Freegle Tech Report 2013-11-30

Freegle Tech Report November 2013
Posts 12978-13039
Members 100

If anyone is interested in this stuff you are welcome to join us, even if you only want to dip in and out. Mods who are willing to try out new stuff,

test any tweaks done, or just comment - please come along.

General maintenance, and Geek stuff is going on in the background at the moment, as work is needed to facilitate the Give as you Live partnership, setting up and transferring data to the new hosting, and working with Andrew Widgery to integrate his Snaply app.

Bulk mailing members.

As part of the GAYL work done by Chris and Edward, we now have the ability to bulk mail members and track the response rates.

It will be used for a first member newsletter fairly soon.
Longer term it is expected to work as follows:
i Central mail set up.
ii Group owners will have a week to edit it to produce a customised local version if they wish.
iii It will then be sent out.
This way we will have a member newsletter which is still under the control of local group mods and hopefully encourage them to join in.
This requires some more coding work before it can be executed.

Events.

a. Some members have complained that the times on their events are incorrect.
Facebook uses the members computer time zone, so if that is incorrectly set and they use Facebook to post,
it will show wrong.
b. A problem a moderator noticed with an approved event, not getting included in the weekly list was promptly sorted.

Mapping requests.

A moderator wondered if it was possible to have a link to the modtools message and the yahoo one in messages requesting mapping. There isn’t one at the moment and he wanted to be able to send an automatic mail ou to the member.
Mapping requests usually follow fast on the post going on, so you can go to modtools and find it there change their settings or just send an email

Snaply

a. This has now been trialled on several groups with no reports of any problems.
Moderators are unable to amend the subject lines, as they can other posts though. Could you let us know if this has caused any problems for anyone?
b. If you want to allow your members to use Snaply, then your group needs to be on Freegle Direct and you can just go to your settings and tick the snaply box.
c.Snaply works easily, as members posts are automatically sent to their nearest group. The limit is 15 miles, and if you want it changing you should ask Andrew at awidgery @ gmail.com. Any questions then we suggest you join Direct and ask on here.

Questions raised and answered.

Q. A mapping question was raised, when a moderator wondered why one was received when it appeared it had mapped it correctly, as the location was in the centre of the group.
A.Mapping defaults to the centre of the group if it can’t find something. If the top left shows that it has been mapped on something in the subject line and it is correct, simply put it in the box on the top left exactly as typed in the subject line and save. You should not be asked again unless different characters are used. The app tends to choose whatever is in the first set of brackets if any are used. Sometimes it chooses what appears to be a strange choice.
These may be because it has been used by another group in the past. If it has done this and the location is also on, then locate on the map, put the correct location in the box on the top right and the incorrect one in the box underneath and save.
These saves, are group specific so take priority over other stored information.
Q Help with switching off email for a FBuser please
We were asked by a mod to help switch off mail for a member who had joined several groups by Yahoo and FD and was complaining about all the mails.
A. If your group settings are to send out the FD mails to all members, then Yahoo members may get two lots of mails. All posts should contain a link at the bottom to stop them.. Providing they are clicking on them from the email address they have joined with, they should work.
Some moderators are deleting the Yahoo membership thinking it is no longer required and will stop the duplicates.
These may be required.
For example those signing into Freegle Direct via the Yahoo ID button. By all means change them to no email but don’t remove unless you are sure the member has a completely separate FB membership.
Q.The support group asked if there was an API they could use to convert the Hotmail email address to the FBuser one? This is for the automatic emails which are sent to groups, when Freegle receives spam reports. Some Moderators are struggling to find the members on their groups, as it necessitates either the use of modtools, or downloading the member list from FD and doing a search. .
A. There is no app available at present. So please if you can’t find them, mail support @ ilovefreegle.org and they will find the FB user membership for you.
Q. Do spammer notifications contain all the groups they have joined or just a sample as some only show them as being members of two or three groups.
A. It shows all those we know of. .

Jean
Freegle Tech

Back to Freegle Tech Report 2013-10-31   Forward to Freegle Tech Report 2013-12-31