Some discussions on the Facebook group, and comments within the site, led me to an outstanding idea (thanks MissTick!) which was to put a yellow notification bar at the top of your screen when new people have requested to become friends. This was, I believe, an awesome idea and as such has today been implemented and delivered. Yes, right there is the reason we switched software to WordPress. I can implement new features SO much quicker

So, if someone new requests to be your friend, you’ll get a notification at the top of your screen which will show only while you’re in the admin screens, but will persist until you visit the Friends section. Unfortunately I cannot ‘retro’ fit it, so if you have new friends from yesterday, they won’t trigger the notification. But new ones from now on will.

Coupled with the new friends search system I hope that will help people to find the friends system more useful.

I have also updated the Genesis Palette to give a hint as to why changes may not appear to be sticking. If you use Genesis check it out and let me know if it fixes your issue with the Genesis palette not updating your settings!

I’ve fixed the Genesis Design Palette plugin, so you can now (if you’re using the Genesis theme) easily modify a number of different things on your diary, such as text colour, link colours, sizes of headers etc.

You will need to activate the plugin from your dashboard if you’re using Genesis as I can’t do it site-wide because not everyone is using Genesis. If I figure out a decent way to do that I will because it’s kind of pivotal to the user experience

Any problems, give me a yell!

The old system has been replaced. Now there are two steps to add a new friend, the first is on the original screen but this is now a SEARCH box.

The drop down will still drop down if it finds people while you type, but you do not have to click on what it finds. Click the Search button when you have entered enough information for your search. You’ll then be taken to a new screen, which will list all the results of the search. Tick the box for the friends you want to add and click submit.

If all went well, your new friends will be added. They’ll have to go to their end of the friends screen to allow you access to their entries if they decide to. I’m working on the possibility of having the system e-mail your friend to let them know they’ve received a request, but in the meantime, you’ll need to do that manually

Let me know how it goes for you all!