In the hustle and bustle of everyday work, it’s easy to let the months slip by without recognizing the progress we’ve made over time. 

2012 was an extremely exciting year, including opening an office in Charleston, SC, finishing a major upgrade of our data center operation, and incorporating some pretty amazing features into the Hoop.la community platform.

Here are some highlights of what was added to Hoop.la in the past year, many of which started out as customer suggestions in our Help Forums. Want to see your favorite feature get added next year?  Post a suggestion and maybe it will get voted up for consideration!

2012 Hoop.la Highlights

Hoop.la’s mobile UI got a beefy update, including pull-to-refresh.

http://company.socialstrata.co...ducing-hoopla-mobile

More admin controls were added in February, including permission to view the member directory, per-forum ad slots, ability to export member data, admin control over member email edits, and suppression of poll vote counts.

http://company.socialstrata.co...eb-2012-new-features

Forum descriptions were added, and the theme editor was improved.

http://company.socialstrata.co...a-forum-descriptions

The interface was streamlined, including a new sign-in bar, easier permissions manager, and new site header options.

http://company.socialstrata.co...2012-software-update

In March, we added new signature features, including admin permission to view signatures, user control over signature usage, and new default setting for user preference on signatures.

http://company.socialstrata.co...re-enhancements-2012

We added mobile search, mobile calendar, and mobile chat, as well as voting on polls in the mobile version.

http://company.socialstrata.co...-features-april-2012

We added more control over profile fields for the admin, including whether to include the field on registration, custom Graemlins, user ability to search everything, ability to customize the “powered by” graphic, and new registration settings area.

http://company.socialstrata.co...agement-improvements

July brought supercharged member profiles, including ability to follow other members, an improved activity point system, community rankings, social network integration, activity streams for the site and per user, social network widgets, and support for mobile themes.  This was a biggie!

http://company.socialstrata.co...rofile-update-hoopla

We introduced the new “Seth” theme (an homage to Seth Godin’s simple approach).

http://company.socialstrata.co...nt/content/meet-seth

In September, we added numerous small enhancements to the admin control panel, and released the Portfolios option for Pro plans.  Portfolios make life much easier for sites with multiple distinct target audiences.

http://company.socialstrata.co...w-cp-features-hoopla

http://company.socialstrata.co...troducing-portfolios

Trolls hated this one; we added the ability to block other members.

http://company.socialstrata.co...eature-block-members

We added member profile walls!

http://company.socialstrata.co...eature-profile-walls

Premium memberships got an overhaul. We increased your revenue share, added new permissions, made it much easier to promote premium memberships, added a lifetime subscription option, and created a default premium membership plan.

http://company.socialstrata.co...ip-enhancements-2012

The “Nerd Glasses” release included forum avatars, a forum directory widget, improved notification emails, improved content moderation area, and removed the “powered by” text from the HTML titles.

http://company.socialstrata.co...lasses-november-2012

Latest, but not least, the “Control Freak” update added several new permissions, permission-sensitive widgets, separate blog content and forum topics widgets, ability to edit guest post author names, and a new home page top banner option.

http://company.socialstrata.co...elease-control-freak

We most recently added a new Hoop.la-powered, forum-only option called UBB Forum.  

Thank you for entrusting us with your online community; we have a lot more surprises in store for 2013!  

Image: Creativity103, Flickr Creative Commons.