UPDATE: We have received a few comments, twitters, and emails from people who were not very happy about the sudden increase in email caused by this new feature. Our goal was to improve communication and help people feel more connected to any progress on their feedback. But, we definitely understand how multiple emails in one day can feel like a bit much. After digging in a little deeper, we discovered that live-updates from user comments are generating the most additional emails, and are most likely to be undesired as live-updates for some users. Specifically, there are twice as many comments as status updates, and four times as many comments as admin responses.

We really appreciate the feedback, and have adjusted the feature in response. Now, there are two separate settings for live-updates: comments (which are now off by default), and status changes and admin responses (which are on by default). As before, these settings can be changed anytime from your settings or from the emails themselves.

(NOTE: Links in previous emails no longer work.)

If you’d like to adjust your notification settings, here’s how to access your preferences:

• Login to uservoice.
• Click on “Settings” beside your Account Name.
• Toggle the checkbox for “receive live status changes, admin responses?”
• Toggle the checkbox for “receive comment updates?”
  

You can also update these settings from the bottom of every email:

Have suggestions about how we can improve our communication? We’d love to hear from you.

To get things started, we’ve stepped forward with four of the more popular Western European tongues:

French – German – Spanish – Dutch

This is a huge step for us, but is of course still a bit “alpha,” so if you see glitches, please feel free to post them on our pbwiki.  We expect to be rolling out many more languages as we produce localized files.  Special thanks to those who’ve helped us get started — If you’re interested in seeing UserVoice in your language, please join the team and help us out!

In addition to language translation, the UV Elves have been slaving away with some other zesty goodness:

Set Your Own Custom Vote Counts

This is another request we’ve been getting – the ability to set your own default vote count.  So instead of the the default of 10 votes, you could bump the default to 25… or maybe 3?

Look for this ability to be included for Bronze account holders and higher service levels!

Customize Your Page Titles

For all of you SEO fans out there, we’ve added the ability to customize your Page Title.  This is a great opportunity to tweak your settings and get the most bang for your buck out for Search Engine results! Settings are customizable for each individual forum, so you can optimize accordingly. Increase your Page Rank and be found on Google – better users find you and see you’re listening, than have them find a competitor!

Again, look for this feature to be included on Bronze accounts on up.

Speedier Service

You’ll also notice the speed of our service increasing. We’ve been very diligent to offload services that were slowing the service down. That coupled with a number of enhancements and updates to the backend, and you’ve now quite the zippy experience!

Improved Search

Let’s face it, our Search feature was a bit on the stinky side.  Consider it Fabrezed!  Your new searches will be faster, more accurate, and downright fresher smelling!

Finally…  Introducing Our New Chief Technology Officer

None of this would have been possible were it not for our new CTO, Dr. Scott Rutherford. Having jumped the pond from London, Scott delivers a wealth of experience, depth of  humor, and an occasional meandering around particle physics – we’re thrilled to have him aboard and his efforts are already paying off in huge dividends.  If you’re not already following him on Twitter – link him up @scottrutherford

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UPDATE: Seesmic Chooses UserVoice

A few weeks ago, @Loic Le Meur approached us about setting up a branded UserVoice page for their video conversation website, Seesmic.  This is a nice example of how forums can be modified to match your company’s look & feel.

Check it out: http://feedback.seesmic.com

]]> http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/03/03/going-global-localizing-uservoice/feed/ 18 http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/01/21/new-service-plan-features/ http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/01/21/new-service-plan-features/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:40:08 +0000 Marcus Nelson http://blog.uservoice.com/?p=118 We’re super excited to tell you about the number of updates we have to announce, so let’s just get to it:

New Service Plan (self service sign up)
Now that we’ve been able to improve our offerings, we can finally reveal a smaller bite-sized service level for start-ups and small business.  This will be known as the Bronze Package – priced at $89/mo. (discount code below).

This plan includes:

• 10,000 Users, 6 Forums, 1 Private Forum, 6 Admins
• Moderation & Analytics
• Domain Aliasing & Single Sign On (SSO)
• Email Support

Silver Package Supercharged!
This service now includes Single Sign On, Domain Aliasing as well as access to APIs.  For and away, this is now our best valued package and sure to cover the majority of business needs.

New Administration Interface
We’re doing more to make administration of your forum even easier to use & understand. Note that the “Manage Account” has  been changed to a tab at the top that says “Admin,” in addition to a small banner being placed on the sidebar.  We’ve also made is yellow so as to stand out clearly.

we <3 skitch

New Cookie-Based Single Sign In
Now that this is in place, we’ll now be able to control access to private UserVoice forums via login. Since this is available, we’re now going to include SSO, APIs & domain aliasing in our Silver package – making it a huge value to businesses looking to dialogue with customers or employees.

Better Search
To speed up and improve UV searches, we swapped out our old search tool for a better one!

Updated Terms of Service
Now that we’re handling credit card processing, we had to add some verbiage.

So Let’s Get Started
Use discount code LIGHTNINGREFLEXES which gives the first 20 people to signup for our Bronze or Silver plans 20% off  (if you sign up before Jan 27 2009)To take advantage of this discount:If you are signing up for the first time, go to our Sign Up Page

• Login to your UserVoice Admin page.
• Look to the left – you’ll see “Subscription Plan”Select, “Change Plan.”
• Select your preferred plan.
• Insert this Coupon Code:   LIGHTNINGREFLEXES

In the mean time, the wheels keep moving forward. Here’s what we’re rolling out today:

OpenID Support

We can now retire our second most popular request. Only thing is, we’re going to go one step further. We’ve partnered with our friends at JanRain, RPXnow allows us to release more than just OpenID support – we now support several single sign-on providers like AOL, Google, Yahoo! MySpace and even Facebook.

Using open technologies like OpenID, Attribute Exchange, OAuth, Portable Contacts, and hCard, UserVoice is now able to verify a user’s identity and match your existing userID to your OpenID (provided it’s the same email address).

Friendly URLs

To make UserVoice more SEO friendly, all profiles & suggestion entries will now have friendly URLs.

So now, instead of: http://uservoice.uservoice.com/pages/general/suggestions/55

Will now look like this: http://uservoice.uservoice.com/pages/general/suggestions/55-openid-user-authentication

Cool, huh?

Widget Changes

We’ve been growing fast. With this growth comes many new users. Becuase of this, we’re seeing a number of folks filling out the “bug report” on our widget thinking they are submitting an idea or suggestion.

To minimize this confusion, we’ve now moved the bug report behind the ideas list (see the very bottom of the widget display). This will be the first of many improvements we’ll be making to the widget in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned.

In the mean time, we’ll keep at it – we appreciate your continued support and feedback.