Classifieds Section Changes

Oct 222012

Greetings, all.  We’ve made some changes to the Classifieds section that we hope will make your lives easier and make the site easier to moderate.

1) Users can now make one ad per week in any given sub-category.  Previously, we limited users to two total ads per fortnight.  This was done to limit the amount of over-posting (deleting and reposting of ads) and the number of duplicates.  Both issues greatly annoyed site users and led to the section being less usable.

The new limits mean that many different kinds of ads can be posted at any one time with any given account, but with a limit of one per sub-category per week.  If you have changes you need to make to an ad, edit that ad instead of deleting and attempting to repost.  You’ll only be able to repost after one week in that sub-category.

Do not try to repost your ad in a different category to get extra exposure.  Incorrectly categorized ads will be removed and repeat attempts to circumvent posting restrictions may result in your account being shut down.

If you have mistakenly deleted your ad before becoming aware of this policy, contact us at info@tnhvietnam.com and we can reinstate your ad for you to edit.

2) We’ve redefined what will constitute prohibited business activity in the Classifieds section.  The Classifieds section is the most heavily used section of the site.  It is used by a broad range of the community and it has proven to be a very effective resource.  Part of what makes it effective, unlike many other classifieds site serving Vietnam, has been that we’ve diligently kept businesses and business activity out of it.  Our volunteer moderators have gone to great pains to prevent both obviously well-established business from posting there, as well as more informal sorts of profiteering.

For reasons that involve both the nature of the ads being posted and the difficulty that our moderators face, we are now changing this approach a bit.  Ads from any business that posts in the section will still be removed, but ads that involve private individuals will remain even if they involve obvious profiteering.  The established standard will be that any ad that can be tied to an outside business presence (a shop/office, a commercial website, a commercial Facebook page, or a TNH Spot) will be considered a business and prohibited.  Others may post, and, as always, caveat emptor.

If we find that this loosening of the business activity definition results in the section being overrun with spammers and scammers, expect the reins to tighten once again.  For those with legitimate users of the site at heart, use it in a way that respects your fellow site users and notify us if you seen anything amiss by flagging suspect ads.

Feedback is welcome at info@tnhvietnam.com.

Site Changes

Feb 272012

As you’ve probably noticed we’ve changed our URL to http://tnhvietnam.xemzi.com. We’ve also added a regional sub-site for Central Vietnam. At the same time we’ve changed our front page layout so that you can get a better overview of what’s happening on the site.

Apart from the cosmetic changes we’ve rewritten a large part of the site code that handles URLs, so if you see any problems with missing pages (or any other technical problems related to these changes) please let us know at tech@tnhvietnam.com

 

 

Following Changes

Nov 132011

We’re just about to push some big changes to the way you interact with each other and with other elements of the site (spots, events, groups, jobs and classifieds).

Basically we’ve just made it possible to “follow” most anything on the site, and this is the one standard conduit for indicating your on-going interest in something.

Simply put, stuff that you follow will result in notifications (the number next to the number of pm’s you have) on the site.

If you follow

  • a person – you’ll be notified of most anything they do, like review a spot, post a classified, attend an event, join a group
  • a spot – you’ll be notified when they have a new event, or when they have a new bizlog post
  • an event – you’ll be notified when someone else decides to attend or watch, or when the event is edited
  • a question – you’ll be notified when a new answer is posted
  • a group – you’ll be notified about new discussions and new members joining

For groups and events the following is implicit – when you join a group or indicate attendance status on an event you’ll automatically be following it. For the others there are buttons to click to follow them, or you can follow spots when reviewing them, and questions when answering.

The accompanying big change with this code push is that notifications are now in a drop down from the header (click the number of new notifications and you’ll see notifications). We’ve also aggregated some types of notification so you won’t see 100 of the same “x answered the question y” notification.

With any change this big we expect there to be some teething problems so, as always, please send your bug reports (with as much detail as possible) to tech@newhanoian.com.

 

Coming Changes to Grouplogs

Sep 132011

It’s about time the groups section felt some love. To that end we’re ramping up to revamp the grouplogs (group discussion areas).

We’re going to make it more like Ask ANH, with:

  • optional title for first post
  • optional image attached to post
  • most recent activity listed first
  • no threading
  • searchability

If you’ve got something to say about this, now’s the time to do it, while we’re still hot and heavy with grouplogs.

All City Links Now in Header

Sep 132011

There has been a (to us) surprising amount of confusion about the relationship between The New Hanoian and So Saigon. Many people have no idea that they are part of the same organization. From time to time we get questions like “is there a site like TNH for Saigon?” Well yes, yes there is. It’s linked from the little drop down to the left of the logo.

Not surprisingly, given how small the indicator is (think Flash “escape the room” game), most people were unable to locate it.

We just made it easier for you to locate good local info on many cities in Vietnam. Simply mouse over  the city name in the page header and you’ll see a menu of our two Vietnam sites with their associated cities. Basically, from Hoi An North it’s The New Hanoian. Points South are So Saigon. Same great taste in a different color.

Some cities are better-served than others. Hanoi, Saigon, Sapa and Danang have quite a bit of content. We’re relying on you as you move about the country to add new Spots that you think others should know about.

For those of you with iPhones, adding Spots just got easier with our new iPhone apps Hanoi City Companion and Saigon City Companion. See the about section for more details, or visit the iTunes App Store / Android Marketplace.

Xemzi Ads / Bullseye Banners

Sep 032011

While you were sunning yourself on some divine beach over the holiday weekend we spent the weekend sitting pale beside our computers pushing out a few major changes to the way the site looks.

  • We’ve made some changes to the way our web addresses work to help search engines find our content more effectively, but that shouldn’t affect your daily browsing. As always if you do run into a glitch please let us know at tech@newhanoian.com
  • We’ve added a city chooser to the nav of every page, and made some site features city-specific. If you’re in Da Nang or Sapa you can choose that city and filter your view to the Spots of that city. Housing is also city-specific.
  • We’ve added Xemzi Bullseye Banners to pages that show a list of Spots like search results and category pages. These are a new way for upgraded businesses to get the attention of site users in a very targeted way.
  • We’ve added Xemzi Ads at the top of said list views. These, like Bullseye Banners, are a contextual way to bring more attention to our upgraded businesses. They are clearly marked as advertising so they shouldn’t confuse you when you’re searching or browsing categories.
  • Search result rankings are still based on the relevance of a given spot to your search criteria
  • Category rankings are still based on our “special sauce” system of ranking spots by user reviews. Upgraded businesses do not get preferential treatment.

If you have comments on these changes we’d love to hear – please leave them below. If something is obviously broken please let us know by sending email to tech@newhanoian.com and we’ll get right on it.