Humble Voice // HUMBLE VOICE

Server improvements (that may break a few things temporarily...)

4/5/2008 at 7:00 PM

Over the next several days we are going to be moving a lot of files on the site to Amazon S3, our Content Delivery Network. This means that when we're done the site should load faster and be more reliable. In the meantime you may notice that a few things seem broken here and there. These will most likely be temporary and just the inevitable consequences of moving a lot of files at once. However, if something doesn't seem right for more than 30 minutes or so then please drop us a line so that we can patch up something we may have overlooked. This process is a part of our continuing effort to stabilize and improve the performance of the website for our growing audience (and your enjoyment.) Thanks for being patient!

Jon

0 comments

Trouble uploading?

3/10/2008 at 11:58 PM

Hey all, due to the heavy volume of uploads on HV recently we ran out of disk space for a little while today. We serve nearly all media from Amazon S3 so that we don't have this problem but we were also keeping local copies as a backup. So if you tried to upload something today and it didn't work please try again and it should be fine. Sorry for the trouble...

Jon

0 comments

Server DNS upgrade

2/23/2008 at 11:18 AM

Last night we took some steps to ensure that HV is more readily available by upgrading to new DNS servers. Unfortunately, the site went down for a short period of time and took a little longer than expected to come back so I apologize to anyone trying to use the site at that time. Everything is good to go now so no worries. One new thing is that we will no longer longer be forwarding emails sent to support@humblevoice.com to our support ticket system. There is too much spam incoming there and is becoming hard to manage... and we'd rather use what little time we have to help you and not weed through Viagra emails. Please make sure you go to http://www.humblevoice.com/support/ instead to get help when you need it. We've been working a lot lately on things that will make HV more stable so it's only going to get better from here! Until next time...

Jon

0 comments

Line Dropping

1/18/2008 at 11:05 PM

Hey, everybody. I just wanted to drop a quick line and say hi, we're still here. Now that the holidays are over and all remaining evidence has been boxed up and placed back in our basements and attics, we're ready to get back down to business. We'll keep you posted as things come up, but rest assured all the those new goodies we promised are on their way, just as fast as we can get to 'em.

Taylor

7 comments

Image quality settings and media delivery improvements

11/4/2007 at 1:04 PM

Last week I offloaded the vast majority of user uploaded media from the Humble Voice servers onto Amazon S3 storage. What does this mean for you? This means that the delivery of the most valuable assets on HV just got faster and more reliable than ever (and is 100% scalable as well.) As an added bonus, I just added an option on your account page to change the quality settings for resized/re-sampled images. This gives you some control over the JPEG compression level that is used for your images throughout the site (which is especially useful for maintaining the clarity of vector art.) More options for your media are coming soon...

Jon

5 comments

Scheduled maintenence

9/10/2007 at 8:32 PM

I'm passing this message along from our web host to make you aware of some brief scheduled downtime for our servers:

This message pertains to the hardware connected downstream from car01.dllstx6 and car03.dllstx5.
The following hardware devices are affected:
humblevoice.com

The network team will be performing a software upgrade for the following devices on 9/12/2007 at 12:00 AM CDT and 9/19/2007 at 12:00 AM CDT. There will be a brief period of downtime for customers directly connected to each devices as it reloads.

Jon

0 comments

Further Evidence of Just How Great We Really Are.

8/14/2007 at 12:29 PM

Toot toot!! Well, well. We just launched another new application that I think you're going to really like, the Events Calendar. You can add and manage your events which are represented by little icons on your Calendar. These icons can be rolled-over or clicked to display the event's details. If it's your Calendar, the icons can be dragged and dropped across different days. When editing an event, you can even elect to have an email or bubble alert sent to you sometime before the date of the event.

Add the Events Calendar component to your profile by selecting it from the "Profile" sections in your edit profile Control Panel.

To access your calendar, just go to www.humblevoice.com/calendar/ or click on the link on Your Account page. You can view anyone else's calendar by adding their username at the end of the URL ( http://www.humblevoice.com/calendar/taylor ).

Feel free to contact me if you need any help.

Taylor

6 comments

Humble Alerts Mac Dashboard Widget

8/5/2007 at 8:11 PM

The new "Humble Alerts" Mac Dashboard Widget is now available to download on Your Account page under the the "Your Account" heading. And look for many more extras coming soon!

Taylor

3 comments

Coming soon to Humble Voice

7/2/2007 at 3:59 PM

We've been working hard this summer on some new features that we think you'll like. Until they're unveiled, here's a sneak preview of what we've been up to . . .

1) Media management center
2) Online editors for media compilations and collaborations with other artists
3) HV Talk - live forum with multiple conversations, tagging and searchable archives

We should probably get outside sometime this summer. At this point, it's not looking good.

Rob

23 comments

Browsing photography and art

4/26/2007 at 5:24 PM

We've been working on ways to improve your ability to browse HV and started it off with a new way to browse photography and art. It's still pretty basic right now but I didn't want to hold out on you much longer. So take a look and keep checking back for many improvements very soon. Get there by following the browse links at the bottom of every page or go directly to photography and art.

Jon

8 comments

We're back!

4/12/2007 at 3:55 AM

So we just finished our huge code/database update. It took a bit longer than we thought but things look pretty good now. Some things are still likely to be broken but just remember these three things if you find something terribly wrong and you'll be golden:

1) DON'T PANIC... everything is backed up so it's not lost, we just have to find it
2) Open a support ticket by emailing support@humblevoice.com
3) Go have a coffee/beer/other vice and we'll get back to you when we fixed it

So go look for all of the fun little features we threw in everywhere. And get excited for all of the really big top secret features we're working on that this update enables us to do!

Jon

8 comments

Fore!!!

3/26/2007 at 2:47 PM

I just want to give everyone a quick heads up that within the next week or so we'll be taking the site down for a few hours in order to prepare for the launch of some new, highly top-secret upgrades that we've been working on the past couple of months. Following this brief abeyance you'll probably notice some pretty cool new features on the site—but just know, the really good stuff is yet to come... soon.

Taylor

18 comments

You Gotta Do, What You Gotta Do.

2/22/2007 at 8:56 AM

Well, they're finally here: Ads. We held off as long as we could, but maintaining a website tends to be quite costly—from the server costs to the pounds of "gourmet" coffee we drink to get us going in the morning. In spite of the ads, however, we do have a pretty good level of control over the quality of the ads that actually appear on the site. We won't allow any of those flashing "You've won ten-billion dollars!!" ads you may have seen on other websites. And just to put it out there, the ads are positioned at the very top because they must appear "above the fold," and up there they're at least out of the way from all the good stuff.

Taylor

31 comments

New way to browse

1/29/2007 at 4:49 PM

I just put up a new Browse page to make it a little easier to look through users on HV. It's pretty limited right now but there's a lot more coming. Feedback and suggestions welcome and appreciated :)

Jon

9 comments

It's official

1/24/2007 at 8:38 PM

Ever wonder if something or someone you've seen on HV is officially tied to Humble Voice? Just check out the user's profile page. They are officially tied to HV if you see the special admin banner like the one at the top of my page. We've seen a lot of people asking whether or not some user, contest, etc. is "official" so here's one way to tell. For everything else, there's MasterCard. (No, I don't know what that means).

Jon

9 comments

Avatar behavior changed

1/17/2007 at 10:51 AM

Avatars are no longer set automatically as the first image in your profile, but are instead set manually through your account. This was done to reduce strain on our database server and to please those member who didn't like the old way. Everyone's avatars are currently set to what they were as of a few minutes ago. If you don't have an avatar set then it will still be set the next time you upload a profile image or can be done manually. Uploading a profile image should never replace your avatar if one currently exists. Please see this knowledge base article for more information. Hope this helps!

Jon

12 comments

New Support System

1/15/2007 at 11:27 PM

I added a new support ticket system to the website in order to better keep track of your requests/comments/suggestions/whatever. There's also a knowledge base to go along with it so that you can more easily find answers to common questions... check it out here. The best part is that the more we use it, the better it'll become. If you've contacted us before and haven't gotten a response or an email with a link to a support ticket, please submit a new ticket so we can be sure to get back to you as soon as possible. I tried to go through and add all of the open questions to the system but I may have missed a few so I apologize if that happened to your message. I hope this helps us to better help you.

Jon

7 comments

Perfect timing

1/15/2007 at 8:49 PM

Hey everyone, I'll make this quick. If you signed up on Humble Voice prior to today, then you'll want to go to your account and update your time zone under "Account Info." After you do this, all the dates and times on the site will display relative to your time zone. sweeeeeeeet.

taylor

9 comments

Email/registration problems

1/12/2007 at 7:28 PM

There were some problems earlier today that prevented any emails from being sent by the system. This will have affected any alert emails that were send out and, unfortunately, people trying to register for a new account. I went through and tried to resend activation codes to members who encountered an error. If anyone had trouble signing up today and didn't have their registration code sent to them please drop an email to hv@humblevoice.com and I'll take care of it. Sorry for the trouble.

Jon

0 comments

Comments

1/11/2007 at 11:33 PM

No more waiting mr./ms. popular's hundreds of comments to load in their profile. It now shows only a handful (10 by default but changeable in the profile editor) with the option to scroll through the rest using some fun AJAX. Also announcing another new addition to your Privacy Settings page, thanks to Taylor. If you're a real grinch you make it so that only friends can leave you comments.

More to come.... Jon

9 comments

Tired of getting emails from HV? Read on...

1/11/2007 at 12:39 PM

For everyone who's been asking you for it, you now have a way to adjust your alert settings for receiving comments, friend requests and new messages. Now you can decide if you'll get an alert, an HV message or an email depending on whether you're logged in or not. Just go into your account and then to the Privacy Settings page. Enjoy...

Jon

11 comments

Attention shoppers...

1/7/2007 at 10:46 PM

Clean-up in aisle... no, but really, the Points Store is finally open for business!! To check out the current selection of available goods, click on the "Cash in Points" button on the Community page. Once you're there, you can browse through our current selection of prizes, and if you've got enough points, you can even "buy" something. Our inventory of prizes will be constantly growing and changing so if you don't see anything you're interested in now, just you wait and keep on saving until something a little more your fancy becomes available.

We've also been getting a lot of requests for an FAQ on how exactly points are actually earned. Well sorry, but in order to keep the whole thing fair we have to remain somewhat clandestine about it, so we're just not going to disclose that information. Hey, Google keeps their search algorithms secret for almost the same reasons.

[UPDATE] Yes, we will ship internationally, and the cost of shipping is included in the point cost. (We raised the cost of a couple prizes to account for this.) On a side note, the Points system is just supposed to be a fun extra on the site. The real driving forces of Humble Voice will always be the art and community.

Happy Shopping,
taylor

17 comments

How sick are you of me saying server issues?

12/28/2006 at 8:11 PM

We are mostly done with our server upgrades but you may still enounter a few problems here and there. For instance, at the moment there's an error on the upload page for profile images. For now you should be able use the link for "Trouble uploading? Try this" on the bottom right of that page under your current picture. I sort of know the problem so by the time you read this we may have already fixed it.

We also managed to find some trouble spots in the code that we're working feverishly to fix. Once we manage to take care of these and take care of one more hardware issue then your issues with the availability of the site should be resolved (knock on wood). All of us at HV really appreciate your patience while we go through these growing pains and promise to make it worth your frustration for waiting it out. I can't wait to fix these problems so I can get back to building the features you've asked for and that we've been anxious to implement. Keep the great work coming in.

Jon

8 comments

Seeking graphic designers

12/26/2006 at 11:29 PM

Want 800 HV points or a free HV t-shirt? Then read on and we will put you to work...

We are seeking some banners and buttons that we can give to the HV community to link back to HumbleVoice.com or their HV profile. Since we have a large amount of really talented graphic designers, we figured we would reach out and ask for some help in exchange for some free stuff.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
- Banners and buttons of all sizes (IE: 88x31, 200x40, 125x125, & 468x60).
- Each banner and/or button should represent the HV brand (pay close attention to colors, fonts, shadows, etc.). Be sure to include the HV bird and the name "Humble Voice" or "HV". You can download our logo using the link below.
- Creativity. Keep it simple and clean but be creative with it!

MAKING A SUBMISSION:
- Simply e-mail each banner and/or button to joshua@humblevoice.com. Be sure to include your HV username.

THE REWARDS:
- Isn't the friendly contribution to a growing creative community enough?! =) Well, if not, for each banner and/or button we choose to use, the designer can pick between either 800 HV points or a free HV t-shirt. Not every submission will be used and we may end up being very picky depending on how many people make contributions.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PSD OF THE HV LOGO AND GET STARTED.

Thanks! Stay classy...
Joshua

35 comments

Aeiko begins the Humble Voice Street Team creative

12/26/2006 at 11:28 PM

Pete Harrison, or better known around here as aeiko, will be designing the first Humble Voice Street Team postcard. Thanks Pete for being such a great Humble Voice contributor - we look forward to seeing what you come up with! Stay tuned for the next blog entry to see how you can get involved in helping us out...

Joshua

20 comments

Welcome back party

12/26/2006 at 11:27 PM

In regards to my last post about data loss: The users who have come back and their referrers should have their 500 bonus points now. If we missed you, please let me know and I will make sure to shower you with the points you deserve. Thanks for staying with us...

Joshua

13 comments

Data loss

12/24/2006 at 2:40 AM

We got owned today by the MySQL server as we finished making another round of upgrades. I am very regretful in saying that we have lost some data (new accounts, profile changes, etc.) in the past 24 hours. If you have lost your newly created HV account, we ask that you take the time to register again and we will throw you a "Welcome Back" party with 500 complimentary points and 500 for the person who referred you (if applicable). Please e-mail us or comment this entry to join the party and get your 500 extra points. Thanks for your patience with us as we experience some growing pains.

Joshua

33 comments

Server troubles

12/22/2006 at 9:50 AM

Hi everyone. I know you've been all very frustrated lately about the issues we've been having with our server. Last night we added a dedicated database server to help with the load on our dinky webserver. We also have a replacement web server but it's going to take a few days to set up. The site seems to be much better already but it does have the occasional glitch here and there. I'm so excited about all of the great users and artwork that has shown up here that it'd be a shame to ruin this great community because of some stupid hunks of metal somewhere in Texas. We have someone working nearly around the clock to fix the problems so thanks again for your patience and we hope to be 110% soon!

PS - If the site is down for a while check out http://www.jonathandean.com. If it's down and I know about it then I'll do my best to post a message there about the issue. Thanks again!

Kiss kiss, Jon

6 comments

Sorry about the ads... (nevermind)

12/19/2006 at 11:29 PM

UPDATE: They were too ugly. We couldn't do it. We took them down in search of something better.
--
I know everyone is going to get upset about the ads at the top of the page now but trust me we had no choice. The site is doing so well that we have to get two new servers immediately and so we had to do something to offset the cost. We're designers and frequent web users so we know how annoying they are but we gotta do what we gotta do. Hopefully you can forgive us. We hope to have new servers running in a day or two so hang on things will get better! In the meantime don't give up on us just because things are a little slow! Slow and steady wins the race?

Much love as always, Jon

11 comments

Server issues

12/19/2006 at 5:15 PM

First, let me say that I am very excited about all of the new and returning members we've been getting the last couple of days. We've been getting so much traffic that our dinky little server can barely handle it. I just wanted you all to know that we are working hard to upgrade the server and do whatever else we can in order to have things run smoothly. For now I had to disable the tracking of all point actions (don't worry your points are still be recorded but as totals not as individual actions). This means that the recent activity stuff on the home page may be just a little out of date until we can switch that back on. Everything else should be pretty good aside from taking a little longer to load pages during times of heavy traffic. Please don't despair! We'll have everything worked out as soon as possible. In the meantime, thanks for your patience and continued support.

Much love, Jon

3 comments

Profile comments, video comments

12/13/2006 at 10:33 AM

It's been a lot of fun watching everyone use the website. One thing I've noticed is that people really like to comment on other people's profile and often have a conversation back and forth between profiles. Since it's been so popular I revamped the profile comments today. Now you can hit the easy reply link above the comment you want to respond to and it'll post your comment on the person's profile you are replying to. It'll also keep track of the replies and provide a link for you to read all of the replies to a comment. I also cleaned up the look of it a bit since it was a little sloppy and not so pretty in internet explorer 6.

In related news, we were asked to provide a way to comment on videos and Taylor's come through for us on that. If you visit the Video page and click on one of the featured videos you'll see that there's now a way to post comments to the video.

Happy commenting!

Jon

2 comments

Non-U.S. accounts, private profiles

12/13/2006 at 10:32 AM

We added support for non-U.S. accounts today since we've had some international visitors and even a few international members. If you are one of these people then head on over to the "your account" page and click the "account info" link to update your location. Let me know if you notice anything funny regarding the display of your location because there may have been some things I overlooked. Even if you have a U.S. account and you notice that your location doesn't show up properly then try editing your location in your account and chances are the problem will be solved.

For those of you concerned about privacy we implemented a new feature for private profiles. If you have your privacy settings set to only show your profile to friends then your non-friends will no longer see the "forbidden" message. Instead they will see a page with only your "actions" box so that they can request your friendship. Otherwise how could anyone with a private profile ever get any new friend requests?

Jon

0 comments

We did some stuff

12/13/2006 at 10:32 AM

A few new things for today:

There is a video editor available for the Videographer's Video Player component in your profile. So now instead of going directly to the upload form when clicking the pencil icon (above the video player in your profile editor, if you have one on your page) you'll land at a page to manage your videos. From there you can go to the upload page.

I added a little "about HV" blurb on the homepage and a fun little rotating current activity box to the right of it. Yes, fun.

I also talked to Tom from myspace and he said that he's buying all of you a Cadillac for Christmas.

Jon

0 comments

Tom on Humble Voice?

12/13/2006 at 10:32 AM

Yes, someone has created an account on HV claiming to be the Tom Anderson of myspace.com fame ( http://www.humblevoice.com/tom ). So far I have not been able to come up with anything proving that this isn't the real Tom. If it is real, awesome. If not, doesn't really matter. That's about all I know but I felt like I should post an "official" statement on the matter since there's some buzz on the site about it.

Jon

0 comments

upload scripts

12/13/2006 at 10:32 AM

as i mentioned in the public chat: "there's a strange issue right now with the upload script being used for audio and video. i have been in contact with the company that developed the upload script but have not found a resolution yet. in the meantime i'm going to set up an alternative upload method you can use if you encounter this problem. check out my blog (there's a link in the sitemap of the bottom of every page) and i will post something when we come up with a resolution. thanks for your patience."

UPDATE (again): It seems like the regular upload forms for audio and video are working again (the fancy ones with the progress bar indicator). Sorry for any trouble this caused anyone. If you still have trouble just let me know and I'll look into it again but all seems well. You can still use the alternative upload form if you like but you shouldn't need it.

UPDATE: there is an alternative upload option for both audio and video if you run into any trouble for now. just click the "Trouble uploading?" link below the usual upload form. You won't have the pretty progress bar but it should work for now. i'll update my blog again when we have a real solution. thanks for understanding :-)

Jon

0 comments

A few new features

12/13/2006 at 10:31 AM

We've been working like crazy trying to fix the problems that our awesome users are finding. Thanks for the help! We also added some new features you may or may not have overlooked. Here are a few of my favorites:

When you go to compose a new message the "To" box will pop up with a menu of the people in your friend list that match what you're typing. I don't know about you but I think that's pretty fun. Sometimes I write messages to myself and my band accounts just to play with it. I also made a newly formatted message list so that it looks a little more consistent between browsers and so that each message in the list is the same height.

You may have noticed when uploading music or music videos that you only got an upload form and no place to edit what you've already uploaded. Well now you have edit options for both the Audio and Audio/Video players for Musicians. The edit options for the Videographer's Video player are coming soon.

Blogs just got a little better too. You now see the "0 comments" links under all of my posts (hopefully that number goes up soon). Click that link to leave me a comment on the post and enter the blog viewer to browse through all posts a little easier. Blogs are getting a lot of new features soon so look out.

Don't worry we have a lot more coming. I don't need to sleep, right?

Jon

1 comment

It's about time!

12/13/2006 at 10:31 AM

So it's finally here. If you're reading this then it should be pretty obvious that Humble Voice is finally up and kickin'. Somehow there are a lot of people here already on the site despite the fact that we haven't advertised it yet and that is awesome. Keep telling your friends! I'm really enjoying checking out everyone's profiles and watching how people are using the site.

Don't be discouraged if you have trouble figuring something out! Look out for the little [?]'s with help information and often a short video tutorial on how to use that nifty little thing it was next to (be patient because sometimes they take a minute or two to load). Also, feel free to send me a message any time and I'll be glad to help. The more feedback we have about the user experience the better we can make it.

Feel free to let me know about anything you like, dislike, or have problems with on the site. At this point in the development it's critical to get this kind of feedback in order to make the best site possible.

So don't be a stranger! I mean we're already friends, right??

Jon

3 comments