I first want to apologise for the lack of activity on this blog and also with the development of Switchboard. I am afraid that I had to put it all to one side for a while due to other events taking priority. That is all about to change.

Work has already started on Switchboard 2.0, which is being rewritten from the ground up. It will be more secure, faster, more customisable and more feature packed than ever. All the stuff you see in the feature list on the right of this blog will be implemented, along with lots more.

So before I get too set on the feature list, make sure that you submit your feature requests now. Start a new discussion about the features that you want to see included in Switchboard 2.0. And I will try my best to include them.

Over the coming months, I am hoping to keep you all informed as to how the development is progressing, so make sure you subscribe to the feed.

Enjoy!

Over the last week or so, you may have noticed a number of smallish changes and new additions to your Switchboard. Most of these are small so you mau not have noticed. However, a few are worth mentioning:

1. Faster page loading

The number of templates that the back end has to parse has been reduced considerably, so you should see a marked improvement in the general loading of most pages.

1. Related Discussions

At the end of each blog or forum post you will now find a short list of discussions that directly relate to the discussion you are currently viewing. This is a great way of enticing your users to raed other discussions.

1. More Admin options and Space Aliases

A small number of new editable options have been added to the Admin Settings screen. The most important of which is the ability to change your Space Subdomain and also set a Space Alias. A Space alias is mentioned here. It basically allows you to use your domain instead of your Tooum subdomain.

1. Inline Filters

When viewing lists of discussions, whether it be blog, forum or both, you will now see a number of filtering options at the top of the page. You can filter by blog, forum and bookmarked discussions and can even use the Content Slider to chose how much of each post you actually want to view. Moving the slider will instantly change how much of the posts body of text is shown. So you can see quickly what the discussion is all about.

More are still to come. The next big feature to be implemented will be External Discussions. We are working on it right now and hope to have something for you by the end of the week.

Seeing as Switchboard is ticking along nicely now and we are on top of the bug list, I wanted to give you a brief taster of upcoming features that we are already working on. These should be implemented within the next few weeks.

• External discussions

Using a small piece of javascript code that you place on any page of your site (or any site for that matter) external to SB, your site visitors can comment on that page directly within that page, and without leaving that page. All past and present comments can be displaying inline on the page, and will also be shown on your SB as a new external discussion.

I hope I described that without confusing you all, but we are still grinding out the fine details of this one. But I believe it to be the most exciting.

• Auto created discussions from feeds

By simply adding any valid RSS/ATOM feed link, a discussion will be started on your SB. The starting post will be the feed post. Users of your SB can then replay and post comments on that feed. Then whenever a new item is detected on that feed, a new discussion is created.

• User icons/avatars
• Whispers / private messaing system
• Feedburner integration

PLUS loads more...

If you have any ideas for new or existing features, please post away.