Your wiki block just got a lot easier to edit, thanks to the new editor called WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).
Say goodbye to HTML and other foreign language markups (admit it: markdown and textile are for geeks only).
Embrace the wonderful wikiness!
It’s here. After more than eight months of development, we’ve finally launched our pride and joy, BricaBox. A lot has changed since our private beta back in November, so I’d like to give you all a brief rundown of what’s new and improved. We’ve got a lot more in store for after the launch, too, so stay tuned for more on that in a later post.
Rails is a great framework and Ruby a beautiful, powerful language, but they just weren’t cutting it for what we wanted BricaBox to do, so we rewrote the entire application from scratch in PHP (in just around two months, to boot). We’re confident that we’ll be able to offer your a more stable, faster BricaBox this way.
One of our favorite new features is the ability to create a brand new BricaBox site with just one click and in less than 15 seconds using our new cloning feature. At the top of every BricaBox is a button that says “Create a site like this”, and clicking it does exactly that; your new site will be an exact copy of the site you’re cloning, complete with the same layout, blocks, color scheme, and more. The only thing that we don’t copy are entries; it’s up to you to add your own!
It’s also dead-simple to create a new BricaBox using one of our one-click templates; just head to http://bricabox.com, choose the type of site you’d like to create, name it and choose a subdomain, and you’re up and running. That’s it.
Blocks, the cornerstone of your BricaBox site, have gotten better. There’s a new Picture block, which automagically displays picture uploads from your entries, and the wiki and tags blocks have gotten major overhauls and are better than ever. We’ve also just rolled out a new Ad block, which allows you to run a BricaBox site and make some cash while doing it.
Clicking your name in the top right corner of the screen will pop open the User Panel. This is a great place to quickly see what BricaBoxes you own and belong to; you’ll also find links to edit your account, see your profile, and log out. We’ll be using this space to give you access even more useful stuff in the very near future.
Not only can you now add new entries from any page in your BricaBox, we’ve totally revamped the entry list, allowing you to easily access everything on your site from one screen; you can sort, filter by categories and tags, and search, as well as interact with content, all from the same place.
BricaBox is sporting a tighter, more crisp design that we hope will make your experience on the site hugely better, and we hope you love it as much as we do. Not only does the application have a brand new design, but we’ve also launched a few really cool customization features, too: BricaBox Themes, a better custom color picker, and the ability to use your own totally custom CSS.
The membership and permissions system has been totally overhauled based on our experiences from the private beta, as well as valuable user feedback we received. It’s now easier to manage existing members, send out invites, as well as maintain total control over who can see and contribute to your BricaBox site.
Head over to http://(yoursubdomain).bricabox.com/admin to see the brand new BricaBox control panel; we totally overhauled every aspect of the existing control panel to make it easier than ever before to control every aspect of your site. There’s also a new dashboard with links to commonly used parts of the control panel, so you can spend less time setting things up and more time actually using your site.
We’ve also launched a limited API you can use to access your entries in XML and RSS format (atom coming soon), with the same powerful sorting and filtering features as the entry list. To access the API, use the following url:
http://(yoursubdomain).bricabox.com/entries/as/xml
http://(yoursubdomain).bricabox.com/entries/as/rss
http://(yoursubdomain).bricabox.com/entries/as/atom (soon!)
We’ll be publishing developer documentation shortly. Any API questions can be emailed to kyle at bricabox dot com. I’ll be happy to help!
We’ve also rolled out a ton of bug fixes, a bunch of improved features from the old site, and more. We’re really pumped about BricaBox and are very excited to see what you create with it.
Kyle pushed out another great update this past week, which included a feature I’m calling “Color Picker.”
Color Picker allows you to change the colors of your BricaBox site in a bunch of places. It’s a great way to make your site more, well, YOURS.
Anyway, check out this new screencast about it below, and head to What.BricaBox.com to leave a comment or helpful tip.
PS: Kyle hated the colors I picked for What.BricaBox.com so I had to change them back to the default colors.
Hello friends, Kyle here with some news we’re pretty stoked about: we’re about to unleash we just unleashed some really awesome new functionality and a bunch of bug fixes for our pride and joy, BricaBox! For your reading pleasure, below you’ll find a brief list of the new stuff we rolled out this morning.
MultiContent
- Each BricaBox can now have multiple content types. Want to create your own version of 43 People, Places, and Things? Easy! Just add a content type for each. Each content type can have its own set of attributes, too. For instance, a Person might have a URL and no address, whereas a Place might have an address and no URL.
- Each content type can have its own custom layout. Just go to Manage > Blocks & Layout > Content Layout. You’ll be able to select which blocks appear for which types of content. Easy.
- Filterable content list on steroids
Community Features
- Profile comments + email notifications about ‘em (you can turn these off on your account settings page)
- Comment block now has pagination on the homepage
Engagement
- Engagement can now be toggled on and off for a BricaBox (e.g. if you’d like to disable voting on a Top 100 list)
User Interface & Bug Fixes
- Lots of UI enhancements + refinements
- A ton of backend tweaks and bug fixes
We’re really excited about where BricaBox is headed in the coming weeks and months, and you can expect more fixes, enhancements, and upgrades as we progress towards our January launch.
As always, please get in touch with us if you have any questions, feedback, comments, complaints, or otherwise; we’re all ears! I should note that a great deal of the features rolled out today are based directly on feedback from a group of very valuable people: YOU!
Cheers!
Kyle just pushed the release button on a new feature….
Here’s a comment I left on my sister’s profile (note her calling VentBox a failure and misspelling BricaBox. Cute!):
Intro:
Introducing, the “Related Content” Block
Yesterday we issued a new Block to publishers, which can exist in the small column of content pages, called the “Related Content” Block.
What this block does is very similar to an Amazon.com feature you may be aware of and which is talked about at length in David Weinberger’s book. Also, it’s the one feature VentBox had:
Basically, it analyzes user engagement history and displays related content based on those user engagement metrics. In layman’s terms, it’s “People who *engagement termed* this also *engagement termed* this.”
As seen the case below, stats don’t lie. We implemented this block on the Silicon Alley 100 BricaBox; and, when you compare Charles Forman’s nomination against mine, you see that “People who nominated Charles Forman also nominated…” folks like Nick Denton and Henry Blodget, while “People who nominated Nate Westheimer also nominated…” Charlie O’Donnell and Caroline McCarthy.
Makes sense.
The usefulness of this feature is evident and the benefits are spread evenly among publishers and users. This puts interesting and relevant content one click away from site visitors, and increases page views for publishers. It’s a win / win. Anyway, we’ll tweak this feature going forward, but for now, please enjoy.
and be cool like
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