An update from Doug

I have been a little quiet of late. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it is not:) Generally what that means is that I have been trying new stuff. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. AND just sometimes it leads to big, sweeping sitewide changes. Well, it's nothing like that this time. ("Hahaha" he laughs, knowing full well no-one believes him:)

The Ancestral Clearing workshop is available

The Lightweaver Emerald Mystery School presents The Golden Temple Teachings.

As most people know we did a workshop at the beginning of the year. It was a four part adventure that has brought about some dramatic changes for many of the participants. Well, now it is available for everyone. You can purchase this workshop from our shop and work through it at your own pace. For more details, please go here.

It is currently on a special discounted price but this is only until the end of March 2010.

Please Note: our shop has a different database from this community site. You will have to register on the shop (but there is nothing to stop you using exactly the same login details you use here). It would be nice if some of the people who did the course would actually go and "review" that product, please. (You will have to register on the shop). It would be awesome to get some real, honest feedback from people who participated live.

We started a group on the site for participants to discuss their "process" and offer their insights to the rest of the group. Anyone is welcome to come and join The Emerald Mystery School Group

Some things I want to re-iterate:

You can put your own banner on our website. Yes, there is a cost. And yes, you must design it yourself. What's more, we do screen potential advertisers. For two reasons, one we will not advertise anything we think is questionable. And two, this means that anything you see advertised on our site has been vetted by The Lightweaver team. To start with, you will have to register as a potential advertiser, click the link below to do that:)

Advertise on The Lightweaver website

We are going to be doing a FREE, LIVE channelling on 22 Feb (22-02-2010). For full details and registration, please click the link below.

Free, LIVE channelling 22:2

Please tell your friends about this event. It is really easy to share this 22:2 "widget", click on the "share widget" link which you will see at the top of the widget, then click on "e-mail". [Erm, so what's a widget, Doug? Well, click the link above. On that page look for the 'blue block' where you sign-up for this event. That is a widget. Basically, it's a little bit of code that you can place anywhere on the net to display info from another site (in this case, from our Dimdim account)]. you can also add it to your Facebook profile and various other social networking accounts.

The Lightweaver Rewards Program

I also want to remind our members that you can upload and sell your digital products on our website. This is something I put in some time ago but it has not proved very popular. Not for sellers or buyers. That might be a lack of advertising on my part (most likely) or a genuine lack of interest. If you want details, please login to your account on the site and then look in the "usermenu" for a link titled "rewards program".

And for anyone who might be interested in buying products from the (few) that have been uploaded already, you can do so via our community shop

Please note that the community shop is completely separate from TLW Shop. TLW Shop has products from The Lightweaver only. The Community shop has products from Lightweaver community members only. Community members do benefit from the sales.

What is Doug working on?

I have been working on the subscription page/process

The money part of a site like this is always going to be the most complicated interesting and challenging part. I have been working on our "subscribe now" page and the process in general. It is a little better (methinks). I have also turned on expiry notifications which is helping enormously to get people to renew before their account expires. But it is still not ideal.

So what's on the roadmap for this; quite simply, a completely automated process. This is very easy, if you have a Paypal account. As a South African, I do not qualify for a Paypal account that can receive money. So, no Paypal for us:( [If you think I am talking sh@#, go read this blog.] The other problem with this is that the currently available systems, that work with 2CO, are not perfect yet. None of them completely satisfies my needs (erm). But with all the forum posts and suggestions I have been posting, I am sure one of them will produce the goods in their next version. But Doug, what does this mean? I don't understand a word you said?

For those who did not understand, please know that I do not think the current system is perfect. Far from it, in fact. But it is working (with your help) and will continue to do so until I can conjure up the perfect system. I do have a clear picture, in my head (and various pieces of paper) of "the perfect system". It's just a matter of time until I find the perfect mixture of sulpher, carbon, sulpeter and eye of newt; and then, it will materialize (with a little bang), magically.

Add to this "custom profiles" (very soon) and I think we have a winner:)

Testing a Live support and Support Ticket system.

And it turned out to be complete #%$@. In fact I have now tested 5 different system but am not happy yet. I have not given up either:)

I have now found something else to test. At the moment, we are wasting lots of our time with e-mails back and forth trying to get details. Basically, I am looking for a system that can get you to supply that info on your first mail. For example, the ability to attach a screen-capture to a support request. It helps us enormously to be able to see what's going on with your PC. Also, this system will store these emails on our database. That means that even if we do not see the email ('cos it gets "lost"), we will be able to see it here on the site. It saves a copy here and mails it out. It also needs to be infinitely expandable. Hehehe, not much to ask for:)

Unfortunately all of the "live support" systems I have tested are not quite up to scratch. It will be a little while before we are offering "live" support (other than occasional questions in webinars). I do believe that with a more streamlined 'support email system', we could reduce the amount of mails we are sending and therefore be able to answer you requests a little sooner and more accurately.

That's what I am working on, and this is what has changed:

Upgraded the Community:)

I have upgraded the community software a little bit. And I changed the layout of the modules and things just a wee little bit (teeny). Nothing dramatic and I think, a little better on the whole:).

Here's one you are going to like, if you look below the community search box (on community home page) you will see a link for "advanced search". You can use that to search the community according to the information people put into their profile. So for example, you could search  for all the people who have entered "Slovenia" under country. Or you could search for all the people in "Milwaukee", or even "Johannesburg". While we are on the topic, you are welcome to send me suggestions for "custom fields" (info fields) on your profile. See the fields listed in the drop down list below 'name' on that advanced search, what would you want to see added to that list?

NB: For those who do not want to be searchable! We do not make any of those fields mandatory, if you want to be invisible, just leave it blank.

It's also fixed the nature of the mails which are now generated when someone starts a new group discussion. As you know, until now, this means you got a mail with so much code in it that it is almost impossible to read. Well, now those will come as HTML mail, in other words, you see them presented perfectly, with no code in the way of the info.

There are a host of other little tweaks and refinements too but I won't bore you (anymore:) with the details. Suffice to say, I will end off with my usual request: please help us, please report problems you find on the site. This is a big site (Google has 37 000 pages listed for us). If you find a link that does not work, please tell us. When you do so, tell us exactly where you found the link (which page), what the link says and the error you got. Most important there is the "where" (37 000 pages). Also, as you know, with upgrades like this, sometimes, certain functions of the site might need a little tweaking to go with the rest of the show:). Please, if something does not work as it used to or as you expect it to, tell us. Let us rather test it to make sure. Please do not assume someone else will let us know. (Sometimes I get the feeling everyone assumes this...)

Well done for reading all the way down here, I'm compressed:) One last thing, I will soon be adding The Cosmic Magician Playshop to our shop, so keep an eye out for that one. It too was awesome.