Popular Posts RSSThu, 02 Apr 2020 08:33:13 GMT8 days ago UNA team pushed the 11 final release, ran updates and published the new package to GitHub. It was almost exactly 7 month between UNA 10 Acrux and UNA 11 Altair, which is a decent improvement over the previous 9 months cycle. Nonetheless, this is a huge update with systems improvements, design refresh, UX/UI enhancements and a few new modules. The new "Wiki" system alone is an epic foray into the world of collaborative editing and structured content organisation - our first big step towards Learning Management.Altair is coming out at the time when the world has to "socially distance" and learn how to be creative, productive and social through the medium of their computers and phones. Now is the time for building new collaboration sites, community networks and educational portals. Even once the COVID19 threat is behind us, the world will be so much more versed in using online tools. Already we hear about significant spikes in traffic to existing UNA sites. UNA 11 is incredibly capable - in fact it may well be the worlds most versatile community platform now. And so much more is planned for UNA 12. What's new UNA 11 Altair (compared to UNA 10 Acrux)WikiCollaborative pages and content publishing with versioning, markdown editing and support for UNA Macros (embeddable content and browsing blocks). For example, you can create things like:HELP section with URLs like domain/help/xyz with user tips, FAQs, tutorials, etc. DOCS section for a product documentation with collaboration tools.LIBRARY for educational projects pulling together links, texts, attachments, etc.NOTEBOOKS for personal free form note taking. CreditsOn-site currency, which can be bought or sold, can be used as payment method in Market or for paid levels. Credits help to reduce payment friction and facilitate micropayments without exuberant gateway transaction fees.BadgesVisual identifiers assigned by Admins. Can be used to give “verified” status or as “insignia“ that isn’t tied to ... Read more

]]>Thu, 02 Apr 2020 08:33:13 GMTMost users of popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, use their mobile apps. The majority of users across each platform access it via a mobile device, ranging from 80% to 98%. At least 70% of active users in professional networks use native apps, while at least 85% of activity in casual networks comes from native apps as well. Simply put, four out of five users prefer native apps over desktop or even mobile web apps. The native app experience is generally more seamless, intuitive, and fast.It is only natural to assume that a network that does not offer native apps would struggle to maintain engagement. Often, good content or intriguing ideas may convince someone to join, but to keep them coming back, a social media site needs native apps.Mobile Apps OptionsGenerally there are a few ways you can target mobile. All come with pros and cons:Responsive Website. Traditional HTML / CSS pages with some JS sprinkles for interactivity. This approach is simple, SEO-friendly and easy to maintain. On the flip side, pages have to reload full when URLs change and even with aggressive caching browsing exprience can feel “choppy”. Users can instantly tell that it’s a website. Another downside is limited access to device features. The site is confined within a browser. *UNA produces responsive HTML pages dynamically, rendered on server.Single Page Application (SPA). Instead of loading entire new pages from the server every time a user navigates, an SPA loads data in the background and displays it in specific sections of the page without refreshing the whole page. This can make the web app feel more fluid and faster, more like a native desktop or mobile app. Standard SPA rendered within same URL is not SEO-friendly, however and may not be able to handle links sharing very well. An SPA is also confined within a browser. *Out of the box UNA doesn’t work as an SPA.Single Page Application (SPA) with Server-Side ... Read more

]]>Tue, 04 Jul 2023 12:54:51 GMTThe following three "tricks" took me 17 years to discover, but it will only take you 5 minutes to learn. Your understanding of what makes a community tick will be better forever. These fundamental principles apply to building a thriving community, regardless of what technology or medium you choose. I know because we failed in every one of them many times over. And from failure, you learn.    Focus on Just One Thing A community is a group of people united by a common trait, need, interest or preference. Importantly, it includes notions of belonging and exclusivity. A strong community requires unity. Unity is formed when the common purpose is distinct, undiluted and constantly reinforced.   At the same time, everyone is unique in their own special way. People's personalities, their beliefs, ideas, physical characters can all never be the same. Humans are incredibly diverse, each representing unique combination of likes and dislikes. As a community leader, you have to make the hard choice and stick to it. Say, you are operating a restaurant, and these are the locals: Bob, Sue and Tam make up a great Pizzarians community. You start as a Pizza Parlour. Remember this: Tim doesn't belong to Pizarrians, and it's OK. Let Tim be. Don't add prawns to your menu to please Tim. He won't be happy anyway because he doesn't like pizza. If you do, then Bob, Sue and Tam wouldn't feel special about your place anymore, and Sue would feel downright upset. Don't overdo any particular music style. Or don't add any music at all. Some will like it, some won't. It's like adding prawns. It may be very tempting to add a football watching experience to complement your offer, but providing a variety reduces affinity. Suddenly they may not feel like your place is special and "best" in doing what it does. The best bet is to focus on Just One Thing - pizza. Welcoming Attitude Affinity starts from that feeling that part of us is invested in the community, that we have a right to b... Read more

]]>Tue, 15 Aug 2017 10:29:48 GMTService update - UNA 11.0.3 - released today with 73 minor enhancements and bug fixes. This update is considered stable and recommended for all UNA-powered websites. If you have "automatic updates" enabled in Studio the new version will install automatically.The next feature-release - UNA 12 is still in active development. 

]]>Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:04:29 GMT#mobileapps #mobile #xcode #mac #compile #ios #android #rebranding

]]>Wed, 09 Oct 2019 21:51:37 GMTHello!New update 11.0.4 for Messenger.It contains ability to block members by membership level even if they are still participants or have access to the page with messenger's block. Corrections for files uploader and several other small improvements.

]]>Thu, 02 Jul 2020 20:11:14 GMTWe are often asked which communication app for UNA is right for a certain idea and what is the difference. It may seem like the distinction between them is very subtle, but making the right choice may, in fact, determine the long-term success of communication within your network. Apart from the four specific UNA apps discussed here, you'd find thousands of alternatives, yet most would fall in one of these categories - Discussions, Conversations, Chat and Messenger.  Each of them may often do the job for another, just like you can use a tip-truck to buy groceries or an "SUV" to carry construction rubble, but they could be that much more efficient if you use the right tool for the right job.      Discussions Discussions can be alternatively called Discussions Boards, Message Boards or Forums. Messages in Discussions are often longer than one line of text, and exchange is expected to be asynchronous - immediate replies are not expected. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the site set-up a discussion forum may have hierarchical structure or categories of topics. Categories are pre-defined by the site admin, creating the thematic context for new topics.  Similar to Conversations, but generally public and categorized. Pros: Posts are organised, easy to browse and reference. Context is clear and the requirement for staying on-topic may be strictly enforced.   Anyone within the group specified by site permissions may join a discussion.  Public discussions can form high-quality content, generating organic search engine traffic.  Asynchronous posting reduces peak server load. Cons: Private conversations with specific users are not possible.  Spontaneous deviation from the topic may disrupt the discussion.  May take too long for users to post follow-up messages, rendering some discussions obsolete.  Participants are not directly addressed and may fail to follow-up when needed.  Best for: Communities focused on specific subject, where ... Read more

]]>Thu, 24 Aug 2017 05:15:01 GMTRegardless of anyone’s personal opinion about significance of the COVID-19 threat, the word is clearly stressed. More and more people are either self-isolating or are forced to stay at home and reduce physical social interaction. Businesses are suffering, stock markets collapsing and there is no end in sight. Or, perhaps, ”the end“ is not so much about the pandemic itself, but rather about accepting this virus as one of many illnesses our bodies are meant to deal with - yet another thing to be conscious of and that’s it. Perhaps, once we simply make friends with the idea that we have yet another reason to wash hands and eat healthy food, the whole hysteria would subside and we’d be able to move on, business as usual. Anyhow, in the meantime, while the fear of anti-utopian collapse of human socially is gripping is firmly, we must look at what it may likely mean for UNA platform development, business operatioms and most importantly - what it would mean for UNA webmasters running niche community sites. UNA DevOpsUNA is a private, bootstrapped company. We have no VC backing or corporate sponsors, so we have to make ends meet every month, in part by way of selling licenses and in part by providing custom implementation services. Naturally, if our clients become overly stressed financially we may have to wind down to some extent too. On the other hand, we are gradually coming to the point where the platform matures and with v11 we should have even better offering all around. We have a number of active ongoing projects, there new ones lining up and the interest is stronger than ever.Furthermore, after UNA Altair (v11) final release we plan to switch to follow-up updates mode for a while to make the platform faster, more stable, more consistent - focusing on minor evolutionary improvements rather than huge new modules. This will gives us some breathing room to work on custom implementations more as well, and thus stay consistently profitable. In short, we wil... Read more

]]>Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:10:30 GMTWho doesn't love a good whistleblower? Especially when they are spilling the dirt on our mates at Facebook. It is concerning stuff, Haugen’s document dump revealed what many suspected but couldn’t prove: that Facebook created more lenient secret rules for elite users, that Instagram made body issues worse for one in three teen girls, and that Facebook knowingly amped up outrage on its main site through an algorithm change in 2018, potentially leading to the January 6 storming of the US Capitol building. Her suggestion is greater transparency, with external observers and more investment toward internal guidance, looking to minimise harm as a highest priority. 

]]>Tue, 05 Oct 2021 03:33:02 GMTUNA 13 Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 now available for download with hundreds of fixes and improvements. Please, note that this is NOT A PRODUCTION-READY release and it recommended for testing and pre-production sites only. If you choose to use it, switch to Beta-channel in UNA Studio and both updates will become available automatically.We decided to release early builds now to keep UNA community informed and to allow time for developers to update/adapt their modules. UNA 13 and UNA 14 updates are planned to become two parts of a year-long UX-overhaul mission. We decided to go through every module, page, setting, language key... and revamp user-experience. The recent switch to TailwindCSS for styling prompted us to review everything and unify the UX of all the UNA's 80+ modules.More on this in the video below:What's new in UNA 13 Alpha 1New modules:Artificer #3399Streams #2331Help Tours #3393Donations #3275System Enhancements:Quill editor was added instead of TinyMCE as default system editor #3252Standalone system Embeds provider #2773More extended permissions control for Roles in group based modules #3332Help links for form fields and blocks #3385Page blocks cache #3369Admin dashboard improvements #3252Reports Dashboard enhancements #3508 #3496Audit enhancements #3502Admin notes for different content #3283Separate membership action to 'delete all content' #3269Menus: allow to use inline SVG and Emoji in Icons #3530Menus: add possibility to mark a menu item as Primary #3514Menus: independent hierarchy(multilevel) #2637Emoji are now used in reactions #3535Logging for transcoder which should help to identify issues with transcoding #3544Transcoding queue now checks if video is really processing, before process could be just ended unexpectedly and stayed in the queue (works in linux only) #3546Cron job now record last run time, how long did it take, how much memory to run for each cron job and logger #3268New block similar to current Profile Stats block #3467New block with site ... Read more

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