One of my many projects is a long term one with a company called ezboard. ezboard is a hosted messageboard system. With one account, you can join and participate in any number of message boards. But ezboard has come to the end of its life, and they are creating a new product to replace it, called yuku.
I have been involved in yuku in various ways, mostly making skins and templates, speccing up features, checking and developing css and html, bug testing and ocassionally helping people out with their own codes, etc.
yuku went beta at the end of last year, and was targetted for release at the end of this year. There have been many changes along the way, but overall it’s looking very exciting, with a lot of new features building on the old ezboard set. They have updated user profiles to be a far more customisable and interactive feature, and are still working on the domain engines for each message board. There is manageable image hosting, plus integrating with photobucket. All areas have rss and email subscription links, and there are tie ins with many social bookmark sites, such as del.icio.us and digg – plus another 29 or so others. (I had no idea there were so many!)
There is a new code release scheduled for this week, and one of the changes is a lot overhauling of the user navigation. While the eventual design has changed from my original ideas, the overall layout is true. I am looking forward to seeing it go live.
One of the really interesting things about yuku is the way it’s being put together. A major complaint by some people who are used to ezboard is that it’s different, and they don’t like it. But I don’t think that just because everyone else does things in a certain way that we need to too. New users to the system would probably find yuku far more user friendly than any other bulletin board system.
ezboard is also taking advantage of web 2.0 technology, with drag and drop layout of profiles and updating on the fly for domain (board) management.
There are a lot of major components yet to come, but if you want to be part of the beta testing, and get a sneak preview, then have a look.
visit yuku now | visit the lobby at yuku now