Today, we rolled out a major upgrade for Hoop.la, UBB Forum, and QuestionShark.  We're calling this update "Total Control" because it gives site admins the ability to customize nearly every word and image on their sites, as well as update the styling of the emails that are sent through the system.

New features in this release:

1.  Wordlets

"Wordlets" are the words/phrases used throughout the system. Now you can customize any of the wording on your site by editing the default Wordlet Set or creating your new ones.  (Look for the new Wordlets section in your Admin Control Panel).

You can search for specific words, view all uncustomized wordlets, or all customized wordlets.  You can even export or import your wordlet sets. Thus, you can share your wordlet set with another site.  

You can edit the default Wordlet Set or create whole new sets.  Only one set can be designated as the "primary set" in use on your site at any time, however.  Note that the Wordlet sets do not include text displayed in the Admin Control Panel. 

2.  Image Sets

Nearly every image displayed by the system can now be customized in the new Image Sets control panel (Manage / Admin Control Panel / Themes / Image Sets).  There are two different image set types- standard image sets and mobile image sets, to account for both the regular web interface and the mobile interface.

You can create multiple, distinct image sets and these sets are applied by associating the image set with a particular theme. You create this association within the Theme's settings.  When editing a specific theme, open the Miscellaneous section, and select the Image Set you wish to apply to it, if you have more than one.

For each image in the Image Set, we display the recommended image dimensions, but we do not actually enforce these dimensions when you upload custom images.  Please note however that applying images that do not match the recommended dimensions may cause severe problems in certain user interfaces, because we create our interfaces based on the recommended image sizes listed.  Thus, we strongly recommend that you honor the recommended image sizes (or stay very close to them, if that is not possible).

3.  Email Themes

We've added a new Email Theme page, located within the Themes section of the admin control panel.  This allows you to customize all of the CSS that is applied to the emails sent by the system.  You'll need to know CSS to make these changes, but this allows you to change the overall look and feel for these emails for the first time.

One really cool feature built into the Email Theme page is email preview. We provide two different sample emails for you to preview on the Email Theme page so you can see what impact your changes will make BEFORE you actually commit the changes. These previews update in REAL TIME as you make changes.

Please make sure you preview both sample emails before you commit your Email Theme changes to ensure a great experience for your community members.

4.  Search For Group Members

For Hoop.la and UBB Forum, we now support searching for members within a  group. 

5.  New Setting: Prevent User Follows

Site admins can now disable the ability for community members to follow each other. Note that admins can ALWAYS follow any community member, however, even if this feature is disabled.  

If the "User Follow" feature is disabled, then the Follow User options will not appear to non admins at all and your community members will also never be notified about such follows by admins.  

To disable the User Follow feature, go to: Manage / Admin Control Panel / Settings / Member Settings and then look for this setting:

"Prevent anyone but admins from following other members"

6.  New TOS Hyperlink Option

Previously, if you enabled a Terms of Service (TOS) for your site, you had to apply raw HTML for the TOS and then update that text area whenever you made changes. Now, we allow you to alternatively link to your own TOS page that you maintain somewhere else.

7.  Audio Clip Playback For iPad

You can now play/listen to audio clips on an iPad.  

As usual, there were numerous other minor improvements and bug fixes, as well.