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Halloween is coming up! Children will be marching up and down your block in costumes asking for trick or treat within the next week. So keep reading to get phpFox Halloween Treats below. Are You Ready To Get Spooky?Hold up as the spooktacular Halloween bargain from phpFox might daze you more than any scary story you have ever heard.Get a screaming deal with phpFox on any purchase with 13% Off Discount + FREE Installation Service when checking out from Oct 24th, 2018 to Oct 31st, 2018 (PST). Promo Code: SCARY13You know what's the scariest of all? Halloween without sweet treats.So hurry up! Please order now and treat yourself kindly with our monster Halloween promotion. Have a wicked Halloween!

We delightedly announce that the phpFox 4.7.0 Developer Release is available now. It is necessary to note that The Development Release is for testing purpose and specially delivered to 3rd-party experts only. Experts who are having products on phpFox Store can check and tweak their products for compatibility in the meantime. phpFox 4.7.0 which is the biggest upgrade in 2018 is expected to be officially released to the public in October. In this version, phpFox takes a big stride with several improvements in performance, scalability, and features to reassure that it is the best platform for Social Network. Please don't forgot to check its Sneak Peek blog for more info. For Experts You can now download the package of phpFox 4.7.0 Development Release in the Client Area. In order to help you update your products conveniently, we also prepared developer note and changelog. Please feel free to contribute your thoughts and findings on this Development Release via Ticket System. We appreciate and love to hear feedback and suggestions so we can place finishing touches to phpFox 4.7.0 before launching the official release.

All of us are counting down day by day to the official release of our Native Mobile app. However, we don't talk about Mobile app today. Instead, we are having another interesting update for you about new phpFox 4.7.0.It has been a few months since we released phpFox 4.6.0. Since then, we have been hard at work for the next version with many important updates. The long wait will soon be over as phpFox 4.7.0 is on the way to you for experiencing.Let us show you a little bit on what we have achieved in this new version! Significant enhancements on Performance Performance is always one of the key factors of websites to bring the best user experience. It is about how fast your web pages are loaded, or how quick your content can be delivered. In the beginning, when having low data volume and traffic, websites can be loaded quickly. However, when your site grows up with more user engagements, high traffic, and big data volume, your site will become slower and slower. Several surveys have shown that the page loading directly impacts the ratings, user retention rate, conversions, number of usages, and revenue from social network sites. You will get into trouble with slow performance site.Understanding the importance of high performance on social network sites, we have spent much effort to optimize the Core system in version 4.7.0. This will make phpFox performance outstanding from other social network platforms.Renovate Cache System Our team revamped phpFox Core Caching Library with a brand new system to guarantee a swift user experience on caching and loading your site. Optimize Database Structure A well-designed database provides quick access to essential information, phpFox 4.7.0 applies best practices in data modeling techniques and redefine a solid yet powerful database architecture. Improve Database Queries By analyzing and selecting the most efficient query evaluation plan from among various strategies, phpFox 4.7.0 accelerated the whole data manipulation process in term of execution time, complexity and server resources. Revise Codes Code quality is a significant element which we primarily focus on phpFox 4.7.0. Strong code requires less maintenance and reach the highest standard from load speed to user experience. We also did experiments to measure the performance of phpFox 4.7.0 in many simulated environments. The result is really amazing. And let's provide you detailed result in another blog soon.  Improve Scalability  Scalability reflects how well your social network site can adapt to a rapidly growing number of users. In particular, when there are significant changes in user accesses to your site and server reaches its limitation quickly, you will need to expand or add more servers to handle. The frequent question is given that how ease to do that without any modifications to the web application or platform. At this time, you have to care of the scalability of the website. Scalability is much more important to a social network site where a number of users grow up very fast. By understanding environmental workload conditions that your phpFox system is designed for, in version 4.7.0, phpFox ultimately targets on scalability. We take a further step to make phpFox scale well either on a cluster of dedicated servers or cloud services such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. With the support of the latest MySQL Group Replication technology, high-load phpFox social networks now can easily split the burden to multiple database servers.New App Releases Activity Point With Activity Point app, users can easily and smoothly manage settings and configurations of pointing system on both backend and frontend. As a stand-alone app, there will be no boundary or limit from the Core system. Additionally, Activity Point app opens a door for developers to take advantage on pointing system and use it in developing, modifying and adjusting features on their apps.Message Packed with a brand new design and various newly developed features, we understand your need for a modern and full-featured messaging app on phpFox. Therefore, in this ported app version, we conclusively work on not only perfecting current features but also developing new features. Message app will bring totally new Chatting experience to your users.And, along with new apps, we also upgraded several components of Core apps such as Photo & Material template to fix bugs, improve features and user experiences...  Support Skins on templates Template skins are simply available variations with pre-defined color set supported within certain templates. All of us love to have skins of templates which can save us much time when modifying the template. Upon selecting, the color styles of template skin will be automatically applied without the need of adjusting each and every theme component manually. Since phpFox 4.7.0, template creators will be able to design and create multiple skins for their phpFox themes.Certainly, we will have additional skins in the Material template on top of the blue one.That's all about main points of phpFox 4.7.0. What do you think about this release? Please share with us on Community or Ticket system. Have a good day and please stay tuned with us. We will be back very soon.

Welcome, October! As soon as September rolls around, Fall has the best of summer, with a little bit of spring, and winter tossed in. We know it is the time of the year again when we are on the edge of all end year activities. Let's explore very new and fascinating products on phpFox Store last month now.  1. Autumn Leaves by Foxer There is a saying – Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all. phpFoxer releases new free app called Autumn Leaves. Just a bit more of autumn mood for your users. Learn More →2. Movies System - Light Version by cespiritual This app will allow your members to add movies to your network and be informed of the new upcoming releases in their countries in a daily basis. They can also review the movies and add them to their favorite or watch list. The Light version is free and has some limitation compared to the Full version with trial purpose. See the Full Version here.Learn More →3. Color Feed by Codemake Software This app gives possibilities to put a background on a phpFox post with different colors or picture as on a Facebook. Your post will be more meaningful and surely catch more attention. Learn More →4. Material Landing by Fox Expert Unique Landing Page for the popular phpFox Material template. The app makes your social network well designed and increase registration count. Landing page based on the newest web design trends such as moving background, skew lines… Several back-end settings allow you to manage all components on the Landing page. Learn More →That's all for now. If you want to learn more about the functions and features of these new products, you can contact directly to our third-party vendors for inquiries.Or you can let us know your thoughts on these products by writing to hello@phpfox.com Also, in case you want to customize these apps to your own needs, you can ask our Experts to assist you on your tasks.  

Nowaday Marketing, building Customer Community is the Key to Create Value. That's the statement written by Bill Lee - president of the Customer Reference Forum, on HBR Blog. Let's check that out:What are your customers telling their friends and colleagues about your business? Your prospective customers and buyers increasingly learn about you from their peers — including your current customers — while tending more and more to ignore traditional sales and marketing communications from corporate. Companies are now taking advantage of this new marketing reality, becoming more skilled at getting their customers to advocate for them, create peer influence in their markets, and make important contributions in areas like product development and services.Creating and capturing such value from customer relationships doesn’t just happen, no matter how stellar your products and services are. It requires an enhanced value proposition, what I call a Level 4 customer value proposition. At Level 1, buyers perceive you as the supplier of a commodity. They’re entirely price sensitive. And more companies are at this level than think they are. Think PC makers, who load their computers with features and functionality believing they’re adding value and creating differentiation. In fact, the vast majority of their customers not only don’t care about such features, but find that all the clutter detracts from the user experience. At Level 2, Buyers perceive you as helping them get a job done. They associate your product or service with their desired outcome and the fact that you help them achieve that in some way that makes you stand out. Significantly (and ironically) companies that reach Level 2 often remove features or functionality that competitors provide. Think Apple, or Southwest Airlines, or for a more recent example, Zipcar. At Level 3, You engage the customer emotionally, which strengthens loyalty and retention. And here’s where it gets interesting. Some firms have such great offerings (at least, great compared to the competition) that their products or services alone are enough to create significant emotional attachment, again, such as Apple and Southwest (when I fly Southwest, I can actually feel my blood pressure drop as I interact with their friendly people.)But not everyone can create such awesome products or services — and even when you do, maintaining that emotional connection through your products and services may be fleeting. (With TiVo, for instance, customers have come to rely on the service so much, they don’t even think about it.) Firms that excel in the new world are discovering that they can create strong emotional attachment by moving to the next level… At Level 4, You’re helping customers build their social capital — that is, helping them to build and expand valuable support groups and communities.Helping customers build social capital may seem far removed from the concerns a competitive business should occupy itself with. But think about it: These days, buyers and prospects are open to receiving and are even seeking, information from your customers &#8212 their peers. Helping your customers build social capital is the way to make it attractive to them to provide this information. This is an area of tremendous creativity. Here are some specific ways that companies are doing this: Help customers build their reputationWhen Jeff Bezos made the controversial decision to allow customers to post reviews of the books they bought on Amazon’s site — a seminal event ushering customer-based marketing into the online world — he reasoned simply that ordinary reader reviews were what buyers wanted. To encourage more of this, Amazon now designates top reviewers on the site and a reviewer Hall of Fame (based in part on ratings from readers), lets reviewers set up their own pages showing their reviews of other books, provides them with a distinctive badge for their pen names, and more — all of which builds their reputation in the book buying community. Top Amazon reviewers are often more powerful than traditional media reviewers. Help customers build their affiliation networksCustomer advisory boards — in which a firm’s customers provide input and guidance on products and strategy — have been around for years and are often an effective way to gain “buy-in” from customers. Firms like Microsoft are taking this up a notch, with industry councils. These are groups that focus not on Microsoft’s products, services, and strategy, but rather on a compelling industry issue that is top-of-mind with people in the industry — a significant difference with great appeal to buyers. In particular, Microsoft formed a council that focused on one of the most vexing of all business technology issues: interoperability (the council is called the Interoperability Executive Council or IEC). Once people were convinced that this was a serious attempt to address the issue (and not a vehicle to push marketing), Microsoft was able to attract a marquee list of senior technology executives from around the world. At times, the IEC will address issues that Microsoft can’t help with — and the firm will go so far as to bring competitors into the discussion who can.What’s in it for Microsoft? Over time, the discussions and work performed by the IEC have given the firm insider access to the best thinking on this issue, which informs its product decisions, helps it establish thought leadership, and burnishes its standing as a constructive force for the industry. Help customers build status in the communityWhen marketing services and software firm, Eloqua, for example, decided to start recognizing outstanding work and results achieved by firms in its industry with awards, it decided to go the whole hog. And for good reason: helping customers build status is an exceptionally valued aspect of one’s social capital. Eloqua patterned the awards ceremony after the Emmy awards (it even hired the firm that designs the Emmy statues — calling it the “Markie“). They’re awarded at a lavish black-tie ceremony at a posh location, where some 20 awards are handed out over the course of the evening. The event attracts substantial media attention, in part because the firm is very careful to make sure that winners really are the best. And note — awards are not limited to Eloqua clients. They go the best in the industry, as determined by an independent industry council. Give them a sayHigh glamour isn’t the only way to help customers build social capital. CSC, which creates financial services software, has built a tier of for-customer communities that allow customers to exchange ideas and best practices, and have a say in new releases. As products or updates are being developed, customers can subscribe to RSS feeds keeping them apprised of new release progress, and provide input — which CSC takes seriously. This can slow the process down, but it creates enthusiasm, as borne out by the numbers. After implementing the process, request rates for new software releases increased by 50%.What do all of these efforts have in common? They build communities that exert positive peer influence across all the relevant companies’ markets. The ability to create this kind of Level 4 customer value proposition is the key skill set that companies will need in the new world of marketing.  Bottom line: Customer Community powered by phpFox is your right choice of building your own Customer Community in days, not weeks. Our Marketing and Technical experts is ready to help at your click http://biz.phpfox.com or email biz@phpfox.com   

In the developed world today, most likely you will own a smartphone, and of course, mobile apps are daily essentials. Therefore, it wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that a mobile app is the present and future of any Social Network. Let's start a quick view with phpFox Mobile apps.  (more…)

Let's enjoy phpFox Autumn Sales Season Now! Get right into action and claim a massive discount to celebrate this romantic season!We delightedly offer a 15% OFF on new phpFox license purchase or upgrade during this Autumn Sales promotion in 24 - 30 Sep 2018 (PST).Promo Code: AUTUMNSALE2018The landscape turns golden-orange. The sun sets earlier in the evening. A romantic escape in Autumn will lift up your spirits and suffuse you with the warm glow of love. Let us kick up some more spices to your Autumn and have a sweet season ahead!

Once you've had your Niche Idea for your Niche Social Network site, that comes to finally start your own social network, you should fully aware that the hardest part is not how to make the network available, but how to make people stay and use your network. Definitely, creating a social network is not something you can do in a day, and so oversee functional strategy for your social network is a must to prevent failure and get your network out to the world.In this blog, we will discuss how to build up a solid functional strategy for your Social Network. Develop Functional Strategy Based On Core Values Of Your Social Network First thing first, you have to decide what your unique value proposition is for your users.How are you going to entice someone to leave the social networking they already use on a daily basis and decide to instead spend time on your network?The answer is that not all social networks boil down to the same recipe for success. Different users will have different demands and requirements on a network. As long as the features and functionalities of your network satisfy, or at least are appropriate to users' preferences, they will stay and enjoy your network.Research indicates that every successful network has only about 20% of functional features identical to existed networks, the impact which makes people keep on coming to a network is from 80% of its unique functional features. Therefore, you should focus on developing specific features which directly identify your site purpose. For instance, LinkedIn takes 'connection' into account as the primary functional trait of the network instead of 'friend' just like on Facebook. This is because LinkedIn is different from other networks as it's specifically designed for business and professionals, making it one of the more important platforms to use for those in B2B. Build Functional Tools To Directly Serve Users' Intentions The next thing to consider is to understand users' behaviors on your network.In other words, the way users utilize the provided tools will determine the direction you should develop your network.Providing users with what they are looking for gives you chances to connect with fans, customers, and prospective customers on a more personal, human level.These unique functional tools don't need to be complex. It just needs to be straightforward, useful and most importantly, it should work well.For instance, Instagram is dedicated mainly to photos while Facebook is inclined towards recent updates. Facebook encourages users to share daily elements, whereas Twitter is more about sharing serious issues such as news and updates. While Instagram uses photo collections as the way to connect people, Twitter triumphs the relations using hashtags. Bottomline Going through this brainstorm you can definitely have your idea about your Social Network – the strong start to build, maintain and monetize your own community. Don’t worry about how strong or weak of your idea or how to make it happen, you can contact us at hello@phpfox.com – number one Social Network Platform! Our experts and partners are happy to assist you from the day one toward your successful community

How to start building your Customer Community is the critical question for marketers in digital transformation age. This is the opinion of David Taber, the expert in Customer Relationship, posted on CIO:Lead generation means user education. Channel management means a partner portal. Case management means a knowledge base, customer discussion groups, and a support forum. Customer loyalty means a customer portal.  It’s all about building a community site.Depending on where you start, you’ll hear about dozens of product offerings and see some extraordinary demos. The best of the demos will live up to Sybase founder Bob Epstein’s famous quote about benchmarks: “they are what the vendor can guarantee you will never achieve.”Before you get dazzled by bright shiny objects, you really have to go off and do some thinking: that’s right, dull homework. Because any of the community-building products could be the right one for you, but all of them will result in a failure if you haven’t answered most of these questions in advance: What's the fundamental value of building/maintaining the community?Getting more prospects or partners sooner? Improving the quality of your decisions? Making your company look better / more visible? Accelerating your prospects evolution? Increasing customer or channel loyalty? Helping you catch up to Competitors’ sites? Making management feel better? How many people will be in the community?Will this be a "public community," where users can spontaneously register themselves?  Or is this by invitation (and pre-setup) only? Will there be sub-groups? How many active threads do you expect at any one time? Will users be allowed to start their own threads? What are the users’ job titles (both the company and the role)?What is their level of knowledge about your company and its products? How will you manage excluding users from certain countries? How will you get to full GPDR compliance? What are the usage patterns?Will users come in via single sign-on (SSO) or direct login? Will they come in from a mobile device? How often do you expect them to log in? How long will they stay on the site? Are there any things about their user session that we’ll need to know/report on / get alerted about? What do they come to the community for?What are they trying to achieve any time they log in? With whom are they trying to communicate? What information do they seek or share? What information are they allowed to download? What things can they report on (if any)? What do they need to be able to hide from others?About themselves and About the information they post How much information will there be in a given year?Number of topics Number of posts and attachments from you and users Number of leads, deals Number of ideas/suggestions, cases/resolutions What of this information is transactional in nature (i.e., not just a content posting)? What of this information needs to be integrated with other systems (e.g., CRM)? Will the "information architecture" (read: navigation) need to change on a regular basis? What's the "memory horizon" of the community?What will be your content archiving strategy? Do some things get hidden from users after a few months? Can this be automatic? Do we actually want a human always involved in the "sunsetting" of information? Do you want to have the community moderated?If so, can it be done "by exception" or does every moderation action have to be done manually? What are the legal terms of use you are expecting? What analytics do you need?Real-time alerts regarding usage patterns, DOS attacks? Social media monitoring? Daily reports, executive dashboards? What's your internal constituency?Worker bees by a department? PR, marketing, sales, support, operations, and legal executives? Board? What's your willingness to spend on?User licenses? Development? Ongoing moderation? This is just internal hours, but you want to have some sort of threshold like "no more than 50 hours/week". Who’s going to own the project and budget?For project management and deployment For community membership growth For moderation and legal policing For ongoing maintenance and technical expansionI know, this is quite the laundry list!  But if you don’t bring up these issues early, you won’t really know what your requirements are, so your product evaluation criteria will be foggy at best.  Save yourself some time and money by starting at the beginning. Bottomline Get those questions answered and ready to kick-start your Customer Community now with the advantages of phpFox 4Biz experts, just email biz@phpfox.com or demo: biz.phpfox.com

Follow up with the introduction to Customer Community powered by phpFox, we fully aware that there is an uprising needs and demands to establish a successful Customer Community.In this blog, we will go over some steps and look at some aspects which surprisingly assist you to build up a powerful Customer Community with phpFox.Go Beyond The Common Traits of Your Products/Services  Knowing what you are lacking while maintaining a connection to your customers decides how your Customer Community will be built up and expanding.Keep in mind that your community shouldn't be limited to certain common standards. In other words, the community doesn't have to only focus on areas which your products/service are offering, but you can identify and nurture an inspiring brand purpose beyond your products and services. For instance, companies like Patagonia, Harley-Davidson, and Nike stand out as customers on their community share their passion not only for clothing, motorcycles, and shoes, but also for the outdoors, adventure, and fitness.Figure out what your customers are interested, keep up with their paces, feed them up with contents, it's more likely your community will be a success.Go with Customer-Oriented Direction  The keys to a successful customer community are to put users in control, go light on marketing content, and remember above all that the community exists to serve customers—not the brand. As explained in the Harvard Business Review:  “Managers often forget that consumers are actually people, with many different needs, interests, and responsibilities. A community-based brand builds loyalty not by driving sales transactions but by helping people meet their needs…For members, brand communities are a means to an end, not an end in themselves…Putting the brand second is tough for a marketer to do, but it’s essential if a strong community is the goal.”Allow prospects and customers to see your corporate values  Increasingly, prospects will turn into customers, and customers will become loyal, because they’re attracted to what your company stands for, which is evident in the values you demonstrate, including online.In a world where everything you sell is a commodity, value – product, price, service – is the threshold of a customer community, but values are the foundation. Value is easy to find these days. But when community members are attracted to your values, they keep coming back and bring their friends. Bottomline Start building your Customer Community now with the phpFox 4Biz solution, you get a free consultancy and optimal package offering while setting up, a professional maintenance service and a long-term cooperation from our experts of technical, marketings and social. Just check out biz.phpfox.com or email biz@phpfox.com