Site Blog

 Welcome and thank you for visiting our site.

The purpose of Suggea is to provide a place for people to easily create and share their thoughts, suggestions, ideas and more.

 The basics are:

• Category Locations provide a structured infrastructure for storing User content.
• Users provide content as Entries stored in Category Locations.
• Entries can be of many different types, such as Suggestions, Discussions or Questions.
• Entries can also be Solutions to other Entries (and comments can be easily promoted to either!).
• Easy editing and updating, to allow your content to be dynamic and evolve.

Users can define Category Locations as well as Entries, allowing the site to grow as Users define new topics and subjects for content.

Entries and Category Locations are always identified by a unique ID, which allows them to always be easily found and referenced, even if they move within the Locations hierarchy. For example,  a Category Location may move to a better location as the site grows, but it will still have the same ID and be found in the same way, and links or references to that Location will still work.

 For more details on how Suggea works and how to use the site,  see our current Help section.

 The current Category Locations are just an initial set (which we will continue to expand and refine) to get the infrastructure in place, and do not represent any specific criteria for selection. Users can add Category Locations as required to further expand and create the structure of the site. Please do.

 As with any User content based site,  our available content is dependent on Users to create and develop input.

 We  want to find out what works and doesn't work, and what people like and  don't like with the site.

 The current overall format and methodology of the site will stay, so don't worry about loosing any content you may submit. We will endevour to make sure that no user effort is wasted or lost by any changes or improvements we may make in the future.

 We welcome your feedback, and hope you like what we have so far.

It's been over a month now since we started the site, and it has been an interesting few weeks. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to visit us, and to those who provided feedback and encouragement.

 The site has seen an erratic trickle of visitors in the last month  . Overall, we have been pleased with the response of users and have gained valuable insight into how people view and use the site. The following are some examples of the changes we have made based on this initial phase.

Tab Cookies
 We received feedback from users that it was frustrating when browsing the site that whenever you returned to a Location, the Tab setting on the Entries display always defaulted back to Latest Entries. For example, if you had selected Popular Entries and had selected to View an Entry from that tab, when you returned to the Location you went back to Latest Entries.
 We have now added cookie capabilities for these tabs, to allow persistence of this selection. This works for the Latest-Popular-Active tabs, and also for selection of Entries or Solutions.

Show Summaries
 The original Entries and Solutions front display always showed the Summary by default. This limited how many Entries or Solutions could be displayed in a single screen or view without scrolling. We added the option to switch the display of Summaries on or off (hide or show).
 This is done via a Summaries selector on the right hand side of the Latest-Popular-Active tabs, one for Entries and one for Solutions. 
 The default for this is on, which shows the Summaries. This selection is controlled by cookies, which means any selection is persistent.

Inclusive Entries and Solutions
 The Home location always showed all Entries or Solutions for the site, with the specific Location or Locations for the Entry or Solution shown at the bottom of each Entry. When you browsed to a Location other than Home, the display only showed Entries or Solutions which were directly linked to that Location. It did not show Entries of Child Locations or Child Links.
 We added an Inclusive option for Entries and Solutions. When this is selected the Entries or Solutions shown for any Location will contain both its direct Entries, and Entries belonging to all Child Locations for that Location. This is recursive, in that the display will also show Child Entries for Child Locations of the Location's Child Locations etc. Entries for Child Locations will show the Location at the bottom of the Entry, similar to how the Home display shows which Locations an Entry belongs to.
 This is done via an Inclusive selector on the right hand side of the  Latest-Popular-Active tabs, one for Entries and one for Solutions.
 The default for this is on, which show Inclusive Entries. This selection is also controlled by cookies, which means any selection is persistent.

 We made some other smaller changes to the displays and views, but these were some of the main functional changes we made. We will continue to improve and add functionality to the site, as it grows and as we receive more feedback and insight into how it is working.
 
 Thanks again to everyone who has used the site, and we hope you like the changes....

We continue to get great feedback from users, with requests and observations on how the site works for them. Based on some of those inputs, we have made the following enhancements to the sites functionality. Hope you like them.

Sticky Entry/Solution Filters
 When a user had entered and used a filter on either the Entry or Solutions browser lists, the filter was cleared whenever a new tab (Latest-Popular-Active) was selected, or when the user navigated to another location. This meant that any required filter had to be re-entered and applied each time.
 We have improved the filter capability to keep the filter settings between tab and location changes. This allows a filter to be set and automatically applied to the lists as the user browses the site.
 For example, if the user applied a filter to the Entries list filtering by the Entry type of Idea, he can now browse to another location, and the list will automatically retain that filter setting and display only Ideas for the new location. 
 To make this functionality more usable we also added a Filter Clear button, which allows any filter (text and/or type) to be easily removed when required.
 One filter is maintained for Entries and one for Solutions.

Notifications
 A user can now configure various automated event notifications from the site. For example, when a new Entry is added to a Location, an email notification can be sent to  any user who has an active notification for that event.
 Notifications are set  by user and item. Any user can select to add a Notification to items suppporting Notifications by selecting the Notifications tab in the item's Detail view. Currently only the following items support Notifications:

•  Locations: When adding Entries, Solutions or Child Locations
•  Entries: When adding to a Location or adding Solutions, Awards or Reviews
•  Solutions: When adding Awards or Reviews

 Currently, any item supporting Notifications will only have the Add event enabled for Notification subscription, but in the future other events, such as Edit or Delete, may be added.
 Configured Notifications for any user can be viewed in the User Manage - Notifications tab. Notifications can also be globally enabled or disabled for the user from this tab. If Notifications are globally disabled, the Item Notifications are kept, and can be easily used again when re-enabled.
 We have currently only enabled email notifications, but SMS notifications may be enabled in the future.

That's it for now. We think these updates definetly make the site more useful and easy to use. Thanks for your support, keep the ideas and suggestions coming....

More Facebook integration to allow for additional feedback options.

Locations, Entries and Solutions have always had Facebook Like and Share functionality, to allow users to easily provide feedback and share content without requiring a Suggea account or login.

We have now added the ability to add Facebook Comments to Entries and Solutions. This provides an additional option for visitors to the site to provide feedback on content, without necessarily being a Suggea User.
 These comments are provided using the standard  Facebook interface, and require only a Facebook login to participate.
 Facebook Comments are text only, and cannot be as easily promoted to Entries or Solutions as a standard Suggea Comment can.

We have added a new Watch capability to Entries and Solutions, along with two new selectable filter Lists from the main browser display, Watching and Your.

To make it easier for Users to track and monitor Entries and Solutions they may be more interested in, we have added the following capabilities. Both of these new features are only relevant to and available when a User is logged in to Suggea. 

Watching
A logged in Suggea User can now select to Watch any Entry or Solution. This is done using the Watch icon (eye) shown in browser lists and Views for all Entries or Solutions. Any Entry or Solution the User has selected can be easily viewed by selecting the new Watching tab in the brower lists section. This tab will show only the Watched Entries or Solutions selected by the user, using the same filtering, exclude and inclusive setting as all other lists.

e.g. If Inclusive is selected, all watched Entries of the current Locations Child Locations will also be displayed, with the Location information shown to indicate which Child Location it comes from. Any Excluded Entries will not show, unless the current Location is the Location of the excluded Entry.

The User can view all of their current Watched items using the Watching tab in the User Manage section.
If you no longer wish to Watch an Entry or Solution, simply select the Delete (cross) icon next to the Watch icon. If you select to Watch an Entry or Solution you are already watching, the Watch icon caption will notify you with the date you started to watch.

The Watch count for any Entry or Solution is shown next to the Watch icon.

Your
Selecting this tab will show only the Entries or Solutions owned by the current User, using the same filtering, exclude and inclusive setting as all other lists.

That's it for now, hope you like these additions.

We have added the capability to select the Display Identity shown for a registered Suggea User. 

If a Suggea user has configured their account to use another Logon provider, they can now chose to use that providers user identity in Suggea displays. This allows them to select wether other Users see their inputs and content as just their Suggea identities, or also as their identities used on other login provider services. Note: These may or may not represent "real" identities, depending how the other provider works. Currently this capability is only available for Facebook accounts linked to a Suggea user account. We may configure additional providers in the future. 

This setting is configured from the Manage > Identity tab. 

If the Display Identity is set to Facebook, the users Facebook identity (Name and Picture only) will be displayed in all Suggea displays showing user information. Hovering over the displayed user name will show the Suggea user name for that user. Note: Suggea does not use or access any external provider user information which is not publicly available. When making this selection, the only information being used is the configured link between the Facebook and the Suggea user accounts. That these two accounts are linked is the only additional information exposed by setting this option.

This setting can be changed back at any time.

We believe this capability will provide a way for Suggea to operate in either a "Real Name" or screen name mode, as preferred and selected by individual users.

We take User data privacy very seriously at Suggea, and minimise our use of User private information to ensure this. We transitioned our Authentication login methods last year to use only Social Network logins. This was done primarily for the following reasons:

• Simplify authentication support
• Provide easier registration and login for users
• Provide safe and consistent authentication methods

Currently we use only Facebook for this social network authentication, although we do plan to expand this in the future to utilize additional providers.

When we use Facebook for authentication, the User links their Facebook account to an automatically created  Suggea account. We only store the following information. This information is NEVER shared by Suggea with anyone other than the User.

• Social Network ID (Specific to provider, in this case provided by Facebook. This is a public ID)
• Email address 

The User can select to use either their Facebook identity, or their Suggea identity in all displays (see prior Blog entry). Their Suggea identity display name can be changed by the User after account creation (by default it may reflect their Social Network/Facebook display name). If they select to use their Facebook identities, we do access the following additional information to display user information. We DO NOT store this information.

• Social network user display name
• Social network user image

When we link these accounts, we use the Social Network ID for the user as the linking key. Internally we use another unique Suggea specific identifier to track items and content relating to the User. We do not use the User email for purposes other than login or sending Notifications. A User's email is NEVER shared.

We do not gather, use or store any other additional information provided by the Social Network provider (Facebook).