Here comes another WackWall Weekly issue announcing important news and changes for the young and growing WackWall community.

What’s New?

• New template HTML and CSS markup.

  This is a very important change so you should check now if your custom CSS is compliant with the new changes. This change is required for more detailed customization of your network and prepares WackWall networks for the more powerful customization tools that are being developed right now.

  Also we introduce improved default network template which will do a better job for starting up. All networks that don’t have customized templates are changed accordingly.

• User blogs feature.

  To activate this feature go to “Features/Layout” page of your admin area (“Configuration” section) and add the corresponding box to your network index page. We will come up with blog RSS feeds and main blog for networks shortly.

• New index page

  as a better presentation of what WackWall is and how it can be used).

• New admin panel

  with one-click shortcuts to all available settings pages.

As a user you have probably noticed that these new things are already being tested live for several days. So far so good, don’t forget to submit your feedback, suggestions, and bug-reports on Wackmasters forum.

In Development

We continue serious backend elaborations including general usability and technical enhancements everywhere like adding appropriate links/tools/interfaces, code optimizations, additional features like smilies engine for all user input and such. Although usually not announced explicitly these things are gradually implemented and come to make life easier for all Wackmasters and their users.

Our goal is to make every WackWall-powered social network website a superb place to communicate. This also greatly depends on your activity in Wackmasters forum because real-life feedback from actual users is something that can’t be replaced with any level of several persons’ insight. We need you no less than you need us.

Now to some concrete things being developed right now:

• Powerful template customization tools and a collection of pre-created templates;
• Network main blogs built on top of user blogs feature;
• Google Accounts login;
• Contacts import from Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail;
• Invite friends by email.

Cool New Social Networks

Miley Cyrus Supporter Club	Harry Potter’s Fans
UGP Friendspace!	Life Philosophy

These social networks were created on WackWall platform with no additional programming, using administration tools available.

What’s New

• Forums feature! Open admin area of your network, Features/Layout section. You will find a new box, “Forum”. Drag’n'drop it to your index page and press the icon for settings. Now you can offer your members simple and attractive discussion boards. First, you will need to create sections and forums, after that your members will be able to start posting.
  

• WackMasters network (http://dev.wackwall.com/) – useful resource for all WackWall webmasters (wackmasters) with forum. Suggest features, report bugs, and exchange ideas about WackWall and its getting better for your needs.
• Numerous fixes and micro-enhancements of the whole system. Perfect software doesn’t exist, even excellent software is hard to find. We don’t really see us stopping improving existing features during the whole project lifetime.
• A new portion of ongoing SEO effort to optimize network pages – means more traffic for your network.
• iBATIS database layer support instead of Hibernate

Currently in development

• Blogs feature
  

• Predefined templates collection
• Easier and more powerful design customization
  

• Admin panel usability reorganization, introducing statistics and mass mailing
  

• Google accounts login integration (!)
  

• Friends functionality, invite friends, import contacts from popular email services
  

New cool social networks created on WackWall

Cat fancier? Come in…	Love
Design	likeapple

With this post we are starting our weekly series of news about WackWall. This column will cover the most interesting events at WackWall camp as well as latest added features and great examples of social networks built on WackWall platform.

Currently in development

It’s been a couple of weeks since the project launch and we want to share some progress with you regarding what’s going on deep in dev docks.

• Currently we’re switching the whole codebase to iBATIS data access layer from Hibernate. This is going to make development even faster and more explicit. On the other side we will perform thorough testing because the change touches all aspects of WackWall functionality.
• Numerous improvements and fixes from the first deployment. Everything discovered and reported within 2 real-life weeks.
• Forums feature will be ready and available for all networks. We’re starting with basic and dead simple implementation to gradually make it full-featured based on feedback from you guys.

New cool social networks

Here we will show the most interesting efforts of custom social networks created on WackWall:

BMW Club	My Anime World
[in]spiration	Wallpapers

These social network websites have been created using only customization tools that WackWall offers, without any additional programming.