It's been a busy weekend with kids, lawn mowers, stray dogs and tractors (dont ask..), but I've managed to add some much needed functionality to Metaversed for members. If you're not a member, join now, it's free and you'll be able to see the stuff I'm talking about..
Remember that we opened up Metaversed only last week for member blogs? Well, this Sunday, Im pleased to announce the first improvements to that small offering. Now if you want to blog, photo blog, promote your SL business or just create a central page full of your SL related details, you can.
You can see my profile page as an example. Here's what's been added this weekend:
Images
If you're logged in, hit the post something link on the right. You'll see that as well as "blog entry", you now have "image". This, as you might imagine, lets you upload an image! It automatically creates thumbnails, and sizes the image to 500px max wide (about the widest it can go before wrecking the page on a 1024x768 resolution).
Those images can be tagged, and the result is the creation of image galleries like this. Once in the system, using the Rich Text editing detailed below, you can easily add images to blog posts by right clicking them and copying their location.
In the not too distant future, I have plans to add Flickr integration and allow members to post pictures to Metaversed directly from Second Life. That last point isn't trivial though, so give me a little time on that one :)
Rich Text
Don't know HTML? No problem, now you don't have to. When you go to submit a blog post, or add text to an image, or even comment or edit your profile page, you'll now see that hopefully familiar row of text editing controls above the form. These buttons will hope those not comfortable with writing raw code insert links, bullted and numbered lists, change the text and background colors, insert emoticons and more.
If like me you prefer the more hardcore "plain ol' text box" you can easily disable rich text editing by default in your profile. Just it the "my account" link on the right, and then edit your profile settings. Incidentally, this is where you can fill in your bio, website and Avatar pic - once you start filling out your profile, and adding blog and image content, that page becomes a lot more useful... You can also change a whole bunch of other stuff there so it's worth exploring a bit.
Improved profile pages
You'll see from my profile that now your images will also show up on your profile page (the last 6) alongside your last 5 blog posts.
In the future, i'd like members to be able to add their own CSS to this page to control the look and feel totally.
Let me know what you think...
If you have problems, find bugs or just have a comment on the new features, do drop your thoughts into the comment box below, i'd love to hear from you..