Well, we’ve been on the new version of theSpoke for almost two weeks now and I wanted to post an update here in my blog so everyone knows what’s going on.  This is going to be a little long but it should answer many of the questions that are out there.

First of all, thanks to everyone in theSpoke community for your patience with us during this process.  We wanted this to be as easy of a migration as possible, and for many of you it was, but we recognize that there have also been problems.  Please realize that we are committed to the success of theSpoke and are 100% committed to making this an awesome community that works for you.  If you continue to have questions or problems, please let us know about them by posting in the Bugs & Feedback forum or by sending me email.

Secondly, I wanted to let everyone know exactly what has happened with theSpoke v2 (in comparison to theSpoke v1) because I think it’s pretty cool, and because it might shed some light on the complexity of our data migration to this site.  When we relaunched two weeks ago, we took user, profile, blog, and comment data from 15 separate localized language sites and databases and moved it all into one database and one site.  The new site is running on top of the .NET Framework 2.0, and you can see some of the cool stuff from ASP.NET 2.0 on the site (such as the web parts on hubs). 

While there was some complexity, the good news is that we’re more global than we were before.  “How are we more global?” you ask?  Well let me tell you :)

How we’re more global than before
Since everyone from across the world is now participating on the same site, you can make your experience as far-reaching as you like.  If you go to your profile, there are two options regarding language:  Main Language and Other Languages.  Main Language is the language you want to see theSpoke’s interface in and the language you want to see posts in.  This should most likely be your native language.  If that’s all you want to see, then that’s all you need to fill out in your profile.  However, we have many users who want so see content in their native language AND one or more other languages.  This is what the Other Languages option is for.  If you check any of the Other Languages boxes in your profile you will see blog posts, forum posts, gallery updates, etc. in both your Main Language and all of the Other Languages you have checked.  Your UI will still render in your Main Language, but posts will appear in all languages you have checked.  So if you want to learn another language, check one of the boxes and start talking to others in that language – I’m sure they’ll help you out.

One other related point is the anonymous (not logged in) experience on theSpoke.  The site renders in the language specified in your browser’s culture settings.  So if your culture settings are Brazilian Portuguese, that’s the language you’ll see the UI and posts in prior to login.  In Internet Explorer, you can see your culture settings by going to the “Tools” menu, clicking “Internet Options” and then clicking the “Languages…” button at the bottom of the “General Tab”.

Testing and Current Status
I’ve seen a few posts about this, so I just want to make it clear that we did serious testing on the site before we migrated data over, but it’s just not possible to predict everything that’s going to happen when you move tens of thousands of accounts from 15 different languages over to a brand new site.  Things didn’t go perfectly (and I have sleepless nights to prove it!) but the good news is that we’re all here and communicating with one another, and I think that’s great.  Your help in finding remaining bugs and posting about them will help us continue to make improvements.

A special thanks to the guys on our dev team who have been posting updates to the forums, and more importantly, fixing bugs and issues:  Terry Denham, Scott Dockendorf, and Rob Howard.  And another special thanks to all of the Student Advisory Board members who have been posting updates as well.

Ok, so with that, here’s an update on the fixes we’ve made, the fixes that are coming, and what’s next.

What’s been fixed since launch
- Blog and RSS feed redirection – your old blog and RSS URL (like http://www.thespoke.net/myblog/mario/myblog.aspx) now redirect to your new blog URL.  This works across all of the old localized sites (so if your blog URL was http://fr.thespoke.net/... that redirects too.)
- Performance – we’ve been working with users to find out where the site is speedy and where it’s really slow.  What we’ve heard is that it’s pretty slow over dialup, but over broadband it’s faster than theSpoke v1 in most places.  In some places it continues to be slow regardless of connection speed.  We have some enhancements coming that we hope will make it faster for everyone regardless of connection speed (see below).
- Image and file migration – images and files from my space are now working in blog posts across the site.
- Critical errors with the Gallery and Forums – error pages in loading galleries and inability to see forums in certain languages have been resolved
- Forgot your Password and Password reset problems – some users were not receiving the “Forgot your Password” emails.  This is now working, but you have to enter the email address that's actually in your profile.  Otherwise we have no way of knowing the email address is associated with your account.
- Culture specific calendar control – the calendars on theSpoke now render in the specific localized languages.

What we’re still working on
- Performance – at the beginning of next week we’ll be making some configuration changes on theSpoke servers to improve DB performance.
- Getting everybody here – there's still a small number of users out there who are having trouble accessing their old account on the new site.  If you are still having trouble, email comment@thespoke.net and we will resolve the issue for you.
- Timezone error – Posts are showing up 4 hours ahead of the timezone specified in the user profile.

What’s next?
- Article publishing – the Articles page is lacking articles (and this is my fault!).  The Student Advisory Board has authored some awesome articles to post here.  I just need to set up their accounts as authors so that they can publish them.  We’ll get to this next week.  If you would like to write a an article series on theSpoke, send me mail and we can set up your account too.
- Blog Roll / Blogs I Read – We’ve heard from everyone that we need a blog roll or a list of “Blogs I Read” on theSpoke as it’s an easy way to check on all of your subscribed blogs.  I’m talking with the dev team on this next week. 
- Lightweight skin – The team that designed the UI for theSpoke v2 also designed a very lightweight skin for theSpoke that contains few graphics.  We’re looking to get that put on the site in the coming weeks for those of you who are accessing the site over dialup.
- Your suggestions and ideas!  Please keep them coming and we’ll consider everything we hear.

Again, thanks for your support and patience during these past few weeks.  You guys are the foundation of this community and your feedback, comments, and constructive criticism :) have been really helpful.  As many of our members from the Philippines say, more power!

Mario