Yuku
Encyclopedia
YukuYuku (which comes from an Australian aboriginal
word for "tree" is the latest version of ezboard, Inc.
's internet forums. Yuku describes itself as "Message Boards 2.0". This tagline was most likely derived from the Web 2.0
features of Yuku message boards, such as tags
and RSS
.
Yuku was owned by KickApps
, the acquisition being announced on February 13, 2008 , until the end of 2010, when Yuku was sold to Inform Technologies Inc. The acquisition was announced to all board owners on December 24, 2010.. No public statement has yet been made about the Inform acquisition.
On September 8, 2011, Crowdgather, Inc. publicly announced acquiring the domain name, website, and assets related to yuku.com including the Ezboard domains and its integrated forums, from Inform Technologies, Inc.
At the DEMOfall launch, ezboard, Inc.'s CEO Robert Labatt's presentation explained that advertising revenues would be shared with the individual board owners. Labatt estimated that "an average large community" could receive $3,000 to $5,000 (speculated) a month. The launch was reported by media outlets such as Computerworld, USA Today, Bloomberg and CNN Money.
More demos were given at the New York City Blogon 2005 event where it was selected as a "BlogOn 2005 Social Media Innovator". Another demonstration was more recently given in November 2006 at a monthly technology networking event in San Francisco: SFWIN 1.10. Instead of the revenue feature mentioned at DEMOfall 2005, only the integral approach of combining message boards and blogs with multiple profiles per person were highlighted.
, free Yuku boards are supported through advertisements. An ad-free board costs $6/month for up to 50,000 page views per month. Communities that generate more than 50,000 views in a month are instead charged $0.20 per 1,000 page views for which they choose ad removal.
Profiles, message boards and blogs can be personalized via pre-made themes in the skins library, or custom-built using HTML
and CSS
. The Mini Profile provides basic user information, e.g. name, location, age etc. The rest of the profile comprises blocks that can be turned on, moved up and down, or removed.
The available blocks include a location block, which displays the location of the user's ISP using Google Maps
; favorite links; media; blog; tags; friends; recent posts; comments; and empty blocks, which can be customised using HTML.
. This means that the board location will be www.boardname.com rather than boardname.yuku.com.
was changed to points in September 2010. Points, earlier called kudos, forms the basis of a simple reputation system
. User-based points is accumulated across Yuku - it is not specific to individual boards. Topic-based points allows users to give positive ratings to good topics. This also gives a small fraction of points to the user who started the topic.
Message board owners can choose not to display post points in their forums (on by default) by a setting in their administration control panel. Members may also hide their point level from their profiles by editing the CSS code in their profile skin. Their points can still be viewed in the Hall of Fame (see below) or by visiting their points page, accessed via the URL {username}.u.yuku.com/vote/kudos/t/View-this-user-s-Kudos.html
The Yuku Hall of Fame shows the top 100 profiles on Yuku, ordered by points.
You can show the tag box at the top of the forum, but it will not show up until there are 6 different tags in use in the forum.
The Feature Voter allows users to vote on which features will be developed in the future. Photobucket integration is an example of a feature that was developed ahead of other features based on user feedback.
The users' administration centers, the message boards and the profiles are accessible for people using Speech recognition
software.
On December 22, 2010, members of Yuku founded their own Members helping Members board. "Members Support" is first of all offering help from members with skins, CSS, HTML and customizing communities and profiles. After only a month the board had more than 3,000 posts and 100 members.
. On the client-side, Yuku makes heavy use of Ajax
. As a result, some features are quick and simple to use, such as reordering forums with drag and drop
. Also, some changes happen instantly, such as editing users within Member Management.
With JavaScript disabled, Yuku is still functional, but some features are simplified. For example, rather than a WYSIWYG
posting editor, non-javascript users are presented with a simple text area
instead. As some menus are hidden using JavaScript, these are displayed in full, which can make some pages look cluttered.
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
word for "tree" is the latest version of ezboard, Inc.
Ezboard
ezboard, Inc., based in San Francisco, California, United States, is a provider of free and paid hosted Internet forums.-Description: was a provider of a free hosted message board for use by webmasters and message board administrators who have little to no experience running a web site...
's internet forums. Yuku describes itself as "Message Boards 2.0". This tagline was most likely derived from the Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
features of Yuku message boards, such as tags
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
and RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
.
Yuku was owned by KickApps
KickApps
KickApps is a hosted platform for creating social networks and adding social software features, video players and widgets to websites. More than 100,000 sites use KickApps, including major media companies KickApps is a hosted platform for creating social networks and adding social software...
, the acquisition being announced on February 13, 2008 , until the end of 2010, when Yuku was sold to Inform Technologies Inc. The acquisition was announced to all board owners on December 24, 2010.. No public statement has yet been made about the Inform acquisition.
On September 8, 2011, Crowdgather, Inc. publicly announced acquiring the domain name, website, and assets related to yuku.com including the Ezboard domains and its integrated forums, from Inform Technologies, Inc.
Early demonstrations
Yuku has been in development since 2005 and was revealed as being "available now" at DEMOfall 2005 in September 2005, although it was in Alpha at that time.At the DEMOfall launch, ezboard, Inc.'s CEO Robert Labatt's presentation explained that advertising revenues would be shared with the individual board owners. Labatt estimated that "an average large community" could receive $3,000 to $5,000 (speculated) a month. The launch was reported by media outlets such as Computerworld, USA Today, Bloomberg and CNN Money.
More demos were given at the New York City Blogon 2005 event where it was selected as a "BlogOn 2005 Social Media Innovator". Another demonstration was more recently given in November 2006 at a monthly technology networking event in San Francisco: SFWIN 1.10. Instead of the revenue feature mentioned at DEMOfall 2005, only the integral approach of combining message boards and blogs with multiple profiles per person were highlighted.
Pricing
As with ezboardEzboard
ezboard, Inc., based in San Francisco, California, United States, is a provider of free and paid hosted Internet forums.-Description: was a provider of a free hosted message board for use by webmasters and message board administrators who have little to no experience running a web site...
, free Yuku boards are supported through advertisements. An ad-free board costs $6/month for up to 50,000 page views per month. Communities that generate more than 50,000 views in a month are instead charged $0.20 per 1,000 page views for which they choose ad removal.
Features
Some of the key features of Yuku are listed below. A detailed ezboard-yuku feature comparison list is also available.Profiles, message boards and blogs
Yuku's user profiles are interactive and similar to those at other Social Networking web sites. Friends can be added or removed, comments can be posted, and private messages exchanged between users. Each account offers the possibility of having five profiles.Profiles, message boards and blogs can be personalized via pre-made themes in the skins library, or custom-built using HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
and CSS
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
. The Mini Profile provides basic user information, e.g. name, location, age etc. The rest of the profile comprises blocks that can be turned on, moved up and down, or removed.
The available blocks include a location block, which displays the location of the user's ISP using Google Maps
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
; favorite links; media; blog; tags; friends; recent posts; comments; and empty blocks, which can be customised using HTML.
Image hosting
Each user gets 30MB of free image hosting, with 100MB of image hosting available for paid accounts. The profiles offer members image galleries with slideshows.Domains
A board owner can point a domain name to Yuku by changing their nameserversName server
In computing, a name server is a program or computer server that implements a name-service protocol. It maps a human-recognizable identifier to a system-internal, often numeric, identification or addressing component....
. This means that the board location will be www.boardname.com rather than boardname.yuku.com.
Points/Kudos
KudosKudos
Kudos is an English word meaning acclaim or praise for exceptional achievement.Kudos may also refer to:* KUDOS, a vocational-counseling computer program* Kudos , a chocolate-covered cereal bar...
was changed to points in September 2010. Points, earlier called kudos, forms the basis of a simple reputation system
Reputation system
A reputation system computes and publishes reputation scores for a set of objects within a community or domain, based on a collection of opinions that other entities hold about the objects...
. User-based points is accumulated across Yuku - it is not specific to individual boards. Topic-based points allows users to give positive ratings to good topics. This also gives a small fraction of points to the user who started the topic.
Message board owners can choose not to display post points in their forums (on by default) by a setting in their administration control panel. Members may also hide their point level from their profiles by editing the CSS code in their profile skin. Their points can still be viewed in the Hall of Fame (see below) or by visiting their points page, accessed via the URL {username}.u.yuku.com/vote/kudos/t/View-this-user-s-Kudos.html
The Yuku Hall of Fame shows the top 100 profiles on Yuku, ordered by points.
Tags
Tags are search terms that can be added to topics. Tags make it easier to find topics on certain subjects if the tag words are used wisely. They are an alternate way to search for information, as they will only show topics if the word you are looking for was used as a tag.You can show the tag box at the top of the forum, but it will not show up until there are 6 different tags in use in the forum.
Feature voting
Accessibility for disabled
The Yuku software makes it possible for people with vision problems to make the text more easy to read by e.g. using larger and bold fonts.The users' administration centers, the message boards and the profiles are accessible for people using Speech recognition
Speech recognition
Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
software.
ezboard migrations
On March 7, 2006, ezboard's CEO stated that all ezboards would move to Yuku when it is ready and that they anticipated that would be in late 2006.Official Yuku help
From December 2010, Yuku no longer provides any help forums, instead offering a ticket system at Yuku Help, which also provides FAQs for board admins and users.On December 22, 2010, members of Yuku founded their own Members helping Members board. "Members Support" is first of all offering help from members with skins, CSS, HTML and customizing communities and profiles. After only a month the board had more than 3,000 posts and 100 members.
Technology
Server-side processing is handled via PHPPHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
. On the client-side, Yuku makes heavy use of Ajax
Ajax (programming)
Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...
. As a result, some features are quick and simple to use, such as reordering forums with drag and drop
Drag-and-drop
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop is the action of selecting a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object...
. Also, some changes happen instantly, such as editing users within Member Management.
With JavaScript disabled, Yuku is still functional, but some features are simplified. For example, rather than a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
posting editor, non-javascript users are presented with a simple text area
Text box
A text box, text field or text entry box is a kind of widget used when building a graphical user interface . A text box's purpose is to allow the user to input text information to be used by the program...
instead. As some menus are hidden using JavaScript, these are displayed in full, which can make some pages look cluttered.