The desire for these global friendships mainly arose from barcampers and webworkers, who actively participate in many of our networks. But since the majority of our users hold a membership in only one network, we have postponed this topic several times.

BarCamp Power Users

One of our goals is to keep mixxt with it’s multiple features as simple as possible to use, even for non-techie users. On the one hand, both the administrator and the members of a single (non-barcamp) community would most probably not catch the importance of “global friendships”. For them, they appear to be just needless. On the other hand, feedback and wishes from the BarCamp scene are very important to us, we see ourselves and our software as part of this scene and have grown with it. That’s why we were looking for a solution which satisfies our power users, but is not too complex to build or to use.

Our “Global Friendship” Solution

After discussing different scenarios, we have decided to go for a system which we can implement with reasonable effort and that will surely make our barcampers happy:

In the mixxt settings, each user will be able to activate global friendships. If both users have activated this feature, they will automatically become friends in the networks (only for realname and public nickname networks) they join in the future. Of course, members will always be able to end friendships manually.

In addition to that: User A has enabled global friendships and joins a network. User B, an “old” friend of A, already is a member but has not activated global friendships yet. User B then automatically receives a friend request from A, which contains a hint to activate global friendships. This helps us to communicate this new feature more quickly and minimises the amount of friend requests and confirmations for each user very fast.

Fine-tuning and implementation

Our developers are already working on the concept and the implementation and we might even be able to release the feature by the end of next week. We are excited about the reactions from the mixxt community and keep you posted on any news and the release date here and via twitter.

A community within your community
Within the privacy and rights management of each community, admins were given the opportunity to decide which users – “simple” members, moderators or administrators – are allowed to view or edit certain content. From now on, mixxt offers a module to create groups within these communities. Imagine many sub-communities within one greater community, where e.g. content and modules are visible and editable by group members only.

Configuration and employment of the groups module
Since configuration and privacy settings are based on the general network administration, mixxt users and community hosts will surely get on well with setting up a group.

Administrators can activate the groups module in the features from the admin panel. A new tab called “groups” appears in the menu bar, and a click on this tab leads you to the start page of this new module.

Create a new group
Find a “new group” button on top of the groups start page, click it and set up your first group on mixxt: First enter a few general settings, choose a logo and a description…

… and then decide about the privacy settings:

With the “group manager” we have introduced a new member role. This manager is comparable to the administrator of a community, but in this case responsible for the respective group.

Groups administration and settings
In the current version of the groups module, we integrated forums and images, other features will follow in the near future. Activation and configuration are also based on the common network features’ settings. This screenshot shows the top part of admin panel of a sample group called “Strategies”:

Search
Another highlight – in addition to all the community features – is the search within this module: You can search within one single group feature, but also extend the search to the entire group. This means, you will not only find forum contributions to one particular keyword, but also images or members (and – coming soon – content from other modules as well).

We are really excited about the first implementations in your communities and are looking forward to our customers’ and users’ feedback. As always, questions are more than welcome: Comments are open :)

Three column trinity
We have added the menu “main page” to the network admin:

eine der drei

After choosing this menu, you’ll find die settings for dragging and dropping the available features to their respective destination. It allows you to change the main page’s look according to your wishes. Just play around and give it a try: Do you like the blog module better above the videos in the main column or do you prefer it to be shown on the left beneath the content management? You may always change these settings later on!

“For each active network feature there is a box available which can be shown on the main page. If it is not shown there yet, it is listed under ‘Active features’. Other boxes, which do not depend on any network features, are shown under ‘More features’.”

This new option for configuring your network reduces scrolling down and shows more information at a glance on the main page. Since many users expressed their wish to freely set up the right column, we are again glad to announce to have incorporated our community’s proposals by introducing this new feature

Network details
Network founders may from now on decide whether to show or to hide the network details’ box on the main page. In the main page admin underneath the “more features”, you can find a box called “network features”. Drag & drop it to the left or right column or just entirely exclude it from being displayed on the main page. This setting is especially interesting and important for private networks, where non-members should not be able to see information about the network founder, or the number of members.

Feature Administration
In addition, we have developed a more convenient administration panel for activating and deactivation network features by just one mouse click.

“Which features would you like to activate in your network? Best is to begin with features you already have a precise idea what to use them for, and then add new ones bit by bit.”

Consequently, the features that you activate here will be available for the arrangement on the main page.

RSS lifestream
Some of our users will be very glad to hear this: The public network lifestream (RSS) is no longer password protected! Activity streams from public networks (!) can now be read with the standard feed readers and do not require a password entry any more.

So if you don’t go our for celebrating carnival today (as many Germans do), go ahead and give it a try. Otherwise: Alaaf and Helau from the whole mixxt team :)