Hello Jannik,

Thank you so much for your feedbacks! These are the feedbacks that we need to listen to and pay attention to because you guys are the one that will be implementing EasySocial on your sites and whilst we are great at building web apps, we are not really dealing with everyday users so we don't really know what's best for a site.

As to your inquiries earlier, please find the (I hope it would be an aswer) below:

o start out with, the most obvious missing feature, which I apologize for repeating myself with is good and consistent Search Plugins for EasySocial, EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss. Live Search in EasySocial is broken, and I want to use a third party Search module (Offlajn's Universal Live Ajax Search, which utilizes any search plugin). Either that, or fix EasySocial live search, and make it compatible with EasyBlog, EasyDiscuss, K2 etc. (ideally offer both options)....

Agreed, I think we need a different approach to this. If it has too much hassles to utilize the internal search in EasySocial (Because we need to write adapters for each and every extension that we plan to support), we might eventually go with using the built in search library (a.k.a Finder) of Joomla. We'll see what we can do in 1.3 or probably before 1.3

The second feature that I feel is missing, which I am aware that you actively are working on, is Events. I have a live site that I want to migrate over from JomSocial to EasySocial... but events are very important for that community. So it is imperative that you launch that feature and that it features a proper migration process... but based on your track record, I do not need to mention this

This is already scheduled for 1.3 and to be honest, I do have "mixed" feedbacks about this from different group of users. Whilst some wants us to build our own Event system, we do not just want to build a basic event system which is almost close to useless. What good is an event if it doesn't have the necessary bells and whistles of a proper Event system like Ohanah offers.

To be fair, if you do a comparison between Ohanah, JEvents and other Event centric extensions, you'll notice that JomSocial's events is close to useless. We do not want to fall into the same loophole where we build something useless that nobody will ever use

Thirdly, and more importantly, it is imperative to offer ways to integrate EasySocial, EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss into the same site more seamlessly. What I mean by that is offering a Universal Sidebar Module inspired by the EasySocial sidebar... and adding EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss features to the current EasySocial Toolbar Module. I want my sidebar and my top bar to look the same on all pages.... I don't want to have different sidebars and toolbars depending on what page I am on.

I couldn't agree more on this and I too am very frustrated when switching between components as all their layouts looks different I am not really sure what is the "best" way to really achieve this because EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss could be a standalone extension of it's own. Can you imagine if users that does not have EasySocial installed. Wouldn't their looks look pretty weird?

To recap.... please offer Universal live search that works with all components, or release search plugins so we can use third party search..... release events with a proper migrator..... and develop a universal sidebar, and make the current toolbar more universal.

Agreed but our toolbar is pretty universal already You can just publish the toolbar module for EasySocial everywhere on your site

Thanks for taking the time to reply to every point with such detail!

First of all, the idea of built in search library (a.k.a Finder) of Joomla is fantastic, as I would be able to use Offlajn's Live Search Module or even the free one from RocketTheme! So I really hope to see that asap

Secondly, regarding events, while I agree that the Events system is suboptimal in JomSocial, I do think it is an imperative feature of a Social Network, so if you guys can make something better than what they have, that will be fantastic... and by the sounds of it, you are putting a lot of thought into the execution of this, so props for that.

Thirdly, I really think you should consider a universal stack ideas sidebar module. Even if it is mostly EasySocial... because I honestly would like to place the sidebar in a different module location, which has different styling, and I would like it to be featured on all pages, not just the EasySocial page. The other suggestion I have made in the past is to integrate EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss with AJAX inside the stream location... this would be a more seamless approach, but won't offer as much flexibility as a universal sidebar. Regarding your concern about customers who do not have EasySocial... my answer is, make the options displayed optional....

Layout example idea for sidebar which would work for members who only subscribe to one or two of your components, or all of them:

{Profile Image} {Full Name}
News Feed
Q&A (EasyDiscuss)
Review Questions
Ask a Question
Pending Questions

Forum (Kunena)
Review Discussions
Start a Discussion
Active Discussions

Blog (EasyBlog)
Write a Blog Entry
Edit/Review Blog Entries

Magazine (K2)
Write an Article
Edit/Review Articles

Upcoming Events (EasySocial, JomSocial, Ohanah, JEvents)
Event 1
Event 2
Event 3

Groups (EasySocial or JomSocial)
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3

Friends(EasySocial, JomSocial or Community Builder)
{Thumbnails of Friends}

Videos
{Thumbnails of Videos}

It would be great to have all products work together (especially if we don't have to rely on 3rd party) but we also have to remember that not everyone will need everything and have all products for their site. Some may think ES will provide all that they need, while other think ED and EB will be enough.

As for events, the problem I can imagine already is not only how it ties in with groups but more importantly how it works globally. It may be great that groups get to see events but what good is that if others don't know about it and participate. Easy to see and engage or it becomes pointless to have such a large feature and only sit there like a calendar with no markings.

Yeah, exactly. The point peter makes about not everyone will use all features and all components is a good one.. especially as it relates to your plans of seamless integration and flexibility of your components. Some of the integrations/cross integrations could be done gradually. For example: you could start by offering the current ES sidebar as a module without changing it, the same way as you did with the Toolbar.... then gradually you can develop a universal sidebar of the caliber I suggested.

Mark wrote: we might eventually go with using the built in search library (a.k.a Finder) of Joomla. We'll see what we can do in 1.3 or probably before 1.3

When you say "finder", is it the same thing as "smart search"? I personally feel the design of Joomla's built in "smart search" needs a lot of work. For example it takes up a ton of space with how it indexes. In addition to this I find it ineffective considering how when I type something like "Eldorado Peak", it brings up a lot of articles with the word "peak" in it. Perhaps finder is different? Just voicing my concern if it is indeed the same thing as "smart search".

As for "Events", while integration with groups would for sure be a nice touch, it should not depend on the existence of a group. This way we can seek out a greater audience. I'm going to mention an idea that is a long ways away, but would be effective for making events really awesome. My site is going to have it's articles grouped in tabs, so for example if I create a page (article) called "Mount Everest", it will automatically have a tab called "Partners" (events). A user could attach their event to the article. Here's a non tabbed demo of what it looks like when pages are attached to a page, the parent "Eldorado Peak" can be seen in the breadcrumbs. Now while those pages aren't events, just imagine if they were. Users would then be able to find relevant events to places they want to go. Don't believe me? Alright, let's step it up a notch.

Using the custom fields of the event, the user can search within the country and state as well as the city (if applicable) which now allows the user to find local events. Then we can add further criteria such as "miles away from user's location", event type, date of the event, and what to expect. In the climbing world we might say how many days long the trip is, what the technical rating is, mileage range, how many people are going (based on the number of people who "joined"), ect. Then if we got super fancy we could make attaching the event to the page easy by having a "attach form" that allows you to type in the name of the article which it would use some sort of ajax to call in article names. When selected, it would attach. This would make it so the event author wouldn't even have to leave the event page to do that.

I already have a tabbing extension and a "auto loader" component which allows me to choose pre-defined content to place into certain categories. I can place {jcomments} in, and poof, I've got the comments inside tabs. The attachment idea mentioned before was a futuristic idea if I can some day build into Joomla a article tree hierarchy system. Anyways, my point of posting this was to inspire ideas and let others know about event possibilities.

Josh, don't worry, what he is referring to is just using Joomla built in search as base for a plugin which they develop and set the criteria for indexing. This results in you being able to use any search component/module on the market, you are not limited to what is built in Joomla. It also means it is easier to get all your components in the same search bar, as majority of components on the market offer a search plugin using these standards.

I also agree that events should not depend on a group, but that there should be option to make events within a group or exclusive to a group, if so desired.

Thanks for sharing this guys

Hello,

I agree with everything you said as far as Stackideas being one of a kind company. They try to cater/satisfy to everyone's need, one customer at a time. This is excellent, but can work against them in the long run. Everyone is requesting a feature that is specific to their need, and it gets implemented. By the time you get to ES v1.5, you end up with so many settings in the backend that it can be overwhelming. They end up focusing on adding additional features here and there instead of making ES better and more robust.

The upcoming release of ES has been in beta for more than 4 weeks now, and they are finding more and more bugs, I feel like every time they fix a bug, they introduce another bug. And this is due to the added/requested features that have been introduced in this release. And I am sure, once the stable release comes out, more bugs will surface because of the many different environments where ES is installed and how people are using it.

They already promised Videos and Events in ES 1.3, plus all the features that I have heard Mark say "We will see if we can add it to v1.3). From what I have seen, it is unrealistic, maybe it's just a way for him to make the customer happy without any commitment that it will be added.

Jannik Laursen,
If you have a request, you should post it their Voice Page, that way it will be voted if people deem it to be useful/necessary. If your voice gets enough votes, that means that the majority of people like it and I am sure it will be added to their Road Map. This thread will be buried deep into the forum in a couple of weeks, and they will forget about it, so this is not the best approach.

Here is my take:

Let ES be ES, meaning the Social Network it was meant to be, I am sure a lot of thoughts have been put into making such a good extention for joomla. Instead of adding additional features here and there while it is still maturing, focus on fixing all the bugs, improving the current features ie: improving the commenting system, making a better picture gallery, etc... Adding EVENT/VIDEO to ES will be a big task, and will take time. There are so many 3rd party EVENT extension out there, such as Ohanah that is a full featured event system that can meet everyone's need. You can integrate such a component with ES seamlessly, you wouldn't even know it is 2 separate component. ES provides all the APIs for 3rd party developers to integrate their extension into it. They should take advantage of that, that way you can wrap anything around ES. I know a lot of popular 3rd party developers that promised an integration with ES in their upcoming release.

I remember when joomsocial first came out, they were the only player beside CB. Lots of 3rd party developers integrated their extension with JS, actually it would be a crime to release an extension without it being integrated with JS, because that is the first feature the users would request: <<Is it integrated/compatible with JS?>>. If you look at JED, you will find more than 100 extensions that are integrated with JS, or specific to JS, made solely by 3rd party developers. This made JS unique and popular in the joomla community. If you look at easysocial app directory, there are merely 20 apps currently supporting ES. Although I understand ES hasn't been around for long, I believe this is the right approach. If ES tries to be everything instead of focusing on its core purpose, it will become to big/hard to manage or administer from a developer and user perspective.

Checksum,

First of all, listening to all the individual customers, and creating a flexible scalable product that works for many setups is what Stackideas does best, and it is what has made me subscribe to all their products, after having subscribed to JomSocial, Zoo which had no cross integration etc. before...

If you were to look in the Voice Page, I have made many suggestions, and provided my feedback and opinions on many features/options. Many of the implemented features, that other people appreciate, I have been an active participant in suggesting. Just because a feature is not relevant to you, does not mean that it isn't relevant to other people. I am providing usability feedback as much as I can, and feedback on how to grow ES into the best Social Networking component on the market. Also, if I had the resources to integrate a component such as Ohanah which does not even have JomSocial integration yet, into EasySocial, I would... but frankly I don't. The majority of Joomla users don't know more than some basic CSS, which they learn to tweak the visuals... So don't stand against progress, just because a feature is irrelevant to you, or because you have certain resources that the rest of us don't have.

Also, I will point out, that some of the features that I mention as missing in this thread, are features that I asked in my pre purchase conversation with Mark. I basically had a list of features that I needed before being willing to make the switch from JomSocial to EasySocial. I have been paying for a product that I haven't been able to use on a live site as it is missing essential features.... so, I do not think I am being selfish in creating a civil and constructive conversation of some features that are essential for many types of websites, including my own. You might not be interested in more features, but frankly... a social network without a working search feature and events is not a social network... I cannot use this products on any of my live sites yet. I purchased early knowing this, especially because I know that Mark and the guys at Stackideas are willing to listen to feedback and always deliver on their promises, so I felt I would be an early adopter and help with Usability information. So don't criticizes me for coming with requests and feedback about more features, this early on in the development... this is not a mature product, this is a new and continuously growing product... and as such, feature requests are going to be a big part of the conversation this first year.

Also, there is a feature request section on these forums, which is separate from the Voice feature. I use them both for different purposes. The Voice Page, I use to suggest and vote for individual features. The forum, I use to provide deeper analysis and spark debate with a more complete overview. If you look at any time that anyone has created a thread on the Voice Page with multiple features, it always leads to people asking to split them into separate topics... thus, this lead me to here.

Regarding the bugs, that is part of building software... and frankly, few companies are as fast to squash the bugs as Stackideas, I have hardly experienced a relevant bug myself in any of the stable builds...

Anyhow, I appreciate your feedback, and I hope you understand where I come from when I post a thread of this nature.

Hi Jannick,

I don't know why you are so defensive about this, I wasn't talking to you directly.
You posted a thread about the future of ES, I was just voicing my opinion. We all want to make ES better, right?

You are free to make any requests, and I am not against your ideas. I can use an event management in my social network website, and I am sure it will be a welcome addition for everyone here.
All I said, is I am not sure if this is the right approach. If you look at the road-map, you will see that v1.3 is due in March, realistically, this will not happen as we are still waiting for v1.2. I don't believe that they can come up with an event management system that will top Ohanah, JEvent or similar in such a short time. Because of the level of expectation, they will be bombarded with feature requests once they release the event, while still trying to fix/improve ES. I am sure they can release an excellent event system, but it will take time. I would rather wait 6+ months for a solid event system, rather than take incremental improvement/fixes for every release.

And yes, I have use ES long enough to experience some bugs, no major bugs, but I believe those bugs could have been caught with more thorough testing. There are also lots of area that needs improvement, like the image gallery and the commenting system which are crucial for a good social network. What I am saying is focus on making sure you have a solid component, before on taking major changes and such. This will guarantee you can meet your commitment to your customers; v1.2 is already 1 month late and we all know why.
Also focus on making a good API that will cover all aspect ES, this will attract more and more 3rd party developers.

Hey guys,

Thank you all for these feedbacks and I really appreciate it very much. I do agree with checksum that we shouldn't be adding everything which eventually makes the code bloated. The core and fundamental of EasySocial should just be "extensible" . This was what our goal was when we developed EasySocial. Rather than adding everything within the core of EasySocial, we'll need to think of this in a better and more robust way where we could add features within apps. People who needs it, can download the app and people who don't, just don't download the app :P

checksum,

I do agree with you that our apps directory has lesser apps than JomSocial but let's look at this in a more positive way. JomSocial has been around for almost 7 - 8 years now and during that initial stages, there were no competition for JomSocial at all (I wouldn't say CB is a competitor of JomSocial, but a gift for JomSocial because users already understand what a community is like and wants a better alternative) and partly because of that, more users started to adopt JomSocial. When this happened, customers starts making feature requests from these 3rd party extensions. But, mind you, if you look at the available addons for JomSocial, I would say almost 60% of it is pretty pointless or doesn't even work with their latest version. Why? Simply because 3rd party developers does not have the time to keep updating their plugins when they need to spend time working on their own extension.

A very good example, if you take a look at is the blog plugin for JomSocial. We initially made it extremely cool but when JomSocial decides to make a mess out of their own codes, we start to write compatibility codes. When I mean compatibility codes, is you will see codes like this:

if (jomsocial < 2.0 )

{

    // do something

}



if (jomsocial > 2.0 < 2.4 )

{

   // do something

}



if (jomsocial > 3.0)

{

   // do something

}

When developers starts to see codes above, they get really tired updating their plugin because it breaks at almost every version. Now, when we try to contact them to develop extensions for EasySocial, they would be afraid because of the nightmare they have been through with JomSocial already

We are trying to avoid such issues altogether But yeah, like I told many people out there, Rome wasn't built in a day and It takes time for us to cast the net to these external 3rd party devs.

Hey Checksum, I did not mean to get defensive, I just didn't appreciate what I felt was a bit of a condescending attitude towards feature requests. I think we all can agree that the both of us are trying to help improve Easy Social, and we just put more weight on different aspects of the development.... I currently am more focused on making sure that EasySocial features a complete feature set and that there is more continuity between Stackideas components... while you are concerned about bug testing and clear and consistent roadmap. Both issues are important to cover, and as such, we shouldn't put so much weight in disagreeing, but more so on the common good for ES which is finding a balance between complete feature set and stability


and to Mark, I agree with you on the bloat side of things, and I think the app route is a valid route, but I will say, from experience, apps do not get updated as well as the core component, and as such, I would argue that the most popular features should come pre bundled, with the option to be removed to reduce the weight... then some more niche features can be optional download... and you said it yourself, more than half of the available apps for JomSocial do not work and haven't been updated in a long time, and therefore, I feel it is imperative to not leave any essential features up to third parties. As that would lead to too many inconsistencies.

By the way, just for your information most of the bugs that you guys seen at the issues area are not 1.2.0 specific errors. Some of these even existed prior to 1.0.0. It's not really a bug per-se but it's more towards the extensibility of the codes

First Jannik had me nodding in agreement, then Checksum did too in equal measure, which goes to show that you are both right in many respects :-)

I think Jannick makes a strong argument for adding certain features to the core and I think Events definitely falls within that category. I think though that it should be developed in a way that allows 3PD to add to this core feature.

For example, Eventbrite didn't try and reinvent the wheel with post-event attendee feadback and why would you when SurveyMonkey is already excellent, easy to use and free for most use cases? Instead, they implemented a "send a survey with SurveyMonkey" feature.

They did the same with invitations. While you are able to use the simple invite system, they also let you farm off to Mailchimp for better control, templates analytical and the like.

I made a suggestion to Mark a few weeks ago to add the ability to link an event to a Joomla article when filling out the form. Things like this mean that we won't need every possible field or function in events, as that content might already be better presented elsewhere in Joomla.

This is how I feel Mark and the team can best serve all users. Give us the essentials (a bit more than the basics), but leave the advanced use cases to the specialists, as in the three examples above.

That I think is what Mark is essentially saying, that making ES extensible is the way forward. At least that's my interpretation anyway!

A lot of suggestions I give are intended for the core of EasySocial. I am keeping my personal preference list of features for way down the road. This way I don't slow down the core development of ES. What the Stacked Team did for ES 1.2 I thought was a good idea. During the beta's, they added better filtering such as the app filter and moved the option configs in better locations. The lightbox is also another great feature.

By the time ES 1.3 comes out, the core should be pretty solid in terms of having features that most people would want. Not to say ES 1.2 doesn't have most of this, but events will make ES a very well rounded community extension. I tell friends in person how I'm working (working as in testing and coming up with ideas) with the best guys in the community software field.

As for too many features. I agree we don't want to overwhelm the user, but flexibility is a huge theme of EasySocial. I have a client who I have to mod his software a lot because it does not come with enough of the right core features out of the box. ES 1.2 has gotten better about organizing it. My predefined advanced search idea uses a "advanced tab" which means that it's a extra feature, but is in a location that only advanced users would want to look at. When it comes to the gallery and private messages I'd say that it could use some more features eventually. I know, Tokyo wasn't built in a week.

I agree wholeheartedly with Mark H's analysis. Include key features, and allow for 3rd parties to extend functionality. This is not a case of either or, it is a case of how do you provide a complete product that stands its ground independently, but which also can be extended to integrate with other popular components from third parties for more specialized, refined or complete functionality..

Thanks guys, we really appreciate all these constructive feedbacks. Well, there's no winner to this debate because at the end of the day, you guys are all the winners And yes, extensibility is the keyword here.

To be honest, there's a lot of stuff and discussion going on with things that most of you don't see in EasySocial since they are not related to the layout / features / usability. While, it does not serve any use to you, it does in terms of extensibility. Hence, the rapid changes even in the beta releases.

Building features is not difficult at all and it's always fast. Building a feature that is extensible needs more thinking involved

Everytime I hear 3rd party, I try to run away. It's not that they don't have the right stuff but it's the lack of quality control and commitment to taking it the next level. When they stop making it compatible, the site and users suffer. That's not what you want when you put so much effort in a community and unable to upgrade because 3rd party stop supporting. I still remember the nightmare for the media plugin that was made for buddypress. It left a very bad taste for everyone. Mark H made a great suggestion about article with event association. Wordpress had something similar and was of great use to many but it was abandoned. I seek seemless over 3rd party any time and day so I'm hoping StackIdeas can make that a reality.

Thanks for the heads up on this Peter To be really honest with you guys, I have received quite a number of requests to not include features in the core but rather integrate them with 3rd party extensions like Ohanah or JEvent. I have also received feedbacks from user that they do not want to use Ohanah nor JEvents because they had bad experiences with them and they would rather us create our own built in event system. We're still evaluating this and we'll start planning for 1.3.0

Either the event system should be built into EasySocial or ES should consider creating their own. I can deal with a 3rd party route, but it would be "sad". If I recall right, the code structure can use quite a bit of groups? I know there are obvious changes of course. Events are very important to a social networking website. What I love about EasySocial is that it appears that it will not only be the best social network software for Joomla, but have the best features such as photo uploading, groups, messaging, ect. It's all centralized into one place.

Once ES has videos, events, and possibly a chat, then I'd say that it doesn't really need more in terms of major components that are built into the core. Is the concern of adding events server performance related?

I will be very honest, I personally am trying to run a 100% stackideas eco system, as I am with Peter on the 3rd party integrations.... they never get updated properly, and developers do not consider it a priority. It is imperative to provide all the most important features via the core, but give people the option to uninstall what they don't want... or even better, if there truly is demand for a limited build with just the basics.... you could offer a lite and a full build on the download page/install screen.

Once ES has videos, events, and possibly a chat, then I'd say that it doesn't really need more in terms of major components that are built into the core.

I would agree with this.

Why not make a separate component for EVENTS, VIDEOS, etc... that you can integrate with ES. That way you can sell it as a Joomla standalone extension, seperate from ES, just like EB and ED.

Hey guys,

It's not really a problem of writing the codes. Writing codes has never been a problem in fact. As Josh pointed out, to add Events, it's merely just extending over the Groups functionality Just want to listen to what you guys have in mind

checksum,

That would be highly unlikely because support itself would kill us. If you look at our support forums, I would say 70% of the posts are mostly about "How do you customize so and so" and not really issues. If we could eliminate these 80%, then by all means this is work-able

(Nevertheless, we are going to tighter our support policy in the coming days or week as we find it almost impossible to handle questions regarding customizations which is actually out of our support scope)

Mark,

As per your comment above:

That would be highly unlikely because support itself would kill us. If you look at our support forums, I would say 70% of the posts are mostly about "How do you customize so and so" and not really issues. If we could eliminate these 80%, then by all means this is work-able

Everybody appreciates that you and your team help so much with how to customize so and so, but as your user base grows this will be the achilles heal and a suggestion would be to consider the following:

Ask for Volunteer Community Managers to step up and offer their volunteer commitment and support to manage a special Community Manager Network in a subdomain on the stackideas site: cm.stackideas.com

Use EasySocial, EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss as the core basis for the Community Manager Network, and then allow the Members to discuss features, issues, site management, customizations, etc.

When the Community Management Team comes up with features etc, and customizations that go through a series of discussions to then all agree upon a best approach, then these requests can be brought to your attention at the end of each month in the Issues section, and because they will require the SI Teams assistance to implement them or make the necessary changes you can allocate resources to what you think is best to do. This also helps with beta cycles, testing cycles etc, as it serves as a main gathering area of long term COMMUNITY MANAGERS to have active engaging discussions.

Essentially, you have to make a decision important to the long term growth of StackIdeas, because we all depend on that growth for you to be profitable and enjoyable.

It is a decision but only you and your team can make and I suggest that you: DO NOT ALLOW FOR CUSTOMIZATIONS to be REQUESTED in the current forums. The forums are reserved for bug fixes and each time someone requests what is beyond the scope of support, then point them every time to the Community Manager Network for vetting and consideration. This Community Manager Network can also have a Group established that 3rd party developers can offer their services to implement these customizations for the Network as a whole. The feature requests could be crowdsourced, and since their is one or two existing extensions that allow Crowdfunding, the funds can be raised to make it worth a 3rd Party developers while.

This allows you and your team at StackIdeas to focus most of your efforts (80%) on the pressing business at hand, and it gets you back to reality that customers should not be expecting that you and your team will always modify or make customizations. Let's face it Mark, you and your team bend over backwards and do handstands to accommodate and please so many customers above and beyond what people should ask of you and your team. But sometimes people become spoiled and they expect too much and ask for customizations specific to their own site needs that are not valuable or valid for the majority of the other paying customers, and this is not fair at all to you and your team.

As much as you and your team offer WORLD CLASS CUSTOMER SERVICE and SUPPORT that has to be a BALANCE, and this requires CHANGES NOW or the problem only gets bigger.

I just had an instance with my template provider. It has been an issue that I could not resolve and the support was not anything what your and your team offers. The Support person became RUDE to me and I had to call him on it yesterday. When I mentioned I did not appreciate the RUDE nature of his reply back to my request, I pointed out the WORLD CLASS SUPPORT I get at StackIdeas and how you and your team are never ever rude to customers and how you help customers above and beyond the scope of what customers should expect of you. No sooner did I post the reply back to him that I did not want his support until he apologized, I got the apology from him and and the proper fix to their template issue. The issue was resolved and it served as an example. I was not expecting any customization at all, Just a fix to the template that I could not figure out on my own from reading and trying out css gathered from other forum posts.

Since the COMMUNITY MANAGER NETWORK can now have GROUPS, there would most likely be TEMPLATE CUSTOMIZATIONS GROUPS that any Joomla TEMPLATE developer would be crazy to ignore, and they will participate. There would also be GROUPS for 3rd Party Extensions and the same would apply. Since you have plans to implement the EasySocial APPS STORE in a future version of EasySocial, think of this as a location for the App store.

CROWDSOURCE AND CROWDFUND the COMMUNITY MANAGER NETWORK for the benefit of everyone. Essentially use EasySocial to it's FULL POTENTIAL that serves a an MODEL COMMUNITY MANAGER NETWORK. It will draw many new people. I saw your post back to me in the thread I created yesterday about this NETWORK and the potential and I think the new network should not have Joomla in the domain name for the following reasons.

Joomla-social.com - great domain but hang onto it for StackIdeas purposes in the future. As a note after some searches on Godaddy.com for an appropriate seperate domain name rather than use a sub-domain I found that - communitymanagers.com is listed for sale at $57,097.00 - COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT is a GROWING area and StackIdeas should be at the forefront of this new network.

1. ww-communitymanagers.com is listed at $9.95 - Stands for WORLD WIDE COMMUNITY MANAGERS NETWORK. There are other possible domain names. This is just one of many I have found available.

2. es-communitymanagers.com is listed at $9.95 - Stands for EASY SOCIAL COMMUNITY MANAGERS NETWORK. There are other possible domain names. This is just one of many I have found available.

By not using the Joomla name in the domain you avoid any issues with Joomla restrictions and it is forward thinking because to gather the most amount of potential you do not want it specific to Joomla but more about building, managing and marketing online communities.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS FOR A COMMUNITY MANAGER NETWORK

I would gladly volunteer some of my time to step up and offer my full Commitment and Support to be one of a number of volunteer COMMUNITY MANAGERS who would work with other COMMUNITY MANAGERS to build and manage a Community Manager Network. This gives many of us the chance to learn and work with each other, and to streamline the process of requests to you and the StackIdeas Team. Essentially we will be using the features of EasySocial and EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss to it full potential to grow it into what all of us believe it can become. Each new version put out the door becomes more awesome than the previous versions.

Give it some thought Mark and I do hope others weigh in on the discussion.

I am sure that since this Community Manager Network offers so many benefits, that a number of other people will also volunteer their time to help get this started and moved forward. As mentioned on the thread I created yesterday, I also makes for a Members area that can have so many benefits for StackIdeas ie: Sales, new customers etc.

To continue this discussion for a separate COMMUNITY MANAGER NETWORK:

GO TO: http://stackideas.com/forums/request-for-a-community-manager-category-to-be-added-to-the-forums-or-to-a-live-easysocial-area

Randall M wrote:The forums are reserved for bug fixes and each time someone requests what is beyond the scope of support, then point them every time to the Community Manager Network for vetting and consideration.

What about well thought out requests that have more to do with the code practices such as a cleaner gallery, position of a close button, and methods pre-thought out for the advanced search? Practices rather than features.

I am always surprised when I see people ask for less support and fewer features lol....

What about events and social networks?

Events are of fundamental important for me, and perhaps others, because they drive user engagement. Especially with my "core" set of community members that is important to my community success.

In the future, I would expect that the emerging Joomla REST API will enable easy integration of ES events with any of the popular event managers. However, it is informing that the most popular social community hosts more organic events (16 million/day) than the most popular single-purpose event manager (458k @ 2011).

Step Outside Joomla for Innovation

We should also look outside of Joomla-world components for innovative Event Creation/Management ideas, particularly for the possibilities within the ES framework. Stack Ideas has probably already done that. They demonstrate that nothing beats the impact an individual can have on a company, co-workers, customers, a market area or an entire industry, nor can it match the passion of the individual for an idea they really believe in.

[*]

BTW, when I saw this relatively new event archiving site, I thought how cool it would be to see a real-time event viewer that might combine all related ES, EB, ED related activity, along with any other ES integrated Apps that supported the event view as well.

Some things must be taken into consideration

Some of us are not building "another" social network and we need maybe just some "core" / basic functions to achieve our project goal.
For example, we may not need the entire overhead like events, groups (we simply don't use groups or events) but we need a scalable and modular system that will help us achieve the goals of our case scenario and project specs.

EasySocial must take into consideration also the "developer-friendly" route where stuff can be added on top of the core thus keeping the core to a functional bare minimum.

Why not creating "events" like a full-supported "official" EasySocial app ? ... same goes for groups or any other feature others may need to build their product.
Apps can also be "official-supported" separate purchased and also supported and mantained by third-parties.

This will set apart EasySocial from it's competitors. I am looking at this kinda similar with a Drupal way of thinking. Make as much as possible everything modular and let developers / system integrators etc. choose their "ingredients" that will build their "cake".
My "cake" for example don't need events, don't need groups, my "cake" needs user-follow system but don't needs the 2 way friends system ... and i can go on with examples.

I don't want EasySocial to be a "ready-made" cake (take and serve it as is, if you don't like chocolate flavour so be it you are out of luck or try to make "chocolate" look and taste different in your "cake" version )... i want it to be more like a "framework" with available modules ("apps") that can extend the core stuff.

Think about scenarios, think about different usage cases, think about the various types of communities that can be built.
Is really time consuming and sometimes frustrating to take a product "as-is" , use only 65% of it's features and try to strip-out the other 35%

You need "Events" ? No problem, go ahead an purchase the official "Events" app and extend your EasySocial install.
... same goes for any other features, think modular !

Just my 2 cents on this i really love you guys !

Do most people buy services or software because they know how to build and extend or do most people purchase it because of the solution it provides? Any time Drupal is mentioned I just hope Stackideas doesn't become too developer focused. Think drupal vs wordpress. Different worlds apart for adoption.

Peter wrote:
Stackideas doesn't become too developer focused.

...and in doing so lose the "Easy" part in their product names.

Some things must be taken into consideration

Some of us are not building "another" social network and we need maybe just some "core" / basic functions to achieve our project goal.
For example, we may not need the entire overhead like events, groups (we simply don't use groups or events) but we need a scalable and modular system that will help us achieve the goals of our case scenario and project specs.

EasySocial must take into consideration also the "developer-friendly" route where stuff can be added on top of the core thus keeping the core to a functional bare minimum.

Why not creating "events" like a full-supported "official" EasySocial app ? ... same goes for groups or any other feature others may need to build their product.
Apps can also be "official-supported" separate purchased and also supported and mantained by third-parties.

This will set apart EasySocial from it's competitors. I am looking at this kinda similar with a Drupal way of thinking. Make as much as possible everything modular and let developers / system integrators etc. choose their "ingredients" that will build their "cake".
My "cake" for example don't need events, don't need groups, my "cake" needs user-follow system but don't needs the 2 way friends system ... and i can go on with examples.

I don't want EasySocial to be a "ready-made" cake (take and serve it as is, if you don't like chocolate flavour so be it you are out of luck or try to make "chocolate" look and taste different in your "cake" version )... i want it to be more like a "framework" with available modules ("apps") that can extend the core stuff.

Think about scenarios, think about different usage cases, think about the various types of communities that can be built.
Is really time consuming and sometimes frustrating to take a product "as-is" , use only 65% of it's features and try to strip-out the other 35%

You need "Events" ? No problem, go ahead an purchase the official "Events" app and extend your EasySocial install.
... same goes for any other features, think modular !

Just my 2 cents on this i really love you guys !

Perfect !

By "developer-friendly" i meant actually "as modular as possible" .
The "Easy" part is still there because you will still be able to configure your products in a "point-click-install" manner.
Joomla itself is a "modular" system. You have your CMS, "click-install" - and there you go, you have a Social Network

The question is how modular extensions can go inside their own "ecosystem" ?

Maybe you don't need "groups" BUT IF you need a "groups" feature for EasySocial, you will purchase the official "Groups" app, install it ... and there you go, you have in couple of seconds a fully-blown "Group" functionality on top of your "EasySocial" core.

Any other feature you may need, in a modular system, you are able to install it and configure it in every way possible.
It's still a matter of "point-and-click" (i am not talking about writing lines of codes but make it "flexible" for different case scenarios)

Peter wrote:

Do most people buy services or software because they know how to build and extend or do most people purchase it because of the solution it provides?

I agree with you, people buys products because of the solution it provides but we need to define what the term "solution" actually means
Think about my analogy with cakes.

All of us around here have our own products, we want to build our own "cake".
We choose the Joomla CMS and add components, modules, plugins, themes to build our own "perfect" cake.
A solution that delivers only a specific "cake" form, a specific "cake" flavour and specific "cake" color ... is an actual "cake" itself not a "cake-building" platform.
Say, you want your "cake" to have candles, my logic says that "candles" must be "add-ons" and not not part of the "core" product and you must design the "core" product as modular as possible to accomodate "candles" if somebody out there wants "candles" on their "cake".

Hope i make sense

It's just my vision of the perfect solution that will allow to build not only the social network you seek but actually build any type of communities integrating any types of other "apps"
Communities can come in different form factors, all kind of different approach. (not just "social networks" but so many other types)

The currently hidden gem for Joomla is a robust, modular solution that will allow to build communities in multiple ways. I am pretty confident that EasySocial can become this hidden gem
In my opinion, it's not about building ONLY a social network but building communities that can be "social networks" or any other form factor.

EasySocial should have the qualities for the greatest number of people. When building a community we often want groups, events, videos, private messages, photos, and of course the profile. When JomSocial had these things in one bundle I was skeptical considering that I wanted nothing but the best. The stacked team however has proved that even in their "side features" such as the gallery they can have the best of everything. So what I'm getting at is that for most of us it's totally awesome to install a extension that has most of what I want in one place. I've looked for many years in the JED for something like this. To have it easily in one location in my book is mind blowing. If everyone else had the same support as the stacked team or if the stacked team's side features weren't as cool, then I'd feel a little different.

I understand that some want ES lighter weight, I know the feeling. So I think a great compromise would be to allow the admin to uninstall sections of EasySocial just like how Joomla admins can uninstall pieces of Joomla. We need to think about the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That is how I post in this forum which is why I keep my niche requests to a minimum.

Josh is right, offer a complete package, and let people uninstall sections they don't intend to use.

Thanks for the feedbacks guys, appreciate the insights on this

I'm with Josh when he said to uninstall pieces you don't need. +1

Some of the items already work that way within ES at the moment so it's flexible. It does need some fine tuning and some options can be simplified.

Jannik Laursen wrote:

Josh is right, offer a complete package, and let people uninstall sections they don't intend to use.

Indeed. If allowing admins to "uninstall" sections they do not want to use becomes to complex from the EasySocial architecture point of view then allowing us to "disable" the portions we do not want to use should be more than sufficient.

In addition to this as we can set the default apps that the end user has available we should also be able to hide the uninstalled apps from them as well. If I have certain features for the end user disabled I do not want them to see them and think they can enable them.

Thanks for the heads up on this Brandon

Randall M wrote:

When the Community Management Team comes up with features etc, and customizations that go through a series of discussions to then all agree upon a best approach, then these requests can be brought to your attention at the end of each month in the Issues section, and because they will require the SI Teams assistance to implement them or make the necessary changes you can allocate resources to what you think is best to do. This also helps with beta cycles, testing cycles etc, as it serves as a main gathering area of long term COMMUNITY MANAGERS to have active engaging discussions.

Essentially, you have to make a decision important to the long term growth of StackIdeas, because we all depend on that growth for you to be profitable and enjoyable.

It is a decision but only you and your team can make and I suggest that you: DO NOT ALLOW FOR CUSTOMIZATIONS to be REQUESTED in the current forums. The forums are reserved for bug fixes and each time someone requests what is beyond the scope of support, then point them every time to the Community Manager Network for vetting and consideration. This Community Manager Network can also have a Group established that 3rd party developers can offer their services to implement these customizations for the Network as a whole. The feature requests could be crowdsourced, and since their is one or two existing extensions that allow Crowdfunding, the funds can be raised to make it worth a 3rd Party developers while.

Randall,

The problem with this is people are not willing to wait 1 month to get their issues resolved. Also, whoever those volunteers are, will have to spend a lot of time on these issues, it is unlikely anyone will fully commit to this unless they are getting paid.

Another problem is people do not bother to read the DOCUMENTATION, most of the questions are covered in the documentation, that is the reason they wrote it in the first place. That's why sometimes, I try to not give them the answer and point them to the documentation. A suggestion would be to put a sticky topic about the documentation on every forum.

Mark,
A suggestion would be to spend more time on covering all aspect of ES in the documentation, spend more time tailoring the doc. You can use this forum as a FAQ, and make sure to cover the basic of every features.

There is a small level of experience that you should have when you are designing/customizing a website. ie: changing the color of the background should be trivial, there are so many tools out there that allows you to do that. FIREBUG should be on everyone list, most of the customization questions being asked here can be achieved easily with FIREBUG.

This will reduce the customization questions a lot and allow you to focus on other things.

checksum

The problem with this is people are not willing to wait 1 month to get their issues resolved. Also, whoever those volunteers are, will have to spend a lot of time on these issues, it is unlikely anyone will fully commit to this unless they are getting paid.

I would say that the StackIdeas SENSIBLE SUPPORT is outlined very well on their support page, but how many people ignore this table of support expectation and ask for support anyways?

We have all asked for support outside the scope of what should be expected. But we all have to take into consideration the following:

1. ONE EXTENSION: Back when StackIdeas first started they had ONE EXTENSION. - Supporting this EXTENSION was what started their reputation as being a very different top notch Joomla extension developer. The support was much easier then, because they only had one product to look after and support and evolve, and the customer base started growing.

2. TWO EXTENSIONS The StackIdeas Team created a 2nd EXTENSION and the customer base grew exponentially and the SUPPORT requirements also grew as the CUSTOMER BASE GREW.

3. THREE, FOUR and FIVE EXTENSIONS. The StackIdeas Team created a 3rd EXTENSION, a 4th EXTENSION, and then EASYSOCIAL which is a Groundbreaking new PRODUCT beyond what most people have ever expected, and the customer base continues to grow exponentially and the SUPPORT requirements also grow as the CUSTOMER BASE GROWS. The SUPPORT REQUIREMENTS has become more complex as the number of EXTENSIONS has grows and JOOMLA has evolved, and now includes BOOTSTRAP. The StackIdeas Team has to support legacy products to please the late upgraders from Joomla 1.5, to Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3. The quality of the StackIdeas support did not suffer, and this makes them a VERY EXCEPTIONAL COMPANY. In fact the QUALITY OF TECHNICAL SUPPORT at STACKIDEAS has evolved into a WORLD CLASS TEAM.

People flock to StackIdeas for good reason. They create and support GREAT QUALITY EXTENSIONS and they PROVIDE WORLD-CLASS SUPPORT.

StackIdeas is now in the midst of a huge rapid development and testing cycle for EasySocial and they are also making changes to EasyDiscuss, EasyBlog and their other extensions, and supporting all of these extensions. They also provide support for the most part almost 18 to 20 hours and day 7 days a week, and even provide support on holidays. This type of support is so EXTRA-ORDINARY it is almost unheard of in the software industry and I have been involved the software industry since 1984.

This is the StacKideas SENSIBLE SUPPORT information. How many people look at this before expecting support? It is CLEARLY OUTLINED on this page what to expect from StackIdeas for support, and what not to expect for support.

Sensible Support™
Our support policy and customer support details. How one should obtain support for our products? See this page: http://stackideas.com/support



This discussion is a very good example of how to do what we can to assistance the StackIdeas Team to come up with a solution

What is the BALANCE to progress forward with development and support and keep customers happy?

What should we expect from StackIdeas beyond what they already deliver to us as customers?

What CAN WE DO to ASSIST the StackIdeas Team to help them accomplish all of their objectives as a world-class software development company?

Are you willing to pay for a PREMIUM SUPPORT PACKAGE like I would pay for so the StackIdeas Team has the financial resources to hire more technical support people?

Randall

I agree with you Randall. I played with a lot of Joomla extensions out there and tried a lot of other paid software / scripts aswell. The support i got from Stackideas team and Mark is in the top 3 most professional and helpfull support ever, and i tried quite some stuff during time

I would be glad to pay a premium support fee, no questions about that. I will pay this fee hands down. Sometimes we need some hacks, some code change some modifications and support for this minor modifications. A "premium" support package will make sure that Mark and the team are getting paid for going beyond the scope of regular product support.
To be honest, they even are going beyond regular support scope with a lot of customers and even with us and for this i am really really greatful. Why not getting paid for this professional level of support ? I would pay a premium support fee with all my heart.

Mist wrote:

I agree with you Randall. I played with a lot of Joomla extensions out there and tried a lot of other paid software / scripts aswell. The support i got from Stackideas team and Mark is in the top 3 most professional and helpfull support ever, and i tried quite some stuff during time

I would be glad to pay a premium support fee, no questions about that. I will pay this fee hands down. Sometimes we need some hacks, some code change some modifications and support for this minor modifications. A "premium" support package will make sure that Mark and the team are getting paid for going beyond the scope of regular product support.
To be honest, they even are going beyond regular support scope with a lot of customers and even with us and for this i am really really greatful. Why not getting paid for this professional level of support ? I would pay a premium support fee with all my heart.

+1

I wouldn't mind paying for premium support. It is only fair that if you want extra support like customisations. Community Builder have an Advanced Support option (and I subscribed when I used it).

I've got a revolutionary idea that if implemented will make EasySocial way more flexible. I should probably work on the post today. Basically the concept is to reduce hacks by created uber flexibility by allowing the admin to choose what goes in what stream. On paper the idea sounds complex from a user stand point, but it actually isn't. The principles I have in mind do not involve adding a bunch of settings which would clutter the options. It involves a "feed manager" that doesn't even have to be touched if the user doesn't need advanced settings. I plan on making screen shots and such showing exactly how it could look. Anyways thought I'd mentioned that to help ease the idea of needing to hack the stream up. Hacks work, but core flexibility is way better in my book. And I think I know exactly how to do it.

Thanks for the input guys and to be honest, I totally agree with what Randall has pointed out here. We have been spending quite a fair amount of time helping users with issues that are not covered in the general support policy and that is done out of good faith to ensure that you build a successful website and not crappy websites.

At the same time, we do not intend to further impose charges on users for very minor customizations (as of currently) yet. We do have plans of introducing a more premium support package or "care package" if you like to call it that way, in the future which probably go by the hour only if you need it.

At this point of time, we can only reject users who try too request too much (I want the site to look like this, that and that or I would like this to work with this that and that) as it would be unfair for other users who paid the same amount for anyway.

On top of all these, we are also going to introduce crowd funding and the way it works is really simple. With the huge list of feature requests on http://stackideas.com/voices , we could offer you a button where if you clicked on it, will give it a specific amount of votes (after you make a contribution). I have not worked out on the calculation details yet as this is still pretty vague in my mind.

Another idea which I have (I have just spoken to one of our customers via a skype call) is the ability to fund a specific set of feature. For an instance, if you see a pretty cool feature that is scheduled to be on 1.8 perhaps, but you need it fast and you need it in the next version which is 1.3.0. What you can do is to forcefully (by contributing a larger amount of fund of course) and we'll prioritize this particular feature. This way, it's a win-win solution for everyone

Mark,

StackIdeas is growing a very loyal community of customers that have a vested interest to see you and your team grow and prosper. This thread has been a good discussion and many good ideas and suggestions have been brought forth to see everyone benefit.

CROWD FUNDING

On top of all these, we are also going to introduce crowd funding and the way it works is really simple. With the huge list of feature requests on http://stackideas.com/voices , we could offer you a button where if you clicked on it, will give it a specific amount of votes (after you make a contribution). I have not worked out on the calculation details yet as this is still pretty vague in my mind.

I do believe that crowd funding features where funding contributors can each contribute some funding to see feature requests accelarated as is a very good way to find out what features are the most popular with the most amount of people.

Another idea which I have (I have just spoken to one of our customers via a skype call) is the ability to fund a specific set of feature. For an instance, if you see a pretty cool feature that is scheduled to be on 1.8 perhaps, but you need it fast and you need it in the next version which is 1.3.0. What you can do is to forcefully (by contributing a larger amount of fund of course) and we'll prioritize this particular feature. This way, it's a win-win solution for everyone

I think this is an excellent way to see EasySocial evolve. When a company or ndividual puts up some finding to move features up in the development release cycle this is something that I am sure others would participate in funding. We all know you and your team deliver extraordinary features in an incredibly compressed timeframe.

I think back to 2010 when I was frustrated with Jomsocial, and I found an early version of a social type extension that I thought had some potential. After working closely with the owner, I made the decision to fund some features that I really wanted to see implemented into this extension. I sent the owner a Money Order for a significant amount to what most people would usually send considering there was no guarantee that the features would be implemented.

I sent the owner $3,000 via Money Gram and it was a risk, but I wanted to excellarate some features, and unfortunately the extension development just didn't pan out in the timeframe that I thought it would - the owner had some issues with a rogue software engineer that stole the code and set them back many many months- It was a costly Risk for me, but I suggested the funding of the features and have done similar things many years ago. In those instances my rosk paid off as my conpany benefited with a ten fold return on nvestment.

That $3,000 n 2010 would have been a much better choice if the team was Stackdeas. The company and extension still exist and Ilast I checked on JED the extension has finally made some progress, and they did get the features implemented eventually. The way I look at it, had I not had this happen back then, things could have been different. I might not have found StackIdeas when I did.

I would like to pool some $$$ funding together with some other customers that would like to see some of the Voices features moved up in the EasySocial development schedule.

I'll be posting my feature priority wish list soon to see how many others would be interested in pooling some funds.

Look forward to more discussion on this thread.

Randall

I agree with Mark on this.
"Care"/ Premium Support based on hours is a must have. Similar with "freelancing" model, we can send a request and obtain a quote from Stackideas team with timeframe and cost involved for any extra customization or implementation. Instead of paying any other freelancer to do some customization job we can always pay the Stackideas team (who knows the product inside-out) for the same task.

Crowdfunding is also a GREAT idea to push in front of the queue the development of most desired features that was voted by people involved in the funding. I do have some needs that are scheduled for later EasySocial versions and i would be glad to be part of the people who fund it.

This can work also for other Stackideas products. For example, the most VITAL and "mission-critical" feature for me, besides the ones related to EasySocial, is a modern uploader for EasyDiscuss posts.

Looking forward for this. Great ideas !

Thanks for the opinion guys, really love to hear what others would think as well?

Mark,

Do not mix the two things:

Should you let the "Voice" and create "Premium Voice"

In the Premuim Voice to Encourage people to fund, you sell quotes of the product, and they would be sold as premium addons.

For example:

Addon "Photo Moderation":

Implementation Cost: $ 700
10 shares at $ 70
Value Addon after ready $ 100

Thanks for the heads up on this Cristiano But I am not sure if I understand you here. You mean two different sections for voices?

I had to think about the funding part a bit before replying because this can cause many problems.

Crowdfunding is good since that allows anyone to fund as a whole but this may work against features that others may want and in turn makes this whole idea a money hungry power grabbing free for all which can break a community. What makes one feature a priority over another? Just because five people have funds to move a feature to the top doesn't mean 20 people without enough funds want that same feature and that takes away from developers time because it is deemed less priority due to "price tag".

This is just an example:
not everyone will need video because they don't plan to build services like youtube and also don't have high powered servers to handle the load or have the funds to pay for extra bandwidth. For others, they want less bandwidth type alternative "video-like" service using animation while using 70% less bandwidth without putting the load on their site.

If 5 clients decide to put large funds into the video service and it takes 3 months to build, that ties up the developing time to move forward with a animation solution that 20 people would want (1 month to build) but no way to beat the funding compared to video.

Hope that makes sense.

Peter, I too don't have a server that can handle videos being uploaded (and converted). So my plan is to rely on external sources such as YouTube and Vimeo for people to submit their videos from. The time saved in comparison to having it local will certainly be worth it for my users.

Thanks for the heads up on this Peter. I think what you said makes sense too, hence it does not mean that if you decide to throw a million dollars on our face and we'll make the software crawl out of your monitor, not really in that sense. We still need to weigh what is possible and what is not.

Yes, I also agree that moving "huge" features into earlier releases might not be useful for you but in a long run, we need to sustain and we use what we have to get intelligent guys on board and as we grow, the software grows with it too. Let's take this example, it may now take 3 month for the current team to build a video service but with the funds we received from the community, we could get more guys on board and concurrently work on other stuffs too

But please take note what I have posted is just a very vague idea that I have and it's not something that is going to be implemented anytime soon.

RE: bandwidth one alternative is to use a content delivery network, there's a well-reviewed Joomla extension that makes it super easy.

RE crowdfunding, I think it should always cost nothing for your customers to express their feedback and input into the product roadmap. Cristiano's point may have been a suggestion of a better way to meet the needs of the many and also of the rich $. Keep it free to provide feedback and incorporate that as you determine appropriate into your product roadmap. But separately allow others to bid for the development of particular Apps. In this way paying customers are pre-purchasing an App and you fund it's development internally that way. The App can then be made available to anyone to purchase. But the progressive forward movement of the underlying platform is not skewed to a particular narrow customer need that may not be valued by the super majority of your users.

Thanks for the heads up on this Cristiano But I am not sure if I understand you here. You mean two different sections for voices?

Mark,

Are two distinct voices

The paid (New in crowdfunding)
The free (current)

All users would be awarded

I have to disagree with the idea of 'buying' votes on voices. As much as it would suit me, I think it goes against the whole spirit (sorry!). Other then that, I am with Mark on everything else, and I for one would be more then happy to pay for such quality service

There are many addons jomsocial, due to the long time for other platform but, I chose Easysocial, simply because of your support and attention. The best support of internet software, I'm client: php/Fox, Social/Engine, jom/social, vld/personals, I know what I'm talking.

I need some resources, security, usability, for transfer my 60k members for Easysocial platform, so I believe that two voices, one for people who are starting out in business and one for the more experienced who can pay a little more.

Thanks for the heads up on this guys