FreeShoutbox.net Blog

New design.. again..

2008-05-01T13:14:00.004+01:00

We have tested different designs the last few weeks, that's why the site may have look different at different visits. The one we feel is most easy navigated is the default and can now be found at http://www.freeshoutbox.net/

The control panel is also restructured into tabs to get an easier overview and space for expansion later.

There will probably be minor changes to the design soon, feel free to post your thoughts on the new designs and possible improvements..

2008-03-23T07:38:00.000Z

We’ve seen some advertisements recently that has redirected users, we take this very seriously so now all new advertisements have to be double-blind approved by the staff at Direct Media before they are added to any eFree-pages (like your shoutboxes).

Sorry for the inconvience this might have caused.

New support forum + important info

2008-02-14T10:22:00.002Z

Today we've moved the FreeShoutbox support forum from freeforums to our own eFreeForum.net platform, which uses the much better phpBB3 forum system. The new address is:
http://forum.efreeforum.net/

However there was no way to move the posts off to the new forum so we have to start over, however the old forum is still available at http://freeshoutbox.freeforums.org/ so the questions/feature requests are not lost. However for any new questions/feature requests please use the new forum.

New team members, new design

2008-02-08T13:54:00.000Z

I would like to welcome Victor and Max to the eFree development-team, Victor just made a new design for the main-page at freeshoutbox.net hope you like it.

The design is not finished, the control-panel will be updated to reflect the new design in the near future.

eFreeBlog, and some more info about eFreeTools

2008-02-02T22:46:00.000Z

I now have a blog hosting service called http://www.eFreeBlog.net/, it is based on the powerful software wordpress, go over there and register your blog =)

Also I've written a page about the eFreeTools network at http://www.efreetools.net/

The support forums is temporarily at http://freeshoutbox.freeforums.org/ during the restructuring.

eFreeTools and eFreeCounter

2008-02-02T20:05:00.000Z

I've released a counter hosting service named eFreeCounter.net, feel free to go there and register yourself one (or more) counter(s) =)

I've also decided to use one trademark for freeshoutbox.net and the counter service which is now eFree, I plan to write a separate page about the network at http://www.eFreeTools.net/ later. They run under the trademark to be able to use the same support forum etc. in the future. Freeshoutbox.net is not changed in any ways because of this, your shoutbox will run as normal.

Stay tuned for more releases, and a support forum etc. for eFreeCounter..

Blogger shoutbox installation instructions

2008-02-01T10:48:00.001Z

Here is a guide how you add a FreeShoutbox.net shoutbox to your Blogger blog.

Create a free shoutbox at http://www.freeshoutbox.net/
Login to blogger, go to "Manage layout" for your blog (it may also be called "Template" depending on which Blogger page you are at).
Press "Add a Page Element" shown in the sidebar layout.
In the page that pops up, select "HTML/Javascript".
At the next page, fill in "Shoutbox" or something similar as title and paste the HTML-code you get when logging in to freeshoutbox.net in the content field.
Save and check your blog, you'll probably have to edit the HTML-code and change the height and width parameters to fit your blog, I found that width 250 seems to be fine for this blog's sidebar.

I hope you find this useful, feel free to add any questions as comments to this blog post or in the support forum.

phpBB2 shoutbox installation instructions

2008-01-28T10:17:00.000Z

Here is a guide how you add a freeshoutbox.net shoutbox to your phpBB2 forum (like freeforums.org forums for example):

Create a free shoutbox at http://www.freeshoutbox.net/
Login to the admin panel, go to "Management" under the header "Forum Admin"
Press the "Create forum"-button without putting anything in the name box
Fill in these values for your new forum:

Forum name: You can leave this empty, or simply put the text "Shoutbox" if you want a header, do not put the shoutbox code here or it might break your forum.

Forum description: Here you should put the HTML-code you get when you login to freeshoutbox.net

Category: Set in which forum category you want the shoutbox to appear.

Forum status: Locked, because you are not creating a true forum but a shoutbox, this will not affect the shoutbox posting.

Auto-pruning: Leave these settings at their default values

Here is the forum.freeshoutbox.net shoutbox as a reference, click at the image to enlarge it:
By default everyone can view/post in the shoutbox, if you only want users that have registered in the forum to be able to post, set the forum permissions for the shoutbox "forum" to "Registered [hidden]"

I hope this will be useful for everyone that want to have a shoutbox in their phpBB2 forums, feel free to comment this article or post in the support forums if you have any further questions.

Word wrap

2008-01-25T11:35:00.000Z

Because of the new AJAX function the wordwrap function work again. So long words that dont fit on one line will wrap to multiple lines.

Updates

2008-01-24T17:51:00.000Z

The bottom ads gets ok rates for now, so unless the rates drop the top-advertisement is gone for good :D

Also I've fixed some bugs with background colors and frame-sizes in IE6 and IE7, the shoutboxes should now be able to use any sizes without breaking the formatting, thanks to Nexus for pointing this out.

Ad at bottom

2008-01-22T12:54:00.000Z

I'm testing a bigger ad at the bottom at the shoutbox instead of the smaller top-ad. I think it will make the shoutbox easier to view. Also the ad is scrollable, so it won't break your page if you are using a smaller box.

I don't know anything of the revenue as of yet, but if it is enough to cover the server costs then the top-ad might get removed for good.

Feel free to post your thoughts about it as comments to this post or in the support forum, remember that I have to get money some way to have my 2 servers (and probably more servers later).

More effecient AJAX-function

2008-01-18T13:43:00.000Z

I've done another backend update, now the shoutbox should only be re-downloaded if there actually is any updates (before it was auto-updated even if there where no changes every 10 seconds). So this will further decrease bandwidth utilization and server load :-D

As always, report any bugs with this to the support forum.

Two servers

2008-01-12T14:38:00.000Z

To get higher performance for freeshoutbox.net I'm currently balancing the system across two servers, my current dual xeon for all page loads, and the older server for static content.

As both servers is already online there should be no downtime (only increased speed ;)) because of this, but as always if you have issues with your shoutbox post in the forums.

Some updates

2008-01-11T22:56:00.000Z

I'm currently working a lot on the backend so I thought it was time to tell you what's going on.

I've optimized the server and the AJAX code mainly to reduce bandwidth, speed up the page loads and lower costs both for users using paid for bandwidth connections and for the cost of server bandwidth. There have been a few bugs of this that has already been fixed, if you find a bug please report in the Support Forum.

The second thing I'm working on is different alternatives of advertising to cover the server costs, my current goal is to make alternate ad placements to give enough so I can remove the top Google ad from all shoutboxes. Let me know if you get any inappropriate ads or have some ideas regarding this.

Remember me

2007-12-19T19:51:00.001Z

I've added a small but very handy feature to the shoutbox, a remember me box to the shoutbox login.

If you login without this option (default) the login will work as before. You will be logged out when the session expire, when you close your browser or when you choose logout in the shoutbox. However if you login with the remember me option you will stay logged in for a year, until you clear your browsers cookies or until you press logout in the shoutbox.

As this is a cookie based system you must have cookies enabled in your webbrowser for this feature to work.

Multiple moderators / Delete users

2007-12-17T10:06:00.000Z

You can now assign moderators from the admin panel, those members can remove posts and view IPs. You can also remove users from the admin panel.

Timezones and an admin panel update

2007-12-12T12:58:00.000Z

Now you can set a default timezone in the admin panel which all timestamps is the shoutbox should use.

Another update is that the admin shoutbox uses the same code as the main shoutbox. So all features from now on that is added to the main shoutbox should be added to the admin panel shoutbox at the same time.

Backend updates and a bugfix

2007-12-09T22:34:00.000Z

Today I found that a MySQL query I have used for months could be replaced with a much faster query (maybe 15 times faster). So there should be a great performance increase for the whole system. Also now all shoutbox pages are compressed before they are sent to your browser (if your browser support it) so the latter will specially speed up for people with slow connections.

I have also fixed a bug in the login system that caused the auto-login after register session to be invalid.

Login system online!

2007-12-08T10:41:00.000Z

The login system in the shoutboxes is now online, it is currently considered experimental, so please leave any bug reports/suggestions in the Support Forum.

You can register/login using the + button-page in the shoutbox, javascript is required for this. The usernames Admin & the username you registered your shoutbox with is pre-registered in the shoutbox too, the password is the same as your login password @ freeshoutbox.net admin panel.

There are different user levels, guests are posted in bold, logged in users are posted as bold underlined, mods/admins are bold italic underlined and can also view IPs and delete posts.

There are currently no way to change a users' userlevel (other than that the admin+your username is admins by default), but it will be added later.

Online at the new server

2007-12-07T08:55:00.000Z

The shoutbox system is online at the new server and all shoutboxes should be restored, however it may take some time before the DNS-changes is reflected all over the net. So if you can't reach your shoutbox yet, it will soon be available.

The server config is not optimized yet, but with that much faster hardware the system is much faster anyways ;)

Server upgrades soon!

2007-12-06T14:59:00.000Z

Today I ordered a new server for freeshoutbox.net, here are some specs on the upgrade.

Server processor will be upgraded from 1 X 2.4 Ghz Pentium4 Celeron to 2 X Intel Xeon 2.8 Ghz
RAM will be upgraded from 512 MB to 2048 MB
Network speed from 10 Mbit/sec to 100 Mbit/sec (and more total bandwidth will be added)
Disk space and server software will be upgraded as well.

Hope you'll enjoy the speed increase and apologize for the slight downtime this might cause. Thanks for hosting with freeshoutbox.net!

Sticky post

2007-12-04T11:30:00.001Z

I've added support for a sticky post, it might be good for important announcements, shoutbox rules etc. You can fill in the post from the admin panel.

If you want to see how it looks like, just check out the example shoutbox

Added options page

2007-12-02T11:50:00.000Z

I added a options page to all shoutboxes, accesible by pressing the + button.

Currently the options page only shows a list of smileys but more useful stuff will probably be added later.

I also slighly changed the behavior on the select all for the message box. It should be more easy to edit the box and to remove the "Message" text that is in the box from start.

As always please report any bugs you may encounter in the Support Forum.

Optimizations

2007-11-30T22:21:00.000Z

Today I've optimized various stuff on both the site/shoutbox-code and the server. I hope you'll enjoy the speed increase ;)

As you've probably noticed the latest news post headers can now also be seen at the homepage.

Some security updates

2007-11-29T20:51:00.000Z

I found a bug in the spambot stopper which did that bots could post without starting a session. This is fixed now so the spambot stopper should be more effective now.

Another improvement is a much more complex session check string to further increase the security.

I've also disabled search engine indexing of all shoutboxes to stop spammers from searching for shoutboxes to spam.