Weekly Release: March 24th, 2009

Hi Everyone,

We have new features launching on Tuesday, March 24th!

Improvements to group photos section
Taking and uploading photos of your Meetups is a great way to not only highlight memories about how awesome your Meetups were, but is also great for attracting and exciting new members for your group. Photos are fantastic at tying together the online and the offline experience for a Meetup Group.

There are roughly 350,000 event photos uploaded every month on Meetup, and we are happy to say that we have made several improvements to the group photos section.

• We have heard lots of complaints about how difficult it is to actually upload photos. To this end, we have made big improvements to the upload process to make it much easier to use, as well as increased the limit from 10 photos to 50 photos uploaded at a time.
  
• We have doubled the size of the default view of the photo in your group's photo section. You take great pictures, and you should be able to see them!
  
• We have added the ability for your members to comment on photos!
  

This is merely a first pass. We have more exciting enhancements to the photos section on the horizon!

As usual, some bug fixes/enhancements:

• Fixed bug where International groups could not add new venues from Group Settings.
  
• Capped the number of Yes RSVPs displayed in the "Who's coming?" section of a Meetup Event page to 500 and added a “see all” link to reduce page load time
  
• 2 New topics added: Social Science, Footbike
  
• Fixed the "Learn more about how Meetup works with PayPal" link displayed on the Membership Dues set up page.
  
• Fixed bug related to starting new groups under the topic, ”Parenting & Family.”
  
• Fixed bug where editing RSVPS of members in a waiting list to “No” or “Haven’t RSVPed” resulted in those members getting emailed that they’ve been moved to a “Yes” RSVP.
  
• Fixed bug where links to a file from the “What’s New” section of a Group’s page would sometimes result in an error.
  
• Fixed the broken links on the “Press Tips — Getting the Attention of Your Local Media” ORC page.
  
• Fixed a copy error on the “Upload a File” page.
  
• Fixed bug when using the courier font as part of a custom theme where it would clip the term “Add a reply” within a Group’s message board post.
  
• We changed the file size of mailing list attachments from 1 MB to 2MB (this includes the size of the message and any encoded attachments).
  
• Fixed bug where blocked members were appearing within a Group’s member search
  
• Fixed bug where non-alpha-numeric characters were breaking a Group’s “What’s New” RSS feed.
  

Thanks,
Viviane.

Capped the number of Yes RSVPs displayed in the "Who's coming?" section of a Meetup Event page to 500 and added a “see all” link to reduce page load time

Nice to see the proposed 100 cap was re-visited before implementation. - Well done.

Looking fowrard to seeing new photo album functionality.

There are roughly 350,000 event photos uploaded every month on Meetup, and we are happy to say that we have made several improvements to the group photos section.

I have been accused of being "Snap-happy", but that figure shows me I'm not the only one by any means. I love to show people having fun.

Len

Have you ever addressed the "Reply" situation regarding when a person uses their own mail client to send mail to the meetup group? Currrently, if the receiver clicks "reply" (as we all are in the habit of doing with all emails),
it sends the reply to the whole group. There should be a default setting for this. My bet is the majority will set it to send the reply just to the sender.
Thanks.

Thanks for the photo upgrade!!
OK, I like the bigger picture (and I keep asking you to make the Welcome page picture a little bigger with no response on that since the June debacle)

and I can live with the extra large comments box.

I don't like the old photo albums displayed on the right side....
see example
instead of a nice orderly list, I have 5 albums showing, requiring more navigation to get to older albums.
I prefer the list (of more than 5 past albums please) centered below the comment box. More aesthetically pleasing to me.

my $0.02
Karen

Hmmm... Am I doing something wrong? I go our albums, which have multiple pictures in them. But I am only seeing the "top" one.. where are the others? There are no arrows, no "next," nothing but the first one in each.

How do I get to them?

- Beth
www.meetup.com/triangletarot

Beth, if you move your mouse over the main photo, you should see the thumbnails "slide" up from the bottom of the main photo so you can navigate to the others. It will hide again when you move your mouse away. When you first load the page, it should be showing.

Hi Joe,

Have you ever addressed the "Reply" situation regarding when a person uses their own mail client to send mail to the meetup group? Currrently, if the receiver clicks "reply" (as we all are in the habit of doing with all emails), it sends the reply to the whole group. There should be a default setting for this. My bet is the majority will set it to send the reply just to the sender.
Thanks.

Sorry that's causing trouble for your Meetup! That's actually how the mailing list works. The default reply-to address is the mailing list, unless you're sending the message through the site as Organizer - in which case replies can be directed to you only.

I've switched a few mailing lists to by approval only, which helps. You may want to try that for now. Or, send a friendly reminder to your members explaining how the mailing works, and to *always* watch the reply-to address on the list carefully! Particularly when you're directing a more personal message to the sender. Eeks.

Thanks,

Andrea

Ummmmm... no. Not working on either Firefox 3.0.7 (Mac) or Safari 3.2.1.

The only thing that happens when I mouse over is I get the link to the full resolution jpg. ???

Sorry.. I must be missing something??
-B.

http://www.meetup.com...

Beth, that is really strange!? Can you do me a favor and hold down the shift key while you hit reload in your browser (or flush your cache and reload). We are definitely functioning and tested in both of those browsers.

Nope.. sorry. Cleared my cache; also did the shift reload .. same deal in Safari, still only getting Open "blah..blah.jpeg" in new window" when I mouse over.

I'm running Mac 10.4.11, fwiw...

It sounds REALLY cool.. Hope I can figure out what to do!
- B.