babyjesus's blog: "fubar news"

we've been kicking around the idea of doing some tv commercials for fubar.com to help spread the word about the site. if anyone has a video salute that you've already made for fubar, or had thought of making one and wanted an excuse, please post a *link* to the youtube video (youtube only please and make sure it's a link.. don't embed it here.) in a comment to this blog or in a PM to me if you're shy... but if you're shy, why are you here? :D in the video please include your uid or fubar custom url. the uid/url can be hand written or spoken, but i need to know how to find you. for example, my uid is 1 and my custom url is fubar.com/mike. feel free to say what you like most about fubar, why you use it, any interesting stories you might have from using the site, or whatever else you want... (keep it legal please, i'm too fragile for the pokey). there isn't a plan to include any of these in the commercial, but you never know what'll happen (i'll contact you and ask permission first, if we want to include parts of the video). i'll be sending the best videos to our production crew so they can get a better idea of the website and the real community behind it. party on! -mike

we're working the bugs out of them now. they should be much easier to use by tomorrow afternoon... i hope. people who used to sit on the same photo/profile and post the same comment, quickly, over and over will need to figure out something else.. as that probably won't work anymore. don't come bitching and moaning to me either, the comment features were never intended for that and requires massive amounts of our resources to let you do that for no one's benefit except your own. if you want to run a contest, do something else... like measure the number of ratings a photo/profile has received. also, we can easily detect people running third-party programs to automate the commenting using the old system. congratulations on violating the rules of the site by cheating and having your account removed in the very near future. merry xmas! :-) -mike

i have a bunch of fubar shirts sitting around my house (new and unused... ha!) and i wanted to send them to some of our fubar members that are on active duty overseas. if you're currently serving overseas or have a friend/family member over there, please click here to send me a private message. you *must* include their name, APO/FPO shipping address, and size (small-XXL). note-- if you don't include everything above, i can't ship it. i'll take the orders over the next few days, and try to get them sent out on friday. they probably won't make it in time for christmas, but hopefully soon after. cheers! update 12/17/08: all the shirts are now spoken for, i'll be spending the next day or 2 packaging them up and sending them out. thanks everyone who sent me an address! i'll be doing this again... don't worry. :D -mike

for those who haven't noticed, we just enabled some updated tooltips. they look about the same as before, but we redid a bunch of the javascript and other logic that made them work. hopefully they're much smoother, more reliable and easier to use than before (this includes the tooltips used in the shoutbox). if things seem weird for you, hold your shift key down and hit the 'refresh' button on your browser. that should force your browser to download the newest javascript if it missed any earlier. let me know if you notice any problems with the updated tooltips, or if they seem to work better. also, i'm just about done with the top dudes and chicks of fubar page. i'll probably make it public tomorrow afternoon. the rankings will be generated every week (probably wednesday nights). we have a couple other good enhancements that will hopefully be ready before monday.... stay tuned! -mike

hey everyone, just wanted to post an update in a new entry so it didn't clutter the old one. MUMM's the only thing that has changed is that points are no longer being awarded for voting on GLOBAL mumms. this is an experiment after hearing the feedback on my last blog post yesterday and we haven't decided if it's staying this way or not. everything else has remained the same, including friends-only mumms. STASH based on feedback from a bunch of members, i'm not going to reset the old stashes when we migrate to the new hardware. the stash limit will remain the same (1000). LEVEL REQUIREMENTS since so many people wanted it, i've turned back on the salute requirement to move beyond level 10. also, i just wanted to get up on my soapbox and clear up a few things for anyone who's forgotten, or is new and doesn't know the history of this site. the site was originally created for *my* friends. everyday i'm amazed that other people end up liking it and want to hang out with us here on fubar. over time we have moved away from only doing changes/enhancements/tweaks/features that we wanted, to pretty much only doing stuff that other people had asked for. however, one thing remains the same-- we want to have fun too. the site has grown a lot over the last few years, but we're still microscopic when compared to the Big Guys (myspace/facebook/etc). we'll probably never end up that big, and if we did, things might be different... but for now, i think of it like this: every single member on this site has been invited into my house for a party. some i know and some i don't know. mi casa su casa. having said that, i expect certain levels of behavior from those who want to enter my home. if you deviate too far from these, don't be surprised when you get thrown out on the curb. i love people who bring drinks to my parties (for the short bus riders: those who spend money on the site to keep it ad free and a roof over my head), but that doesn't make my house yours. if you act a fool, expect to get treated like one. if you seriously don't know where the line is from being a complete retard, asshole, jackass in someone elses house, and just being yourself and having fun-- you're in the wrong place. i won't spell it out any clearer for you. didn't your momma teach you any manners? i don't expect everyone to be friendly or nice to everyone else. if you don't like what someone's doing, go talk to a bouncer. don't like what the bouncer tells you? go talk to scrapper or myself. if that's not good enough for you, then go find another party. now, if you want to hang out and have a few drinks with some crazy aussie surfers, a couple ranchers from texas, a soccer mom from virginia, maybe a silicon valley geek or two, a hippie burnout, an ex stripper and porn star from brooklyn, and everyone in between... then you found the rite place. one last word of advice: if you're ever not sure if something is ok to do on fubar or not, think about this-- if you walked into your local bar and did the same, would a bouncer (or bartender) knock your teeth out and put you out on the curb? if the answer is yes, don't do it. werd to your mothers. -mike edit: forgot to add, i increased the daily profile and photo rating limits for all levels. if you're a vip, your level rating limits are doubled.

hey everyone, i'm trying to simplify the way we store and display everyone's name on the site. for example, the nickname for my profile is 'babyjesus', my first-name is 'mike' and my last-name is 'hedlund'. we have an overly complicated procedure that we use to figure out what name to display above everyone's photo on the site, and the name to display at the top of the public profile page for each member. to simplify this, starting today *ONLY* your 'nickname' will be displayed above your photo everywhere on the site. if you don't have a nickname set in your profile, then your user id will be displayed. so, if you start showing up as a number-- simply go to your profile settings page and enter whatever you want in the nickname field. public profile pages will also be modified so that only the nickname (or user id if you don't have a nickname setup on your profile) will be displayed at the top of the page. there will be a 'Name' column above your status/rank in the center of the profile where you first/last name is displayed. hope everyone had a good labor day. time to get back to drinking... err work! :-) -mike

anyone who's been reading my blogs knows that i've been doing a lot of (crazy?) stuff the last few weeks.. removing the requirements to level, adding salute filters to your profile, etc. in order to help fight off the spammers/scammers who're trying to infest our nice little watering hole, i've been forced to enable something that i've tried to avoid: email verification to post comments, send private message, send shouts, or have html displayed in your profile area. most other sites require you to verify your email address before they even activate your account. i always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and try to keep the site as open as possible... but the spammers/scammers have been abusing it and this is one of the most effective ways to make it harder on them. if you don't know if you've verified your email addres, or if you need to verify it, please go to your profile settings page. under your email address you'll either find a 'Verified' label, or instructions on how to verify the address. it should only take a few seconds to complete. what does this mean to you? if you haven't verified your email address you'll start to receive error messages when posting comments, sending shouts and private messages. you'll continue to earn points and can surf around like normal. if you haven't verified your email address, the only people you can private message or shout are bouncers. the following members are excluded from the email verification requirement: VIP's. members with approved salutes. this will take effect in the next few hours. werd. -mike

fubar members with salutes will now show up on the site with a bolded white name. vip's who also have salutes will now find 'White' as a selectable color on your profile settings page. viva la resistance! -mike

hey fubarians, i've just added some new stuff to your privacy settings page. in addition to controlling who can send you messages in your shoutbox, private messages, profile and photo comments by family/friends/everyone/nobody you can now require them to have a salute as well. for example, if you have your private messages set to family only, and check the 'require salute' box, everyone in your family will need a salute to send you a private message. or, if you have it set to 'everybody' and check the 'require salute' box, only members with a salute can send you a private message. werd. ps: the privacy settings for photo comments also apply to mum and blog comments. -mike

good morning fubarians! i've done a bunch of small tweaks on the site this morning, and a few large ones. here's the bigger tweaks: 'remember me' checkbox (checked by default) on the login pages. fixed the redirecting after logging in. ie: if you weren't logged in, went to a fubar page that required you to login, it would make you login then send you to your homepage. now it correctly sends you back to where ever you were that required the login. bonus points are now awarded every time you receive points based on your buzz meter-- higher the buzz, higher the bonus. having trouble getting a good buzz with the girly stuff? get a friend to hook you up a bottle of cristal from the fubling shop-- it will wreck your face. viva la resistance! -mike