When we first built WildVoice, we thought it would be a good idea to give users separate pages for their audio posts and their written posts. Effectively, the Spotlight Channel and the Journal were a Podcast page and a Blog page. However, after a few months of use we’ve realized that this causes more confusion than its worth. Most people just want one place to post and most viewers want one place to catch up with what you’ve been doing.

So, we’ve rolled out a major change to the site that should really help simplify how you use it. Here is a summary of what has changed:

1. You no longer have dedicated “Spotlight Channel” or “Journal” tabs in your site. New users will never get these tabs either.

2. The oddly named “WildClips” tab is gone. (Actually, it has really been renamed “Posts” but don’t tell anybody. Most people didn’t bother figuring out what WildClips was about and the too-cute name didn’t help much.)

3. You now have a new tab called “Posts”. Posts is a list of all the posts you’ve made on WildVoice. This includes both audio posts or purely written posts. The Posts tab is your primary place to view posts and to create posts. The Posts tab is one stop viewing to see anything new someone has created. You don’t have to browse multiple tabs to find their latest.

4. Theme Channels have been simplified and now we simply call them “Channels”.

5. All users are given two new Channels by default. These are:

a. User’s Favorites – this is a list channel to which you can add your favorite posts. As you browse the site and find something you like, go to the Post menu and add it to your favorites channel.

b. User’s Friends – this is a Smart Channel that will list all the recent posts created by your friends. If you want to see what your Friends have done recently, just look at your own Smart Channel, or even better, subscribe to it and always be up to date.

6. User’s who had a “Spotlight Channel” will automatically have a new list channel created that is identical to your old Spotlight Channel. You can continue to update your Spotlight Channel as you post new items. Simply post directly to your Spotlight Channel, or after posting, add the post to your Spotlight Channel. If your viewers have subscribed to your Spotlight Channel, they will continue to automatically receive updates if you add these items to your Spotlight Channel. Also, if you are using the WildVoice player on an external site like Myspace or your blog, if you continue to add your new posts to your Spotlight Channel you don’t have to change anything. This is an easy way to control which of your posts are heard externally.

7. If you used the WildVoice player on your WildVoice home page and assigned it to your Spotlight Channel, don’t worry. We will convert your player to point at your Posts instead (only posts with MP3 files actually).

8. If your viewers had previously subscribed to your Spotlight Channel and you do not want to manually update your Spotlight Channel with all new posts, then you can ask your subscribers to subscribe to your Posts Channel. This is also true if you’ve used the WildVoice player on an external site, you can regenerate the Html for the player so that it now references your Posts and it will automatically play all your new posts.

9. If you’ve read the previous two points carefully, then you probably realize that if you’ve listed your Spotlight Channel in external directories like iTunes or Podcastalley you have to make the same choice. If you are willing to manually add your posts to your Spotlight Channel list channel, then you do not have to change anything. However, if you do not want to manually maintain your Spotlight Channel with your new posts you can change the RSS URL you submitted to the various directories.

10. The previous points only affect Spotlight Channel subscriptions. If you used the RSS generated by the WildClips or by any Theme, Channel you do not have to change anything. The directories, players, and external subscribers will continue to work unchanged. This only affects uses who have external subscribers accessing their Spotlight Channel feed.

11. RSS Subscriptions can now be filtered by MIME type. If you don’t know what that means, I envy you. Basically, now when someone subscribes to your channel they can request to only find out about posts that include new mp3 audio. By appending a parameter to the RSS URL we can limit the types of posts returned in the feed. For example, our Featured Post feed url is http://www.wildvoice.com/ListId/3672/EmRss.aspx but if you want to subscribe to this feed and only receive posts that include MP3 audio, you can subscribe to the feed with the filter specified as http://www.wildvoice.com/ListId/3672/EmRss.aspx?Filter=audio%2fmpeg.