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Posts Tagged ‘Features’

New Feature Tuesday– Playlists, Videos, and Subscriptions!

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

What is more exciting than coming to eHow.com?  Of course, coming to eHow.com on new feature Tuesday!  See what has arrived today…

Video playlists… oh my!

Go to any video page and you can add the video to your playlist

Go to any video page and add the video to your playlist.

From your profile page, you can gain access to your video library.  This is where all your favorite videos are added.

From your profile page, you can gain access to your video library. This is where all your favorite videos are added.

Two words sum up what is to be unveiled to the eHow community today and those are… VIDEO PLAYLIST!  Starting today, you are now able to save your favorite eHow videos and group them together in a thematic way.  The best part is that you can create as many playlists as you want! Grouping your videos is a convenient way for you to organize the videos you like and use them as a personal reference or even a nifty way to share information with your friends.
Start creating a playlist to help you out with your daily workout regimen or use it to plan ahead by building a playlist that will help you organize a great backyard barbeque.  In your profile, you should see a “Videos” tab; click on that and you’ll have access to your video station.  This is where all your favorite videos will be saved.  From this section, you will also be able to re-organize and rearrange your videos as well as create a playlist.  We’ve made the feature pretty easy to use, so dive in and start exploring!

Have a favorite?  Subscribe to it!

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Subscribe to your favorite categories, experts, and members.

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Check your "Subscriptions" button in your profile page. Toggle between categories or members and keep tabs on your favorite subscriptions.

Also in eHow news, we have a new “Subscriptions” tab in member profiles.  Now you can subscribe to your favorite eHow experts, members, or categories.  As for the categories, not only can you subscribe to the main categories, but you can also subscribe to the sub categories as well as the sub-sub categories.  Now you can get real specific and get up-to-date information on things that are most relevant to you.

Videos and more videos.

Finally, we would like to mention a huge feat eHow.com achieved this month.  Now, eHow.com officially has 166,000 instructional videos to its name.  That’s a whopping number!  It’s a huge accomplishment and we would like to share this glory with the community because without your support, the site wouldn’t be what it is today.

Enjoy!

Double Feature Tuesday

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
What's Happening Now on eHow

What's Happening Now on eHow

Today we have a sweet deal on eHow.com.  We’ve got two stories in one post.  Let’s start off with some news that really matters to the eHow community.  So, just today we did a few new releases on the site.  The eHow team has been regularly pushing out enhancements and many of them are related to the community.  We’re hearing you out and we are making sure to deliver the goods.  Without further ado, check out what our team dished out today:

New holiday header: If you’ve noticed, we have the new St. Patrick’s Day header on eHow.  It’ll feel extra green on the site for the rest of the week and don’t forget to check in on the homepage to see some great St. Patrick’s Day related articles.  Our editorial team is looking for some good ones, so feel free to reply to this post with your suggestions.

Scroll through your articles with ease: Pagination… pagination… pagination… what does that mean to you?  It means that you’ll have a better way to get through your articles now.  The dreaded “next” or “back” button is now of the past and you’re able to go through your articles through pages.  We know this was a long time coming, but rest assured, we want things to be easy peasy :)

Article quality is a must: Aligned with our goal to ensure quality articles on the site, we have implemented new check boxes that require contributors to agree to the terms of use as well as confirm that any article they are submitting is not plagiarized.  “First the CAPTCHA, and now this?” This is what you may be thinking in your head, but this definitely the direction we need to take to avoid unruly users from gaming the system and submitting articles that do not follow eHow.com’s submission guidelines.  Issues have been quite prevalent the past months and although it may seem like a hassle to go through this process, ultimately it’s beneficial for the community, since we want to surface articles that are legitimate and original.

eHow is a community: Finally, eHow is just not another repository of information; it’s also a community site.  We’re making it our goal to express the communal side of eHow, especially for this year.  If you check out the homepage, you’ll now see a new module that tells you exactly what is happening now on eHow.  It displays everything in real time of what articles have been commented on or have been published.  Believe it or not, but you can probably just sit there for a good 10 minutes staring at it to see what kind of articles are being published.  It’s quite nifty indeed.

Bethenny Frankel

Bethenny Frankel

More on eHow.com…

You see the eHow experts being promoted on the site, but did you know we have a celebrity expert, such as Bethenny Frankel.  You may know her from “The Real Housewives of NYC” and she’s our official eHow food expert.  Bethenny is currently on a book tour, promoting her book called “Naturally Thin Unleash Your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting.”  She may be in your neck of the woods, so we welcome you to meet up with her at the following locations:

Wednesday, March 11th

Barnes & Noble - Tribeca - Speak & Sign Event

97 Warren Street, New York, NY

7pm


Saturday, March 14th

Fred Segal Fun Santa Monica - Speak & Sign Event

500 Broadway, Santa Monica, CA

4pm

Wednesday, March 18th

Barnes & Noble- Century City - Speak & Sign Event

250 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

7pm

For more info on Bethenny, please check out her eHow profile.

eHow Features Galore

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

This week has been probably one of the busiest ones at the eHow HQ.  For the past two weeks we’ve been planning and developing various new features as well as additional eHow pages called “Topic” pages.  Offhand it may not seem like it, but an explosion of things went out, so we thought it would be nice to give our members a quick overview.

eHow Topic Pages…

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Find what you need in our Topic Pages.  The eHow Topic Page essentially encompasses and packages all the relevant resources on eHow for a given topic.  So, if you happen to be on a photography topic page, you’ll find a bunch of articles related to photography, but the experience is quite intuitive and it helps a normal visitor find what they need with ease.  In addition to having access to relevant articles, a Topic Page has relevant Quick Guides and blog postings by a topic expert.  The Topic Page is packed with various information.  Not to mention that it has applicable community items, such as Groups and Q&A discussions, where you can post up questions and have the community provide answers for you.

List of our Topic Pages:

Feature your five…

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Customization makes things fun on the site as well as give a sense of ownership, and we’ve answered the community’s request for this one particular feature.  We unveiled this week a new profile tool, where you can pick any 5 articles from your article library and have them featured on your profile page.  This allows you to market your articles on your profile and bring more visibility to them.

I Twitter, you Twitter, we all like to Twitter…

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Twitter-ing articles has never been this easy for our members.  If you go to your email notification setting, you will be able setup your account to automatically send new articles that you’ve contributed to your Twitter account.  You can also do the same for any comments you’ve made on articles.  This is another great tool to help you promote and market your articles instantaneously.

eHow News Updates…

ehownews

Did you know we had a blog?  Well, if you are reading this, obviously you do, but it’s not surprising many folks do not know we have one.  The eHow blog is great to get up-to-date info about the site or just any relevant news that deals with the eHow community.  There’s a new small section included on your profile page (on the bottom left corner), where you can click on links to get to the eHow blog or the eHow Twitter.  You can start off your daily dose of eHow by checking out the blog and be in the k now with everything and anything about the site.

Spread the word about your published articles…

publish

As soon you publish you articles, you should, as usual, end up on a page that confirms your article being published.  Well, on this very page you should now have access to the “Share” button tool, which will allow you to immediately socialize and promote your newly published articles.

Finally…

Have you noticed the site being a little faster than usual?  We’ve done some upgrades on our server and pages on eHow should be loading up quicker.  No more going through that experience, where you’re navigating through the site and all of a sudden you hit a wall, and the page you want to get to takes awhile to load up.  Take a test drive for yourself and you’ll notice quite a difference.

We hope you find these new updates satisfying.  A lot of the upgrades were made due to the community’s requests and it’s a never ending effort to continue making the product even more better.  To be continued… more new stuff coming soon!

I Did This. Did You?

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

We’ve dished out some new features on the site and one in particular will have you screaming to the world what eHow articles you’ve done in real life.  Let’s see what new toys we’ve unleashed for the eHow community to play with…

1. Convenience is key: At one point, the only way you would be able to get access to the “Top Requested How To Articles” is by going through the Community page.  We’ve made some updates and you’re now able to get suggested title ideas served up to a module that is located on the right-hand side of your profile page.  Just click on the article title and then write it.  Easy peasy.

 

2. By popular demand: Many of you voiced your suggestion on wanting a more lucrative list of sites to share eHow articles on.  Well, what do you know?  Today, eHow is the mailman, and we delivered.  At one point, we only had a few sites where you can bookmark and share eHow articles, but we’ve expanded…. a lot.  Now, you can share articles on sites like Digg, MySpace, Google, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Yahoo! Buzz, and the list goes on.

 

3. Did you do this?  Well, if you’ve seen the article pages, you’ll notice a “I Did This” button.  Essentially, this is a great tool to tell people, which eHow articles you’ve actually done in real life.  For example, if you come across a How To article on “How to Boil an Egg,” more than likely you’ve done this, so you would click on the “I Did This” button and share this experience with the community.  You will be able to see other members who’ve participated in the same experience by looking at a module on the top right-hand corner of the article page (it will say “Members Who Did This”).  Any articles you’ve clicked the “I DId This” button on should show up under your “Projects” tab on your profile page.  Not only does this showcase the things you’ve done in your day to day life (which we like to think of as your personal “Projects”), but it also acquaints you with other community members who’ve done the same stuff as you have.

As always, we love to read your feedback.  There’s a dedicated forum post about these new features, so don’t be shy and tell us what you think!