list with the contents of any node in any RSS or ATOM feed, and soon any XML feed.

Feed Parser
Update 7/2:  We want to give this feature a little extra love, so we're going to move it to the release following the 7/7 release. Stay tuned!
The Feed Parser lets you drill into any XML document and assign the contents of any node within it to populate text and image components.  

Widget Assets
Now you can upload images and .swf files directly into the App Studio.  These files won't go on your KickApps play pages; instead you can use them within the App Studio for things like backgrounds, logos, and custom animations.  You can access these files via the Widget Assets window.  To add them to your widget, simply drag and drop them onto the stage, or into the background image field in the properties panel of any component.

KickApps Media Window
Much like the Widget Assets window, the KickApps Media window lets you run simple searches on your KickApps community media and drag and drop results onto the stage, or for use in playlists.

Playlists
You no longer have to rely on dynamic feeds to populate your video players!  With playlists now available for all players, you can create playlists of media in any order that you please.  To create a playlist, simply select the Playlist option in the Content panel of one of these components, open up the KickApps Media window, and drag and drop items from it into the Playlist panel.

Action Panel UI Improvements
We've streamlined the workflow in the Actions panel to make the process of adding Actions to your components easier and much faster.  Instead of adding an Action in a modal pop-up window, you now create Actions in a panel that extends directly from the main Actions window.  All dropdown menus have been replaced with autocompleting dropdowns, you can tab between fields, and to save an action you just have to press return.

Copy & Paste
We've all been waiting for this one.  You can now copy via CTRL-C and paste via CTRL-V, as well as from a right-click context menu.

Pixlr Integration for image editing
You can now edit Widget Assets images via Pixlr, a powerful image editor available as a free web app (pixlr.com).  Just select the image you want to edit in the Widget Assets window and click the Edit button.  You'll be whisked off to Pixlr.com, where you can edit the image to your satisfaction, and then save it back to the App Studio.  Pixlr, we salute you!

SSO enhancements

We updated the registerNewUser SSO call so that you can now set the extended profile questions, about me and postal code using this call. After the release is complete, you can view the updates on the Member Register page in KickDeveloper.

 

 

Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think on the KickDeveloper Message Board.

Tonight we added 3 new video players to the Gallery in the App Studio.  These new players can be used right out of the box, or you can customize them with your own background images and logo, or add additional components to create a completely customized solution.  You'll find these good-lookers under the Gallery Beta tab in the App Studio on the far right.  Drag one to the stage to use it in your widget!

1. Simple Video Player
   
   
2. Transparent Video Player
   
   
3. Looseleaf Video Player
   

Enjoy!

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LATEST UPDATE:  The hot fix was completed, and the system is running smoothly.

We’re performing an emergency hot fix release across the KickApps platform the afternoon of Monday June 29, 2009 at approximately 4:30pm ET (8:30pm GMT).  The process should last an hour or two during which your KickApps website will operate normally.

This hot fix will resolve an issue where the updateProfile SSO call was affecting incorrect data fields.  Please check this section of KickDeveloper.com for any updates.

KickApps is known for powering rich social media experiences for some of the world’s most recognizable brands, tier-one web publishers, and Fortune 1,000 enterprises. Over the last few years the market has shown that the social media experiences we provide are becoming baseline for any website in the world and it’s our commitment to service all publishers and businesses no matter how large or small.

Based on feedback from our growing network of customers, we’ve made a few changes to our service that I’d like to bring to your attention. From today onward, we will be offering a Free 30 day trial for all new KickApps accounts. You’ll be able to design, build, integrate and test your KickApps website during this time and will have complete access to the entire KickApps platform.

As part of this change, we will be replacing the KickApps ad network advertising offering with a new series of subscription offers that provides the publisher with complete control of all ad slots (including video advertising slots). Current KickApps ad network accounts can choose to stay ad supported and receive advertisements from the KickApps ad network or switch over to one of our subscription packages that provides the publisher complete control of all ad slots.

We started testing three new self-service monthly subscription packages that provide complete control six months ago resulting in the following offers:

1. Basic = $39.95/mo.
2. Small Business = $99.95/mo.
3. Small Business Plus = $299.95/mo.

The response has been very positive which is encouraging because it signifies the maturing of the industry as a whole. The Basic to Small Business Plus packages are available on a self-service basis in the Affiliate Center where you’ll find all the details necessary to pick the offering that meets your needs. Payment for the new subscription offers can be made via PayPal account or major credit card. Navigate to Configure > Services in the Affiliate Center to choose the package that makes most sense for you.

For publishers that expect traffic to exceed 30,000 page or video (outside of a KickApps hosted page) views per month, please contact our sales team and we’ll walk you through an enterprise licensing package tailored specifically to your needs.

With today’s KickApps, that includes; Widget & Video Player Studio, a robust API Developer Kit, complete content, media & member management, community and customer insight solutions and so much more, nothing stands in the way of any publisher from taking advantage of how social media can transform your web site.

Thank you for your support of KickApps over the last four years. We’re very excited about continuing to deliver the best social media solutions to you.

KickApps is powering websites for many major brands, tier one properties, professional sports teams and literally tens of thousands of mid tier and smaller web sites.  Sites such asNew York Rangers, Bonnaroo, Planet Orange, OvationTV, and many more, draw a much deserved sense of attention to the KickApps platform. The larger a given platform grows, the more likely it is to be a target of spammers.  Many of the top sites and social media engines on the web are targets as well, but here at KickApps we take spamming seriously, and are proactive in providing our customers with tools for preventing spamming.

Within the existing platform we have several anti-spam techniques that our affiliates can configure to prevent those annoying out-bound links.

 

1. Email Verification - Enable email verification for new members. Upon registration, members will have to input a valid email address, then follow the link sent to them in an email. Our own studies show that this alone decreased the amount of active spam accounts by almost 55%.
2. Automatic Approvals - Disable auto-approvals and assemble a team of editors to assist in your approval processes.
3. Flagging Threshold - It maybe a good practice to set the flagging threshold to 1. However, be sure to notify your members that as soon as they see something that may be considered spam, to flag it. An email notification of every flag will be sent to the designated help address that was set when initially configuring your KickApps community.
4. Notify KickDev - I have recently created a KickDeveloper message board thread where we can help each other moderate the spammers who make into our community. Visit this thread and give the rest of us developers a heads up!

 

If you follow these techniques, you will be able to limit the amount of spam accounts that attack your site. Although it is impossible to guarantee that you will completely eliminate spam, this a significant leap forward while we prepare a full featured spam prevention tool.

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LATEST UPDATE:  The release was completed this morning (Thursday June 18, 2009), and the system is running smoothly.

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UPDATE:  The release scheduled for the morning of Tuesday, June 16th has been rescheduled for the morning of Thursday, June 18th, 2009 starting at 12:01AM ET (4AM GMT).  The process will last a few hours during which your KickApps website will operate normally.  You community will not be in read-only mode.

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We’ll be performing a release with several enhancements and new features on the morning of Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 3AM ET (7AM GMT).  The release will last approximately three hours during which your community will be in read-only mode.  The new features and platform enhancements include a new set of API calls, privacy controls for member profiles, a couple of DOM changes, and new features in the Widget Studio.

 

Automatically set new member profile pages to private

New privacy control!  Under Configure > Settings, if you enable profile privacy, you will see an option called "Default all profiles to be private."  Selecting that option will default all newly created profiles within the community to private.

 

Blank Page Template

We now provide a blank page template that contains only the header and footer of your KickApps hosted community.  Combined with the JavaScript Events API, you can use this template to create a fully customized experience for your visitors by injecting any HTML content you would like.

Learn more about this feature at KickDeveloper.

Update, 6/17: Introducing Widget Gallery Beta

We've added a new "Gallery" tab to the top panel in the App Studio.  This new tab is loaded with a number of pre-built widgets that you can drag to the stage to use in your own project.  We look forward to adding more widgets and skins to the Gallery going forward.  In the near term we'll also be working to expand this functionality and open it up so you can share your widgets with the community as well!

 

Widget Studio enhancements

We also made a number of tweaks and changes to the Widget Studio.  Here's the ones you'll probably notice:

• Update, 6/17: You can now run JavaScript functions using the Open Custom URL Action.  Very handy for triggering JS functions on the page that the widget is on when the widget throws a certain Event (like when a video starts playing).
  
  
• You can now display members' levels and how many points they've earned by ticking off the Points and/or Levels checkboxes in the Custom Meta section of the List Item Properties panel.
  
• .swf files loaded into the Image/.SWF component can now be resized and masked
• We've replaced the Feed dropdown in the Content panel with an auto-completing dropdown that searches your feeds as you type
  
• You can now apply Actions to the List component, which means you can finally have a hidden video player appear when you click a video in the list!
• Added text truncation ellpises (...) to long component names in layers panel
• Refactored the image component and its properties panel. The updated panel layout clearly distinguishes between whether resizing the image component's bounding box should scale the image with it and lets you center the image vertically and horizontally-- especially helpful when the image component will dynamically load images of different sizes.
  
• Updated behavior to size to the dimensions of the first image/swf loaded into it when dragged/double clicked to stage
• Proxying and bitmap smoothing gif and png when needed as proxy supports
• Added check on actions panel drag operation to fix issue that occurs when a component is dropped on or through it
• Changed feed builder save message

 

We also addressed the following issues:

• Meebo widget not updating when properties are changed in design mode
• YouTube audio still playing when switching between youtube and regular video
• Audio player not playing on blogs
• "Center content vertical/horizontal" not factored in when "Scale to Fit" wasn't enabled
• Bypassing corrupt null actions
• List component showPreloader=false being ignored in some situations

Now automatically killing the cache for a widget's Facebook thumbnail URL when you save it in the Studio.

New API Calls

• Approve media
  
• Reject media
  
• Approve member
• Reject member
• Retrieve Pending Media
• Extend get tag count call to accept multiple media ID's
  
• Extend get article with tag call to accept mutiple media Id's
  
• Block API calls based on IP's

Please note: API access requires a special account. See the API docs for more information.

DOM Changes

• A separate body class has been added to the My Friends (.ka_mkp_myFriends) , My Fans (.ka_mkp_MyFans) , and I'm a Fan of (.ka_mkp_FanOf) pages.
• A body ID of #ka_requestGroup has been added to the group request page.
• On the Getting Started page, #ka_manageSubNav has been moved out of #ka_manageContent to conform with all other KA management pages.
• On private profile pages, there was a missing closing div tag on #ka_profilePrivacy that was causing private profile pages to break.  This has been added in.
• On the profile page, the li.ka_profileRSSLink is now identical to the other li's in the list where the icon and the anchor text are both linkable.
• The body class .ka_myhome_pages has been added to the My Fans and I'm a Fan of pages to be consistent with all other KA management pages.
• On the profile page, under .ka_stats, the comments and views areas are now in separate divs, to give users the ability to hide one or the other.
• On the My Groups page, a div #ka_allGroups has been wrapped around the All Groups section, to enable css hiding.
• List pages:  Media list pages now have the body class .ka_listResults while a search results list page has the body class of .ka_searchResults to help distinguish between the two.

Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think on the KickDeveloper Message Board.

Greetings Developers,
If you haven't already noticed, we made some changes to the KickDeveloper homepage earlier this week. To clear things up, I'd just like to point out the changes and direct you to some areas of the site that appear to be MIA.

Most significantly, the "Resources" tab has been replaced by the "Documentation" tab. Although the Documentation tab has in fact replaced resources, the tab is linked to a new section of KickDeveloper, our Wiki. For tutorials, or screen casts, that were previously in the Resources section, click on the Browse Through Our Archive link on the left side "Quick Links" panel.

Another big change is the fact that there is now a Google Search on every page and we have done away with the search page. This search bar will index all of our message board posts, members, and tutorials. Therefore, if you have a specific question, it is now easier to find what you are looking for, and as always, if the search results turn up null, open a thread on the Message Boards!

Often, as developers, we overlook the importance of a great community manager. However, we also know that the community manager wouldn't exist if there was no community to manage! This is why we have chosen a 2-man team, or should I say 2-woman team, as our KickDeveloper Of The Month for June.

I would consider them to be the best team of KickDevelopers on the site. Megan Smith leads the community action as the current standing Community Manager at Ovation TV while Jennifer Colley heads up the development process. Together, they are unstoppable!

OvationTV has quickly become one of our top sites with over 7,000 members! The focus of their site is on the fine arts of different cultures. With a tagline like "Make Life Creative" you know that they are down to business!