After much laboring and after letting our wonderful Music Guides give us some feedback, we would like to debut your new MyHomepages!




First off, to clarify, THIS IS NOT YOUR PUBLIC HOMEPAGE. We wouldn't dare change your homepages so suddenly and without any consultation. This is the page you see when you hit, "My Home" up in the right corner. You URL looks like this:  http://YOURUSERNAME.buzznet.com/user/home/

Think of it as the homepage you go to when you arrive to Buzznet and you want to see what's going on around the site. The neat feature to this entire page is that you have absolute control over what appears, how much appears, and where it appears; we've turned the control over to you so you can have a homepage that best suits what you're doing here on Buzznet.

Now, we know there are two styles of your current homepage out there. If you've got the old one, it looks like this:


You'll get the chance to switch over to our new MyHomepage. If you don't want to switch, you can keep this one!

If you've got the newer homepage, it looks like this:


Your homepage will automatically switch to the new version. We're updating you to the new homepage, given that the new homepage has all the same functionality as the beta one, but with more features and control.

Customize Module

So let's go through how you can change the general look of your homepage before we get into the specific modules.
The main control panel for MyHomepage is up in the top right:



The two options you have are to add more modules or change all the colors and appearances of the page. If you click on "Add Stuff," you'll get the following menu:


These two folders contain any of the modules or RSS feeds that you HAVE NOT added to your page. Click on Buzznet Stuff and you'll get:



Clicking "Add Module" next to either of these will add the module to your page.

Clicking on Music News will bring you to this:

This will add an RSS feed module for that specific site.

Now let's move on to customizing your page!! You can change the colors, the background, or tile an image behind the homepage. Click "Colorize" in the control panel:




Much like your own page, you can change and control virtually every part of your homepage! Go nuts.

In addition to the main control panel, there is a tool bar on top of each module, which allows you to control that modules' display options, as well as where it appears on the page. This is the "Settings Menu."


 
The wrench icon opens up the module's Settings Menu.



Next to the wrench are two small arrows; these allow you to move that module up and down on the page!


At any time, you can bump that module up or down one spot.

You can also minimize a module by clicking on the Minimize button on the top bar:

 
It'll appear like this on your page until you expand it again:


Additionally, your modules can be removed entirely if you don't like them, which is a new control we've given to you based on feedback we received. We're very excited to give you this kind of control over your page!

If you want to get rid of a module completely, click the 'X' button in the top right of the tool bar:


An overlay will pop up and ask you to confirm that you'd like to remove the module entirely.


If you remove it, you can always add it back by going to the "Add Stuff" menu in the Customize bar, where it will be filed into the respective folder it came from:


So now that you know how modules themselves work, as well as how to control them, let's break down which modules you now have and how they work!

Status

Your status bar will now sit on the top left at the top of your page.


If you want to see a video How-To about this module, please watch this video:

Message Inbox

You can display up to 5 messages in the Message module; it will preview the message title, the sender, and the first few words of the message.



Activity Feed

Your activity feed will display your friends feed, a feed of your favorites, and your own feed.


If you want to check out what you're blasting out to the world, click "My Activity" to see your own feed.

We've also allowed you to control what displays much more than before, as well as the ability to remove a person entirely. Click the wrench icon to bring up the Settings Menu:



Uncheck any item that you don't want to appear in your feed. On the right side, type a username in to add them to your list of blocked activity feed members:


At any time, you can choose to filter your feed to display a certain item. (Topics, polls, photos, videos, etc.)




Awesome!

Buzznet Picture Feed

We are happy to introduce our first new module, the Buzznet Picture Feed. You can have an RSS feed, based through our tag system, filtered right to your homepage.


I've added 'photoassignment' and 'photography' to my feeds. Look how awesome that looks!

You can change the settings in the Settings Menu:


Add tags and choose how many photos you'd like to display. Don't forget to Save Changes before you close it!

Daily Most Commented

This is another new addition to your homepage. You can see anywhere from one to five items that are the most commented on the site:



You can also switch to Journals!


This updates continuously throughout the day and will reset at the end of the day, so make sure to keep checking it to see what's popular on Buzznet!

Buzznet Music News

Another new module for your consumption is our Music News Module. This feeds stories from the Music News page onto your page, so you can always stay up-to-date with what we're writing about. You can control how many stories display in the Settings Menu.


Let's move on to the right side of your page!

Song of the Moment

Another new module for you to play around with is our My Song of The Moment box. As we announced back in September, we have Music Players here on Buzznet! We'd like to add another feature to this player by allowing you to choose a single song to represent yourself at that specific time. Tell your friends what mood you're in or what you're currently obsessed with through song! Choose from an incredibly diverse library of songs and save the song so you can switch to it later!


Begin typing in an artist and if we've got music from them, they'll appear in the drop down menu:


Choose a song from the long list of songs we have in the MyMusic library:


If you leave "Save For Later" checked, you'll be able to choose that song later from "Saved songs" without having to search for it again!

My Friends' Songs

You can now view what your friends on Buzznet have chosen as their "Song of the Moment," play them from the module, and add them to your library!


The Settings Menu allows you to change how many songs you display:


Awesome! I implore all of you to explore both of these to see the ridiculous number of artists and songs we have. I promise you'll be surprised.

My Friends

Your friends list is displayed in this module and allows you easy access to your top friends, as well as seeing which of them are online right now.


You'll notice two differences: A green "Online" bar notifying you that your friend is online, as well as the ability to have 16 friends displayed instead of 12. You can also change it as low as one friend if you like by using the Settings Menu to modify the module's settings.

Daily Top Songs

You can now see a full chart of the top 10 songs that are being listened to on Buzznet. From here, you can listen to the songs or add them to your Library.


Invite Friends

This static module is always at the bottom of the right column and helps you to invite friends to Buzznet!



BONUS MODULES

All of these modules do not appear as default modules when you get your new homepage; you must add them to your page manually. I still wanted to give a run down of what they are, though, in case you want them!

Groups

You can add a module to keep track of the groups you belong to, as well as control how they're displayed:


Hit the wrench icon to open up the Settings Menu, where you can choose which groups you want to display:


Make sure to press save before you exit out of the menu!

Comments

You can add a module to notify you of up to 5 new comments to your content. This tells you the author of the content, where it shows up, and what the comment is:


Notes

You can add a module to notify you of up to 5 new notes to your profile. It is very similar to how notes were displayed on your old homepage, with the exception that the note is previewed instead of posted in full:


Bulletins

You can add a module to preview bulletins that your Buzznet friends have posted.

 The Settings Menu allows you to change how many are displayed.

Music News Feeds

For the first time ever, we're going to have an RSS feed module on your homepage that allows you to choose a site's news to get filtered directly from you. We're starting this off with a couple of our partner sites and some of the most respected names in Music News!

If you choose to add a module to your page, it will appear in the left column and you can place it anywhere you like!


Default Modules

At any time, if you'd like to start over, go to the Customize bar, click 'Add Stuff,' and choose, "Restore Default Page Modules." This will revert your entire page back to how it started and remove all customization.


It will prompt you to confirm that you want to remove all customization:



Then you can begin again!

That wraps up my explanation of your new MyHomepage! As always, please drop any comments, concerns, questions, and praise in the comments below.