DonationCoder.com Software > UserQuotes.com Web Service

UserQuotes.com Web Service: Initial Opening Jan 1, 2011

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mouser:
The UserQuotes.com web service is a project that I and DC member JavaJones developed together.



The idea of the website is to let one or more people in a group manage a collection of quotes from users, links to online reviews, email testimonials, and feedback comments.

Many websites keep a collection of links to reviews, awards, email comments, etc. that praise their products.  Typically this list is created by hand and placed in a box on a website somewhere, with a heading something like "What people say about us"  or "Awards we have won."

But there are problems with maintaining such a list by hand and UserQuotes.com was designed to solve these problems:


* Allows collective management of quotes/reviews/awards, so a *team* of people can add and manage items together.
* Allows anonymous users to submit feedback form or add new items, but these items are not made public until the team appoves them; gives you control over what items are shown.
* Site automatically fetches screenshot grabs of web pages (with reviews, etc.) and makes a thumbnail image of the web page (or directly of an award graphic).
* In addition to reduced size thumbnails, the site will also grab a FULL image of the entire webpage and a text version of the webpage.  If the review page *ever* goes offline, users can still read the cached original.
* Tags let you organize sets of quotes into logical groups and present them to users.  So a team can manager a collection of quotes about multiple projects, and you can choose different subsets of these to show on different pages.
* You can embed random quote boxes in different styles and themes on your own site's pages.  Or just send people to the UserQuotes.com page to browse.
UserQuotes.com is currently in a *VERY* ROUGH BETA state.  Don't expect to be able to use this for your real projects yet.  Most features work well, but some final finishing touches are really in rough shape which will make it hard to actually deploy for real yet.  But we are working on it, so stay tuned.

mouser:
ps.
Because UserQuotes is in such rough beta state and not really ready for lots of users, i'd like to ask everyone not to spread the word or encourage new users until we get more of the kinks worked out!

I would be remiss if I didn't thank a few people for helping with UserQuotes.com:

* First, JavaJones for the teamwork and all of the support and discussions about it and for partnering with me in it's development; i hope we will have more projects to collaborate on.
* Second, to Gothic (John, the dc server admin) for doing a lot of work to get the server set up to run it and run some additional helper tools that had to be compiled and installed for it; not easy work and really appreciated.
* DC member Krishean who solved a css/html problem with formatting that i felt like i was going to lose my mind over.

mouser:
UQ is really made for embedding quote boxes on your own web pages, but just as a quick and dirty sample you can view:

DC Quotes (layout is still wonky and needs improvement)
http://www.userquotes.com/uqpage?nid=4

And you can test the built-in feedback form functionality and let us know about new dc quotes/reviews/etc:
http://www.userquotes.com/uqfeedback?nid=4

The feedback page not only makes it easy to submit feedback, but also submit found web page reviews.  All submissions are first approved by the group admins for the quote set.

Soon i will embed a quotes box with DC quotes on the main DC pages.  And then i can add some people to help manage the quotes through UQ to help us find and add more reviews and writeups, etc.

GrowMap:
Hi mouser. April let me know about this project on FriendFeed because she knows what I'm interested in and that I blog about solutions that benefit small businesses and bloggers.  I manage content for half a dozen marketing related blogs with significant followings. When you're ready to launch to a larger audience connect with me and we can talk about publishing posts explaining the service.

The fastest ways to reach me are:
 SKYPE: GrowMap
 Twitter: @GrowMap
 
My email address and additional contact information are on the contact tab on my blog at GrowMap.com.

Any members here who could use increased visibility for their projects or causes they believe in are always welcome to reach out to me. I can publish far more frequently than I am currently and welcome quality content. If blogging/writing isn't your thing but you can explain to me the benefits of what you are doing I can write it up for you.


 

mouser:
that is very generous of you and much appreciated -- you will be hearing from me.  :Thmbsup:

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