I can't quite put my finger on it, but something seems different around here today. If you're new to the site, take a look at the picture to the right to see what I mean.

The new Lithosphere design is up! I can't say enough about all the great work that went on behind the scenes to make this possible - some of it starting over a year ago before we even launched the community! From those who built the foundation in the Winter Release of 2009, to the team that designed the vision, to the folks that made that vision a reality - it was truly a company-wide effort at Lithium to bring you this amazing new look!

For a look at some of the bigger changes and what they mean, be sure to look through the Design Changes Part 1 and Design Changes Part 2. But for me, the changes with most impact have been in all the little things, from the addition of RSS links everywhere to make subscribing easy, to improvements in the WYSIWYG editor and posting workflows. I hope you enjoy the improved experience as much as I do!

But we never want to stop improving or rest on our laurels here - and I'm sure that amongst all the goodness, there are still a few rough edges or ideas that just didn't turn out like we hoped. So check out the community and let me know what what you think works well - and what needs more work!

Hello again, I'm back with another update on changes to expect in the upcoming Lithosphere design!

For reference, here is the previous update on planned changes to the board structure and front page navigation. If you haven't seen that post yet, be sure to check it out:

• Design Changes Part 1

Today I want to focus on an area near and dear to each of you - your user accounts! We have quite a few improvements planned in this area that are intended to show off thenew capabilities of the product and push some boundaries on what we can show and how we show it!

User profile pop-ups
Now when you hover over a user's name on the Lithosphere, you will see a pop-up containing a brief overview of that user, including their name,location (if entered), rank, avatar,and some quick stats about their activity. We fully expect to expand on and improve what is available here over time, so if you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see here in the future please be sure to let us know!

Avatars

Lots new to say about Avatars, but most of it has already been said by Susan & David on their blogs, so please check them out if you want the full story. But the important thing to note for Lithosphere members is that the avatar display format will be changing from 36x36 pixels to a 16:9 aspect ratio that varies depending on which page you are on. We will highly recommend that you go to your profile preferences and update your avatar after the new deployment so you can look your best! We will try to make the existing images look as good as possible, but there are limits to what we can do with the old formats. The highest resolution image for your new avatar that will be displayed is 256x144, so it would be good to choose a new avatar of those dimensions (or pick one of the cool new avatar designs we will be making available!)

User Preferences

Speaking of updating your user preferences, this page has been redesigned to provide a better tabbed UI experience, so that items you don't need are hidden until you select them. Within each high level tab, there are sub labels that you can select (like Display, Home Page, Privacy, etc.) to update that information - no more hunting through huge lists of information to find the preference you want, now you can quickly knwo what's available and where!

User profile page
The public profile page layout and appearance has changed a great deal from the past; but mostly it was altered to make a more consistent look and feel with the rest of the site. Functionality has not changed here, it's just arranged in a different way.

Live Now bar

New to this design is the Live Now bar, a new dynamic view to see who is online and when they last logged in! This is visible only on the front page, and replaces some of the text-based functionality of the Community Statistics section on the old site. This is very experimental at this point, so if you have feedback please suggest your idea!

Activity Pulse

Similar to the Live Now bar, we wanted to be able to display data about activity in the community in a new dynamic and interactive graphical format. So we created the Activity Pulse charts, which allow you to see quickly at a glance or click where activity is on the community, and what kinds of participation is going on. This pulse is availabel both on the front page, as well as further down the hierarchy, and the data changes depending on where you are. Again, another experimental feature that we hope you will help us improve!

That's all for today - wow, that was a lot of pictures this time around! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask in the comments.

Next time we'll see some more subtle differences and changes in the blogs, forums and ideas pages - see you then!

Please stop by and welcome our newest blogger to the Lithosphere, Adam Traver, and his new blog Behind the Lithium Curtain! Adam and others from our stellar Production Operations team will be stopping by from time to time to give us a peek behind the scenes at what it takes to keep the most vibrant online communities in the world up and running 24x7x365! Welcome Adam!

Also, bonus points to Adam for including references to both the Wizard of OZ and Futurama on your inaugural post!

The new Lithosphere design is just weeks away!

This will be the first major change to the Lithosphere design since we launched the community less than a year ago, and we all know how much everybody loves change.  So I want to give everyone a brief orientation to things you should expect to see that are different.

First, let me tell everyone that a lot of thought and effort was spent really trying to push the envelope of community design and demonstrate what can be done with the new tools available in the platform. But by no means should we consider this a finished product! Our vision has always been that the Lithosphere should shift over time as we achieve some of our of objectives and start to focus on others. In many ways, a big part of the new platform introduced in the Winter '09 release is increased flexibility in what can be done, and we fully intent to take advantage of that over time! But as we experiment, we will be looking to all of you Lithospherians to provide us with the feedback we need so we can improve!

So with that in mind, here is the first few in a series on the upcoming changes to the site:

New main page & tabs

Today we have 3 main areas of the community: Learn (blogs), Discuss (forums) and Suggest (ideas). On the new site, each of these will be highlighted on the front page carousel, and have their own site tabs with a unique look and feel. We also will be doing more to highlight these areas throughout the site, so they are visible no matter how you arrive at the community.

Board structure consolidation

As we discussed previously, we will be doing some board consolidation to concentrate activity - after the move there will be 2 public boards and one private one:

Public:

• Growing Successful Communities: all ongoing posts in the Managing, Developing and Square Pegs boards will be moved here for ease of location and discussion.
• Lithosphere Feedback: The existing board will remain, with a simplified name. This board is for feedback on the Lithosphere community itself (not Lithium products, that's still Ideas). So examples would be feedback on all these changes we're planning right here.

Private:

• Customer Connection:  Existing private customer content will be moved to a single board to consolidate activity and make it easier to find. As a private board, it will only be visible if you have been granted access (in other words, you have to be a customer).

Other categories:

• Events: will remain unchanged and accessible as before.
• Archive: will remain unchanged and accessible as before.

That's enough to chew on for now - more to come in the next few days. If you have any questions, suggestions or concerns, let me know in the comments or via private message!

Coming up next time:

New blogs

New avatars

RSS everywhere