Administrators Pat - Community Publisher Posted March 29, 2010 Administrators Share Posted March 29, 2010 Members and guests, While this forum and our patient created websites have served us well, we've been working behind the scenes for almost a year to create a new robust community and forum that will take our sharing and interacting to a higher level. Much like Facebook, the new Hair Restoration Social Network will enable members to create personal profiles and share their hair restoration stories, photos, and videos. Members can also create blogs, update their status (tweet), create and join groups, and interact with hundreds of hair loss sufferers online. Bill Seemiller, our managing publisher and forum moderator, has worked very hard in creating this new community and assuring that all current forum member profiles, posts, photos and links will be transferred intact into the new social network's discussion forum. After extensive testing and months of revision, we'd like to invite you to take the new Hair Restoration Social Network for a test drive. After all, you and other members are ultimately going to be the ones in the driver's seat. We'd greatly appreciate your feedback on any errors you may discover or suggested enhancements. Please share this feedback on this forum topic or email them to help@HairTransplantNetwork.com Important Note - the current version of the Hair Restoration Social Network is for testing purposes only. All posts, blogs, photos albums etc. that you add to this test version will not be carried over to the final version and will be lost. To test drive the new community and forum, visit www.hairrestorationnetwork.com. Highlights of the new Hair Restoration Social Network: New and Improved Discussion Forum The new discussion forum will offer many new enhancements such as the ability to embed videos, present higher resolution images, and much more. Our new forum is fully integrated with our new social community and one login will give members access to all its features. In addition, all previous discussions, links and photo albums from our current forum will be transferred into the new forum. Though some of the new forum tasks are performed a little differently, we think you will find its features easy to use and similar to the current discussion forum. Design Your Own Custom Profile In the new social community you can create and customize your own profile. You can share photos, upload videos, create blogs, update your status (tweet) and share your hair loss treatment regime. If you have already created a patient website you can include a link to it in your profile. Become Friends with Other Members Much like Facebook, you can invite your favorite members including patients and physicians to become your friends. Your friends will appear on your profile. Interact with Other Members In addition to making friends, you will have the ability to leave public comments on other member's profiles and send them private messages. Create or Join Discussion Groups Members will also be able to create or join groups specific to their particular hair loss related interests. Unlike discussion threads that fall out of public view in time, discussion groups are easily found and moderated by the group designers and creators. Public Chat Rooms Interact live with other community members via Public Chat. Attaching Photos to your Profile You will have the ability to attach photos to your social networking profile and create and share photo albums. Creating Blogs You will be able to create your own blog articles to help educate others or to share information about yourself. You can also share photos in your blog articles. Your blogs will appear on your profile. Video Presentations Share high resolution videos documenting your hair restoration journey by embedding videos you've uploaded into discussion forum threads. You can also upload videos directly to your social profile. Instant Messaging Much like Facebook, you will have the ability to see which friends are online when logged in and then initiate an instant message chat window. You can choose to appear offline when you sign in if you are not interested in getting private chat requests. We look forward to hearing your feedback so that we can customize the new Hair Restoration Social Network to serve you best. Onwards and Upwards, Patrick Hennessey, Publisher of the Hair Transplant Network, the Hair Loss Learning Center, the Hair Loss Q&A Blog and the Hair Restoration Forum Never Forget - It's what radiates from within, not from your skin, that really matters! My Hair Loss Blog Sharing is what keeps this community vital. Please join in. To learn how I restored my hair and started this community, click here. Follow our Community on Twitter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Glenn Charles Posted March 30, 2010 Share Posted March 30, 2010 This sounds really interesting. I am looking forward to diving in and helping potential patients and existing patients learn more about the reality of hair restoration. Dr. Glenn Charles is a member of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted March 30, 2010 Share Posted March 30, 2010 Right on Dr. Charles! Be sure to check your email which includes additional information specific to physician profiles. I think you'll really enjoy the many new and exciting features and methods of helping to educate hair loss sufferers and showcasing your results. Best wishes, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member Sunnycoastman Posted March 30, 2010 Senior Member Share Posted March 30, 2010 looks good. I just hope it dosnt take longer to load up and negotiate around. Not everyone has super fast internet. A recent forum I am a member of recently revamped its site too. Now everything takes so long to do, so I dont go there much anymore. Just something to keep in mind....cheers sunny My Hair Loss Website - Hair Transplant with Dr. Pathomvanich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted March 30, 2010 Share Posted March 30, 2010 Sunnycoastman, Thanks for your feedback. While there are a few more graphics on the new website, I don't expect load times to take longer than it does to load this community. When you looked at the new site, did you experience any problems with slow loading? Also, did you get a chance to test the site, login to your account, update your profile, create a blog and/or photo albums? Best wishes, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member Sunnycoastman Posted March 30, 2010 Senior Member Share Posted March 30, 2010 Hi Bill. I did a quick test run. Looks like the new site will be fine. I tried clicking on topics on both sites to see how long it took to bring up the discussion. Old site 2 counts, new site 3 counts, so slightly slower but nothing that will worry anyone unless you have really slow internet. It looks good....cheers Sunny My Hair Loss Website - Hair Transplant with Dr. Pathomvanich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 Thanks for your feedback Sunny. Feel free to play around with and customize your own profile and/or post on the new forum as a test if you'd like. Any additional feedback you or other members can provide will only help us improve the overall community for you! Best wishes, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member drmstx Posted March 31, 2010 Senior Member Share Posted March 31, 2010 Hmm...I am on a broadband network and it was taking a while to load, but I assume that is just a temporary slowdown. The site reminds me of FB in a way that people are exchanging smiles with each other (like the poking concept in FB) and you can add friends etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member dakota3 Posted March 31, 2010 Senior Member Share Posted March 31, 2010 alot going on there but it looks great! It'll take a little getting used to but Im sure we'll all be able to navigate around in no time! Great Job Bill and Pat!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 drmstx, What pages in particular are you having a problem with? Everything is loading terrificly on my end and I haven't had any other complaints about this. I encourage you to try again and let me know if you have any problems. Facebook is a social community, which is why you see many commonalities. However, the discussion forum will always be the heart of the community and for those who don't enjoy the additional features, they can skip past them and continue plugging away (no pun intended) on the discussion forum :-). Best wishes, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 Dakota, Like anything new, I expect it may take some a little while to become fully acclimated with the new community. However, everything will be fully integrated and other members and guests can easily find your blogs, photo albums, videos, etc. by clicking on your name from the discussion forum and/or by viewing your profile. You can share as much or as little information about yourself on your profile as you'd like, but I'd encourage members to beef up their profiles with as much information as possible. The more you share, the more others will benefit and the more new members share, the easier it is for veteran members to provide them with helpful information and support. Dakota, did you get a chance to login and experiment a little? If not, I encourage you to do so. All the Best, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted April 5, 2010 Share Posted April 5, 2010 Thanks to all who've given their feedback so far. Thanks especially to forum member "Pratik" and "Lynnette" for performing extensive tests on the new test community and making a few suggested revisions. We're currently in the process of fixing these bugs and making a few enhancements to the blog and photo album processes. If you haven't yet logged in and tested this community, I encourage you to visit our new test community and login. Note that existing members of this community don't have to sign up as a new member on the new one. However, you will have to reset your password to login. Remember that the current hair restoration social networking community is for testing purposes only. Thus, once we go live, you will have to reset your password again and make any changes to any of the new features again. I look forward to your continued feedback. Best wishes, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member HairDew Posted April 9, 2010 Senior Member Share Posted April 9, 2010 About time Bill CMS+vBulletin should work fine. I'm running a large vBulletin site (with 120k members) although it's on a newer version 4.0.3. Nevertheless, congrats, this revamp is way over due Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted April 10, 2010 Share Posted April 10, 2010 HairDew, Thanks for your input. We will most likely be upgrading to the latest VBulletin after we rollout the new community. Because all of our import/migration scripts were written for previous versions, it was easier to wait. I'm glad you like the new community and trust that our members will love the new features as well as take comfort in many of the familiar ones. All the Best, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senior Member HairDew Posted April 12, 2010 Senior Member Share Posted April 12, 2010 Right on Bill, the only thing I would caution you is that, DO get prepared for 4.x version because all template work that you have done, you would have to completely re-do as new template system is NOT compatible with old 3.x version. Just a friendly reminder Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill - Seemiller Posted April 12, 2010 Share Posted April 12, 2010 Thanks HairDew. We did some basic evaluation of the new 4.X VBulletin software when it was first released and know there will be a lot of changes we'd have to make. That's why we chose to release the new community first and then work on further development later. Unfortunately, when we first started developing the new social community, version 4.0 probably wasn't even a thought. Onwards and Upwards into web 2.0 :-) Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now