After a lot of revamping, liking it, hating it, revamping again, liking it, hating it and revamping AGAIN, we finally have a new myDigitalLife website:)

The planned date to re-launch the new site is this coming Wednesday, the 25th of November 2009 - a few month later than I initially planned, but it will be well worth the wait.

So let's see what you can expect and can't expect (right now).

Selenium

On my local PC I created the last template called Selenium.

So far it seems that only Dissol knows what Selenium is.  The rest of you can do a Wikipedia search for it - very interesting stuff.

Blogs

The first thing we needed was a new blogging component.  One that doesn't bomb out when you use Google Chrome as a browser.  It also has a great new way to add tags and images to your blogs.

You will only access your own images folder now, so all the scrolling and waiting for directories to load will be a thing of the past.  You will also be able to search prior blogs and drag and drop the links into your postings - frikkin cool.

We will be sorting the blogs into 2 main categories from this point onwards.  Digital and Lifestyle blogs.  So if you feel that your blog has a digital flavour you put it in the one and all the rest go into lifestyle.

Social Networks

The first visible thing you will see is the new Twitter label on every page.  This will provide browsers with a quick way to share pages on Twitter.

All blogs are also set to ping Technorati automatically and there are several other sites accommodated like Facebook, Digg, Stumble Upon and LinkedIn to mention a few.  We do have that on the current site but since then and now there has been a lot of API changes on the various services and we are now using Open Source plug-in's that make sharing a click click process.

Comments

The new comment system now has a voting component attached to it.  So if you think it was a great comment that added value to the posting you can vote it up, if not just dump it.

Gallery

I have loaded a new gallery that would provide you with more ability to add titles and descriptions about the photos.  You can create your own categories, share it with friends, embed it into your postings and if you really want to, you can tag yourself in a photo.

CHAT

Sadly, the shout box will fall away.  I have replaced it with a Chat room.

We will have a General Chat room that has the same purpose as the Shout Box.  For the first few month we will also have a myDL Help room where we will assist you with the new site if you have any questions.

The cool thing about the new chat, is that you will also have the ability to have one-on-one chats with individual members (limited to 5 at a time).

What falls away

For now I am dropping the SMS functionality since nobody really uses it.  I will however restore it again early 2010.

The MMS Blog will still be available but I will be replacing it with a more advanced one soon.

What more

All of this is mostly a "Phase 1" scenario as I am still working on other cool things for the site.

• Gaming Section with Flash games
• Reviews Section
• A Digg/Reddit type of component

You will notice some changes on the template and layout moving forward as we will constantly be improving on it.

I hope you will all love the new site as much as we do and join us as we take myDL to the next level.  I do expect a few hick-up's and will appreciate it if you could report those to me so that we can sort them as they come along.

So keep a look out on Wednesday - you might refresh and see a new site :)