If you haven't already noticed we launched a BRAND NEW Embeddable Message Forum Service!

A forum is an online message board where your site visitors can post messages and reply to messages. It is a great way to build traffic for your website and have people return over and over to communicate with new friends.

We have created an awesome demo Message Forum for you to see the new Forum in action! Have fun, post, and check out all the new features on our forum demo at myawesomeforum.com!

The new Embeddable Message Forum comes with tons of new awesome features.

  It's Embeddable!
You can now embed the forum directly on your site. Like the Guestbook and Photo Album the Message Forum can be embedded directly into ANY website! When you are in the Service Manager, simply click the 'Get Code' button in the top right and grab the Embedded Copy/Paste Code.

  Multiple Categories!
Now you can put multiple forums into separate categories. To add categories, login to your Service Manager and click the 'Forum Manager' button on the left and there you will see the 'Category Manager'. Note: Your categories will not display on your board until you place a forum into each category. You can also sort the order of your categories as seen below.

  Multiple Forums
Forums contain message threads and their replies. Now you can add more than one forum in your account! To create your forums, again, in the Service Manager, click the 'Forum Manager' button and there you will see how to manage and create new forums. Remember you can place forums into categories to break the board up into sections.

For example, you can have a sports category and then have forums for football, soccer, hockey, etc. Or you could have a category specifically for hockey and have forums for all your favorite hockey teams.

  Avatars
When posting you can now add an avatar image to identify yourself. Every time you post, your Avatar will be along-side your message. If you need a place to store your images, remember you can use either Bravenet Hosting or Bravenet Photo Album for image storage.

  Quoting Replies
Now, you can either "Reply" to a post, or you can alternatively "Quote" a previous post. This will include a portion of the original message in order to better indicate the message you are referencing.

  Edit/Delete Ability for Posters
Now, anyone that posts in your forum can, for one hour, edit or delete their own posts. A much requested feature from our members.

  Added Search features
Now you can search based on keywords in a post and search by author to see all of their posts. Additionally, forum owners, when logged in, can search by IP address in order to locate posts from the same computer.

  Date and Time Display Options
The date display is now customizable. You can choose to show the current date and time, or you can show the elapsed time since the post was made… example: "posted 1 hour ago". To change this setting, from your Service Manager, click the 'General Settings' buttons on the left and then select the 'Display' tab. If you wish to change the time zone of your Message Forum you may do so by clicking 'Edit Info' from the main Bravenet account page.

  New Status Icons
Be sure to select the best Status Icon Set for your forum look! These will be displayed to indicate whether a forum is Open, Hot, Locked, Private, or contains New messages. You can choose your Status Icon Set by clicking the orange button that says 'edit forum styles' when editing your forum.

  BBCode support
Like most other forums out there, the Bravenet Forum now accepts BBCode (Bulletin Board Code).

Here are just a few simple examples of BBCode:

[b]bolded text[/b]

[i]italicized text[/i]

[u]underlined text[/u]

[url]http://example.org[/url]

[url=http://example.com]Example[/url]

[img]http://imageurl.png[/img]

[quote]quoted text[/quote]

[color=red]This is sample red text[/color]

In addition to BBCode, your forum still supports HTML if you so choose.

  Lots More Coming Soon!

We have even more exciting forum updates planned for the future. One thing we are working on is User Registration, which will allow you to turn on a user registration system. In other words, users can register and make accounts to post on your forums. When this feature is added it will be optional of course. In addition, we are going to cater to Wireless/Mobile phones. Once completed, you will be able to access and post from your iPhone or Blackberry!

As some of you have noticed, we are still ironing out a few minor bumps and kinks in the new message forum. You will see it improve in speed and functionality over the coming weeks.

And please, if you are having any problems or notice any new bugs with your new message forum, please contact our support department.

We are really proud of our New Bravenet Message Forum and hope you give it a try. It really is a great tool for building traffic to your website. And of course, it is a great way to make new friends and meet people with similar interests. You’ll build your own community in no time!

Sign up for your Message Forum today!

Bravenet Hosting is now better than ever! Last month we told you all we had some exciting news coming, and here it is:

NEW! - Now all Bravenet Professional Hosting Members receive, at no extra cost, ALL Bravenet Web Tools completely AD-FREE!

That's right, every single web tool - Guestbook, Blog, Forum, Photo Album, and more - with no advertising!

Yep - that's Hosting with all Ad-Free web tools for as little as $4.99 per month, WOW!

Start growing your business now with our Mailing Lists, Email Forms, Web Polls, Hit Counter and more. If you are not already a professional hosting member you can sign up here. Existing members log in and start enjoying your ad-free web tools immediately!

Don't forget, as a professional hosting member, you also receive:
up to $275 in free advertising credits to build traffic to your site
exclusive to Bravenet -- Free web embedded Talking Characters
and full access to the Bravenet Template Gallery!

Click here to Sign up for Professional Hosting
and take advantage of all the extras Bravenet has to offer!

Reply to a Guestbook Post!
With the new addition of comments to the Photo Album service, we have looked at what other services may take advantage of the comments system. We have heard from many members that they wanted a way to reply to a Guestbook post and so we have added this feature! We have added the ability to reply to individual guestbook posts.

How it Looks
We have added two links below each Guestbook Post: 'replies (2)', and 'post a reply'. Clicking on replies (2) will display two replies that have been made for the post that the links are associated with. The digit is the number of replies made to that particular post. If no replies exist for a particular guestbook post, then only the link 'be first to reply' will be displayed.

Now you can easily carry on conversations with particular visitors of your Bravenet Guestbook without having to navigate through all the pages.

Sign up for your Guestbook now!

Previously we told you about our brand new Photo Album service - since then, we have made some improvements to the service.

Comments - You and your viewers can now comment on your favorite photos! To modify your comment settings click 'General Settings' and the 'Comments' tab. See the comments in action here.

Full Screen Mode - This allows you to configure your slideshow to open photos in a lightbox where the images are not cropped. However, if the image is larger than your screen resolution, it will be scaled to fit the page.

Panning/Fading - We have made tweaks to the Panning and Fading option to make the animation a little smoother than previous versions.

Cropped Slideshow Settings - For Panning/Fading or Fade slideshows, the visitor may toggle between the types by clicking the new 'settings' link outputted when the slideshow is started. This is not included in the Full-screen version.

Speed Adjustments - We have made minor speed adjustments to Cropped (Panning/Fading and Fade Only) slideshows.

Link to Photo Feature - We have added a new link included with the Tell a Friend and Email Photo links that will allow your visitor to copy URLS to either the photo or the photo page they are currently viewing. This option is disabled when you turn on "Disable Right Click".

Sign up for your Photo Album now!

JUST A REMINDER!

Both the Guestbook and Photo Album are now fully embeddable onto any webpage! If you need hosting, be sure to check out our affordable hosting package. Sign up for a year, save $45 and get a free domain name! Sign up now.

The article below will teach you how to create a Picture Frame for your Photo Album pictures!

You can create a picture frame for your photos by setting a background color and/or image.

To create a picture frame select an album from your service manger.

Click the 'edit frame' button located above the thumbnails.

Create a frame with just background colors by entering a color for your frame and/or matte, enter a width and hit 'save.'

For this picture frame I used:

Frame Background Color: #000000      Frame Width: 10
Matte Background Color: #ffffff          Matte Width: 5

You can also make a picture frame using background images. You will need to create or find two images that you would l ike to use.

I have created two images, feel free to use them (right click and save as).      

Using the 'Background image' option we will set our images.

1. Upload your image: Click the 'image picker' link to open the Bravenet Image Picker.
2. Select 'Upload New Image' on the left. After uploading your image, select it from the list and then click 'use this image.'

Follow steps 1 and 2 for both your frame and matte images. Set your widths and hit save.

NOTE: Frame Borders are a thin black lines that appear around your frame and matte and can be turned on and off.

View the Photo Album Demo!

We are very excited to announce that we have launched a new Photo Album service!! Following in the footsteps of the Embeddable Guestbook the new Photo Album is also embeddable and sports an all new – easy to use – service manager.

That's right! You can now place your Photo Album RIGHT onto your very own web page! Not only is it now embeddable but we have also added TONS of new features AND upped your storage limits!

New Embeddable Photo Album Features

  Embeddable – copy and paste right into any web page.

  New Manger/Builder – similar to the one in the new Guestbook; edit/make changes and watch them take effect instantly.

  Multi-Photo Uploader – you can now upload multi photos with a single click of a button. Best of all, they upload super fast! To upload photos click the 'Upload Photos' button, select the album you wish to upload to and click 'continue'. Click the 'select photos' button, navigate to your photos. Using shift click or alt click select the photos you wish to upload hit 'open' and watch your photos upload before your eyes!

  Increased Limits – we have increased the photo album limits so you have more room to try out all these features! You can now upload 5 times more photos!

  More Customizable – You can now change the width, colors and choose icons for your photo album. To change your icons click 'edit navigation.'

  Easy Photo Management – we have stream-lined the editing and deleting of your photos. You can easily edit and delete photos in an album when you are logged in.

  Picture Frames - create picture frames around your photos. You can set a matte and a frame.

  Themes – pre-built themes to get your photo album set up quickly. You can change your theme at any time by clicking 'Theme Picker.'

  Album Covers – albums now have covers or 'album art.' Album covers use the first photo displayed in your album.

  Easy Navigation – along with the slide show we have added 'Prev' and 'Next' links so you can easily jump from photo to photo.

  Slideshow – when viewing a photo there is now a slideshow option at the top. his feature automatically rotates your photos and will continue to play until you hit stop.

  Layouts – we have created even more layouts for customizing your photo album. To change your layout click the orange 'edit page' button found near the top of your service manager. Select the second tab 'Layout.' Here you can change your entries per page, album width and select a different layout.

  More Photos per Page – you can now have up to 99 photos per page! This is more than 5 times what it used to be.

And on top of all these new features we still have the old great features such as: emailing photos, tell a friend about your photos, the ability to display right click, user albums and more. All of these settings can be found under 'General Settings.'

Sign up for the new Photo Album Now!

The New Embeddable Guestbook with the cool new inline editor is now live and in Beta. Please log into your guestbook and check out the options! We're still working things out as we move along here, but its in open Beta for all you guys to try out! Let us know what you think.

http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/guestbook/

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's day, and get to spend it with that special someone in your life.

Also hope all your members out there caught the latest members update newsletter with the screenshots of the new guestbook manager! We've been working hard to try and get you this new updated service as soon as possible.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

The new Lunar year starts today, and this year is the year of the Rat. Hope all is well with our Bravenet Journal/Blog users out there!

Hi Guys!

Andrea has left the company, so she won't be updating the blog anymore. But I'm here to do that now! We wish her well in her future endeavours.

Lots of really exciting things happening here are Bravenet. We will be looking at revamping several tools and the flow of the registration and several other items over the next few months. Hope you guys are as excited as we are!

Hope you all had a great Holiday Season and New Years!