Beta Release of Active Forums 4.2 and Active Social 1.5

Beta versions of Active Forums 4.2 and Active Social 1.5 are now available to Active Forums Enterprise and Active Social Customers.  Active Forums Enterprise customers that do not have Active Social will also have access to Active Social 1.5.  We have also added an extra incentive to beta participants that encounter and report any bugs that they may find.  Each beta release also has a supported upgrade path to the final production release.  I don't expect the beta release to

What to expect for Active Forums 4.2

This is the first major release for Active Forums in over a year.  I know there has been some confusion between Active Forums 4.2 and 5.0.  I want to clear a few things up and make sure we set some expectations prior to the release.  Active Forums 4.2 is not a replacement for Active Forums 5.0.  Active Forums 4.2 fixes two major aspects that will not be visible as features.  First and foremost is performance.  Active Forums has always been known for

Active Social 1.5 Quick Start Wizard

We are just a couple days away from releasing Active Social 1.5 and Active Forums 4.2.  One of the main goals for this release was to make the setup process for Active Social even easier.  We want you to have your site up and running quickly; not overwhelm you with dozens of module options.   The Quick Start Wizard will provide you with 3 options: Simple, Standard and Expert.  If you select Simple or Standard everything will be configured for you.  This includes cre

What do you think about Google Buzz?

Still trying to check out all the benefits of google buzz.  Since it is integrated so well with GMail, I think it has potential to attract a much larger audience than google wave.  I can already see a few ways to integrate Buzz with DotNetNuke sites and Active Social.  Google Buzz does require a user profile which appears to integrate with other google apps.  I wonder what demographic they could pull away from Facebook or LinkedIn?

New Documentation, Customer Feedback, and Webinars

It’s that time again … this week I have a few reminders from last week and a few new things to tell you about!  First, as I’ve mentioned before, with the release of Active Social 1.3, we have added to the available documentation and have consolidated it in the Knowledge Base.  Ben has added another guide this afternoon: Active Social Login and SignUp Setup Guide.  Make sure you have set up your site using the Getting Started Guide; then follow this guide for public registration.&n

Webinar: Building Social Networks and Online Communities with DotNetNuke

Building Social Networks and Online Communities with DotNetNuke How can you make your site more "social?" Do you want to improve communication with your customers? Would you like to add more capabilities to your existing community? Are social tools a good fit for your site, your users and for you? We will look at what capabilities exist today within DotNetNuke along with administrative and maintenance tasks that you should consider. We will also review what modules and widgets you can easily

Webinar: Getting Started with Active Social

Getting Started with Active SocialLearn how quick and easy it is to add Active Social to your site.   We will walkthrough the setup and configuration of activesocial.com and show how to setup a site from scratch. " border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> Join us for a Webinar on February 11

Documentation, Installation Service, and Featured Sites

I hope everyone has had a good week!  It’s been another busy one here at Active Modules.  As our Active Social customers continue to install 1.3 on new sites or upgrade to 1.3 on existing ones, I want to remind everyone to be sure to read over the documentation BEFORE installing or upgrading Active Social.  Documentation for Active Social has been consolidated here.  In addition, Ben posted a guide to Creating a Custom Theme in Active Social 1.3 yesterday afternoon.As we cont

Active Purchase and Active Social

I had several specific goals in mind when we first created Active Purchase.  Shortly after the first release It became very apparent that there was a growing need for an e-commerce module for DotNetNuke. I found it very odd that people were considering Active Purchase over all the other well established e-commerce modules for DotNetNuke.  After several months of pre-sales inquiries the pattern became fairly obvious.  Most modules could do 80% of what the user wanted, but the r

Social CRM - The Power of Groups

Active Social 1.3 introduced a new feature for you to categorize groups.  While this is a great feature for helping you organize your social groups within your DotNetNuke site, there is still much more you can do with a group.A group has some fairly common data elements.  A few of which include: Name, Description, Address, and Web Site.  A group is also an easy way to associate multiple users with a common interest or entity.  Within Active Social, a group also has numerous f

Active Social 1.3

As I am sure you are all aware by now, Active Social 1.3 was released to customers last week.  I hope that you all are as excited about this release as we are.  Some cool new features include the Social Summary, auto-friend, and categories for groups.  We'd love to hear what your favorite enhancements are and how you are using them on your site! Will consolidated Active Social 1.3 documentation on Sunday in the Knowledge Base.  As you continue to install or upgrade the softwa

Active Social Comments Module

We have been trying to make many of the core components within Active Social as reusable as possible.  This makes adding new features easier and keeps the overall package small.  Evidently I have been doing a better job of this than I realized.  We have made several improvements within the Events area for the Active Social 1.3 release.  One more feature I wanted to add was the option for you to leave comments on events.  I thought this would be a good time to a

Active Social 1.2

We are excited to get Active Update started again, and I look forward to reporting to you every week about what is going on here at Active Modules and hearing your feedback!The big news this week is that we have upgraded www.activesocial.com to Active Social 1.2 and have made 1.2 available to current customers.  We know that some of you have been anticipating this release for a few weeks, and we hope you’ll agree that it was worth the wait!   The release of Active Social 1.2 inclu

Active Social 1.2 Profile Visibility Options

DotNetNuke 5.x changed the way users are deleted from a portal.  Instead of actually deleting the user, the user is marked as deleted.  Depending on your situation, this can be a feature or a flaw.  One thing is for certain, the way it is currently implemented in DotNetNuke 5.x is not a complete solution.  DNN Corp is aware of this and will be correcting this behavior in DNN 5.2.  However, this still means that managing deleted users will be different for DNN 4.x and 5.x

Active Social 1.2 is getting closer to release

I knew as soon as I set a date for release something would come up.  The good news is that the past week has been very busy with new customers and existing customers preparing sites for release.  This of course increases our support demands.  When I see an increase in support requests the first thing I try to figure out is what we can do differently.  This usually involves more documentation and/or changes within the application.  We have been working very hard the past

Active Social 1.1.2 Highlights

Active Social 1.1.2 includes several bug fixes, some performance improvements and a couple new features.  The biggest performance improvement is in the Messaging area.  Previously, users with large quantities of messages in their inbox would experience SQL timeout problems.  We addressed this issue in two ways.  First, we optimized the database queries.  In previous releases, the query to retrieve 300 messages for a user would take over 5 seconds.  Now the query wil

Active Social Registration Wizard

Here is a brief video I just put together that takes you through the sign up process using the Active Social Registration wizard.  Keep in mind that all of the fields you see are defined using the DotNetNuke Profile Properties.  You can create as many or as few steps as you like and also choose fields or groups of fields to display in the template.   Active Social Registration Wizard Screencast 

Active Social 1.0 Feature List

Below is a list of some of the features that you can expect to see when Active Social is released on January 15th.  General Benefits & FeaturesSingle module w/ multiple views - easy to install and configureComplete integration with DotNetNuke ProfileSocial Journal keeps track of site activity.  Easily filter by Portal, Group, User or journal activity.100% Template based - complete design and layout controlUnique notification system allows users to define alerts in addition to sendi

Active Social or Active Profile for DotNetNuke Social Networking

I know there is a bit of confusion regarding Active Social and Active Profile.  Hopefully this article will clear up the confusion.  ------------------------------------------Active Profile only addresses the user profile aspect of DotNetNuke Social Networking.  Active Social includes user profiles, groups, messaging, forums and a few other capabilities.  This will provide you with a complete social networking solution for DotNetNuke--------------------------------------------Active Profile allo

Simplified approach to building complex modules

You just installed a brand new module.  As far as you know, you only installed one module.  You create a new page, go to add the new module...What?  You don't have one module, you have 2, 3, 4 or 20 modules from just installing that one new module.  You only installed one module, but now you have "Vendor X - Module A", "Vendor X - Module B", "Vendor X - Module C", etc.  Now you are stuck trying to decide which of the multiple entries that now appear in the list to add first.  Make sure you guess

Answers to some questions about Active Social

It was great getting to talk with so many people at OpenForce last week.  Below are some of the common questions we received along with answers.Q: How much will Active Social cost?A: Active Social will be available in 3 versions:     Active Social ($499) - This is a standalone version that is pre-packaged with a custom DotNetNuke installation.     Active Social For DotNetNuke ($399) - This is the Active Social Module package for those that already have DotNetNuke installed.     Active Social Liv

Active Social - Profile Overview

One of the common requests we received with Active Profile was, "How could every user have a default profile?".  Active Social uses the built-in profile information from DotNetNuke.  This has several advantages:1) Every user will now have a profile.2) The profile can be maintained in one location.3) Custom profile fields in DotNetNuke are immediately available in Active Social.While relying on the DotNetNuke profile mechanism provides the best form of integration, we did face some challenges.1)

Social CRM with Active Social and DotNetNuke

I have never been able to keep a secret.   I just spent the past hour writing a blog post describing how you could use Active Social for your CRM.  Screen captures showing custom profiles, integration with Active CRM, Active Purchase and an external database, using social groups to organize customers by product interest, etc.   I can't help but get excited talking about our products and new features.  I know I said earlier I was going to post details about this topic before the end of the week. 

Social CRM - Have you heard about it?

Have you heard the term Social CRM yet?  If you search for Social CRM you will find various articles talking about marketing to users of social media.  I have always found it frustrating that the majority of information about CRM tools, processes and use cases are focused around lead generation.  This also seems to be the case with the term "Social CRM".  Don't get me wrong, in most cases you need to have sales to keep a business running and you can't have sales without leads.  However, CRM stan

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