FilmGator has recovered from a hardware failure. We have now been back in business for a few days and have also moved over to a new server. Preparations for the official beta -launch are also underway and we should be hearing more about that in the near future!

Thank you all for your patience!

Other functions included in the mini profile are:

• User picture - which also is a link to the users personal movie timeline
• Name and link to the last movie the user has seen
• Name and link to the last movie the user has reviewed
• Link to a page with all the users reviews
• Gator score
• Link to the “Top rated by” page of the user
• A list of other users the user in question is following (i.e. their activity feed; including movies watched, reviewed etc).
• A private messaging tool which sends an e-mail to the user.
• A toggle link whereby you are able to start following the users activity feed.

I really like our search. It’s up there on every page, automatically focused when a page is loaded. It’s quick and it searches for movies, actors and users. It’s my gateway to the whole site. Enter two or more characters into the field and the search is on. However, as the number of movies, actors and users on FilmGator grows, you might want to type just a little more than that to make sure you get what you are looking for. That said, it is rarely necessary to type the full name of whatever you are trying to find.

Because I like the search so much, I thought I’d give it some additional capabilities. I ended up defining 3 keywords that have a special meaning:

*online* - shows the 10 most recently active users

*friends* - shows up to 10 of your most recently active friends

*random* - shows 10 random movies, 10 random actors and 10 random users

(it is actually enough to just type *o, *f or *r)

I hope everyone takes some time to really get to know the search function as it is an essential part of the FilmGator experience!

Two interesting new developments:

2. Lauri, or rather nmd, the lead architect himself has also worked diligently with some neat features that are presently partly under the surface, but can be accessed through the users’ mini-popup-profile. If you’ve already rated some movies and want to see some nice statistics, then go search for your own nick and find out what the feature does.

Stay tuned for more!

Yesterday a new useful feature was added to the Timeline page for each user. The overview chart provides a glance at history by showing the total amount of movies added to your timeline and a nice break-down of monthly activity. The chart can also be used to easily navigate through past months.

The timeline is certainly one of the essential unique features provided by FilmGator and thus is going to be subject to a great deal of attention in the development process.

In the FilmGator blog the development team will write, rant and report on issues related to the site, its design and architecture and maybe even broader matters ranging from corporate developments to the web 2.x hysteria as a whole.

In behalf of the dev team I welcome all and everybody to the blog and especially to FilmGator, which is still in its infancy, but loaded with great expectations.