There’s a book in the navigation bar … for a little while

December 16, 2008

We added a book image and message to the navigation bar up top today.  It’s a temporary thing to promote the release of our new book Dream It. List It. Do It! and the new 43 Things Personality Quiz. If you haven’t already, take the quiz … it’s quirky, fun(ny), informative and, at times, wildly insightful.

book-nav-bar


I’m an Extroverted Lifelong Learning Tree Hugger. What are you?

December 11, 2008

There’s a new 43 Things book and a fun 43 Things personality quiz to go along with it. Take the quiz, check out the book and let us know what you think. So far the most common results are “Newness-Seeking Self-Improving Tree Hugger” and “Romantic Traveling Reinventer”.  What are you?

 

Dream It. List It. Do It!


New 43 Things nav bar on the way

August 18, 2008

We’re launching a new navigation bar for 43 Things. Hopefully this week. Here it is (click on it to see the full size image):

The new nav bar includes Your X Things, Zeitgeist & Your Account. When you click on Your Account a dropdown box opens up with Subscriptions, Messages, Edit Account and Log Out. The search box is much bigger and the 43 Things logo moves over to the left. The pages will get a little wider (we’re moving from 750 pixels to 930 pixels). We’ve already moved many pages to 930 in the past few months, but we’re getting them all over to 930 pixels wide with the new nav bar. You may notice that there’s extra white space on the goal page - we’ll be tightening that up in the coming weeks as we’re working on a redesign of the goal page that will make use of the new 930 width.

The important links will be readily available to you from any page. You’ll now be one click away at all times from editing your account, viewing your subscriptions and your messages.


New widgets, tweaks, Cheers & tips

April 17, 2008

Thanks for all the feedback on the new profile page! In response to the missing links to other 43 websites in the footer and missing tags we’re happy to announce 2 new widgets:

Your Tags & 43 Universe Widgets:

  • Your Tags (displays the tags you’ve given to goals on 43T)
  • 43 Universe (displays links to your activity on 43 Places, 43 People, All Consuming, Lists of Bests)

To adopt these widgets click the “customize” link in the top, right corner of the right widgets column on your profile page. Select the widget and save.

Tweaks:

  • “I love 43 Things” is no longer the default language in the About Me widget
  • remove your birthday - click edit on the About Me widget - zero out the day and month fields and save changes
  • better pagination — allows you to easily jump to the end or middle of your completed goals, entries and other paginated stuff (we’ll push this out by day’s end)
  • goals you’ve given up are now located under the “I’ve done x things” tab — click the “… & I’ve given up on x things” link up top
  • added back the “read all 5 entries” link next to entries under recent entries

I’m probably missing some other tweaks we’ve pushed out the last 24 hours.

Disappearing Cheers:

Many people’s cheers given/received have gone down a notch in the last day. This was related to a bug fix that we’ve had sitting ready to get pushed out — this fix coincidentally went out with the new profile page.

Okay, so here’s where I lay it down for you, and there’s no sugar coating that will make this cheer-drop go down any smoother. The higher cheers counts many of us had (me too) were artificially inflated for a few months. Now that the cheers count bug is fixed everyone is seeing their true, for reals, honest to goodness cheers count. So, on the one hand you probably feel deflated (damn the Cheer Goblin!). On the other hand you may be experiencing the uphoria of absolution (”These cheers are the real deal and I’m an honest cheer giver and getter!”). I choose to see the cheers glass as half full. Join me?

Tips (for fun):

  • add the Tags and 43 Universe widgets … because they’re cool
  • reorder your widgets by dragging them up and down to a desired location
  • reorder your goals by dragging them up and down
  • click on the “x cheers” link under any goal and see the fancy recent cheer pop-up
  • click on a picture and watch it get big!

Okay, that’s a mouthful. Help me spread the word about the fixes, widgets and enhancements. More to report soon …


Profile page preview: the kitchen sink

April 15, 2008

When we set out to redesign the profile page we didn’t realize how much of the site revolves around this page. It’s been a bigger project than we initially imagined — both in scope and implementation. One great side effect of this has been the site enhancements we’ve discovered along the way. So, we’re throwing in the kitchen sink along with all the other new profile page goodies:

  • inline editing of entries: now editing an entry on the profile page happens inline
  • inline photo viewing: click on a photo and it automagically expands in front of your eyes
  • inline peek-at-cheers: click the “x cheers” link for a preview bubble of the latest cheers
  • inline delete an entry: click the tool arrow next to your entry, then “delete” — poof!
  • new photo gallery: click the “x photos” beneath your photo and see more picture magic
  • print your list: print a nice readable version of your life list for your fridge, wallet or cubicle

I’m likely omitting many little nips and tucks, but it’s all great stuff.

Next up … launch of the new profile page!


Profile page preview: my status

April 14, 2008

My status is a brand new feature to 43 Things. Think of it as a casual way of letting people know what you’re up to. Some folks have been hacking this feature for a while by editing their display name in the ‘edit your account’ section. My status makes sharing this info much easier.

When you’re logged in on your profile page you’ll see the sentence “what are you doing today?”. Click on it. Type what you want people to know. Hit return. You’ve just updated your status.

You can update your status as often as you like. Your status message will display after your name on your profile page, your entries and your comments across the site. As soon as you change your status it changes sitewide. Status is optional, so share your status only if you feel the need.

Next up … the kitchen sink.


Profile page preview: adding, editing, reordering and removing your goals

April 11, 2008

Adding, editing, reordering and removing your goals just got easier.

  • add a goal: type in a new goal direct from your profile page.
  • edit a goal: “I really meant play electric guitar, not play guitar!”. Edit your goal name inline. Yessss!
  • reorder your goals: drag and drop your goals where you like in one simple move.
  • remove a goal: click remove; confirm if you’re removing or giving up (a dialog box explains the difference). Buh bye!

Next up … edit your status.


In the future ago …

March 18, 2008

If you’re experiencing a time stamp in the future … specifically “in the future ago”, you are not alone. One of the web servers is out of sync at the moment and we’re working on bringing it back to the present day. As it’s only one server that’s out of sync, some folks will experience normal time stamps on their entries, comments and cheers such as “43 minutes ago”. Others looking at the same content (but on a different server) will see the peculiar “in the future ago” time stamp. We distribute traffic to 43 Things across multiple web servers to handle the load efficiently.

It’s an interesting concept and I personally love the wording so enjoy it while it lasts. Ivan tells me that in about 2 hours the server should be synced back up and your entries, comments and cheers will be back in the present tense.


Site(s) outage Saturday, Jan. 26 at 6pm PST

January 24, 2008

We’ll be bringing all the sites down for about an hour (hopefully less) on Saturday at 6pm Seattle time (aka PST). Ivan and Laurel are putting a new load balancer into place that will do all sorts of great things for performance. The sites will go dark. Completely dark … as in nothing will show up. But don’t fret, we’ll bring everything back online with a quickness.

In the meantime you may want to check this out.


43 Things homepage

December 18, 2007

We’ve been talking a lot in recent months about the 43 Things homepage. The current homepage has taken us a long way with the early adopter crowd but can be cryptic for new users. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked ‘what is 43 Things?’. I usually tell people it’s a site where people create a list of their goals and give advice and support to each other. It would be nice to have a homepage that communicated that for me.

Enter new robot Michelle who is now helping us out with all things design. Here’s where we’re headed with the unrecognized homepage (that means when you’re not logged into the site). If you’re signed in, the homepage will look as it does today for now. We should have this live in a few days:

newhomepage.jpg

p.s. the “need inspiration” section is a fancy tool that reveals popular goals by category and allows you to quickly add them to your list.