Tech Group Report 2013-03-31

Freegle Tech Report March 2013

Messages 11525-11717

Members 96

If anyone is interested in this stuff you are welcome to join us, even if you only want to dip in and out. Mods who are willing to try out new stuff, test any tweaks done, or just comment, please come along.

General

Edward has been playing about again and done a pie chart showing the amounts in each category freegled. You can see this here http://ilovefreegle.org/ he hopes to find time to do them on a group basis.

Server

Needed a reboot on the 3rd then went down on the 5th for a couple of hours, due to a problem with the London Data Centre.

The SSL certificate which we use on our servers to allow HTTPS connections has been renewed. If you see any oddities about SSL connections, please let us know.

Direct and Facebook

Auto replies to posts on Facebook had stopped working. This should now be fixed and also the reposts from the main Facebook page onto group Facebook pages are now back. (Not the group posts - they cause spam complaints.)

If you cannot see any on your page just go to http://apps.facebook.com/freegle_graffiti/ to jump start them. All groups I remain an Admin on have been done. (Jean) You will get a pop up asking you to authorise for any other pages you may have, but don’t worry, we will just post to the Freegle one.

Events

It was suggested that we make the repeat event feature so groups can turn it off as they were receiving duplicates. We might instead have a pop up double-checking repeat events, and perhaps also spotting duplicates.

Mobiles

a. Using the HTC Desire the photo is coming out very large.

Some improvement have been made, but we would appreciate it, if anyone who can use their phones for posting, will try it and report back any problems.

b .Users prefer apps to mobile websites?

www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/12/mobile_apps/
If you want to comment on this topic then why not pop along topic starts at post 11625

c. People have been reporting not being able to join because they don't use Java Script. It seems that Yahoo have recently made changes which require it. Direct also requires it, and most people do have it.

Points raised and sorted

• Events which had finished were still going out. This affected recurring events only and has been fixed.
• The contact Moderator link was not working in IE10
• The "freegle it" button on Facebook went smaller or disappeared when you post if there are a lot of suggested posts.
• Idle chaseups were not going out. (These are the ones to members who have not participated for a few months.)

These have all now been fixed, but do please report if you have a problem.

Questions raised and answered

Q. My Message Maker won’t allow photo uploads

A. It is there, but it doesn’t work unless you have flash 10 and a decent connection. Try refreshing as this sometimes works.

Q. How does FD deal with spam from hacked accounts?

A. Unless they have a correctly formatted subject line they won’t get through to the groups.

Q.I just posted on my group and it was mapped at 354 miles

A. This was because it goes off the previous post you made which was Ambridge. It will be correct it next time.

Q. I wanted to find the stories on the main Website but found it difficult to find without going to the page and looking for the link. I noticed it is http://ilovefreegle.org/about/testimonials.php which is not very snappy.

A. We have now done a short link which is freegle.in/stories.

Q.If a member has a Yahoo and a Direct membership are the changes to message delivery on one, reflected on the other?

A. No because some people who originally joined on Yahoo might want just the Yahoo mails, some might prefer the FD mails and want to turn off the Yahoo ones.

Q. Can wording on the FOP be made to say ‘ I agree to take at least 12 hours to see what responses etc.’ instead the present ‘a period of time’?

A. We have discussed this previously and most prefer it to be open to members preferences. It has now been put on Edward’s list to make it configurable on a group basis.

Q. I see this automated response, ‘Last posted on such a date still looking.’ Is there anyway to stop this appearing?

A. It is on the to do list to make it configurable.

Q. Can someone explain how the hyphen in a group name helps with search engine optimisation? As stated in the Wiki.

A.Search engines recognise hyphens in the url as a word separator so using a hyphen between the words helps improve your ranking for keywords. ie. if someone searched for "areaname freegle", something with areaname-freegle will be ranked higher (other things being equal) than areanamefreegle.

Q. Should we have posts appearing on our FB page now?

A. Only those from the main Freegle app, the groups posts are still not working, as a way to avoid members from deleting rather hiding them when they get too many needs to be found.

Jean

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