Open BETA

Hello there

We are proud to announce Open BETA for betaPod and there are many new updates and changes made to betaPod, internally and externally.

Firstly, betaPod has a new team of management people managing betaPod. The team has been splitted into two: Team Alpha(the development and core team) and Team BETA(in-forum matters, members and customer relations). We have also assigned new leaders of the two team.

Amplif1er - Team BETA Leader/betaPod Creative Director
"Call me Kai will do. I am 17 years old this year and taking Accountancy in one of the polytechnics is Singapore. I am quite new to betaPod and lemme start by telling you guys how i got here. I was browsing through http://forum.vr-zone.com when i chanced upon our dear Hellclanner's post. His signature are links of his sites like his deviantART and others. Last but not least, betaPod. I added him on MSN and asked for invitation and ta-da. I am a member of betaPod.

Just recently, he asked me if i would like to be admin for betaPod. I was quite shocked when he asked that cuz i don't know any thing about what he does. I accepted and hoped to be more resourceful for betaPod. Would love to see more things happening around in betaPod and do help one and another as we are all a team."

Josh - Team BETA Assisting Leader
"I met Sam(Hellclanner) on Aqua-Gero a while back, he contacted me on MSN and asked if I wanted to join his site so I joined. After some time he then asked me to be part of the staff, so I accepted the offer and here I am."

andymac4182 - Team Alpha Assisting Leader
" I met Hellclanner on deviantART a few months ago. I saw the add for betaPod and thought I would have a look. I then helped out with spotting a few bugs and gave some ideas. Then after a while he asked if I would like to help out officially and join the team here. I was really happy to be offered the opportunity to help out here. Can't wait to see the way this community will grow and expand."

Now we are going to list down the updates made to Open BETA, certain updates might have been made known before this:
We have created and submitted our Google Gadget and it's now available on the Google Gadget Gallery. You can install the gadget on Google Desktop or iGoogle to get the latest updates and a summary of the Today page. The Gadget follows your personalized site theme.

More RSS Feeds has been added to betaPod's RSS Service. This includes the Search function for RSS, RSS for Projects, Latest Thread Updates, and more. We have also included FeedBurner service to help us improve the promotion of our RSS Feeds and you are able to subscribe to our Site News via email through FeedBurner services.

The Orange theme has been added as an additional choice for all members. Also, we are going to add a Dark theme soon. CSS Optimization has been implaced and errors are removed for faster loading. The Blue theme has also been modified to look nicer too! Say goodbye to the old ugly blue theme.

Database splitting have been implemented to meet the needs of more members. You can now safely invite more friends over without fear of database overflowing. This has increased stability on betaPod and implemented the "Load What You Need" policy we mentioned.

The Today Page has more information than ever. We have added Latest Site News on the right and Latest Thread Updates at the bottom. Also, instead of pure pageview per time calculation for popular members, we have also added post per time into the calculation for a more precised calculation of popularity.

Certain major bugs have been fixed and we have optimized our XML databases to load faster and our codes are modified in a way to make the databases become smaller and take up less space on the server.

Our records showed that we have a rapid rise of unique visitors from the month July to August 07. We'd like to thank all for participating in the Pre-Open BETA to make betaPod a better place.

In near future, betaPod will release a lightweight version of betaPod for those without Javascript-enabled browsers and also a Mobile version to enable you to access betaPod on your mobile on the go.

Thanks for participating in betaPod.


Cheers
Sam Yong aka Hellclanner
Director, betaPod