SocialGO Owners

Hi there :)

For the last few weeks there have been complaints of blogs not showing in the Magazine and Magazine Categories; after some investigation it was found that the problem was related to the way in which the system was handling TimeZone information.

After the investigation, some time was spent fixing the timezone system to allow for greater control by network owners and by the network users themselves.

The Upgrades are as follows

1. Network Owners can set the default timezone for their networks in http://my.socialgo.com: This will be the default timezone that the user is given should the have an invalid country selection - Otherwise the Country selected defines the Timezone.
2. When a New User signs up; the system now approximates the timezone based on the country selected. (The US like Australia and Russia are all fairly large *cough*, so New York is the default TZ in the states and the same for the larger continents as defined by the ISO2 standards)
3. Blogs Publish Date; will now default to the actual time in your personally selected Timezone.
4. The User is able to select their personal TimeZone from their "My Location" section, this then directly affects what they can and cant see in the magazine.  Unfortunately this was causing too much confusion and potential for confusion; and thus was removed. By default, the network now uses the TimeZone that is defined by the owner in the admin system.
   

If you have any questions; please feel free to post them in the forum here at owners or on http://getsatisfaction.com/socialgo. and rather not PM me, that way we can deal with your questions in the open and thereby helping other Network Owners.

Regards

Ross C

• You can choose if you would like to solely allow one e-mail domain to sign-up to your site, for instance if you only want students and teachers at your school to sign up to your network.
• You can also do the opposite, and ban certain e-mail domains, for instance the domain of a rival business.
• To do either of these actions, go to your admin centre, which can be accessed via your sidebar, or at http://my.socialgo.com.
• Click on the 'Access Settings' box.

• Once inside 'Access Settings', go to the block titled "Limit registration by domain"

• To allow only one e-mail domain, type in the domain, i.e. 'myschool.com'
• To ban a domain, type in the domain with an exclamation mark infront of it, for instance, "!hotmail.com"

• Don't forget to click 'Save Changes' to save your settings.
• Now, if someone tries to sign-up with an e-mail address you have banned, the user will see this message:

I just posted a link to register for our third party program on the main blog. Please feel free to register if you are interested in developing for us and selling widgets through the upcoming widget store.

http://www.socialgo.com/blog/socialgos-third-party-program

We have also posted an update to our terms of service which includes the following guarantees. These are a few simple statements which we hope will give you the reassurances you need regarding ownership of the data on your site and what happens incase of dispute :

1. You Own Your Content Materials. Neither SocialGO nor any of its affiliates claim any ownership rights with respect to any of the content materials or other audiovisual works, data and/or information (collectively, “Content Materials”) posted by any registered users and/or other individuals or entitles who access and use the Service.
   
2. Good Faith Efforts to Resolve Disputes. SocialGO or its affiliates (as applicable) will use diligent, good faith efforts to attempt to resolve any issues, problems, violations and/or disputes that may arise in connection with your use (or inability to use) the Service. The suspension or termination of any account that you elect to establish on SocialGO.com (each an “Account”), and the suspension or termination of the corresponding network, will only be undertaken by SocialGO.com as a consequence of the parties failing, after good faith discussion, to reach a mutually acceptable resolution to any such matter.
   
3. Access to Your Content Materials. If SocialGO believes that a breach or violation of the Service Terms has occurred in connection with any Account that you elect to establish, prior to deleting the Content Materials that are directly related to such Account, SocialGO will provide you with the opportunity for a reasonable period of time (and in any event not less than seven (7) calendar days prior to any scheduled deletion of such Content Materials from SocialGO.com) to have access to such Content Materials and relocate them to an independently created social network (but specifically excluding any and all Content Materials that are owned and/or controlled by SocialGO and/or its affiliates) that is not a part of SocialGO.com.
   
4. Explanation of Reasons for Suspension or Deletion. In the event that any Account and/or related social network is permanently suspended or terminated as a consequence of a breach or default of the Service Terms, and the corresponding social network is permanently suspended and/or removed from SocialGO.com, you will be provided (via email) with a reasonably detailed explanation of the reason for such action being undertaken.
   
5. Third-Party Widgets and Other Content Materials. If SocialGO or its affiliates (as applicable) determines that the use of a third-party widget or any other such Content Materials that are part of the social network corresponding to your Account interferes with the operation, performance or functionality of the Service, SocialGO or its affiliates (as applicable) will temporarily take your network off-line, and suspend your Account, to allow you the opportunity to correct and remedy the noted problem to the reasonable satisfaction of SocialGO or its affiliates (as applicable). Your network will be re-activated once the noted problem has been appropriately resolved to the reasonable satisfaction of SocialGO or its affiliates (as applicable).
   
6. The support community for SocialGO.com is provided by an independent third party. SocialGO and its affiliates (as applicable) welcome the posting and dissemination of open and honest opinions, reviews and, indeed, potential criticism of SocialGO.com, as we truly believe that such communications will help create the best community and help us tailor SocialGO.com to the needs and expectations of all those who create social networks and make use of the complement of products and services that are part of SocialGO.com.

Why does this matter? This matters because as your network grows and people start to use it you grow a huge asset in the content and data held in your network. If from one day to the next we simply stop you from backing it up, or accessing through our API's it undermines your ability to continue your business elsewhere. We will be taking further steps in the next few weeks to reinforce this commitment to data portability.

We will adding additional servers tomorrow morning around 10am GMT to cope with the growth we are experiancing. Downtime will be a maximum of 15 minutes while we reconfigure the load balancer to include the new servers.

From now on you will also be able to get status updates at :

http://status.socialgo.com/

In the event that your network is unavailable, this URL will be there to give you updates so add it to your bookmarks.

• SocialGO allows you to temporarily suspend your network, so that you may introduce new content, or perform maintenance.
• To do this, go to your admin centre, via your sidebar or at http://my.socialgo.com and click on 'Access Settings'.

• Once inside the 'Access Settings' section, scroll to the bottom, where it says 'Maintenance mode'.

• Check the box to make your network in-active, and should you wish to display a message to your users, you can enter one in the text box.
• Press 'Save Changes' to save your settings.
• Now, when a user goes to the network, they will see a message looking like this:

• Remember, you only need to go back to the 'Access Settings' section of your admin centre, and simply un-click on the  box, followed by 'Save Changes', to make your network active again!

Just wanted to drop you a quick note to talk about a few features that have gone live. Check our the main blog at SocialGO.com/blog.

Lot's more exciting things coming soon......stay tunned!