Stuff On My Cat

Hey guys, welcome to the new site! We've got a handful of new features we think you all should know about. I'm going to let you guys explore some of them on your own, but there's a few I thought I should go into a little more in depth. Hit the jump for the latest and greatest.

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A couple of things you'll notice immediately:

On the left hand side of the site you'll notice some numbered slides. These slides will show you, immediately, the most important things going on with the site. If we have a contest going, a special announcement or new merchandise in the store we'll show it on one of these slides. Each slide is clickable and will take you to it's respective page. 

On the right you'll notice another set of images rotating. We call these Shout Outs and they're a brand new feature we're very excited about. An SOMC Shout-Out is a fun and easy way to show off your favorite cat to the whole world. Whether it be their birthday, anniversary, special event, big day, passing, or holiday. For a small fee your cat will be on the MAIN page of the site for all to see. We thought this would be a fun special way to show your cat off for those special events. This is typically prime advertising real estate that businesses would kill for, but we figured we'd try something new and hopefully will be able to keep obtrusive ads to a minimum. Every purchase helps keeps the site up and running. Oh yeah, just to ensure your cat gets seen as much as possible we limit it to only 30 cats a day. 

Let's take a look at the posts:

1. You're going to notice we have two different ways to interact with posts. The first being your run of the mill comments. The same as before, except this time you'll need to log in. Say goodbye to spammers!

2. The second we're calling Create-A-Caption. You know the witty captions we have for each post? Well each one is going to be done by you guys now! Over the years we've done thousands and thousands of captions. And to be honest, we're running dry of ideas! You guys, however, seem to have an endless pool of witty captions at your dispoal. Each post will be a blank slate for you guys to get creative and submit your own caption. The winning caption at any given time will become the caption everyone sees on the home page. Just above and to the left of each image the user with the winning caption will be displayed. This system takes place in real time and is vote based, so you guys also choose which caption is the funniest. I'll get more into this a bit later on.

3. You can now put site images directly into your blog or site! Just copy and paste the code.

4. Now you can easily post the images on a host of social networking sites like Myspace or Facebook. You can also email submissions or Digg them as well.

Now onto comments and create-a-captions:

5. Just below individual posts things are going to look a little something like this. You can switch between comments or create-a-captions with these two links. The darkened link will be the section you're currently looking at.

6. Hmmkay! Now to voting on create-a-captions! To submit your own caption you write in the text box and submit, it works just like submitting a comment. The highlighted information on the left hand side of captions will tell you two things. The green check mark will show you which caption is winning (and therefore showing up on the main page), it will also show you how many votes each caption has received. One cool thing about the way the system works is the caption can change at anytime! Whenever a new caption receives the most votes the system will make that the winner. It can (and most likely will) change several times even in the first hour!

7. The information on the right side will tell you two things. The green vote button allows you to vote for a caption you like, once voted for the button will turn into a grey outlined voted button. You're allowed just once vote per caption. However, you can vote for as many captions as you want. You're either giving captions your approval or you're not. Captions with the most votes will be declared the winner...until another one with more votes comes along. 

Let's look into tagging:

8. I'm happy to say we've now allowed tagging on the site! Tagging images is a great way to track down your favorite posts and keeps posts searchable based on key words users input into the system. Any user has the ability to tag posts. If you see a black and white kitty wearing a top hat you can tag the post using keywords (black, hat, tuxedo, dressed up, etc). So then in the future if there was a picture you want to look up but can't remember the cats name you can search based on key words. To the left you'll see the add a new tag link, to the right you'll be able to view tags.

9. Add new tags here.

10. A list of keywords will be shown of existing tags for the post.

Tabs!

11. On just about every page on the site you'll see these tabs above the main posting area. The site will always be defaulted to the first tab, which as you could guess is the main blog.

12. The second tab is titled Expressions. Did you paint a picture of your cat or have a funny story you wanted to share with everyone? Considering posting it in the Expressions tab! Think of it as an open blog for everyone on the site. It's a place to share funny experiences, images, links, stories or anything else you can come up with. Just make sure it's on topic to the site! To ensure the content stays on topic this section will be moderated.

13. The Community tab is your one stop tab to keep up with all things relating to the SOMC community. Forum links, community FAQs, important updates and other miscellaneous community content will go here.

Let's check out your mini profile:

14. Welcome to your mini profile! While the site is primarily blog based we thought it would be nice to have a little section where you can tell people a little bit about yourself. Whenever someone clicks on your name or profile image they'll be taken to something that looks a little like this. In the upper left hand side of your profile you'll be able to update your profile image, bio, contact information, etc. In your friends section you'll be able to keep tabs of whose your friend, manage contacts, send private messages to friends and so forth.

15. A simply bio about yourself as well as some basic stats about your membership.

16. These series of links will allow you to do all sorts of stuff. See your friends at a glance, see your forum activity, upload photos among other things.

17. You'll have an open area to tell people about yourself, share pictures, links, etc.

We've got forums now!

Not a whole more to say about this one, go check 'em out here: The SOMC Forums

 That's it for the new features that I wanted to in depth about! Very soon we're going to launch our archives version of the old site, as soon as it's up I'll let everyone know. If you guys have any questions email me at my new address: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

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