Foundation Dev Blog: Free Stuff

Over the last few weeks, we've rolled out a number of small enhancements worth bringing to your attention:

* Members with Images - The member list can now be sorted by Members with Images. This feature is live everywhere and will be accessible on the Member Search page. Here's an example at the Kids VT

* Free Stuff Admin Notes - The Free Stuff class now has an Admin Notes field where you can post administrative notes of your choosing. These notes are private and for administrative eyes only.

* Poll Image - We've added the ability for you to upload an image in the Poll class, to appear with your Poll question.

* Instapaper - If you're a fan of the Instapaper service and/or would simply like to offer an easy click for saving stories to Instapaper you can use the new Instapaper micro component. You can see a live example here at Arkansas Times

To add Instapaper to the article tools, please do the following:

1. Search for the component named "Article Tools"

2. Edit that component and find the MicroComponent field.

3. Click the place within the MicroComponent field that you'd like to add Instapaper and then click choose to select "Instapaper". For example: click Share Slider, then choose which will result in "Share Slider | Instapaper"

4. Save the Article Tools Component.

5. Review your addition in admin mode.

If you have any questions on how to add the Instapaper tool or on anything else within this update, please email support@desert.net

We're pleased to announce the release of the new Foundation Free Stuff module. This module provides a new area on your site for giving away tickets to upcoming films, concerts, and special events, as well as general contest entries and announcements for other free events.

• Source: Creative Loafing Atlanta

* The Free Stuff landing page provides a listing of all currently running offerings.

* The user can choose to sign up to win any of the offerings. When doing so, they will be prompted to login if they aren't logged in already. Their single registration will then be saved.

* Free stuff allows for connections to your other data, including related events, locations, and/or films.

* Each Free Stuff page includes friendly URLs, cookie crumbs, and standard SEO.

* Event pages, location pages, and film pages will also display a related Free Stuff object should they exist. The goal being to tie both the location/event/film and the free stuff object together while viewing from either perspective.

• Source: Chicago Reader

* The link to your main "Free Stuff" page will be the same pattern as all of your site pages, just ending with FreeStuff: EX: http://YOURSITE.com/YOURCITYABBREV/FreeStuff

* Layouts have been created for the Free Stuff Landing Page, the Free Stuff Process page, and the Free Stuff page itself. Like all Foundation layouts, they can be customized.

* You can create your own custom categories to organize your Free Stuff offerings such as Movie Tickets, Concerts, or Events. The categories are controlled via the FreeStuffCategory class.

* Free Stuff objects can be browsed in the Object Editor by live, admin, offline, and expired status.

* Free Stuff objects can be scheduled for a particular release date and expiration date.

* At any time, you can view a Free Stuff entry in the Object Editor to see who has signed up. To access this, click to edit a Free Stuff entry and you'll see a link regarding registrants and winners at the top.

* The full suite of images are supported including Magnum, Teaser, and standard Images.

* Free Stuff also supports a non contest entry type of Announcement should there be a free event that you wish to promote in this area that doesn't require registration.

* Components to promote Free Stuff are available and will promote either all upcoming free stuff options or fine tuned to a particular section like music.

Free Stuff 1.0 debuted on Creative Loafing Atlanta and Chicago Reader as seen here:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/FreeStuff

http://clatl.com/atlanta/FreeStuff

This release is version 1.1 and completes a number of features that were needed for a full release. Future enhancements are also in the works.

Next week, we'll be posting some how to documents to help in getting started with this new module.