The LIVESTRONG.COM Blog

Last night, we rolled out a few new fixes to the site. I’m especially pleased that we were able to address a few niggling glitches that, although small, were major annoyances for some of you!

• When writing in your diaries on The Daily Plate, many of you noted that your apostrophes and quotation marks could get mangled. This will no longer happen! 
• We’ve made a variety of UI fixes and enhancements to the new “Lance” tab, where you can keep up with our advisor Lance Armstrong as he trains and continues his worldwide cancer awareness campaign.
• Group names are now alphabetized on your profile, so that it’s easier to find the exact one you’re looking for.

Our developers have been working as hard as ever, and last night they rolled out our biggest release since launch, containing dozens of fixes, features, and improvements. Here’s a sampling:

1. Better Group categorization. Now, when browsing groups, you can drill down by category into subcategories.

2. Better MyPlate layout. We’ve improved the layout for those of you who use The Daily Plate to track the foods you eat each day. By removing an ad, we’ve gotten the important data you care about higher up on the page. More improvements for that page are in store!

3. Fix for profile links from Forums. There had been a glitch with linking from usernames on the forums to a member’s profile. That has been fixed.

4. Vitamin / supplement page improvements. Some links from those pages hadn’t been working properly; they now are.

5. Increased limit for length of Group posts. Some members wished they could write longer missives in Group blogs and comments. We’ve upped the limit on post-size by a big margin. Write away!

6. Search improvements. You’ve no doubt realized that LIVESTRONG.COM has simply tons of content. We discovered not all of our article categories were appearing in search results when you search the site with that bar at the top. That’s now corrected!

7. Video player refinements. We’ve tweaked the video player we use on the site to make it a bit sleeker.

8. WYSIWYG text editor for Groups. WYSI-what now? Don’t worry, some of our own staffers didn’t know that term. It stands for “What You See Is What You Get,” and it refers to a fancier text editor that resembles Microsoft Word. That’ll make posting in Groups even easier, since you can use nice formatting without needing to know a lick of HTML. (Note that our current WYSIWYG editor doesn’t work in all browsers. If your browser doesn’t support it, you’ll just see a regular text entry box.)

UPDATE: There had been an issue with posting replies to Group posts. That has since been resolved.

There are plenty more under-the-hood fixes, and we’re working on a lot more. We’ll be posting a nice long list with everything we’re working on soon, which should help you stay informed about what’s coming here on the site. We value your feedback; let us know what you think!

Hi everyone!

You might have thought our team would take a break after last week’s round of fixes, but there’s no stopping the LIVESTRONG.COM crew! We rolled out another smattering of upgrades and fixes this week; here’s a sampling:

1. We’ve made LIVESTRONG Groups better than ever. They now sport an easier-to-read three-column layout. You can also post links to other sites and resources into your group entries with a really slick new tool that I think you’ll love. Groups also load much, much faster than ever before. Explore, and enjoy!

2. You might have already noted the new search bar in the header that we released last week. Now, we’ve refined search — especially “Member Search” — so that the results are even more accurate.

3. We’ve made several bug fixes on The Daily Plate. Some members were having issues viewing their weight charts; viewing date ranges wasn’t working properly. That should now be corrected. We’ve also implemented some new measures to cut down on new duplicates entering the database. And today, we’re introducing “Locked” food items. When we independently verify the accuracy of food data, we’ll mark the food as such and prevent it from being edited later. While most food items have a button to “Edit this item,” locked foods – like this one — don’t.

4. Beyond these changes, we’ve improved the layout of some articles, improved our video experience, added an “Experts” module to our homepage, and more. 

Take a look around the site to experience the changes, and let us know what you think!

The team continues to make upgrades and improvements to LIVESTRONG.COM every single day. Some of our most recent changes have dramatically improved day-to-day use of the site, and I wanted to enumerate some of them so that you can take a look at all the work that we’ve poured into it.

1. Even-better “Slim Header” mode.
LIVESTRONG.COM offers a ton of content. But when you’re using The Daily Plate on LIVESTRONG.COM, you might prefer a more TDP-centric navigation. Enable the “slim header” from the top of any page within TDP on LIVESTRONG. Now, when you click the Forum link in that slim header, the site will realize you want to go straight to the TDP forums, and we’ll take you right there.

2. Editing your profile works better.
Some users were having issues updating their profiles. We believe we have completely resolved those issues.

3. Easier inbox navigation.
The site was using large user photo images when browsing your inbox, which made it harder to scroll through. We’re now using smaller user images, which makes it a lot easier to read your messages! We now also shows you if a message is unread or read, instead of listing every message in bold as if it were new.

4. Remember me.
You can now tell LIVESTRONG.COM to “keep you logged in” if you are accessing the site from a private computer. You’ll find the checkbox on the login page.

5. Enhanced privacy settings.
By default, search engines like Google will “crawl” or public pages on any website, including your profile. LIVESTRONG.COM has, since launch, offered a preference to “block your profile from search engines like Google.” Now, if you enable that checkbox, we’ll block more than just your profile page from Google; we’ll also block your photo page, friends list, and blog.

7. Drag and drop modules on MyPlate.
The Daily Plate on LIVESTRONG’s calorie tracker MyPlate now allows you to reorder the right-side modules. If you prefer to see your “frequently eaten foods” over your Meals, just drag the modules into that order instead!

8. Forum fixes.
Various font and “smiley” issues have been fixed on the forums.

9. HTML in groups and elsewhere.
Limited HTML is now working again in group posts.

10. Ability to see all the foods you added to The Daily Plate on LIVESTRONG.
This was missing from your profile on LIVESTRONG.COM, but it’s there now!

11. Group posting issues.
Some members were having occasional issues where posts or comments on Groups were vanishing into the ether. No more — it’s fixed!

Wow. That’s a long list, right?!

We have plenty more on the list — fixes, enhancements, and brand new features are on the horizon for LIVESTRONG.COM. As you can see, your feedback directly impacts the work we do each day. Thanks, as always, for your feedback and support.