Working through some old Weblist new listing suggestions

If you've submitted a new listing on a Weblist whose owner is no longer on the site, we will ALWAYS get to your suggestion. Sometimes it might take a little while, but we'll always send you a response one way or the other. Our general policy as that we will approve anything that remotely makes sense within the context of the list.

Conversely, we will never respond to a weblist suggestion within the first seven days - we want to give the publisher of the list a chance to make their own call about the suggestion.

Stamping Bugs

Put your requests in... if you there any nagging little bugs that you don't see on this list, now is the time to submit them. I am making a plan to start stamping them out.

Known RateItAll Bugs - View All
	Helpful / Not Helpful Buttons Broken When a Review is Reposted (7)
	Profanity Filter (4)
	Display of Foreign Language Accents (2)
	Display of Quotation Marks in Edit Fields (2)
	Character Limit Bug (4)
	Image Uploader Only Takes .JPG Files (2)
	Cumulative Item Rating Display (1)
	Cumulative Weblist Rating Display (1)
	Index Bug (1)
	Profile Page Tallies: New Listing Submissions (0)
	Rounding Bug in Star Display (0)
RateItAll.com - A network for opinionated individuals.

Tighten Up

Just a heads up that I'm not planning any more major feature roll outs (with the exception of a new widget or two) in the near future.

I'm going to concentrate all of RIA's development dollars on tightening existing things up - making it easier to rate, register, make a weblist, etc. I'm going to get rid of some of these nagging little bugs.

It's time to sweat the small stuff.

Couple of Changes to the Site

Guys, check it out:

- the Rate It! pop up window is now gone from the listing / item page. Instead, there is a review interface built into the page.

- you can now set email alerts for when people comment on your reviews

- There is a shortcuts tab in the header now that allows you to hit pages like Recent Reviews from any page (thank Ridge for this, he's been asking for it)

- There is an "actions box" in the left hand margin of all item and topic pages

- The RSS feeds, email alerts, and MyYahoo adds now should work for individual ratings lists

Please help me look for bugs....

T-Shirts for Sale

Hi All, if you can't wait to get your hands on the new RIA T-Shirts, you can check them out here and here.

I'll most likely be setting up some promotions and contests in the coming weeks....

Tagging Video Weblists

Hey all, let's use the following tag for weblists with videos:

riavideos

If we all do this, we can create a video clip directory here cuts across categories.

Still Having Mail Issues

Yesterday's DNS issues relating to the site have been resolved, but are still affecting our mail server.

This means that message notifications and the like most likely are not working. We should have this issue resolved by the end of the day.

Did you know?

That one of RIA's elite reviewers once sparred with Sylvester Stallone (aka Rocky) in 1976? Click through for a pic.

If you want to add photos like this, I recommend Photobucket. You can host your photos there, and they will give you a snippet of code to paste into your RIA profile.

San Francisco has Emerged From RIA Darkeness

I'm getting reports of various parts of the world getting their RIA back. San Francisco is now one of them.

I am now able to access RateItAll. If you are still getting an error message, have faith - it won't be long now.... the fixed dns information is now propagating around the Web.

When I complained to the nice folks at EasyDNS about shutting RIA down for two unpaid $19.95 bills, they politely explained that they had sent me a few emails.

As I get about 300 emails a day that tell me that "Your _____ is about to expire, please send cash!" - most of them from Nigeria or Eastern Europe - I'm starting to think that email may not be the best way to manage important stuff any more.

We'll be down for about 3 hours....

.... for the dumbest reason ever. We didn't pay a $19.95 charge for our dns - this is the service which reconciles the name "RateItAll.com" with the actual IP address of our servers.

I think we have it sorted out now, but it takes about 3-6 hours for things to be fixed around the Web.

Great way to start the week :(

Wow, this stuff really bugs me

Tell us what you like, don't tell us what we are (and aren't) allowed to like.

If you need to get the adrenalin going....

Check out the videos on Randyman's page.

Do you want to add a music player to your RateItAll profile?

Add a music player to your profile page just like this one with the song of your choice. Here's how:



If you want to add a player with one song:

1) Go to Streampad.com

2) Click the "Web" link in the left hand column of the page

3) Fill in the name of a band or track you like in the Search For Music Box

4) Find the song you want from the results, and test to make sure it plays by clicking the little blue triangle and clicking "play"

5) If it plays, then click the little blue triangle next to the track and click "share"

6) copy and paste the snippet of code into your music field on your RIA profile page

If you want to set up a playlist like Magellan, follow the same steps, but register with Streampad first. Instead of clicking "share" next to the track, click "add to playlist." Then click "share" on the little blue triangle next to your Playlist.

If you don't want your player to start automatically when people hit your profile page, you'll need to change the text in your player code from:

autostart=yes

to

autostart=no

(in other words, just higlight the "yes" and change it to "no")

It's really not as complicated as it sounds... and Streampad has a lot of good bands across a lot of genres.

(if you want to add "Dear Prudence" you can just click "share" in the player above and copy and paste it into your music field on your profile page)

Check it out!

Scissor Sisters

This is a good tune.

I need to take it easy with these widgets

This is getting ridiculous.

For you baseball fans out there...

... check out this clip on Louie's profile page of the Dodgers come back against the Pads the other night.... incredible. You have to scroll down a little bit.

More Ideas for Weblists

TV Commercials are fertile ground, I think.

The Weblist Implications of HTML Embeds

Those that like to get creative on Weblists just got a fun new toy to play with. With html embeds, you can now add just about anything to a Weblist - photos (big! photos), songs, games, videos, audio - you name it.

Check this out - I have a new RIA t-shirt for the person who holds the top spot in Asteroids on September 26 at midnight California time.

And then check this out (and no, I'm not quitting my day job, so don't give me any grief.)

another t-shirt design...

maybe i'll make a weblist and get some feedback (this design got a little screwy when i uploaded it to blogger, but you get the idea):

T-Shirt Design

My friend Brad just hooked me up with a couple of amazing designs for new and improved RIA t-shirts. I think this one is badass:

Want to add more photos to your profile page?

With html embeds, you can.

Here's how:

1) Upload your photo to Photobucket (it's free)
2) Copy and paste the code from the "Tag" field into one of your RateItAll profile fields (not the About me section however)

That's it. Here's a pic that's on Magellan's profile page of him and a young lady friend.

Comment Link on Recent Reviews Page

Many of you may have noticed that the recent reviews page now provides a link to comment on each one. This should make it easier to react to reviews as they come in.

Want to make a Weblist with videos?

Here's how to do it.

Go to YouTube or Google Video or any other video site that provides an embed feature. Click through for a full list of video sharing sites.

Find a video that you like. Somewhere on that page you will see an "Embed" option that shows a snippet of code. Copy that code and paste it into your RateItAll Weblist item description.

That's it.

Let me know if you get stuck.

For your listening pleasure

Just testing a widget from Streampad:

VRoxas Creates a Video Weblist

Check out her list of powerful movie monologues.

Profile Bling

You can now add html / flash widgets to your profile pages, in each of the major fields except for the "About Me" field.

So what does this mean? It means you can add bling. Games, photos, audio, video, chat, voicemail, and it doesn't stop there.

You can add shopping carts that let you sell stuff from your profile page. There's even a company that has a tool that allows someone to call you via your profile page, and they will bill the caller for the privilege of talking to you (this is good for subject matter experts or consultants)

Literally thousands of companies are investing in things called "widgets" right now - little snippets of code that you can copy and paste into other sites to customize your pages.

You can even add a Weblist to your profile page, if you are so inclined.

I wouldn't mess around with this too much yet - we're still working through some kinks. But by the end of the weekend, you should be able to add just about any widget that isn't a script to your profile page, giving you all kinds of flexibility in customizing your page.

I think this is an amazing development. I know that many of us RateItAll regulars spend a tremendous amount of time on the site. Shouldn't we be able to personalize our profile pages a bit?

So how can you find all the cool stuff that's out there to plug into your profile pages? Here are two resources for you.

1) RateItAll has a widget directory. This will be a great resource to get an idea of what's out there, and to share experiences about what works and what doesn't work.

2) I've lauched a blog called Sexy Widget in which I test and review the various widgets.

Check out Magellan's page for a small glimpse of the kind of things that will be possible.

Much more on this to follow... it's easy and fun to mix these web services on your page. And for those who need help getting started, I'm here to help.

If you can't wait to try it out, here's an easy thing to do - go to YouTube.

Find a video that you like, and copy the line of code from the line that says "Embed." Paste it into your profile page in the field that says "movies." Presto, your using widgets.

Talkin' About Practice

Planetary Gear is making his Weblists better by adding video.

AI talks about practice.

Videos on RateItAll

You can now plug YouTube or Google Video videos into RateItAll. Here's an example (click through on any item to see the video):

Best National Anthem Performances - View All
	Marvin Gaye - NBA All Star Game (1)
	Carl Lewis Sings the National Anthem (0)
	Edmonton Oilers Fans Sing O Canada (0)
	Grateful Dead Sing National Anthem at Giants Game (0)
	Mo Cheeks Helps Out Struggling Girl (0)
	Whitney Houston - Super Bowl (0)
RateItAll.com - A network for opinionated individuals.

I'll follow up with a post on how to do this tomorrow....

Some cool stuff going live today...

... stay tuned.

Internet Celebrities

I've been following the rise of these Internet celebrities with interest - folks like LonelyGirl15 on YouTube and Forbidden on MySpace. It's pretty amazing that folks can get famous based solely on what they do on a Web site.

Who would be RIA's LonelyGirl? How about our Forbidden?

World Trade Center

Over the years, we've intentionally left our listing for the Top of the World at World Trade Center up on the site, despite the fact that it no longer exists. There's no real rational reason, other than I can't bring myself to take it down.

I find it to be pretty poignant to read through the barrage of reviews from September 11-12, 2001.

Calling All NFL Experts

RateItAll needs to update its NFL related lists. Now is your chance to get your RIA account permanently associated with up and coming players and coaches.... help us out and submit players or coaches that may not be included on our lists:

Current NFL Players

Current NFL Coaches

Remembering the Crocodile Hunter

Steve Irwin, aka The Crocodile Hunter, died over the weekend after being stung by a manta ray. You can remember him HERE.

Nice Use of Affiliate Links

I recently created a list of tips to maximize your earnings on RateItAll. One of the suggestions that I made on this list was to add affiliate links to your Weblist.

Well, I spotted a good example of this. RateItAll newcomer IndelibleMind has created a list of messenger bags. If you click through on the listing for the Chrome Metropolis bag, you'll notice that IM has added his Amazon affiliate link to the page.

If anybody ends up buying this bag on Amazon by way of his review on RateItAll, IndelibleMind will earn about a 5% commission on the sale.

Get it?

Over time, we're going to look to make this process a lot easier. There's no reason that this shouldn't be as easy as adding your Amazon affiliate ID to your profile page, and letting us add the links automatically to Amazon.

For now, here's a link to the Amazon Associate program.

Ronald McDonald knows what time it is...

If you want to make your own McDonalds sign, go HERE.