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.

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!

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

As you can see we have gone live with Switchboard and the public beta is now open at http://tooum.com Please signup for your Switchboard. It is free and does not include any ads - for the time being.

If you want to know more about us and Switchboard, please visit our new main site at http://tooum.com

• We want to know what you think!
• We want to know what you want!
• We want to know what you like!
• We want to know what you don't like!

So please tell us so that we can make Tooum and Switchboard even better.

IMPORTANT NOTE

Switchboard is currently running in beta mode, which means that it is not quite perfect - yet! We have opened up the beta to the public to gage interest, collect feedback and remove all known bugs from the system. So we would greatly appreciate your help is doing this, by simply posting you comments, bug reports and feature requests right here.

Just read a great article on Techquila Shots about an idea that allows users to comment on any page on any site, even if that site does not allow comments. I know this basic idea has already been done, but the article delves even deeper into the idea.

What really caught my attention, was how I can implement similar concepts directly into Switchboard. The planned external discussions and discussions from feeds features are a great basis for these ideas, and I will be developing them even further, with help from this article.

It also highlights how Switchboard could implement some great social networking features and really empower users to control their comments across all Switchboards. For example, Switchboard 2.0 will have a new single login that will work with any and all Switchboards. So you will be able to manage and track your comments/posts across all Switchboards. You can also track other users comments/posts, and rate them.

I could go on about the many possibilities of this particular aspect, but I won't. I want at least some surprises for you all. But what do you think? Take a look at the article and let me know your thoughts.