Updated widget designer

<p><div>Quick note about a few new screencasts to go over the latest changes to the widget designer:</div><div><br /></div><div>Updated widget designer part 1:</div><div><a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/pe1lTcmH7">Part 1: Basic overview and embedded widgets</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Updated widget designer part 2:</div><div><a href="http://www.screencast.com/t/qYLovUhZjW">Part 2: Central code storage; pop-up widgets</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Updated widget designer part 3:</div><div><a href="http://screencast.com/t/CzRtGDo9">Part 3: Follow-me widgets</a></div><div><br /></div><div>(The end of Part 3 references a screencast about service rollover, but that is not updated yet. The earlier version is accurate except that it shows older-style code. The concepts are still very sound: <a href="http://screencast.com/t/GpuM4YhQOy">service rollover screencast</a><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">)</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>New libraryh3lp admins will find these useful, and <b>experienced </b>admins may find them helpful too,<b> especially Part 2</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Soon, we hope to have a screencast for experienced admins that will succinctly describe the key changes in the widget designer and resulting code, which looks pretty different now than it did before. But for now, here are a few points:</div><div><ul><li>Your existing code should be backwards compatible, so you don't need to change anything.</li><li>The new javascript method (no longer libraryh3lp.js?multi, although that still works fine) is more robust in various failure scenarios, in terms of network problems and such not creating problems with your larger web page.</li><li>The biggie: all of your chat code (not just things like widget skins) can be centrally stored in the libraryh3lp admin site now, if you want to do so. This is especially helpful for those who do not have access to edit the web pages housing all of their chat widgets. You can update your code on the admin site now, once you have the new-style code in place. </li><li>The key new part of the javascript looks like this: "libraryh3lp.com/js/libraryh3lp.js?xxx" where xxx is a number that references your chat code snippet. </li></ul>Again, hopefully we'll have a screencast for experienced admins about the changes soon. Stay tuned!</div></p>

Quick note about a few new screencasts to go over the latest changes to the widget designer: Updated widget designer part 1: Part 1: Basic o...

Canadian Servers Now Available

<p>For LibraryH3lp:<div><br /></div><div><a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">support@libraryh3lp.com</a> Please include your affiliation and preferred admin username.</div><div><br /></div><div>Or RefChatter:</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="mailto:info@altarama.com">info@altarama.com</a></div><div><br /></div></p>

For LibraryH3lp: support@libraryh3lp.com Please include your affiliation and preferred admin username. Or RefChatter: info@altarama.com

New Signups, New Servers

<p>At the risk of boring you, I'm going to start with a bit of LibraryH3lp history. Those of you who have been with us a long time will remember that during the first two years of LibraryH3lp we introduced new features on a regular basis. The third year... not so much. During the third year, we were pretty well occupied with managing ever-increasing load. Eventually we put a temporary hold on new registrations altogether, pending a very large upgrade.<div><br /></div><div>Because the required upgrades and architectural changes were necessarily disruptive, we decided to wait until summer, when the work would cause the least damage. Those upgrades went about as well as expected, though admittedly not as well as hoped, but the heavy lifting is behind us now¹ and we're ready to move forward again. Unfortunately, we have no "I survived the LibraryH3lp upgrade and didn't even get a lousy T-shirt" T-shirts to give you. But we hope that you'll find the coming new features a worthy consolation prize. (We'll talk a bit about new features in a future post.) But enough history. Let's talk sign-ups.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-weight: bold;">We're now ready resume accepting new signups.</span> One of the benefits of the upgrade is that we now have three regional servers available. To get started, simply choose the server physically closest to you:<br /><br /><ul><li>USA: Please email us at <a href="mailto:support@libraryh3lp.com">support@libraryh3lp.com</a> to request a free trial. Please include your affiliation and preferred admin username.</li><br /><li>Europe: <a href="https://eu.libraryh3lp.com/signup">https://eu.libraryh3lp.com/signup</a></li><li>Asia: <a href="https://sg.libraryh3lp.com/signup">https://sg.libraryh3lp.com/signup</a></li></ul></div><div><div><br />(Just a note, the Europe and Asia servers are currently running with self-signed HTTPS certificates. This is only temporary. We just needed a quick way to ensure that the signup process was encrypted.)</div><div><br /></div>Yes, the sign-up pages are admittedly not pretty. That's to keep the riffraff out. No, not really. Because we have a sizable backlog of libraries wanting to do a LibraryH3lp trial, we decided bare-bones sign-up was better than none. We'll soon make the sign-up pages fancier. And yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">we still offer 90-day trials with no limits on features</span>. So have at it!</div><div><br /></div>More details on the new servers. Not only have we overhauled our existing US server and added new servers in Europe and Asia, but we'll be adding a fourth server in Canada in another week or so. Why all the new servers? Better performance! Because LibraryH3lp is all about real-time communication -- it's basically a real-time anything-to-anything-else technology -- the time it takes for messages to get to and from the server matters. I measure a ping-time of 100ms between the US and European servers, and 250ms between the US and Asian servers. Which means than European users should see a nice performance boost, and Asian users should OMG!!!<br /><div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Screencasts for new admins.</span> Here are a few screencasts we created to give new admins a leg up:<br /><br />Users/queues:<br /><a href="http://screencast.com/t/ZB9isCp3PGd" target="_blank">http://screencast.com/t/<wbr>ZB9isCp3PGd</a><br /><br />Widget designer part 1:<br /><a href="http://screencast.com/t/c7zi5SmJ4k" target="_blank">http://screencast.com/t/<wbr>c7zi5SmJ4k</a><br /><br />Widget designer part 2:<br /><a href="http://screencast.com/t/IVHXXmvlE" target="_blank">http://screencast.com/t/<wbr>IVHXXmvlE</a><br /><br />Widget designer part 3:<br /><a href="http://screencast.com/t/GpuM4YhQOy" target="_blank">http://screencast.com/t/<wbr>GpuM4YhQOy</a><br /><br /></div><div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Existing users that want to move to a regional server.</span> If you're an existing user and would like to move to one of the regional servers, this is the process:</div><div><ol><li>Sign up for a trial account on the regional server closest to you, just to satisfy yourself that it will be worth the hassle of moving. Don't get too invested in your trial, as this is not your real account.</li><li>Let us know that you'd like to move. (Thanks much to those of you who have already declared a desire to move!) We'll migrate your users and queues to the new server.</li><li>You'll need to start logging into the new server via your chat clients and work on updating your web pages to point to the new URL. You may want to monitor both systems during this transitional period.<br /></li><li>Once your web pages are updated, we can move your gateways, existing chat data, and transcripts.</li><li>You can finally stop logging into the old server.</li></ol><div>If you begin your move to a new server <span style="font-style: italic;">before the end of August</span>, it's free to move. After that, there is a $100 fee, because we may need to resolve conflicts between your users and queues and those of an existing user on your new server, and this is a tedious manual process. Oh, and of course you can also choose to move between LibraryH3lp and My Customer Cloud for free during this period.<br /><br /></div></div><div>Regards,</div><div><br /></div><div>Eric<br /><p>¹ We're very much aware that there are still some user-visible features missing, but they'll be added soon. The hardest work really is behind us.</p><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div></p>

At the risk of boring you, I'm going to start with a bit of LibraryH3lp history. Those of you who have been with us a long time will re...

Upgrade begins Sunday

<p>Hey everyone,<div><br /></div><div>Just a reminder that we have a <a href="http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2011/05/upgrades-and-new-service-models-on-way.html"><b>big </b>upgrade on the way</a>. Here is the rough timeline:</div><div><br /></div><div>We're taking the server down Sunday, June 5, and it will probably be unavailable all day. Your web pages will still load, and all services will be shown as offline. Do not try to staff your service that day; you will not be able to log in.</div><div><br /></div><div>We'll be bringing the server back on Monday, June 6. There will probably be multiple restarts and instability. Our goal will be to get basic services stable as soon as possible. You will be able to log in, but you might be happier if you don't.</div><div><br /></div><div>We'll spend the rest of the week bringing up the less critical services such as gateways and getting everything re-stabilized and accustomed to load. </div><div><br /></div><div>The admin site (especially reports) will probably be hit-or-miss most of the week. Please don't plan to run critical end of the year reports next week. (Do them tomorrow!)</div><div><br /></div><div>We'll <a href="http://twitter.com/libraryh3lp">tweet </a>our progress.</div><div><br /></div><div>The great news is that once we're through this upgrade, we'll be able to start pushing out new features again. This upgrade will also allow us to re-enable new trial registrations and to provide new regional and private servers. We believe it will be worth it.</div><div><br /></div></p>

Hey everyone, Just a reminder that we have a big upgrade on the way . Here is the rough timeline: We're taking the server down Sunday, ...

Introducing our new full time person, Amy

<p>As Eric mentioned in the last post, we've done our very best to support our users, but we haven't been able to guarantee assistance because we're spread pretty thin. We hope to change that. My name is Amy Shelton and I'll be joining the team full time starting June 1. I will be providing support as well as doing some programming. <br /><br />I have been working with Eric in my spare time for about a year now to make the chat functionality contained within Libraryh3lp available to businesses of all sizes through <a href="http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2010/06/introducing-my-customer-cloud.html">My Customer Cloud</a>. While working on My Customer Cloud, I've had the pleasure of working directly with multiple libraries already. I very much look forward to meeting and interacting with the Libraryh3lp community.<br /><br />I'm coming to Nub Games from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory where I've worked for the past 13 years, most recently as the Head of Software Development for the Green Bank, WV site. I first met Eric and Pam about 10 years ago while Eric was working at the Observatory in Green Bank. My current professional interests are software engineering, customer service, and web application development. I've been <a href="http://online-customer-service.blogspot.com/">blogging on customer service</a> for about a year now. We're always looking for ideas and inspiration as well as guest bloggers. <a href="mailto:amy@nubgames.com">Drop me a line</a> if you would like to suggest topics or submit a post.<br /><br />I'm very excited to be working full time with Pam and Eric and even more excited that the extra pair of hands will translate into better support for our user community!</p>

As Eric mentioned in the last post, we've done our very best to support our users, but we haven't been able to guarantee assistance ...

Upgrades and new service models on the way

<p>Summer has arrived! We have a bunch of news to share, so let's get straight to it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;">New full-time person</span><br />In the past, we've done our very best to support our users, but we haven't been able to guarantee assistance because we're spread pretty thin. That's changing. We have a new, full-time person starting June 1, and she will be providing support as well as programming.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Upgrade (and new trial registrations) coming soon</span><br />The major system upgrade we mentioned in our last post is slated for the <span style="font-weight: bold;">week of June 6</span>. There will probably be a few rough days while we work out the kinks. We expect to enable new trial registrations by June 20. This upgrade will allow us to start pushing out a lot of requested features. Which brings me to...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New service models: additional regional and private servers</span><br />Most libraries have been happy to run on the shared Libraryh3lp server, physically located in Virginia and running on the Amazon EC2. But we have been receiving increasing numbers of requests from libraries wanting their own servers, or preferring to run on a server physically located someplace else.<br /><br />A key element in our upgrade is easier management of multiple servers, and so we're going to be able to accommodate these requests.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shared regional servers</span><br /><ul><li>What we mean by "shared server:" This is how Libraryh3lp operates now. You manage your own users and queues, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">all of your data is private</span>, but you are physically running on the same hardware as many other libraries. User and queue names have to be unique across the whole server; if another library has already taken the queue name "reference," you'll have to get a little bit creative ("uax_reference"). Hosting many libraries on the same hardware keeps costs down.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>In addition to the current shared server in the US, we'll bring up new shared regional servers in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ireland (Amazon EC2), Singapore (Amazon EC2), and Canada</span>. These new servers will improve performance and reduce latency for non-US libraries.</li></ul><ul><li>No change in <a href="http://libraryh3lp.com/static/payment.html">subscription fee</a> for any of the shared servers.</li></ul><ul><li>We will move existing customers to a new regional server for free up through July 31, 2011. After that, there will be a one-time fee of $100 to move since we will have to resolve conflicts with existing user and queue names. Please let us know ASAP if you know you're going to want to move to one of the new shared regional servers. (If you move, you will have to change your own web pages and update XMPP clients with the new server name.)<br /></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Private servers</span><br /><ul><li>What we mean by "private server:" You, or a group of libraries such as a consortium or a collaborative state-wide system, are the only ones running on a private server instance. It means you will not have to compete for the best queue names or usernames. Private servers also provide better fault isolation.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>We can work with you on the domain name so that it is something like "help.yourlibrary.edu." </li></ul><ul><li>No activation fee. Moving from a shared server to a private server at any time is free.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>Cost is dependent on location of server. For private servers in the US, we will physically locate the server as close to you as we can. Price for US private servers will be $100/month <span style="font-weight: bold;">plus</span> whatever the population-based subscription would ordinarily cost. </li></ul><ul><li>We do not yet have a pricing model for non-US private servers, but please contact us if you are interested and we will work it out for you.</li></ul><ul><li>SSL certificates (for HTTPS): Self-signed certs, or certs purchased by your own institution, will be installed for free. If we obtain an SSL cert for you, there will be a fee of $200/yr.</li></ul><ul><li>Sorry, but we will not install the system on your own hardware.<br /></li></ul>Whew! I think that about sums it up for now. If you need to contact us about any of this, please email <a href="mailto:support@nubgames.com">support@nubgames.com</a>. All prices above are in US dollars.</p>

Summer has arrived! We have a bunch of news to share, so let's get straight to it. New full-time person In the past, we've done our...

You can still haz. Just a little later.

<p><div style="text-align: left;">Hey everyone,</div><div><br /></div><div>A couple of weeks ago, we temporarily suspended registration of new Libraryh3lp trial accounts. Although we indicated that this was a temporary situation and that new trials would again be available this summer, we're hearing a fair bit of inaccurate rumor mill stuff, so we feel the need to provide more detail.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why did we disable new Libraryh3lp signups? Plain and simple: heavy load. </div><div><br /></div><div>Libraryh3lp has grown tremendously, approximately doubling each year. We're at a point now where the system is under a pretty amazing amount of strain for its current architecture. New trials only increase this load, and we still need to be able to survive the peak usage months this semester. April promises to bring a new record amount of traffic. New trials would only increase the chance of instability for existing customers, many of which have paid money for subscriptions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Proof:</div><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582224512427986098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwF15oGSnmIRXZmO3otfMO3MT-btFvsn4N3ePyFSg2GZkj7eThELyZMYoST3v8_VCvQ7rPpuOpO_Ppn6rqTueuJFOiM3BVfidJi4r8yhonLyRkgIrsiun6QZhwWnrCNTNI3WiIcTW_NeM/s400/stats.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 284px;" /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>In order to get Libraryh3lp over the next anticipated growth wall, we need to release a large upgrade. The coding work is underway. When we push out this new release, it will be somewhat disruptive, and there will be lots of bugs to be squashed in the weeks following the upgrade. This is better done over the summer than it is during the peak usage time in the Spring semester.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, keep in mind that Libraryh3lp has always been about providing a pretty much unlimited platform. You can create any number of users, queues, and gateways. You can put the widget and presence calls on any number of web pages. All of this does, in fact, require a pretty serious technical infrastructure. We could throttle growth and usage by placing all sorts of limits on things like users, queues, widget loads, and presence calls. But, we really believe in making this system very flexible, so we haven't done that. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now, to some specific rumors:</div><div><ol><li>Libraryh3lp has been sold. Patently false.</li><li>We are forcing libraries to use <a href="http://mycustomercloud.com/">My Customer Cloud</a>. Also false. But, MCC is a very good place to start if you're a wanna-be Libraryh3lp user. MCC still has plenty of capacity for new users. AND, for many libraries, MCC is cheaper than Libraryh3lp. </li></ol><div>And, as another option, keep <a href="http://www.altarama.com/page/RefChatter.aspx">Refchatter</a> by Altarama in mind. It is also very similar to Libraryh3lp, having the same code base, and it comes with guaranteed training and support (which Libraryh3lp does not).</div></div><div><br /></div><div>If you'd like to be notified when new Libraryh3lp registrations are available again this summer, please write to Pam at psessoms@gmail.com.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>One small favor</b>: If you are a current user, please check your Account Status tab in the admin site. We haven't had a lot of time to do proactive renewal billing, and it saves us a lot of time when libraries renew independently using the form in the site or at least write to us requesting an invoice. Help keep Libraryh3lp inexpensive by not requiring us to hire a billing person!</div><div><br /></div><div>Over and out!</div></p>

Hey everyone, A couple of weeks ago, we temporarily suspended registration of new Libraryh3lp trial accounts. Although we indicated that th...