Category Archives: Community

Oxwall Store Revamped

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General Thoughts

The essential changes to the Oxwall Store that we’ve talked about for some time now are finally here. As the Store experienced the increased activity, we couldn’t help but notice the system becoming cluttered. Something had to be done, and thus we undertook the task of introducing some order and organization within the project. It is our belief that Oxwall Store should be a simple and comprehensible place. Here’s what we did to achieve that.

Oxwall Store Revamped

Different Listings

Prior to the change, Oxwall Store featured one single listing of all plugins created for the platform. Needless to say, that wasn’t really convenient or efficient. Instead, we’ve come up with a division into four different listing types.

Oxwall Store Revamped

  • Featured

Items found here will be carefully selected by members of the Oxwall Foundation, as most beneficial for the entire community.

  • Most Popular

The section will show the end-user what the community thinks are the best themes and plugins. The popularity of items here will be measured by the combined score of top ratings, most downloads, etc.

  • Top FREE

Most popular free items will end up in this category.

  • Latest

This is self-explanatory – all the latest items will be automatically placed here.

Reviews

Oxwall Store RevampedReviews are now comprised of three sections – title, short user opinion of the item, and the score (with the maximum of five stars). Also, all reviews can now be rated as helpful by other users. Paid items will be open for reviews only upon purchase. In addition, all submitted reviews will be pre-moderated by the Oxwall Team. Ain’t the democracy a great thing? 😉

Oxwall Store Revamped

Note that all support questions will be separated from the item score, and could be addressed or reported only on the forum.

Oxwall Store Revamped

While converting to the new system we have moved all comments about the item to a separate section of the item’s forum called Support Questions. It is no longer possible to leave simple comments on the item’s page. The scores (without feedback) have been saved as well. So if you browse the Store and see a score without any actual reviews around, that can mean only one thing – this score was converted from submissions prior to the introduced change.

More Items Widget

Oxwall Store RevampedWe’ve added a new widget to item pages, called ‘More plugins/themes from this author.’ It will show other items the user has added to the Store, which is a very convenient tool for promoting specific store items through the ones already achieved popularity. The item list for the widget is compiled by the user through the item edit page.

Minor Stuff

We have also revamped item pages themselves, to allow visitors immediaely see all the necessary information and scores left by other users.

The presentation of each item in the overall listing was made more detailed and informative.

Traditionally, we’ve fixed some minor system bugs.

Conclusion

We hope you will like this latest improvement of Oxwall Store. In our opinion the changes will benefit everyone, including visitors looking for new plugins, and developers displaying their creative output. Check out our progress and tell us what you think. Enjoy!

 

 

Oxwall Market Partners oDesk

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Dear friends,

For quite a while now we’ve been looking into introducing improvements for Oxwall Market to streamline its entire operation. To do that we’ve partnered with oDesk – the world largest and fastest-growing online community of freelance developers.

For your convenience we’ve placed oDesk widget on the Oxwall Market page, listing all available developers pre-screened as qualified for Oxwall Jobs. The database of contractors can be searched right from within Oxwall Market, with the option to filter results by hourly rates, location, feedback score, etc., to find the best developer for the job.

We believe the partnership will boost Oxwall Market efficiency, and bring the community directly in contact with professional developers offering quality help.

Oxwall Market Partners oDesk

Oxwall: 100,000 Downloads and Counting

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Oxwall: 100,000 Downloads and Counting

Dear friends,

As many of you have noticed, we have climbed over another impressive milestone. Ladies and gentlemen, as of last week Oxwall Software has been downloaded over 100,000 times since first becoming publicly available! These are the numbers straight from our site, so the final figure is even bigger once auto-installer downloads are counted in.

We take this as great encouragement and a sign that we took the right development trajectory. In a few days we will give you Oxwall 1.4, and with the next programming cycle around the corner, we are already working on even more impressive features.

Indeed, we have a pretty hot summer ahead, with plenty of tasty delights coming your way pretty soon. Here is a sneak peek at what to expect in the nearest future:

  • New default theme
  • New real-time notification system
  • New member console
  • More professional themes
  • Store improvements
  • Mobile version
  • New CMS functions

As you can see, we are keeping quite busy to make sure all people downloading our software are not disappointed. Expect some of the listed features this coming season.

We would like to thank the entire Oxwall community for making this breakthrough a reality.

Oxwall Team.

Stop SOPA

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Let’s cut to the chase. If you are reading this, you likely already know what SOPA and PIPA are, you’ve seen the darkened Wikipedia, you’ve noticed Google’s laconic petition, and you’ve heard millions of protesting voices all over the net screaming in rage against a couple of bills currently moving through the US Congress.

If you haven’t notice anything at all, congratulations. You just might be one of the few people, who, along with SOPA and PIPA proponents, talk about “online community” as if it was some sort of outcast group. This failure to realise that the world has really changed, and absolutely everyone is now part of this online community; that absolutely everyone will be harmed in one way or another if the bills will make it, is simply overwhelming.

Here at Oxwall and Wall.fm we support websites, companies, and individuals who are protesting SOPA and PIPA. We believe that installing censorship in any form, blocking websites, killing the notion of “fair use”, disrespecting user submitted content, reducing privacy, etc., is not only a huge blow to the progressive development of the Internet, but also a general assault on democracy and freedom of expression – something we give people collective tools for.

Most importantly, we do not want anyone to have the ability to puppeteer the Internet and then face the grim future where the law could suddenly place too much power into wrong hands, inevitably leading to the abuse of said power. Stop SOPA.

Oxwall Launches Beta Testing

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Great news, everyone!

We are launching beta testing for the new build of Oxwall Software. While we continue to improve the quality of the new release, some of you will be able to get your hands on Oxwall 1.3.0 ahead of everyone else.

Now, since we have limited resources to process all bug reports, and also to raise the testing efficiency, we are going to limit the Beta Testing Team this time over. Only Community Leaders, Oxwall Club members, and users with items in Oxwall Store can apply for the access to Beta Testing this time. To do so, simply drop us a line at support@oxwall.org, with Claim Beta in the subject line.

Good luck!

 

 

First Official Oxwall Google+ Hangout January 19

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As promised last month, we have finally found time for a Google+ Hangout with you guys. All admins running Oxwall-powered websites, or anyone interested in joining our rapidly growing community are welcome to join us next Thursday, January 19th, at 12PM EST (6PM CET) for an informal chat.

Once again, Oxwall founder Emil will be on hand to speak about his vision for the product, answer any questions, and even make important announcements concerning Oxwall Software and Oxwall Store. Oh yeah, and also to simply hangout with like-minded people. Trust us, you don’t want to miss it.

For those not in the know – Google+ Hangout is basically a multi-user video chat available to anyone with a Google account. Before joining a Hangout you should make sure your webcam, microphone, and speakers (or headphones) are all working properly. Also, we advise to run a quick test Hangout if you’ve never done it before, just to make sure you have all the necessary plugins installed. If you have everything ready, add Emil (gplus.to/emil) to one of your Circles and wait for him to launch the Hangout at designated time – you’ll see a notification on your Google+ Stream.

Now, since we have a truly international community here, with members all across the globe, we had to think long and hard about the best time to hold the Hangout. Launching it at 12PM EST seems to be the best possible compromise, but as always, we are open to your suggestions. Let us know what you think, what you want to talk about, or if you have any technical questions regarding the Hangout in the comments bellow.

Oxwall Store Increased Quality Control

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Dear friends,

We are happy to report that Oxwall Store is coming along quite nicely, judging by the steadily growing volume of new items and sales. Unfortunately, quantity does not always translate to quality, and like everyone, we notice the appearance of mediocre-to-poor submissions.

This is not what we had in mind initially. We are also sure most Oxwall admins will agree that Oxwall Store should not become another online collection of second-rate mods of existing plugins and themes.

Oxwall Foundation always strove for improved quality for the end user and we anticipate the community will follow our lead. We all still have a long way to go to reach the desired level of excellence, but with small steps in the right direction we can do it.

One of such steps will be the introduction of stricter quality control for Oxwall Store submissions, in accordance with our Terms of Use. We hope everyone understands that this decision will benefit the project in the long run. Let’s make Oxwall better together.

Happy 2012!

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Happy 2012!And so the time has come to say goodbyes to 2011. We hope that the past year gave you a lot of great memories, just as it did to the Oxwall Foundation staff.

At the same time, we are sure that 2012 will see even more breakthroughs, innovation, and real success, as we look forward to continue bringing our vision to the community, in the form of Oxwall Software.

Our entire team wishes you all the best in the New Year! Let the Dragon bring power and wealth to all of you!

Oxwall Store Improved

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We’ve got a couple more news we can push out before the holidays.

First of all, don’t forget to check out the updated Development Roadmap to see what to expect from our upcoming release. But while the team is busy with that, we decided to further tweak the Oxwall Store, seeing its growing significance and demand.

The changes are both, cosmetic and functional, streamlining and simplifying the Store’s presentation. We intend to introduce a more significant overhaul to the Oxwall Store in the future, but for now the changes include the following:

  • Store Search added;
  • Themes and Plugins separated into different categories;
  • Items and Listing Items display changed;
  • Item Lists simplified;