I just finished reading an inspired blog post by Stowe Boyd about something he has named 'Blog Trees'.

Please take a look, as his idea continues on very nicely from my earlier post about social commenting in Switchboard, and gives me even more ideas of how we can commoditise comments on a blog and tie them neatly into some sort of threaded tree or list.

The real thought here is that a wiki-like expansion of structure would be supported in this "Blog Tree" model. Any one participating (presuming they were granted rights to do so) could create a new blog, in context, extending the topics explored within an existing blog post. We would not be limited to the blog post/comment/trackback model, now in use.

I really like the idea of comments becoming their own blog post and can really expand on that.

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!

We recognise that one of the most important things about any forum or blog solution, is that it must be as customisable as possible. We already provide you with a skinning feature that lets you customise the look and feel of your Switchboard using CSS templates. And now, you can customise your SB even further with fully cutomisable templates.

Switchboard is built using the very popular and very fast Smarty Templating Engine and so we are passing on this power to you. Although SB uses several templates, there is one main template that is used on every page. This is the template that controls the layout and is also the template that you can now customise to your hearts content.

This means that you can now add additional HTML and javascript to your SB. Adding further content such as your Del.icio.us links and your Flickr photos. You can even add items to the main menu in your SB, perhaps linking back your main site, or to other interesting Blogs and forums.

It also uses the same principles as the skinning system, in that you can create a new template based off the system default, or just create a new empty template. You can also mark any of your templates as public, which will allow other SB owners to use and modify that template and make it their own. And of course, you can do the same with their public templates.

We have also pushed out a few smaller tweaks to your Switchboard, including:

• The navigation menu is now a little smaller, taking up less room on the page.
• Spam comments are now easier to manage. You will see a notice at the top of the page if you have any spam comments. Clicking on that link will show you all the those comments and let you mark them as spam or ham.
• Content selection on the filter bar now saves its state as part of your session

And as requested, we have posted a simple list of upcoming features soon to be implemented into Switchboard. This list will be updated when a listed feature is implemented and when we come up with a new feature. You can find it under the navigation menu on ever page of this Switchboard.

We hope that this new found power does not go to your head, but if it does... enjoy it!

Or is it digged? Whatever it is, Tooum just got a mention on Digg. Please be sure to digg us and help spread the word.

The ever popular and IE beating Firefox browser has just become available as an all new version 2. Althought this is only a release candidate - with the official release due in October - I installed it and found a nice new feature called Microsummaries.

Microsummaries are regularly-updated short summaries of web pages. When you bookmark a web page that has a microsummary, you can choose to display the microsummary as the title of the bookmark. Then, when the page changes, the title will also change, so you can find out the current status of the page just by looking at the bookmark.

So I just knocked up a very quick implementation of Microsummaries for Switchboard. Try it out with yours. Just bookmark your Switchboard in Firefox and you will be given the option to bookmark it using it's Microsummary, which will display the Switchboard's title and the number of new comments.

It's a great way of seeing if your Switchboard has any new comments since you last checked.

You like?

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.

Just received a good question in response to my post on the HPU:Switchboard

what about a doamin name, can i have www.mydomain.com or will it have an extension on it e.g. mydomain.tooum.com

Good question! It also allows me to introduce the first cool feature that will implemented early next week.

Custom Domains

By default, your Switchboard will be available at http://yourswitchboard.tooum.net which, thanks to our short domain, is not too hard to forget. However, you can customise this even further. If you have your own domain, you can simply create a simple CNAME record within your DNS zone records and then you will be able to access your Switchboard at your domain.

This feature is already implemented, but is not yet configurable via the admin area. So if you want to use your own domain or even your own subdomain and cannot wait until next week, simply drop me a line: joel [at] tooum.com and we will get that sorted for you.