From the Desk of Devin Jeanel


December 30, 2007: Special holiday greetings to all the STARLITERS both large and small. I wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all. For this is the season to be thankful and kind. And, why am I still talking in this see-saw rhyme? All kidding aside, I do love this time of year. One of the most important days of the year for me is coming up, New Year's eve. A time of reflection and accountability for the year gone by with a goal setting time for the year to come.

First, let me bring you up to speed on the new things that have been happening. There seems like something new is popping up every day. Here are the bigger items. If I don't give you enough details, just jump over to the Devin's Corner Discussion group and read the details.

1) Every Starliter now has an Automatic Notification Mailing List. This mailing list is maintained entirely by Starlite. The publishing poet doesn't have to add, monitor, or delete people from it. The reader decides which list they want to be on and signs up. If they change their mind, they can remove themselves without contacting the publishing poet. Have you ever been on a list and was afraid to ask to be removed? This mailing list eliminates this concern. When the subscriber removes themselves from a mailing list, it is effective IMMEDIATELY. Starliters can sign up for notification by poem, or get a daily summary report. To subscribe, go to a poet's home page and click the JoinMyMailingList link. To manage your subscription (change or delete), go to your own home page and click the List link.

2) The friends functionality has been greatly improved. You have seen the fact that we display your friend's pictures on your home page. You may not know that you can control how many friends are displayed. By default, you will see the pictures of five friends. However, if you go to your profile, you can set this number to anywhere from zero to ten. The last big change is you can now place your friends into a specific order. This feature allows you to select which friends will be displayed on your personal homepage.

3) The Starlite Cafe Featured Poets launched this month. This feature picks ten poets each day to be displayed on our front page -- http://thestarlitecafe.com. You have to be logged out to see this feature work. Being selected as a Starlite Cafe Featured Poet allows your home page to be easily accessible by over 20,000 unique monthly visitors. It has been shown that pictures can entice a reader to click to your homepage. Once there, you have the opportunity to tell them about yourself in your bio. Your last 10 poems will also be available to them with just a click of their mouse. If you have captured their interest, they can click to join your mailing list and be notified each time you write another poem. However, the benefits do not just stop there. Once a reader has absorbed your page, they can click on your friends. So you help your friends to receive traffic as well.

The Featured Poets are determined by the following automated process.

  1. Find all poets who have posted in the last 24 hours
  2. Eliminate any poet that does not have a picture in their profile
  3. Eliminate any poet that does not have at least five friends
  4. Out of the remaining pool of names, randomly pick 10 names
4) Your home page has experienced several other changes:
  1. "HOME" link added below your picture will always take you back to YOUR homepage
  2. When visiting another homepage, much of the text that is duplicated from your homepage is removed.
  3. Added a module which shows your last ten poems on your homepage (after Dec 19)
  4. Show the reader your personal bio (pulled from your profile)
Second, it is my privilege to announce a new member to my management team. Bonnie has accepted the position of The Starlite Cafe Music Coordinator. The midi collection here at Starlite is limited. Bonnie is tasked with the challenge of upgrading our music selections.

Before the questions arise, let me answer a couple of them for her. First, we do have plans to give Starliters a private directory for their own music, but it will be months away. For now, we are only adding music to the general pool. Second, for now, we are staying with midi. The "real music files" like mps3 are just too large for us to handle at this time. Bonnie will also be heading up a new challenge starting in mid January based around music. Each week the host will get to pick a background song for the challenge. Poets will be challenged to write a poem that fits the song the best. Bonnie will be releasing more details on that in the future. Please join me on the boards in welcoming Bonnie to the team.

Over the next few months, we will be sharing more and more of our vision. There are lots of features in the queue to be released in 2008. The whole idea is to give you more capability, more ways of connecting with your fellow poet, and more importantly, more ways of getting your poetry read. We know Starlite is the best poetry web site on the Internet. In 2008, we will take it to the next level.

If you want to be the first to hear about new features, go to your profile and sign up for email notification from Devin's Corner. An announcement is posted for each new feature released. Devin's Corner is also a great place to give feedback and suggestions for new functionality.

I wish you the happiest of holidays. For now, so long and remember... I love you Starliters !!!

Devin Jeanel
The Starlite Cafe


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