Blog posts by Lena Spegel

Our first Oracle on World!

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:26:03 GMT

I have the pleasure of announcing our first EPiServer World Oracle! Magnus Rahl is the first member to reach this prestigious level of community membership. Magnus is of course a frequent blogger on World and his contributions within the forums are invaluable for other members.

Since Magnus joined EPiServer World, he has made 987 contributions to the community - impressive!

We called Magnus to have a short chat with him.

So Magnus, to become an Oracle on World it requires a lot of time, engagement and knowledge. What drives you?

“Well it is quite easy; I am curious, love problem solving and enjoy helping other fellow developers. I am trying to contribute with my knowledge as I have been developing EPiServer solutions for a number of years now. Sometimes it is also kind of a competition within the forums, to see who can answer a question first and also deliver the right answer. “

“What I appreciate on World, especially within the forums, is that even if it is a simple question posted by an EPiServer rookie developer, no one is answering in a derogatory manner. Most members try to contribute in the best possible way. The same goes for more advanced topics, where the sharing of experiences and discussions on different solutions are invaluable, even if there is no definite answer. “

We congratulate Magnus on his Oracle status and hope that he will find a suitable home for his nice new diploma!

Read Magnus latest blog posts

View Magnus community profile

World Scores for Magnus Rahl

EPiServer World Needs a New Search Function!

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:19:47 GMT

One of the most important functions on our site is Search and we are painfully aware of the fact that it currently doesn't work very well. But this will hopefully not be the case for much longer.

The EPiServer World Team works, like many of you, as a Scrum team and in the next sprint (starting on Monday) we will start the implementation of a new search engine on the site.

We have gone through a pre-study phase and now have a good overview of what we want to do and where we want to go with the Search. One of the most important things that we have talked to various users on the site about is the ability to take action directly on the search result. If you, for example, are searching for a specific download, you want to be able to download directly from the search result. This is definitely something that we want to provide you with, and of course the results need to efficiently give you correct suggestions.

New Framework Design

We will also be implementing a new design for the navigation and general framework, with the aim of creating a brighter and airier feel for users. The start page will be restructured to focus more on the main areas that are most frequently used according to site statistics - Blogs, Forum Topics and Downloads. Our main goal is to make tools and information readily available as quickly as possible to help you implement your solutions both efficiently and painlessly.

Check out the sketches for the new search results page and framework below.

New Features on EPiServer World!

Tue, 19 May 2009 10:27:00 GMT

EPiServer World has been updated today with some new, and hopefully very useful, features for you all.

We have gathered feedback from EPiServer World community users and constantly aim to improve the functionality on the site based on that feedback.

Subscriptions on Forum Topics

If you are a registered member and logged in to the site, you will now be able to subscribe to forum topics that you find interesting. All you need to do is go to the specific topic and click Subscribe. Your subscription will then push e-mails with links to the topics and answers automatically. The e-mails will go to the e-mail address that you use when you sign in to EPiServer World.

If you want to end a subscription, an overview of the topics you have subscribed to can be found on the My Settings page, from where you can easily unsubscribe.

Get Notifications from Your Blog

If you have a blog that is hosted on EPiServer World, you can now receive e-mail notification when someone comments on your blog posts.

To activate the notification, go to the My Settings page and select "Receive an email-notification on my blog posts".

Twitter Notifications on Any Blog

Use the new Twitter notification if you want to follow a specific blog post and the comments posted to it. After creating a Twitter account, go to the My Settings page on EPiServer World and add your Twitter user name. If you are logged in, you can then just select the check box on a blog post to activate the notification service.

New Article Section

We have redesigned the Articles section to make it easier to find interesting articles.

The article list contains more information and you can filter the list of articles based on Most Viewed and Highest Rated. You can also filter the articles by Area of Interest, which we hope will help you find useful information in the Articles section.

Rating on Blogs and Articles

It is now possible to rate both articles and blog items. Take the opportunity to rate the information you read and hopefully find useful. Note that you can only rate blogs that are hosted on EPiServer World.

Readability

We have received a number of comments regarding the readability on the site and have therefore increased the font size and line height in general throughout the site.

Bugs and Problems

In addition to the above mentioned items, we have also reviewed the code behind the site in order to improve speed and stability. We have fixed a number of bugs that have been reported by users in the community.

I hope that you all like the changes that have been made, but the EPiServer World Team is far from satisfied! There are still several areas that we want to improve and fix and we are eager to hear your feedback and get started with the next development sprint.

Our site is aimed for you!

The day I fell in love with the Report Center!

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:07:43 GMT

I was not sure it would actually happen, but today I really saw the light with the new Report Center that was included as new functionality in EPiServer CMS 5 R2. For as long as we have been publishing the software installations for our products on the web, I have been trying to quickly capture reliable statistics regarding how many downloads of each product or module are done every month.

Until today it has been very much a manual job where I have captured statistics from various kinds of statistics tools, or even more manual – counting the number of downloads from the Xforms data. :-(

My colleague Erik Skagerlind released me from the manual gutter today! He has quickly developed three different reports that I can use directly on EPiServer World within the Report Center.

Not only do I have the possibility to get quick statistics regarding downloads, I can also efficiently get information about the activity of user-generated information on the site, in the reports regarding Blog posts and Forum posts. And this is only the beginning… I am already planning several other reports that could make my day. Plans for the future is also to extend the report format to show graphs and charts.

So – the Report Center really rocks! It saves me a lot of hours of boring work and it is a useful tool to keep me on my toes when it comes to user-generated content.

I can only imagine the wide area of reports that could be covered and developed to give more time to the Editors and Webmasters! So to all Editors out there – get even more efficient – use the Report Center for wider purposes than only the standard reports delivered in the installation of EPiServer CMS 5 R2. You will not regret it, I promise.

Some facts

In the report Downloads, pages containing XForms data are found through categories. Downloads made by the same user within an hour are treated as one download and all downloads made by EPiServer employees are filtered out.

Articles about the Report Center

» http://world.episerver.com/en/Articles/Items/New-functionality-for-Editors/

» http://world.episerver.com/en/Articles/Items/Create-Your-Own-Reports-in-the-New-Report-Center/

Guides showing the Report Center live

» http://guides.episerver.com/smartass/players/guideplayer/GuidePlayer.jsp?Guide=http://guides.episerver.com/smartass/media/20081204/54/Guide.xml

Did you know that there is a built-in statistics function in Edit mode?

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:10:00 GMT

In EPiServer CMS it is possible to activate a statistics function that editors have access to directly from Edit mode. The statistics function is included in a standard EPiServer CMS installation from version 4.61, but must be activated separately after installation.

Do you have a large team of editors working together on the same content on your Web site? Some of the editors may be infrequent editors who only work with EPiServer CMS occasionally and don't have it as part of their main tasks. The statistics function in EPiServer CMS makes it easy for editors, especially infrequent editors, to quickly and easily find out if a certain page has been visited, when it was visited, and even how visitors reached the page. This is often adequate information to motivate the editor to keep working with the content on the page.

» Read the full article

Why is it so difficult to start blogging?

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:06:00 GMT

For quite a while now, we have had the possibility to actually work with blogging at EPiServer AB. The technique is there, the air time could be there if I just let myself. But why is it then so difficult to start blogging?

I am working every day with creating content on our Web sites, creating texts for brochures, White Papers, you name it. But why is it so difficult to start blogging? This question has really been bugging me for a while.

I think I have the answer, at least from my own perspective.

As a “professional” content producer, with my built in thinking of structure, quality, spelling, grammar, what should go first etc etc, it gives me quite a high wall to climb. I need to change my way of thinking, and see the blog as the fast and creative information channel that it really is. Sometimes fast, short information is really the king! Not the grammar, spelling and structure. (Can’t believe I just said that…)

Now I really have the opportunity to share content my way. Not the standard, structured way.

So – here I go. In my blog I am going to, at least I think I am going to, focus on editorial issues and EPiServer CMS. So I guess I will be a bit of a cat among the pigeons in this team blog.

Content is king!

P.S. (Do you really use P.S. in a blog? Well I do…)

Would it not be cool if a couple of the 50.000 Editors that are out there in the real world, working with EPiServer on a daily basis, would like to blog on our TeamBlog? To share their EPiServer problems or happy moments, tips and tricks or whatever it might be. We would together build a very big knowledge base and source of inspiration for other Editors.

Dear co-Editors in the real world, send me an e-mail or post a comment on this article, if you would like us to set up a blog for you! And remember; it does not have to be perfect!

lena.spegel@episerver.com