Profiles, Folios & Personalized URLs
August 21, 2008
The team has well and truly been buzzing along this past week and we’re excited to announce the following new features.
Profiles have been refreshed with usability and personalization in mind, paving the way for several improvements (both now and in the future). We’ve brought your personal information up-front, given your contests and designs the limelight and collected your statistics together for at-a-glance viewing. Watch this space!
We’re also pleased to say we’ve heard you loud and clear, and … Folios are here! Simply click the new “Add to Folio” button on one of your designs to get started. In addition to your new folio page, you will also notice we highlight four of your most recent folio designs on your profile page.
An important aspect of folios is the ability to easily share them. To make this as pleasant an experience as possible we’ve introduced Personalized URLs. You can claim your own personal URL from your new profile page, but be quick!
As always, we’d love to know what you think.
August 21, 2008 at 2:35 pm
It’s a good idea but the webpages are all squished now.
Also, on the “Find Contest” page, will you be adding back the avatars of the recent winners and the title of the new blog at the bottom?
August 21, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Good idea and well done :), but:
1. there’s a bug….I can’t delete images from my folio.
2. It would be nice if we cold acces the folio from the “my account” page :)
August 21, 2008 at 3:38 pm
It’s all looking good — however, I notice in my wins, that the very last winning design is not showing up in either the recent wins or the ‘all wins’ window.
August 21, 2008 at 4:19 pm
…nice work guys.
*bug report*
i clicked on the contact button under my avatar. my username and avatar stay the same but my name, age and even sex seem to have changed!! lol.
The set up is good but how necessary is the ‘recent designs’ section? maybe more winning designs or folio work up there instead?
Also I think the number of contests entered by each designer should still be there. That way you get an idea of how productive and effective they are.
….just my 2 cents.
August 21, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Great!
Loved the ‘ recent designs ‘ and the ‘ folio ‘ concept.:)
August 21, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Great work, keep it up.
One thing, Could the Folio Highlights be set in order by oneself?
That’d be great.
August 21, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Thanks for the feedback. We’re listening!
@pegatinas: We’ve ‘un-squished’ those pages in IE6 and restored the ‘Find Contests’ page to its former glory. Thanks for the heads-up.
@Carbunash: You should be able to remove designs from your folio now.
@Nadia P: Thanks, we’re looking into the issue now.
@Rich: Haha! Sorry about that. I believe we’ve resolved the issue.
Keep it coming! Also, remember you can vote on features!
August 21, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Im lovin it. How about personalizing the order of the folio pieces for which are viewed on the first page of your profile page? Other than that, no complaints!
August 21, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Loved the new personalize but but what i don’t like is the recent participating contest because I think that the contest in which a designer is participating links should be shown.
August 21, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Loved the new personalize page but what i don’t like is the recent participating contest because I think that the contest in which a designer is participating links should be shown.
August 21, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Great, Thanks guys…
August 21, 2008 at 6:08 pm
OMG, i’ve been hit, i’ve been hit. Alfa Bravo Once….Alfa Bravo Twice….please help me.
My profile is being beauyfized.
General Sir Personalized Link is a great toucher.
Infantry must complete the profile now!!!
AWESOME JOB!
August 21, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Small images should not be resized to fit in folio like:
http://99designs.com/users/96279/folio/designs/1256
August 21, 2008 at 7:30 pm
NICE!!!! great job guys.. thanks :D
August 21, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Just to add to post above in case it helps:
In the activity box, the number of wins shown is correct, however, when following the ‘all wins’ link, it shows 1 number less, and the last design win is not showing up. Maybe it’s getting cut off at a certain date?
August 21, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Great job!!
Awesome update guys, keep up the good work :D
August 21, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Nice enough for its own sake but it doesn’t improve the competition process.
August 22, 2008 at 12:02 am
Someone has been busy :)
I like most of the changes but when I was chosing a link name..it says it was reserved.Then I followed the link name and it was not yet taken? I take you put reservations on usernames? When will you end the reservations?
Plus I think the number of contests entered by each designer should still be there. Big difference between some1 with 100 contest entered and 5 wins and some1 with 10 contests and 5 wins
August 22, 2008 at 12:19 am
Thanks for the positive feedback!
@serdar: Good point. I’ll look into a fix in the morning.
@Nadia P: Hm. I’ll double-check this in the morning, too. Thanks!
August 22, 2008 at 1:28 am
Love it. Love it. Love it!
August 22, 2008 at 2:46 am
This sort of relates thankfully, because I didn’t know where else to address this :-)
Just noticed in a contest that an entry could not be placed into the ‘folio’ because it was a ‘private contest’. However, there is no indication (as in showing an icon / link / whatever) that this *was* a private contest.
I certainly don’t have a problem with not placing an entry into the folio, and don’t have any problems with private contests, only curious as to how to tell a private from a standard contest – if indeed we are supposed to ??
August 22, 2008 at 3:53 am
wow, thank you so much!
Good work!
August 22, 2008 at 3:55 am
Is there any way to search for a designer to contact?
August 22, 2008 at 5:48 am
Looks great.
August 22, 2008 at 9:11 am
What is this, I see after submission that the contests are now private and if you win it wont be added to your folio? Several contest are now showing this when it didn’t say that earlier or when submitting. So is this another bug?
August 22, 2008 at 9:44 am
Wow, I logged on today noticed the “add to foli” feature on a few of my entries & decided to investigate this blog & play with the new features in my profile.
Love it, simply love it. The only thing I didn’t like about it (Not a big issue) was that when I add to my Folio, the new adds seem to fall to the back & same ones are in the front.
It would be nice if the main page ones rotated with the new folio entries. No big deal though
Love the new features, thanks a bunch :)
August 22, 2008 at 10:17 am
hello..pepz
August 22, 2008 at 11:58 am
How many contests have I entered???? Oh no… Where is it at :(
August 22, 2008 at 6:15 pm
@serdar: We’re still working on a solution for you.
@Nadia P: Private Contests should be more easily identifiable now. More information on Help › Contest Types.
@Terry: It’s on the cards (have you voted, yet?).
@Illustration Design: That should be resolved now.
@Ten Dimes: ‘# of Contests Entered’ is now listed on your Profile page.
August 22, 2008 at 6:58 pm
@ten dimes – it’s the first listing under Activity.
Wish it would be fixed though to show only the real number contests entered, not the number of ‘entries submitted’.
August 22, 2008 at 7:04 pm
oops, sorry Adam – didn’t see your update when I was typing my response to ten dimes :-)
I’d like to hear your opinion on the way that ‘contests entered’ is calculated and whether there will be a fix for that?
August 23, 2008 at 12:17 am
Nice update and new features however there is one issue. The new profiles make it much harder to spot CHs that have abandoned contests. You basically have to subtract contest held minus contests awarded and then adjust that number for active contests still in progress. Plus theres no easy way to identify and go straight to the abandoned contests to see what happened there.
Probably jsut an oversight but the promise of the profile system (At least as far as designers were concerned) was that it would make it easy to see Chs that had abandoned contests. If you highlight the awards then there should be an easier way to spot contests abandoned or else its just helping the bad contest holders. anyway I like the portfolio. Might actually use it instead of witdrawing all my entries as I am in the habit of doing now.
August 23, 2008 at 2:44 am
WoW, really love the changes made to the profile.
Only bugs I’ve found are as Maginno says the option to view a list of all the contests held by a CH.
Under the contest holders activity, the # of contests held doesn’t include any active contests – yes I can do maths but I’m very lazy!!
Other than that though, fantastic changes!! Well done to all involved.
August 28, 2008 at 2:35 am
Two things:
I can’t see it, so if it is missing, I’d like to see the return of the joining date of a 99designs member in their profile page.
checkI too would like to see a ‘list’ of previous contests held by a contest holder rather than the thumbnails we see now… much easier/faster to track their history. You can’t rely too heavily on the ‘health’ remarks/point system, because some CHs haven’t even awarded a winner, yet their contests are marked as healthy, which in essence would show up as being a reputable CH where in fact, they may not be…. ??
August 29, 2008 at 12:17 am
An idea – now that private contests are here and the winning entry can’t be used in the ‘winning porfolio’, is it possible to show a thumbnail pic instead – possibly an image similar to the avators being used here or a small box with perhaps text saying “99designs Private Contest’ (or something similar) incorporated into it.. something to show that there was a recent win without violating the privacy of the CH ??
August 29, 2008 at 12:22 am
Relating to my post above – what about an image like this one: http://99designs.com/static/images/unavailable-smallcrop.gif
This way, the number of contest wins would equal the number of thumbs shown :-)
August 31, 2008 at 10:38 pm
I also agree that the link to the CH’s previously held contest be shown and the date of joining.
September 2, 2008 at 2:45 am
good day, i have a question, how can i delete the old contest, they always there :S
September 7, 2008 at 8:25 am
Still no fix for this:
Small images should not be resized to fit in folio like:
http://99designs.com/users/96279/folio/designs/1256