EUG Admin's Blog

Site Update

Admin — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:05:00 GMT

So, after a stalled update last week, we have managed to update the Excel User Group site.

It has a stronger 'community' feel with friends that make it easier to track contributions by your favourite authors for example.

Files are now stored under 'Media' and we will be looking to add videos at some point in the future, that will stream in an embedded viewer in the site. private messages have become 'Conversations' and these are viewable on you own personal home page, which is accessed as soon as you log on. When viewed by others, the 'Conversation' panel on your home page is replaced with an 'announcement' panel for you to leave messages for others, such as 'Out of Office' or developer looking for work type messages.

We will be enabling groups shortly and may use this functionality for a 'work exchange' community where authorised developers can advertise their skills and customers could place work to be done. Don't know how it will work, but worth a try.

I hope you like the changes, but as usual we are grateful for any feedback you may give

PS:Sorry we lost the links to avatars, please re-upload and we will be good to go

Site Statistics

Admin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:53:05 GMT

I was having a look on Google Analytics for the site and you may be interested to see how many, where from and where to. these stats are from Mid Jan 2008 and we are growing slowly each week (as the recent spam is showing).

There were some peak times when we first launched, when many of you kindly posted on blogs, etc resulting in just over 500 unique visitors on one day! We are currently running at around 300 visitors a day after a short lull about 3 weeks ago. the users are interested though as they take about 4 pages per visit and spend 5 minutes on the site. (I don't think that's bad?). Our repeat visitors are growing each day too and currently stand at 32%.

The referrals are about where I felt, search engines, my site and DDoE. (My site is categorically NOT busier the DDoE but I have link on each page!)

The top destination is obviously the 'Default.aspx' home page(s), but the forums are very busy and also the blogs. It is truly a worldwide community as one of the tables shows.

Here are a few tables and if anyone else wants to know any stats, keywords, search terms, what do you get from my site, comment away or send me a PM/Email.

Another excelusergroup.org milestone

Admin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:45:00 GMT

Good morning all from a not so sunny Cologne, Germany. (On my travels). Just though I would announce we now have our 200th registered user! (without counting all the lurkers out their, which if you look at anytime of the guests on line is always around 10. (Click on forums link and it is there)).

Our 200th registrant was cgcordry who actually shows as 202, but I have two user IDs (Admin and TestUser), so they don't count.

Thanks to all for making this a valuable, vibrant and growing community.

Posting Code to excelusergroup.org

Admin — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:46:29 GMT

I have been testing several solutions for posting formatted code to these forums and blogs. There are a few that I can build-in, but I am nervous messing with the code base as we are just getting going.

The code below is formatted using Windows Live Writer, a free blogging tool from here. I have added to that an add-in, (there are dozens of them) to insert code snippets. (There are lots of these too).

You can just add this as a plug-in very simply and it appears as a link in the right sidebar of WLW. Click on it, paste your VBA code (or other code if you need) and, in VBA's case select VB as the language.

You can either set it to be in a container or post the styles with the post.

Now the tricks. If you are posting to a blog (even one on www.excelusergroup.org), then you can very easily link to your account there and just post at the click of a button...job done.

If you want the formatted code in a forum post, just go to View>HTML Code and copy the post in it's entirety. Now take this HTML to the forum and either start a new post or reply to an existing one and click on the HTML button in the editor and paste the code.

Job done, (an example is below, posted in it's 'container', formatted, indented the lot and you can even add line numbers to make navigation or instructions for readers easier)

Hope you use it

Sub TestPost()
Dim wb As Workbook
Dim wks As Worksheet
Dim myCell As Range
'Assign Object Variables
Set wb = ThisWorkbook
Set wks = wb.ActiveSheet

'Iterate range
For Each myCell In wks.Range("A1:A100")
    If myCell.Value = 1 Then
        myCell.Value = "Do This"
    End If
Next myCell

'Release object pointers
Set wks = Nothing
Set wb = Nothing
End Sub

Update on Updates (19th January 2008)

Admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:06:00 GMT

Good Day All

More news 'from the bridge' here.

Over the last few days a few more changes have been made to our site.

The original poster can now set there forum post as a 'question' and then, the posts can be marked as answered, allowing other users later to find 'answered questions'
The Lean and Green theme is now up and running. if you want to test or run this, you can do so from the 'Site Options' section under your profile.
Corrected the issue where post dates were wrong. Providing you have the correct time zone set in your profile, they will now be correct.

We are looking to upgrade some more stuff over the next week or so, both user requests and things we want to get done anyhow.

Look forward to more suggestions and ideas, keep 'em coming!

Nick Hodge

Post times now fixed

Admin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:21:00 GMT

We have been working on fixing the post time issue on the site. You should find, providing you have your setting correct under your profile, that the post time should now appear correctly for you.

Let me know if that's not the case

File attachments on forum posts

Admin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:24:24 GMT

We have now enabled attachments for registered users of forum posts to make it easier to explain some issues or for responders to pass along demo's, etc. There is a file limit on these files so if they bomb you out that is likely the cause. Zipping the file is obviously preferable.

Bear in mind also that if the file has general appeal, it can be uploaded to the downloads section for everybody to be aware of.

We are still tinkering behind the scenes here to get the experience just right, so some things that worked earlier may not in the future and vice-versa. We are trying to make it so that the more authoritative you become on the site, the more privileges you get to do more.

Thank you everyone for your efforts so far, we have over 70 registered users and quite some activity going.

If you have any queries about the experience, I'm your man, you can PM me through the site, leave a post in the Site forums or email me directly on admin@excelusergroup.org.

So we're up and running!

Admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:08:00 GMT

Hi everyone from the bridge

We are up and running and I am delighted to say we have a considerable number of registrants and quite a few Microsoft MVPs. Whatever your status, welcome along and join in!

We have had two new forums added (with a couple of sub forums) for Excel Add-Ins and Excel Services. The former has had XL-Dennis volunteer to moderate and hang around so hopefully we can get some threads going there.

We have had kind permission from Dick Kusleika (often seen here as *** as the profanity filter gets him) to mirror Daily Dose of Excel here, so thanks Dick.

At the moment we allow anonymous posting, but over time, that may change as we can then open up some more features to the community. If we do this, you will be able to post anonymously, even if you are registered, only I'm not sure why you'd want to.

We are searching for a code editor that will nicely format code. I tried to load one last night but it didn't seem to work well and I wouldn't give you second rate would I?

We still welcome ideas on forums, although I don't think we want too much of a scattergun approach.

I have been playing around for a while and still find new stuff so keep looking around and hopefully the interface will become familiar quickly.

If you would like to blog about Excel, I can facilitate a blog for you, or give you access to some of the general blogs, although these will be moderated by admin until we can ascertain tone and writing style of each. It doesn't matter what level you post to... I stress this as there are always people who can learn from your experiences from all around the World and this 'community' will not be 'community' without you!

It's been a great couple of days

Thank You