The 10,000th candle was lit in nshrine.com at Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:38:25 GMT. It was in the Bumblebee Shrine and was accompanied by the dedication “Voor Syl”.
It’s been a great 10,000 candles. I’m looking forward to making room for millions more.
Thanks to all of you, nshrine.com is becoming a success. To celebrate several minor milestones this week, I’ve made all current shrines advertising free for a week. Those of you that have ad-free shrines already will have one free week added.
To learn how to keep your shrines ad-free status, you can click on the “Keep Ads Off This Shrine” button on any ad-free shrine. (In shrines with advertisements, you will be able to find this information through the “Remove Ads From This Shrine” button.) If you don’t want to have the Keep/Remove buttons in your shrine, you can block this through the “Change Shrine Settings”.
If you haven’t checked your shrine out in a while, or haven’t visited others, now is a good time. You can start here:
http://nshrine.com/shrines.html
If you haven’t got any shrines yet, get started
http://nshrine.com/
Thanks again for using nshrine and spreading the word.
Growth is steady and great input is coming in. New tools are in the works and the nshrine experience keeps getting better.
I’ve just launched a simple listing of all publicly-available shrines. Many shrines have opted-out of listing, as is completely understandable. Hopefully we can soon offer greater privacy through access control. For now, shrines may be removed from the directory by “Change Shrine Settings” in the shrine editor.
According to the settings the shrine creator gives, some shrines welcome candles from all, some from just nshrine members, some from friends only, and some just from the creator. Browse around and respect a new shrine or two with a candle: Visit the Shrines Page.
The number of shrines grows at nshrine.com, as does the number of candles and the new members. Welcome all.
To help visitors discover new shrines, nshrine.com will soon have directories of shrines. In order to preserve the low profile many shrines currently have, the option to keep shrines out of directory listings is now available. To remove your shrines, log in to account and click on the ‘Edit’ button for the shrine you wish to de-list. The option to remove a shrine from listings is in the
‘Change Shrine Settings’ panel.
Removing a shrine from directories won’t make it completely hidden–people will still be able to visit from links to your shrine on other sites or through search engines, The ability to close the shrine to all but your own account, your friends, or to nshrine members in general is coming soon to ad-free shrines.
Today’s launch includes paging for shrines. Some shrines have had hundreds of candles placed in them and this has led to large pages too large to be appreciated. I’ve programmed arrow keys to appear on shrines with more than eight candles. I may move this number up over time. You can see an example of the arrows at work on the play shrine. Let me know what you think.
Also, some of you may have noticed a change in shrine advertising (for shrines that have ads on them, that is). I’ve placed a block of text ads at the bottom of each page instead of ads at the top. I’ve also enabled a per-session ad-free option for all visitors and all shrines. If a visitor clicks on the “Remove Ads From This Shrine” button (for those shrines that don’t have this button disabled), ads will be removed for that visitor for 20 minutes. I am experimenting with different advertising services, so please let me know if you see any offensive ads or malfunctions with your shrines. Thanks.
In response to the horrible earthquake in China, I created The Sichuan Earthquake Shrine and removed the ads from it. I was hoping to find some correctly formatted ads from the Red Cross or other emergency assistance groups, but failed. I’ll keep looking.
I’m pleased to announce the availability of premium ad-free service for all shrines. I’ve set up a sample ad free shrine to show what it looks like. As you can see, not only are the ads removed, but also much of the nshrine.com-related navigation.
This of course comes with a small fee. Prices can be seen on the example shrine page. For a limited time, owners of shrines created before April 24th 2008 can get some free ad free time for their shrines. Click on the shrine’s “Make This Shrine Ad” button to learn more.
More features will be added to the “ad free” premium mode as time goes on. Keep the suggestions and feedback coming! Email artwells@nshrine.com.
Though not entirely related to nshrine’s development, I thought it might be of interest. I’ve released a google gadget based on wingmail from the artwells oracula. I published it with a “provided by nshrine.com” statement, and I’m going to re-use a lot of the code for a nshrine.com gadget coming soon, so I suppose there is some relevance.
You can add the gadget to your web pages here, or you can use the link below the gadget to add it to your goog homepage.
The growth of nshrine.com is steady and appropriate. I’m feeling almost ready for a publicity push, but still have a few things on the GottaDo list to check off. Links to individual shrines are spreading throughout myspace, livejournal and various special interest forums at a manageable rate, and that’s a pleasure to see. Many shrines are being visited and cared for daily. The intentions of the site are being fulfilled.
One feature launched today is a tool to recover and change passwords. Now there is a “Forgot Your Password?” link on the Log In page. Also on each users’ profile page, there is a password change form. Passwords can be changed at any time.
I’ve created a new page displaying the latest candles and linking them to their place in their shrines. Hopefully this will help people familiarize themselves with the many thoughts and prayers folks have when they place candles.
The shrines so far have been on the average more serious than the oracula’s old shrines. I don’t think that is a better or worse culture for a group of shrines. It does seem that my efforts are being well appreciated. Still, it would be nice to see a bit more play. It will come.
I fiddled with the homepage to hopefully make it more compelling. I still have a ton of design issues to tackle, and a lot of good input to be inspired by, but if you have any, definitely let me know.