Yes, it’s the news you’ve all been waiting for. In just a few weeks we will be re-launching theSpoke with a new UI, some enhanced features, and a technical platform that will take us into the future.
Think of the new version of theSpoke as a bigger, better house for our community that will enable theSpoke to continue to grow, to become more global, and to connect members with one another in cool new ways.
You can see a beta version of the new site at http://www.thespoke2.net. We’re still finishing up development so there are still some bug fixes, UI cleanups, and enhancements that will be done over the next 1-2 weeks, but you can get an idea for what the new site will be like. If you find bugs or have comments overall, post them in the forums on the new site.
What does this mean for all of the existing members of theSpoke? Well, we’ll be sending you an email in a few weeks with instructions on activating your account on the new version. Don’t worry -- you will get to keep your existing username, and your blog posts, comments, and avatar will all come over as well. The one thing we are not migrating is the existing forum posts. The forums on theSpoke v2 will be organized differently on theSpoke v2 so trying to guess which existing forums belong in which new forums will be a challenge. Therefore the new forums will begin with no posts. Think of the new forums as a blank slate on which to start some vibrant discussions!
What’s cool about the new site?
- A new UI – we’ve heard many suggestions for improvements about theSpoke’s current UI. We’ve taken an approach that we hope everyone will like.
- One site for everyone – today theSpoke is localized into 15 languages, but the localized sites are separate web sites with separate databases (i.e. English is www.thespoke.net, German is http://de.thespoke.net, etc.). With theSpoke v2, all members will reside on the same site. You can choose the language you see the theSpoke’s interface in and the language or languages you see site posts in. You can choose to view content in one language or up to 15 if you want!
- Articles and Web Casts – students with technical expertise on theSpoke v2 can write articles for everyone to see. We will also be web casting different events around the world (starting with the Imagine Cup Finals in Japan) and posting student-relevant Microsoft web casts to theSpoke. If you are interested in writing an article series or submitting existing articles and web casts for theSpoke v2, please comment below or email me at mario@thespoke.net.
- Personal Hub – All members of theSpoke v2 will have a personal hub, which will function like your personal homepage on theSpoke v2. The hub shows you (and others) all of your recent blog posts, recent forum posts, and lets you post announcements, polls, and links for others who visit your hub. The hub is customizable with ASP.NET 2.0 web parts and we’ll be adding more web parts after the site launch.
- who-bar – this is a feature replacing the existing Member Mosaic. It enables you to track your interactions with other members on theSpoke during a session/visit. If you click on any avatar (or visit a blog, profile, or personal hub), the member’s avatar appears on your who-bar. You can then get immediate information about them (where they are from, link to their profile and blog, etc.). The who-bar keeps a history of the last 22 people you interacted with during a particular session. It appears at the bottom of the window at all times (collapsed by default, but can be opened by clicking it or clicking an avatar).
- Badges – members receive recognition badges for participating in the Imagine Cup, writing articles, being a frequent poster, and more.
Are we losing any existing features on theSpoke today?
In developing theSpoke v2, we decided to make two changes to the existing feature set:
- Remove Private Hubs (My Network) - In looking at member surveys and the number of members who use the private hub feature today, we decided that the new personal hubs as well as existing topic hubs would be a good approach for the next version of theSpoke. The private hubs will not exist on the new site.
- Image Galleries instead of My Space (temporarily) – After looking all of the types of files that have been uploaded into My Space, we’ve noticed that over 90% of them are images. Therefore, we will re-launch theSpoke with a gallery feature that has better support for these images. Each member will be able to upload images but not other types of files (for just a few months). However, all files that are currently uploaded to My Space on theSpoke v1 will continue to exist on theSpoke v2. This means you will not lose any files that you have already uploaded – they will continue to exist at their current URL. By the end of the year, we expect to add back in support for all types of file uploads.
Once we have migrated all accounts to the new site, www.thespoke.net will point to the new version of theSpoke. We will keep the old sites up at an alternate URL for a few months in case you need to want to see the old version, check out an old forum post, and of course, to remember what the first version of theSpoke was like.
As always, we want to hear your thoughts and feedback, so comment below or email me.