#EAv missions become available for everyone and get new features!

12/14/2011 By Scott Wendling 18 Comments

Empire Avenue is taking shareholder missions out of beta and opening them up to everyone. At the same time they are get an overhaul and new features. I was given the opportunity to speak with the developers about the changes. Here are the biggest things I drew from the conversation (if you like this article please consider purchasing some (e)PenguinSpark):

Missions are separate from shareholder mail (though you can send a mail alongside/attached to the mission).
There will be a public mission board to see which players are doing missions (however you must still own shares to participate).
The iframe will “kind of” go away. If you link to a site known not to work in iframes like YouTube then the iframe will go away.

Interview with Brad Grier of Empire Avenue:

1. What made you guys decide to add missions to a stock market game?

Empire Avenue is more than a Stock Market Game, in fact it is an engagement platform which happens to have a social stock market powering the economy. We didn’t really ‘decide to add’ them; Shareholder Missions were the natural ‘next-step’ in the development of Empire Avenue as an engagement platform. It is this central economic engine which empowers people to incent their shareholders to complete specific activities and further participate in a global online economy. Empire Avenue Missions Engage and Reward your connections!

2. What made you decide to split up missions and shareholder mail?

In order to expand Missions to everyone (which will be soon, though we really want to make the base system as tight as possible), it became clear during our two-month testing that as more people launched Missions, the Shareholder Mail feature became more cluttered and harder to work with. By exposing Missions to everyone (you still need to be a Shareholder to participate in Missions) we’ll alleviate some of that clutter and restore the prominence of Shareholder Mail. Shareholder Mail is an important tool for you to communicate with your Shareholders and not just related to Missions. In fact this allows you to potentially send a couple Shareholder Mails about the same Mission during the Mission’s lifetime.

3. Besides splitting up missions/mail and adding a public mission area are there any other notable changes or features we should look for?

Workflow streamlining. Though we have a very high average daily time spent of 25 minutes, your time is important on Empire Avenue and, we want youto spend more time doing the things that matter to you. Many of our recent and upcoming changes reflect this vision and a fairly labour-intensive study of how you all use our platform. You can see a great example of where this works well in the Feed / Blog endorsement section of the Connections tab. These changes are small, and sometimes timeconsuming for us, but they make a big impact on your day on the Avenue!

4. Will you be able to comment and like missions still?

Absolutely! We’re going to have the same commenting, liking and subscribing as in Shareholder Mail. There is one difference. If you link a Shareholder Mail to a Mission then any discussion on the Mission happens in the Mission area so we don’t split any valuable discussion. And remember all this social proof of likes and comments adds to your value on both Empire Avenue and the overall online economy!

5. What has been the biggest complaint regarding shareholder missions so far?

We have received great constructive feedback as part of the initial beta of Missions and we are taking these comments and suggestions into account on further iterations of Missions.

6. Will you be getting rid of the iframe?

I assume you are talking about the iframe we place your content in when someone clicks on completing a Mission? We have improved it somewhat and removed it in instances that we know iframes will not work. For example, currently YouTube.com prevents browsing in an iframe, those services will not be placed into an iframe.

7. What’s the most creative use of missions you’ve seen so far?

One member gave away copies of his eBook and solicited reviews via Missions. Another is the EAvCares Charity Water project that’s currently secured drinking water for 31 people in need. Awesome, real-world stuff.

8. Can you tell me numbers about the average number of missions per day, reward amount, and number of rewards?

Heh *lots*. But we’re not going into specifics at this point.

9. Do you have any other major features or changes to missions scheduled for the future?

Filters, targeting, improved tracking and segmentation — some of those are a ways off though.

10. How will the new missions affect earnings? (I know I can’t get the recipe but what sort of actions if any will have any impact on earnings?)

Missions will have no additional impact on earnings, beyond the collateral activity people do when they complete missions (tweet, blog, etc). Do also realize that we are working on how to reward those who create good, well-liked missions. This maybe additions to your Share Price through appropriate changes to your Empire Avenue Network Score!

11. What’s the best way for people to provide feedback on missions?

If you like a Mission, tell the owner! They’ll love to hear your feedback and it’ll encourage them to do more. If you have a challenge or problem with the way missions work (technical, workflow, etc) let us know through the Helpdesk (http://www.empireavenue.com/support )

Filed Under: Empire Avenue Tagged With: EAv, Empire Avenue, missions, shareholder missions

3 things not to do to your WordPress site

12/08/2011 By Scott Wendling 32 Comments

Don’t use Google to find free themes and plugins.

One great thing about WordPress is the availability of free tools to go with it. At the time of this posting there are 1,457 themes and 17,297 plugins in the WordPress repository. However, anyone can build a theme or plugin and there are plenty out there you won’t find in the repository. There are many guidelines for plugins and themes that people must follow in order to add their code to the repository. These guidelines are meant to protect you from malicious code that can turn your site into a spam machine or disable it completely. Unless you are very comfortable reviewing plugins yourself it’s best to stick to the official repositories.

Don’t get completely scared of from non repository plugins. There are some reputable companies out there that offer “free” versions of plugins in order to coerce you into a pro version. As a rule of thumb if someone is trying to up-sell you they probably don’t want to upset you. There are also many premium themes from places like StudioPress and Woothemes, as well as premium plugins like Gravity Forms and Scribe SEO. Most of these companies have been around a few years now and are highly reputable. Once again, if someone is trying to sell to the masses they probably don’t want to create a reputation for selling virus and spam machines.

For more information on the dangers of Google and free themes check out this article from WPMU.org.

Don’t ignore updates.

This applies to WordPress itself as well as themes and plugins. Updates are done for three reasons: add new functionality, fix bugs, fix security flaws. The first two reasons might not make or break your site. However, if you have a security flaw it can be a death nail. Recently an image editing code called “timthumb” had a massive security flaw. This code is used in hundreds of themes and left many people vulnerable. I can attest to the destructive nature of this security problem as it took down an old site I have a tendency to ignore. If you have multiple sites on the same server or run many sites on a multiuser install it can be especially devastating. Fixing one site is bad enough, 10 at once is even worse.

Don’t turn your site into a yard sale.

Ever go to a website or blog and think “this site has stuff all over the place, it’s a mess!” Do you really need to have 3 different sharing plugins scattered about the site, a bunch of of widgets streaming random information, or plugins that replicate core functions with a small tweak? You want people to come to your site for one reason: to hear what you have to say or buy what you have to sell. Turning your site into a Christmas tree can be very distracting and cause readers to lose focus.

Another problem with this is it can make your site extremely slow. Every plugin adds more code that has to load which increases loading times. Some are also poorly written causing it to load even slower than it should. And finally, it’s easier to get conflicting code with a ton of plugins. Javascript can be very finicky if done incorrectly and cause a whole site to act goofy. You might think you’ve trashed your site when really it’s a bad plugin that is just getting in the way of everything else. There are other ways codes can conflict but I personally find javascript to be the most common problem when someone has tons of plugins.

What is an acceptable number of plugins? It depends of course. Some people will tell you 10 and others say 20. There are also people that say zero and prefer to hand code everything into their theme. There are light plugins and there are heavy plugins. Typically plugins that create a fancy display, some cool trickery, or bring in information from outside sources are your biggest slow downs. If you have 15 plugins for sliders and live tweet feeds you will run much slower than if you had 5 and 10 plugins for things like affiliate link management or back end SEO.

What else can be drastic for a WordPress site?

Filed Under: Wordpress Tagged With: errors, plugins, problems, themes, WordPress

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