We've rolled out yet another software update for all Hoop.la sites.  This one is called "Black Friday" because one of the features is support for coupons for premium memberships (Standard plans and above only).   Here's the full run-down on the new features:

1. Premium Membership Coupons

Hoop.la site admins can now offer coupons to their members for premium memberships. Coupons can be for a percentage or a fixed dollar discount, can be for life or for a specific period of time (for instance 12 months) and can be limited to a maximum number of people for redemption. Finally, you can set a date by which a coupon must be redeemed.

You can create any number of coupons.  

To create and manage your coupons go to: Manage > Premium Memberships > Coupons.

This feature is not available on Apprentice plans.

2.  New Chat Notifications

We've added support for being notified when new chat events are added to a Hoop.la site.

3.  Notifications for Comments/Replies Per Content Type

Your members can now subscribe to all comments/replies for each content type. For instance, a member can get notifications for comments to all blog posts or for all clips.  Members can still follow individual posts and do not have to subscribe to all comments, but this option is very useful for smaller sites.

4.  Admins Can Now Set Notification Defaults

Hoop.la site admins can now set the overall notification defaults for all new members. This gives you a lot more control over the experience for your members.  There are three levels, as you can see in the screenshot below.

You will find this in: Manage > Admin Control Panel > Basic Settings

Note that the setting there only applies to NEW members.  However, admins can also apply these defaults for any members via the Manage Members control panel.  That is useful if you make a change to your defaults and want existing members to be set to that default notification level, as well. Note that when you set defaults for members via the Member Management control panel, the system will never remove notifications for a member (only add them).

5. New Global HEAD and CSS Fields

We've made things a lot more flexible for Hoop.la admins by adding support for a new Custom Code for HEAD field and a new Custom CSS field that can be applied to all pages.  You set these on the Display Settings page in your Hoop.la control panel.  Previously, you could add HEAD code only via the theme. However, if you had more than one theme, that could lead to a lot of extra work.  

With these new global fields, you can apply code once and have it applied to every Hoop.la page.  

You can still apply Custom Code for the HEAD section in your themes, but these new options will give you a much easier and more flexible way to customize your site.  In addition, we added a Custom CSS field for the theme to make it even easier to add custom CSS on a per-theme basis, as well.

6.  Revamped Basic Settings and Display Settings Control Panels

We've moved the Site Header and Footer out of the Basic Settings and into Display Settings.

As usual, there were numerous other minor changes, bug fixes, and tweaks as part of this update.  Also note that all of the changes are reflected in our UBB Forum service, as well.  UBB Forum is part of our overall Hoop.la platform.

Happy Holidays, everyone!