http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/tags/Community News for the frontpage Feed for BeWelcome Blogs Big BW event in Toulouse, France! Read all about it! In the Northern Hemisphere we are slowly saying goodbye to spring and welcoming summer. That is probably the reason why the people from Toulouse, France are inviting us to join them during the SeekTheDuck event: a BeWelcome meeting hosted by a duck mascot that will take place between May 31and June 2 2013 There are lots of events on the agenda: discovering Toulouse’s many bars, a workshop creating/painting mölkky, local winetasting, a huge barbecue, walks and bicycle rides, Seek The Hidden Wine Bottles and much more (including Easter omelettes BBQ-style) The event is open, free and the local population are looking forward to hosting you You can register and find the complete programme here: SeekTheDuck Activity Planner And while you’re at it, why don’t you join the Event Group: Seek The Duck - BW Toulouse Event Toulouse is waiting for you! BeWelcome Tue, 14 May 2013 14:27:20 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/2246 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/2246 thorgal67 Over the past months of rapid growth, it has become obvious that the engine that currently drives BeWelcome will reach the end of its life soon. Thus, plans were made to start with a clean slate and rebuild from scratch. It is now time to announce that Welen has passed the modelling stage and the coding has begun. If you are a coder, this is probably the time where you want to get on board because the early stages are likely to be the most fun. Welen is built on top of the PHP framework Symfony and the frontend will make use of a number of standard components like Bootstrap, jQuery and LESS. We would love you to join us, no matter what your skill is. Particularly, useful would certainly be UI/UX specialists frontend developers PHP developers However, do not hesitate to offer whatever other skill you think you could contribute. To find out more about the project, have a look at the project pages or contact jsfan. BeWelcome Sat, 04 May 2013 16:32:49 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/2197 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/2197 jsfan Hi all, the dev team just released a new version of the software that drives BeWelcome. This release includes one long awaited feature: Activities. Checkout the feature here: http://www.bewelcome.org/activities  The other big change is that there is now a landing page which shows you posts to groups and the BW forum in separate lists. During testing people said they like it better than the old setup and other said the old setup was less confusing. So please add your voice (either as a comment or start a discussion in the BW forum) so that we can decide if we should revert this change or keep it. For people that prefer there privacy we added better support for SSL. For the list of your forum posts you can now decide to show it to other members while in the past it was always visible to everyone. The mails send in case of a subscriptions now show the username of the poster as sender instead of BeWelcome and the subject was streamlined a bit. The full list of changes can be found in Trac. Thanks to everyone who supported this endeavor,shevek BeWelcome Wed, 01 May 2013 21:13:27 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/2193 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/2193 shevek Another month - another release. There are lot of places where you can select a language on BeWelcome. In the past, these lists were rather confusing because they were not sorted alphabetically. Now we have changed the sorting to make it easier to find the langauge you are searching for and we added a few languages that were missing before. You might have seen the discussion about gender in the forum. You can now select 'other' as a gender in case neither 'male' nor 'female' suits you. Regardless of your choice you can always hide your gender from being shown on your profile or in the search results. (Just edit your profile summary accordingly.) A feature that was well hidden in the menu on the left side of each profile page moved to a more prominent place: 'Add a note'. If you visit a profile you can save a note about it for your personal use. On your own profile you can see all your notes. On the message pages you can now see 20 messages instead of 7 per page and if you ever wanted a reply button on top of the message display, now you've got it. The message text is in a better readable format as well. If you care for your privacy you're probably happy to hear that another place where your username was shown to the public even if you decided to have a non-public profile is now gone. Do you wonder what this blue pin in the forum overview is all about by now? It shows you that a forum thread was fixed on top of the forum overview because it was deemed important. For the full monty see the changelog. Many thanks to abyssin, beatnickgr, bikepunk, crumbking, dima42, feuerdaemon, globetrotter_tt, guaka, james_oder_dave, jsfan, lantti, lemon-head, mahouni, mattoz, midsch, mikael, pablobd, philipp, planetcruiser, shevek, sitatara, timloal, and toub for all their help. If you find errors, please post them in the bugs group. If you have a suggestion to improve things, please post in the feature requests group. Cheers, shevek Well, if you're as picky as I can be, you will probably point out it's been 3 weeks. BeWelcome Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:50:17 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/1974 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/1974 shevek As you might have noticed already, a new version of BeWelcome has been released. This version focuses on empowering volunteers to help the community better. However, it also comes with the following: A new timezone for Hawaii was added to the preferences The comments page now shows all comments you have left or other have left for you The WYSIWYG editor used for forums and blogs was updated To see the full list of changesand buxfixes, please refer to the changelog. Many thanks go to beatnickgr, crumbking, dima42, matthias, guaka, jeanyves, jsfan, mahouni200000, midsch, planetcruiser, pablobd, shevek, sitatara, and totalf for their efforts in helping tobring these improvements to you. If you find errors, please post them in the bugs group. If you have a suggestion to improve things, please post in the feature requests group. BeWelcome Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:39:23 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1892 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1892 jsfan A discussion about an unconference was started in January. I vaguely proposed my apartment in Brussels as a possible location. And suddenly it was the most popular option. So here it is. From Friday March 1st till Sunday March 3rd We're having a participant-driven meeting (aka unconference) about (and to improve) various aspects of BeWelcome. Most important, there will be discussions and related wiki edits, but expect also some work on code. This is the second BW event in my apartment in Brussels within one year. The previous one was a hackathon event that lasted more than one week, with a lot of focus on code and it allowed coders to get to know eachother. It was a lot of fun and some stuff happened. It wasn't just BeWelcome, the Hitchwiki.org layout was heavily improved by Mikael. As far as BW code, a big start was made with moving to Symfony and some meeting functionality was written. The latter is still not in use and personally I would like to see this move forward a little bit during the upcoming unconference, which will be a bit shorter (3 days instead of 13 or so) and now also non-coders (aka normal people) will be very welcome. Thus far we have 6 confirmed participants and 9 more people who might or might not come. It's definitely going to be fun. Check the related Piratepad and let me know if you're coming!   P.S. I expect some more BW unconferences in 2013 as anyone is free to organize one and BW is growing nicely :)             BeWelcome Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:01:54 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/guaka/1756 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/guaka/1756 guaka If you want to know what kind of people joins BeWelcome there's a nice way to get some first sight. It's not a definitive profile of all membership, but it gives some hints. You just sort groups for the member count. If you do it, you can tell clearly where most people is coming from (CS & HC) but you also see how they like to move (Hitchhikers, Cyclists) and what they eat (VegansVegetarians) and how much they like to cook! You can see some political tendencies aswell (Alternative ways of living & consuming, Enviromentalists, but also on the second page Anarchists and Open source) and some popular hobbies or practices (photography, dumpster diving, and a lot of volunteering!). We have a almost the same amount in families and queer, and 50+ group is also popular, it seems prety diverse!. Some popular or most active places are Berlin, Paris, Tolouse, London, Amsterdam and other european classics. Happily some southern hemisphere is represented too :) This is a very small sample, but an interesting one.  What kind of people BW attracts? Do you feel comfortable here? Would you invite anyone? What do you think? BeWelcome Fri, 25 Jan 2013 03:45:07 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/pablobd/1729 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/pablobd/1729 pablobd Happy new year to you all from the dev team,We just released a new version of the software running the site. Bigger problems addressed were: The verification icon is now always displayed as soon as you verified another member (and vice versa). If you receive a new message this will be indicated with a small number after 'My messages'. A nasty bug that could link your profile to a group description was also fixed. Smaller problems addressed were: If you need a new password the email will now contain your username as well. The number of comments in the search results is now correct. All the offers and restrictions you set in the accommodation section of your profile are now shown as icons on your profile. For a complete list of fixes see http://trac.bewelcome.org/wiki/Changelog_1.3Thanks to abyssin, beatnickgr, crumbking, guaka, James_Oder_Dave, jeanyves, jsfan, lantti, mahouni200000, matthias, pablobd, planetcruiser, sanderr, shevek and TimLoal for all their help. Let us know what you think about these changes in the comments below! BeWelcome Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:28:17 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/1629 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/1629 shevek IMMEDIATE RELEASE BeWelcome switches to OpenStreetMap 20 December 2012, Rennes, France - On Friday, 14 December, worldwide hospitality exchange network BeWelcome released a major update to their website www.bewelcome.org, dropping Google Maps as default map provider in favor of free and open source OpenStreetMap. BeWelcome decided to make the switch because thanks to thousands of individual contributors OpenStreetMap mapping material has greatly improved over the last years, and because implementation through third party services has become painless. With this step volunteer-run BeWelcome also underlines its strong non-profit values - in a time where internet-based "peer-to-peer hospitality" communities are subject to increasing commercialization by venture capitalists. Why OpenStreetMap? When BeWelcome was launched in 2007 all mapping features were implemented using Google Maps, the only free up-to-date maps with search and embedding capabilities available back then. Over time, and also with contributions by BeWelcome members themselves, the free alternative OpenStreetMap (OSM) matured and other websites switched over from proprietary services. In some parts of Russia or Bosnia for example OSM even offers more detailed maps than commercial alternatives. So when BeWelcome was approached by an OSM spokesperson in Germany earlier this year, the topic was discussed in the community and the switch was made a priority, additionally fueled by the fact that Google introduced a pricing model and ads for its maps service. A few weeks later one BeWelcome software developer presented an almost complete integration of OSM based on the free Cloudmade/Leaflet API. His work was then extended by a team, recently included in the main development environment and finally launched to the live website. Quotes "With the switch we are getting closer to becoming completely independent from using commercial services. I am convinced that our users will appreciate our commitment to privacy and non-profit projects." says founding member and active volunteer Matthias Hess. Meinhard Benn, technical coordinator and programmer at BeWelcome notes: "OpenStreetMap is all about people and their passion for sharing, just like us. So it's a perfect match." He adds: "Google Maps will remain an optional layer for the time being, but depending on user feedback we will either ditch it completely or at least allow users to choose alternative commercial map providers to have less of a mono-culture." Frank Van Den Block, chairman of BeWelcome's legal body BeVolunteer confirms: "The switch to OSM is a logical next step in the evolution of BeWelcome. Nothing beats a map created by thousands of individuals and constantly updated by dedicated volunteers. Open Source means freedom, and that is something we can never have enough of." Links and contact BeWelcome website: www.bewelcome.org Map example: www.bewelcome.org/searchmembers Screenshot: downloads.bewelcome.org/media/osm-screenshot.png BeWelcome media inquiries: media@bewelcome.org About BeWelcome BeWelcome is a hospitality exchange network - a worldwide community that lets you share your home or a place to stay for a few nights, make new friends from different cultures and help others on their way. In contrast to similar commercial networks, BeWelcome is a registered non-profit that places value on open source and contributions made by their members. BeWelcome has created a legal and organizational framework which ensures that it will always remain non-profit, open and free. Every member is encouraged to help guide the community, participate in core decision-making and contribute to the development of the website. Thanks to the hard work of an expanding team of contributors, BeWelcome has grown from a small project with a handful of members in 2007 into a vibrant and enthusiastic community. Its membership base has more than doubled in 2012, now comprising 30,000 registered hosts and travelers. It is an organic self-managed organization without the need for investors, stockholders or venture capital. Everyone passionate about alternative travel, cultural exchange, making new friends, and sharing experiences with like-minded people in every corner of the world will feel right at home in the BeWelcome community. BeWelcome plans to continuously improve its service and innovate new ways of serving its cause. About OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Two major driving forces behind the establishment and growth of OSM have been restrictions on use or availability of map information across much of the world and the advent of inexpensive portable satellite navigation devices. Founded by Steve Coast in 2004, it was inspired by the success of Wikipedia and preponderance of proprietary map data in the UK and elsewhere. Since then, it has grown to over 900,000 contributors, who collect data with GPS devices, aerial photography, and other free sources. This crowdsourced data is then made available under the Open Database License. The site is supported by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, a non-profit organization registered in England. (Source: Wikipedia) BeWelcome Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:13:46 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1568 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1568 planetcruiser Hello everyone, it has long been in the making, a bit more than two months, but we hope this was worth the wait: Complete overhaul of all maps - we are now using free and open source OpenStreetMap as our default map, with the option to switch back to a Google Maps view Many, many bug fixes in map and city searches along the way Group membership management improvements There are a few more smaller changes and improvements. Read more details in the complete changelog, if you are interested. With this release we are taking another step towards supporting the non-profit world by including work from other volunteer-run projects into our site. We feel this is worth a press release, which will be sent out shortly. Stay tuned. Thanks fly out to abyssin, beatnickgr, crumbking, lantti, James_Oder_Dave, jsfan, mahoun200000, matthias, midsch, pablobd, sanderr, shevek and toub for making this release possible by testing, commenting and contributing code. We would also like to thank Cloudmade for supplying their fantastic free API service to embed OpenStreetMap material into any website. Let us know what you think about these changes in the comments below! May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:15:16 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1564 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1564 planetcruiser As with continued growth the BeWelcome forums and groups are becoming more and more important, the forum moderators team decided to revise and update the rules which apply to them. The revision focused on making the rules less ambiguous and address recent debates which arose from unclear wordings. Furthermore, they now contain some detailed information on forum and groups moderation which was hard to find earlier. While these rules apply immediately and can also be applied retospectively, they are not to be considered final. The forum moderators team's job is to apply community standards to the forums which means it is open to constructive criticism and suggestions. BeWelcome Sun, 18 Nov 2012 13:15:16 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1511 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1511 jsfan As you might have noticed there was a problem with messaging over the weekend. A wrong configuration led to a failure of the process that takes care of message deliveries. This issue has now been resolved and we are taking steps to ensure something like this cannot remain undetected for such a long time again. We are sorry for any inconvenience this glitch may have caused you as a BeWelcome member. BeWelcome Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:27:48 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1458 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1458 jsfan The time has come once again for a new release of BW Rox to take your BeWelcome experience to a new level. The current release focuses on security on privacy but also fixes a number of other bugs. The highlights this time are certainly Persistent logins ("Stay logged in"/"Remember me") are now possible. Opt out from visitor tracking ("Recent visitors to your profile") is now possible All threads of a group can now be set to "group only" at group creation time There are a number of other smaller fixes and changes which are all listed in the detailed changelog. Hopefully, this release will make your BeWelcome site experience much more enjoyable, so you can focus on using BeWelcome for what it is meant for, hospitality exchange. Thanks go to beatnickgr, crumbking, guaka, James_Oder_Dave, jsfan, lantti, matthias, midsch and planetcruiser for their help with this release in the form of code contributions, bug reports, comments and testing. Stay welcome forever without your session expiring now. ;) BeWelcome Fri, 05 Oct 2012 01:20:29 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1430 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1430 jsfan The BeWelcome dev team proudly announces another release of BW Rox, the software behind BeWelcome. In the past 3 weeks, we have been working hard to fix a number of annoying bugs and improved some features. You can now enjoy the following improved and fixed features: Profile images  and images uploaded to your gallery can now be up to 16MB and will be automatically resized. A new tool now allows BeWelcome volunteers to ask random members to vote on decisions concerning BeWelcome The video on "The Tour" can now be viewed again The copyright statement at the bottom of all pages now acknowledges the many contributors to BeWelcome. To see all changes and fixes in this release, please refer to the full changelog. The improvements of this release will hopefully make it easier to upload images without expert knowledge and foster a culture in which BeWelcome's members take more and more ownership of the site. Thanks go to abyssin, coroa, crumbking, James_Oder_Dave, jsfan, mahouni200000, matthias and planetcruiser for their help with this release in the form of code contributions, bug reports, comments and testing. BeWelcome Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:12:25 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1401 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1401 jsfan It has taken another month again but the new release of BW Rox, the software that powers BeWelcome, has finally arrived. You can now enjoy the following improvements: changed profile comment editing to actually allow modifying written text, instead of appending changed forums overview page layout to be more user-friendly changed display of result count at member search to provide more information to anonymous users fixed privacy flaw that made all galleries publicly accessible fixed map search to work for more places again There are a number of other fixes and improvements which are minor or mainly affect members with special permissions on BeWelcome (admins and volunteers). To see the full list, have a look at the changelog. That the search now does not choke on some profiles any more and list them properly, will hopefully make it easier to find hosts when you are travelling. It also should be much easier to navigate the forums from the overview page now and you can make much better use of your gallery because you can deliberately make it publicly accessible along with your BW profile. Thanks to crumbking, jeanyves, jsfan, mahouni200000, matthias and planetcruiser for their help with this release in the form of code contributions, bug reports, comments and testing. Enjoy beingWelcome wherever you are. BeWelcome Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:08:06 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1303 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1303 jsfan The last BW newsletter had a litle error (a missing " in the source code) that resulted in a hidden part of the text. Here's the full text in english. Sorry for the inconvinience. Dear members, fellow travelers, We have lots of good news for this newsletter, please stay with us, it won't be long. Update of Privacy Statement Address not mandatory on profiles Many improvements for the website Donation Campaign is successful Photos on Startpage Support team needs your support Update of Privacy Statement An observant member recently pointed out to us that our privacy policydoes not require you to give us a geographical reference to your location. However, to properly use BeWelcome we should at least know in which country and city you live (how else can you find hosts?). Therefore we decided to implement the new privacy policy where we require you enter country and city. This has no influence on current members since everybody was required to give this information during signup. But this leads to our next point: Address not mandatory on profiles In the past we had a mandatory address field on signup. This has been changed as now we only require your country and city (or region). From now on you can edit your profileand erase your address if you wish. You can always leave it there if you like and choose whether to show it on your profile or not. We hope this change is better for your privacy and gives you more freedom to choose wich information you leave online. Many improvements for the website Our developers team has been working hard to keep the BW software up to date, free from bugs, and more useful. We want to tell you two of the main recent changes: On the privacy side, from now on galleries of non-public profiles are now only visible to members. If members still want their gallery or some pictures in it publicly visible, they should check their "public profile" setting in the preferences. As requested by the community there was also a change that will let you edit the comments you left on other people´s profiles. Profile comments that have duplicate texts in them because of the old appending behaviour can now be fixed. You can keep track of all changes and news (and give your feedback) in the Community News. Donation Campaign is Successful Over the last few months we held an annual donation campaign to raise money for the whole year's expenses and have now reached our goal for the year. We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our generous members who have helped to keep the website running. As you might already know Bewelcome is a service run by Bevolunteer, a non-profit organization that maintains the website and keeps everything running. You are welcome to see our financial statements and budgeton the website. Photos on Startpage It has been some time since we last updated the images you can see on the start page (before you log in). We want to ask the community to help renew them. If you have some pictures that you think illustrate the spirit of hospitality and cultural exchange and you want to share them with the world, you should post it in the forum. The communications team will gather the most relevant and add them to the front page. Support team needs your support Last but not least we want to ask for your help. The volunteer team that handles support for the website needs some volunteers, specially in some languages like Russian, Spanish, Chinese or French. If you feel you can devote a couple of hours a week helping other members use the website you should join the Support Volunteers group and introduce yourself. Spread the vibe, host the world and travel without boundaries! BeWelcome Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:07:26 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/pablobd/1310 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/pablobd/1310 pablobd As BeWelcome is moving to a new server, the site will probably be down for some timeon Friday, 22 June and/or Saturday, 23 June 2012 (also depending on your time zone). You will see a placeholder page while the move is in progress. BeWelcome Tue, 26 Jun 2012 06:50:21 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1212 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1212 jsfan Hello everyone, February has been a pretty quiet month for the BeWelcome "devs". No major spamming, no major technical development. ;) So also this release is a pretty small one with four issues solved: Fixed display of country and region for members in some exotic places Fixed blog comment counters to only count active members (not spammers) Changed donation page to display donations for the whole year instead of the current quarter only Changed member banning behaviour to log out currently logged in banned members (stops a spammer right after being discovered) See the changelog for some technical background.   As a sidenote, Pedalr has started two new groups Bugs and Feature Requests and gave us lots of feedback there already. Feel free to join him!   May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :)   BeWelcome Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:06:46 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1117 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1117 planetcruiser Good morning Bewelcome ! How about visiting Toulouse under the sign of the Duck over a bright (long) week-end, from Wednesday the 9th of May to Sunday the 13th ?A lot of entertaining activities organized by toulousian hosts will take place. They include tasty meals, a bunch of nice little gigs, a big barbecue, an international picnic, a pub-crawl, and much more to be discovered in the detailed programm ! An official webpage has been created, where you’ll find the detailed program or information about how to come to Toulouse : have a look at it! There is also a BW forum where you’ll find some updates, car-sharing propositions, etc.Bisous and see you soon ! BeWelcome Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:14:19 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/acidrongeur/1083 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/acidrongeur/1083 acidrongeur Hi everyone, this release cycle was somewhat shaken by two events: First the database had some inconsistencies in geographical data and then we had a single spammer sending thousands of messages and more than a hundred profile comments within hours after sign-up. This led to the following changes which were released last night: Added tight limit on number of messages a new member can send (5 per hour, 15 per day) - this limit is temporary and will be lifted as soon as better logic is in place, see below Removed display of banned members in various lists and counters Fixed various features related to counting and displaying members in geographical regions (mainly in Browse countries section) More countries in the countries list - yay! See the complete changelog for 8 more changes and technical details. We are sorry if the spam attack mentioned above bothered you, and we hope that you will bare with us and help us to protect our community from this kind of abuse by reporting it as soon as you spot it. Giving the users the much asked for possibility to send messages right after sign-up comes with a trade-off, we learned this the hard way now. But better ways of marking and automatically detecting spam are on their way. Sniff around the next release milestone to find out more. Thanks to coroa, matthias and lupochen for contributing code to this release. May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:45:53 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1076 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1076 planetcruiser First of all, a happy Gregorian new year to you! :) Yes, it's a Monday, and yes, we have just released some BeWelcome goodness. The most important changes: See comment replies on profile comments pages Added Delete and Spam button when reading a message Fixed a bug that hid dozens of new members in the member approval tool No more captcha for new members when sending messages, we will add other ways of preventing message abuse soon Fixed more bugs in the address update form See 8 more changes and more technical details in the complete changelog of this release. By the way, we are always happy about people that would like to join us in getting our hands dirty while plumbing our software. We have fixed a lot of things that were broken since a while, but there is still plenty to do. Send me a message or write to the developer mailing list if you are interested to help. Thanks to bikepunk, confoodle, coroa, crumbking, matthias, lupochen and pablobd for contributing to this release and to everyone else for participating in creating a better BeWelcome, one bug at a time. ;) May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:46:36 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1054 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1054 planetcruiser Good news, it's Release Monday! I'm happy to announce that we just pushed out an update to the site. Here is what's new today: Profile page: Increased profile picture size and added zoom - on popular demand, yeah! Fixed "Show all pictures" link in latest pictures box Fixed bug causing age being hidden for all users Your personal welcome page (after login): Added user picture thumbnail at top left to encourage people to upload their photo Added RSS feed icon and links to comments for community news entries Removed headlines "What's the news?", "Who is who?" and "What's hot?" for cleaner layout Other: Workaround for Chrome/Chromium bug on invite members result page Changed link for bug report at bottom of page Fixed and cleaned various bits of framework code Also again this time, check the changelog if you are interested in the technical details behind these improvements.   This was the second release since the major clean-up I mentioned in my last announcement. A process is slowly shaping up and more contributors joined. A bit of time has passed since the last release, but let's not forget that we had to prepare a General Assembly of our organisation in the meantime. Also I personally was on a road for a bit..   So, be very welcome and keep on suggesting improvements and reporting bugs please.   May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :)   BeWelcome Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:29:08 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1029 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1029 planetcruiser In the beginning of November we held the annual General Assembly (GA) of BeVolunteer, the legal organisation behind BeWelcome. During this meeting we dealt with some official tasks like electing a new Board of Directors, approving the financial statement of the previous year and agreeing on the budget for the following year. Full details on the minutes of the GA and all the voting results can be found on our wiki. If you are interested in becoming a member of BeVolunteer you can find all necessary information on our BeVolunteer wiki. BeWelcome Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:54:37 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1022 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1022 thorgal67 Hello to all and a warm "BeWelcome" to our new members! I'm Matthias, a long time member of hospitality exchange networks and right now the treasurer of BeVolunteer, the french organisation legally running BeWelcome. I'm preparing the financial report for the general assembly of BV in early November and drafting the budget for 2012. You'll find details on BeWelcome as soon as it's approved by the GA and available. But before I like to give you an overview on how we're doing financially. Especially because our donation bar doesn't work exact. (A change will be discussed and probably made at the GA.). And overview how much and for what purposes money is needed can be found here: http://www.bewelcome.org/wiki/financesThe good news is: Thanks to all your donations there is already enough money to pay the cheques for the rest of the year and also survive the next months.In short: No donations needed right now. In this moment I'm very sure financial troubles or unpaid billswon't be an issue. Actually we don't need that much money and if we fail in raising even this small amount, something else is wrong. In one month, when we have the approved plan for 2012, the next treasurer will be back to ask you for donations for the next year. Right now the exact amount is unclear, as we try to reduce some costs (i. e. for servers, banking fees), but it's probably the same or even a bit less than 2011. While it's good to be on the safe side for some months, there is no reason to raise and save a lot of extra money with no plan what to do with it. If there are unexpected or extra costs (i. e. need for a stronger server), we'll start an extra donation campaign. Usually people are more tempted to donate if they now exactly what for. Hopefully this is some useful and interesting information for you. If something regarding money isn't transparent for you or just look weird in your eyes, don't hesitate to ask questions. I'll like to thank you for all your contributions, not only donations but also volunteer work, hosting, spreading the word, software coding, discussing and so on. We'll have a lot of work to do and - much more important - a lot of great experiences ahead of us. Matthias,current treasurer of BeVolunteer BeWelcome Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:55:49 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/matthias/967 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/matthias/967 matthias Couchsurfing has been going through a lot of changes lately. So we thought it's a good idea to explain the idea behind BeWelcome better. Thomas Goorden, volunteer for BeWelcome and current chairman of BeVolunteer (the legal entity behind BeWelcome), tries to do just that in a short video:http://vimeo.com/bewelcome/thomas-goorden-why-bewelcome-is-differentThomas' statement hopefully gives you an idea of how BeWelcome is different. We believe you as a member should shape its future. In the end this is what it's all about: To make a difference.So, go ahead and add your voice: What should hospitality exchange, what should BeWelcome look like? BeWelcome Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:41:09 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/lupochen/907 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/lupochen/907 lupochen Recently we experience an unsual number of new members, that's great! So first of all: BeWelcome, I'm happy to have you here. As a lot of questions naturally come up to a newbies mind, someone had the idea to explain some of the important things in the community news, so here we go: I'm no lawyer, but I'll try to explain the basic legal setup of BeWelcome. BeWelcome isn't owned by anyone and I think that's a good thing. The software and content (except private data off course) is open source / open licenced and can't be monopolised by anyone. Nevertheless it's very usefull (if not required) to have a legal organisation to run the network. Right now there is a french Organisation called BeVolunteer who is running the site and dealing with the financial and legal issues. The french legal setup of BeVolunteer is in a way, what makes it impossible to "own" or "sellout" anything. Personal profits are just illegal. Everyone at BeWelcome can become a member of BeVolunteer (and therefore vote or be elected to the board), but doesn't have to, i. e I'm not. Experience with similar networks show, a lot of people don't really care, so I think this "outsourcing" helps to have a structure able to work and make legal decisions. But the practical decisions for BeWelcome are usually made by consensus of people (who do care about it) in the forums.  More tools at BeWelcome to make deciscions (i. e. polls) have been discussed but need to be implemented first. In theory BeVolunteer could ignore such decisions / decide in another way, but it won't work very well, as the members of BeWelcome could make most changes anyway. In an unlikely worst case scenario, when BeVolunteer is taken over by "bad guys", BeWelcome is free to move on to another setup / legal setup. And sure we do. If the "bad guys" try to get their fingers on donation money, they'll face legal consequences in France, as it is simply illegal. On the long run, it's maybe useful to back up the french organisation with similar setups / organisations in other countries as well. In the moment BeWelcome / BeVolunteer is lacking personal ressources, maybe also the urge to do so. Dealing with this legal stuff isn't so much fun for the most of us. I hope this helps to get an idea, here are more Details: FAQ BeWelcome organisation in general - Feel free to explore the Wiki, the Forum and all the other pages. And if there are more questions, feel free to ask. BeWelcome works because we (yes, this includes you) make it work. BeWelcome Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:16:56 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/midsch/896 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/midsch/896 midsch Since the BeWelcome / Open CouchSurfing workshop during Project 888 in Paris 2008, I haven't couchsurfed on any of my subsequent travels. And every time I looked for a place to crash on BeWelcome, I have met an amazing person. I mostly travel by hitchhiking and for the magic of the things that happen when you let go. So just two hours before hitching out from Amsterdam to Istanbul, I got a text message from a Berlin friend offering a free train ticket for Vienna-Budapest. And she even was in Amsterdam, just 10 minutes by bike away! Eventually, after a night spent well at a playground in Vienna, I approached an Internet café, intending to write a few messages to Budapest people, asking them to text me their address in case of a positive reply since I wouldn't be able to check on the Internet. But just as I was about to write the third message, I saw Dalma's reply in my Inbox, even offering to pick me up at the station! We went to a bar with a local CS meeting going on where she left for the bathroom, saying "make yourself some new friends" - and just seconds later I bump into my friend Jeppe! (who as I just realised while writing I first met on BW too!) Arriving in Istanbul after many adventures, I checked into a hostel and - after recovering from non-stop hitchhiking - went online looking for a new home. I found Isa, whose health problems had stalled cleaning his house - but still he invited me over to his place in the Kurdish Ikitelli neighbourhood. He and the folks from the local mosque made my stay an incredible experience. Almost one year later, on a short stop in Frankfurt Sanne offered a home to recover from my terrible cold and two interesting nights out. She even mailed some things back to my place when I ran out of time before my flight to Toronto... ... where, after a night of stealth camping, I sent out some messages with my Internet tablet. Pien wasn't able to host me - but she treaded me to an amazing Vietnamese dinner. Not only that, after I returned to Toronto at the end of my trip she invited me to a Vegetarian restaurant. Such a good feeling to return to a place and have someone to meet and tell stories. Such as the story of Gabrielle and her flatshare, who replied in like twenty minutes: "Hello hello! Well, my friend, your bed will be warm for you when you come."... BeWelcome Tue, 04 Jan 2011 18:45:56 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/atopia/714 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/atopia/714 atopia Monday there was a meeting between the Servas-to-BeWelcome project members. It involved two members of the BW board of directors (including me), one BW coder and three Servas coordinators (including the president of Servas International).The topic was the general roadmap for the project. A draft had been submitted a few days earlier by one Servas coordinator and we were going to discuss it and take it to a complete state. Most of the items of the roadmap were pretty trivial and were quickly agreed upon. However we ran into a disagreement on one point. The draft included the option of outsourcing some of the programming to a commercial company.This illustrates very well the difficulties for two independant organizations to join forces in a common goal. In particular when, like in our case, it is two philantropic organizations with very similar mindsets and an emphasis on democracy. You'd think it would go very smoothly... Think again :) . But the cool thing about democratic organization is that they always find a good consensus. And we draw much satisfaction from that democratic process. Historically, BeWelcome is a volunteer project. It is written in many places on the website that nobody is getting paid for anything. Servas has no such history and finds it pretty normal to hire external help if they don't have the volunteer ressources to reach their goals. None of those two approaches is "bad", but they are a bit incompatible.The main issue comes from the fact that BeWelcome lacks the skilled programmers necessary to carry out this project. So something needs to be done.So, what compromise? Well, we decided that we would hire help for documenting the existing code (which is not programming in any way), that is a difficult and boring task that volunteers are reluctant to pick up. And possibly to design mockups of the final product (which code will be separated from the BeWelcome software). The actual coding would still be done by volunteers.And, to make it possible, we will organize a "coding week-end" where new-coming programmers will be invited as well as old-timers to kickstart the production of code in a friendly and relaxed setting. Nobody gets paid, but expenses will be covered.That's all for now. Stay tuned for later news. BeWelcome Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:37:18 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitarane/677 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitarane/677 sitarane You had a great travel experience, met incredible persons or want to share memories about unforgettable moments? That's the kind of stuff to put in your personal blog, linked to your profile! BeWelcome Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:55:48 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/566 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/566 kiwiflave The new Board of Directors met for the first time on the 13th of August. It was largly an organizational meeting and decisions were taken regarding the focus of this year's BoD. From now on meetings will take place on every last Thursday of the month. BeWelcome Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:17:53 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/562 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/562 demorganna Follow us on Twitter to support the community and meet other members! BeWelcome is about to enter the world of social networking. To get ourselves more visible and spread the word even more effectively, we created Twitter account. We will use it to keep you up to date, publish BeWelcome news and traveling tips.   BeWelcome Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:03:42 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/502 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/502 demorganna It's that time of year again: when the highly motivated get ready for the pilgrim journey. Yup, the GA is fast approaching and the interested will gather in Grimbergen on the 11th and the 12th of July to vote for board members and discuss the future of BeWelcome and BeVolunteer.This, the 3rd GA, is my second time - missed it last year, unfortunately. I find it quite enjoyable, a nice excercise of democracy and team work. To me it's about affirming the basic values of BW: the openness, the inclusiveness, the democracy. So I hope to see a lot of people there, working together on a common project :) Left to say is just that the GA is open for everyone with an interest in BW and/or BV. While some issues can be voted on by only BV members, discussion is typically open for everyone, even on the topics where only BV members can vote. For more info, check the forum thread by Claudia: http://www.bewelcome.org/forums/s632-BeVolunteer-General-Assembly-2009---BeWelcome-meeting BeWelcome Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:04:20 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/fake51/491 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/fake51/491 fake51 Ready for meeting in real life and getting to know many of the active members and volunteers? Come to the meeting in Grimbergen and Brussels, 11-12 July! Big media event planned (flashmob dance) - fun guaranteed! Check here for details! BeWelcome Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:15:05 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/493 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/493 kiwiflave You love the project but haven't got time or resources to seriously contribute? User Michael came up with a great idea to get the word spread without a lot of effort. Curious? Join this initiative and make your pledge today! BeWelcome Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:33:28 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/481 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/481 kiwiflave from now on everybody can post news of general interest to the personal startpage by: * creating a new blog post * tagging it with "Community news for the frontpage" BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/lupochen/443 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/lupochen/443 lupochen Took some time, but finally the new design is online. Personally I haven't worked that much on it (my main contribution has been helping in moving it live) - the credit mainly goes to Lupochen and Globetrotter_tt. Other people who had a part: Crumbking (testing), Lemon-Head (testing and general input) and Philipp (also testing and input).Shiny as it is it does come with bugs though - so we'd be mighty grateful if anyone with a bit of time would check out the site and let us know what bugs there might be. Better still, if you have some time in general and like the idea of the project, you're more than welcome to lend a hand :) There are many parts not yet translated for instance, and the dev team sorely needs help (we're just a few active people at the moment).Most importantly though: if you like the new look and the features ... use them! :D BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/fake51/463 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/fake51/463 fake51 Work on the next BeWelcome Newsletter has already started. Have a look at the wiki and help writing it. This is your chance to have a voice in the community!If you have any troubles using the wiki, have a look at wiki frontpage for tips or contact us through feedback. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/522 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/522 demorganna BW is currently being translated into 33 languages! Thanks for the great work, all you translators! :-) Your language not there? Join the team! BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/572 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/572 kiwiflave Minutes from recent BoD meeting are now available here. Have a look at what was discussed and feel free to provide your input by posting in this forum thread. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/573 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/573 demorganna What does Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger have in common with over 125 curious people from all around the world? He follows us on twitter! Why not follow us, too! BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/576 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/576 kiwiflave October newsletter was sent out this weekend. You can find an archive version here. If you did not receive this newsletter try adding newsletter@bewelcome.org to your address book and get in touch with demorganna. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/586 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/586 demorganna There will be an informal BeWelcome (un)conference in Antwerp from the 23rd to the 24th of January. It is the second time we do this (in Antwerp at least) and open to anyone happy to help with the project ... BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/589 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/589 kiwiflave The registration for Budapest Winter Camp is finally open! Don't miss out on a great opportunity to spend New Year's Eve visiting the beautiful city of Budapest with scores of other travellers from all over the world!Read more and ask you questions here. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/596 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/demorganna/596 demorganna Verification increases the security on BeWelcome, by making sure that members use their real name and real street address on BeWelcome.It is done by members for members and it is completely free of charge. Basically, you can verify you next host/guest. Just go on their profile and click on  "Verify member" and follow the steps.If you're interested in how it works, follow this link. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitarane/597 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitarane/597 sitarane Has the BeWelcome community rewarded you with unique travel experiences, open doors and hearts last year? Then please consider a small donation to the project so that even more people can share inspiring moments in 2010! BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/613 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/613 kiwiflave Share your travel experiences through your personal blog at BeWelcome! Link your blog posts to trips. How? Have a look! BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/616 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/kiwiflave/616 kiwiflave It's been stated a couple of times on the forum and possibly written about in some forum posts: BeWelcome is relocating it's test server to one of it's members (Tobixen - many thanks!). In connection with this, you might experience some problems if you try to reach the old BV wiki or the trac pages (if you're trying to put in a bug report). Things should be up and running within a day or two again, though - so please, don't worry too much if you see some pages broken, they should be fixed again soon. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/fake51/626 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/fake51/626 fake51 For the past few weeks we have had some problems with the server that hosts the feedback messages and forwards them to our ticket-managing system. We have now solved this problem by temporarily forwarding the feedback to a 'normal' e-mail address, but unfortunately we can't get hold of older feedback there. So please send us your feedback once more and we will try and handle it this time :) Sorry for this inconvenience!!! BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/claudiaab/891 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/claudiaab/891 claudiaab I'm proud to announce that I just made some changes to the BeWelcome site by our phantastic software development team available to the public. Here is what changed with today's release: Removed checkboxes for "Accept spam policy" and "Attach profile picture" from message sending dialogue Added link to group at the top of group forum post Fixed extra empty lines appearing when editing forum posts Fixed developer links at bottom right of page: revision links to gitorious, better bug report pre-filling Check the changelog if you are interested in the technical details behind these improvements. This release was preceeded by a lengthy clean-up on our main webserver and a realignment of our common working platform, the code repository. So this relatively small impact on the site actually means a big step for the improvement of BeWelcome features in the future. With the new release procedure regular updates to the source code, the core of our project, are starting to flow easily again and you can expect more bug fixes and usability improvements soon. We are also cooking up a completely rewritten version of BeWelcome based on the Drupal community framework, but more on that when it's ready for tasting. Did you notice something on the site that's broken or very complicated to use? Let us know in the forum or even better, click "Report bug" at the bottom right of the page! Thank you for participating in the community and for helping to improve! May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/976 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/976 planetcruiser On November 5 & 6 the annual General Assembly (GA) of BeVolunteer will take place in Grimbergen near Brussels, Belgium. Traditionally this GA is accompanied by a BW party/meeting, and this year is not different. So if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Brussels, you are more than welcome to join us on Saturday November 5th between 8 and 8.30 pm in Café Monk (42 rue Sainte-Catherine, 1000 Brussels).  Afterwards we might go to a free DJ concert (SoundBits : GaBLé + BRNS + DJ tbc) at the Beursschouwburg (A. Ortsstraat 20, 1000 Brussels). Hope to see you at Café Monk at 8pm or later at the Beursschouwburg. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/985 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/985 thorgal67 Another Release Monday, another announcement. We are getting some routine going here - niiice! New today: Allowing new, not approved members (Pending status) to send messages to other users - this is actually quite a big change - see below.. Greatly improved usability of profile edit page Fixed "mark as spam" functionality in messages - now we are notified again Added email notification for new profile comment or update Added number of user photos to left-hand navigation on profile page Also there about 15 more smaller changes. See the changelog for a detailed list and all the glorious details. A note on the possibility of new members to send messages to other members straight after they signed up: We decided to allow this, because when you are on the road and trying to contact a host that only accepts guest via BeWelcome you don't have time to wait around until your profile is approved by one of our volunteers. We hope new potential members like this improvement! We will however keep an eye on spam levels and add more spam protection mechanisms in the next releases. Related to this I would like to mention that for the last 3 months we had a preference setting that allowed you to opt-out of messages from new members. We removed this setting again because a) it was not working properly and because b) we are planning to drop the manual reviewing of profiles in three months from now. This means new members will become full members after they confirmed their email address. We will then, like most other community websites, rely on flagging of joke or abuse profiles by our users. So we are going to "crowd-source" our review process. ;) I think that's all for today. Thanks to bikepunk, coroa, crumbking, jeanyves, matthias, lupochen, pablobd and steinwinde for contributing to this release. May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1040 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1040 planetcruiser If you've been secretly wondering where you'd fit as a volunteer, we have a few suggestions:   The support team is calling for new volunteers. They are on the receiving end of the "contact us" form. A friendly and prompt reply to messages sent to the website team is an essential task, because it makes people feel confortable in the community. You can be part of it.   We never have enough translation volunteers. Interestingly enough, English is where some editors we would need. ;) But you can join any existing language team, or create your own if it is not already there. Take a look at http://www.bewelcome.org/groups/60/wiki for the first steps.   Another "language" BeWelcome needs support with is PHP. If you're a programmer, this is where you can make a difference. Currently we have two teams, one is fixing bugs in the current code and the other one is working on a bigger project migrating our website to Drupal. For more info visit http://trac.bewelcome.org/ or http://redmine.bewelcome.org/ respectively.   BeWelcome wouldn't mind some extra social media presence. Our Twitter account and our Facebook page could do with a bit more liveliness. If you're good at this, please raise a hand or simply start posting notices, likes and comments.   If you want to volunteer, please post a comment below or contact us. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/matthias/1092 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/matthias/1092 matthias Dear members, We kept pushing more and more things into this release, changed the date a few times, but finally it is here! The most important changes: Fixed reporting of profile comments, note the new flag button on comment pages Added group name and link to recent forum posts list on personal start page Changed (increased) message sending limits for new users and always allow replies to messages See the detailed changelog for some technical background and 10 more smaller changes and developer related improvements. Regarding reporting of comments please note that if you have reported problematic comments in the past and have not heard back from us, please report them again by clicking on the flag symbol. This time you can be sure that we receive your feedback. ;) For the next release we have not set tasks or a focus yet, so please tell us in the comments below what you think is most important to be fixed next! May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1141 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1141 planetcruiser Fellow travellers and hosts, the summer is about to start and the big BeWelcome event in Toulouse is about to happen this weekend, so our motivation is high to improve this site. Here is what we've done: Made profile updates more intuitive by adding "Edit" links when viewing own profile Improved map search to return more relevant results Fixed a couple of errors when editing profile data Showed the "Family and close friends" feature some love Read all the background and discussion in the 10 tickets mentioned in the detailed changelog. Also, we'd like to know your opinion on two smaller changes we've made to the profile pages: Firstly, when viewing your own profile, you also see "Edit" links on the groups, comments and pictures boxes although you can't directly edit things on the following pages. Should we rename the link to "Manage" there, or is this clear as it is? Secondly, the "Family and close friends" list had no limit anyway, that's why we removed the "Show more" link. This means the box currently always shows all friends, which is already a very long list for some members (bonjour du Sud de la France). Should we limit this box to 3, 5, 10 or more friends, or even let you set this in your preferences? Please write your opinion in the comments below! I'd like to thank crumbking and mahouni200000 for testing and contributing code to this release. Also toub is currently working on liberating us from using commercial mapping technology, more details on this once it's there.. ;) Happy travels from Dracula land, and may non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1166 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1166 planetcruiser After a number of days of hard work, it is finally done. BeWelcome now comes to you from a new, more powerful server. While we have made an effort to thorougly test everything before we switch to the new server, it is well possible that you'll come across some quirks. Please don't hesitate to contact us and let us know if you find something to not be working properly. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1216 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1216 jsfan "The donation goal of 1,000 € for this year's operation of BeWelcome has just been reached" says the treasurer of BeVolunteer (the non-profit that deals with everything financial and legal for BeWelcome).So it is with financial serenity that we can remove the appeal for donation that sits on the frontpage since May. And with the added peace of mind for the future, that we can raise the operating costs in a donation campaign of just 2 month.I hope you found it less obnoxious than the Wikipedia ones :) BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitarane/1217 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitarane/1217 sitarane Hello hosts and travellers, after just 3 months since the last software release ;) we are proud to present the following improvements: Sign up now without residence address and without volunteer approval Sign up with names containing special characters now possible (i.e. Chinese, Turkish or Cyrillic) Result list of map search now displaying more active users first Fixed gallery picture upload Improved database performance Banned profiles not accessible any longer Fixed translation and CSS for quick search button on personal start page There are a few more changes and plenty of technical details in the complete changelog. The simplified sign up is a pretty big change for improving our new user's privacy. Existing users can now remove their address data as well of course. The location (city) set via the map however remains mandatory. How else could travelling members find you otherwise? :) Thanks to crumbking, jsfan, mahouni200000, matthias, sitarane, tobixen and toub for helping with this release by contributing code, bug reporting, commenting and testing. Enjoy the summer, or winter if you are down-under somewhere.. May non-profit hospitality exchange prevail! :) BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1267 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/planetcruiser/1267 planetcruiser The forums have recently been subjected to a number of posts that weren't received well by the wider BW community. As in any community, this is kind of a problem because it shifts the balance towards individuals who put there own interests and agendas before the interest of the community. As the forum admins have been busy with other things recently, I have now taken over the job of "policing" the forums a bit. That means that I will read reports from members (see the link under every forum post) and respond to them. Please make sure that you have read and understood the Forum Rules and Regulations and abide by them. If you feel that someone else isn't, please seak up. As is encouraged in the Forum Rules and Regulations as well, it is often appropriate to sound out the community vibes on a certain post or thread before reporting it. This is not necessary for grave and obvious violations of simple rules (e.g. disclosure of another member's personal details, illegal content or spam). In other words, use common sense when reporting issues and do not overload forum admins with pointless reports. Last but not least, BW will need more forum admins in the long run. So, if you feel this is a job you could take on, let me know and I'll pass it on for decision. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1292 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/jsfan/1292 jsfan Whenever there are new members joining our community, they tend to be confused by the distinction between BeVolunteer (BV) and BeWelcome (BW). Well, simply put, BeVolunteer is the legal non-profit association that runs BeWelcome. Under French law, BV is required to hold a General Assembly once a year where the Financial Accounts and the Annual Report are approved, and where a new Board of Directors (BoD) is elected for the next year. This year the General Assembly will take place in two parts: first an online part, then a real-life meeting in Halle/Saale, Germany in the weekend of 13-14 October 2012. Everything you've always wanted to ask (but didn't know where to look) is listed in our BeVolunteer Wiki. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1421 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1421 thorgal67 Before two weeks we held the annual General Assembly (GA) of BeVolunteer, the legal organisation behind BeWelcome. During this two day meeting in Halle (Saale) we dealt with official tasks like electing a new Board of Directors (BoD), approving the financial statement of the previous year and agreeing on the budget for the following year.Detailed information like the voting results can be found on the minutes of the GA and on our General Assembly 2012 wiki page. If you are interested in becoming a member of BeVolunteer you can find all necessary information on our BeVolunteer wiki. In future we will move the data about the non-profit association on a separate website. Declarations about the BoD meetings can be found in the BoD meeting reports and also a regular volunteer cafe will be established. I wish you all happy travels and great hosting experiences using BeWelcome. Manuel :-) BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/crumbking/1481 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/crumbking/1481 crumbking We are happy to announce that we just "BeWelcomed" our 30,000th member. Over the last couple of weeks we have seen quite a few new members, much more forum activity and lots of feedback and questions about our little community. Of course we'd choose quality over quantity any time, but it would be hypocritical to say that an open-source hospitality network does not care about an increase of its user base. After all, BeWelcome is in the first place about meeting people, and what better way to do that than with a thriving community? So get your travel boots on, arrange a meeting in your town or open your home to strangers and see the world!   BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1566 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1566 thorgal67 Hi everybody, Only a month ago we had our last release and here we go again. One big change that you might have already spotted are the related groups. If you are a member of a group you can link it with another group (you're a member of). Please do so responsibly and if in doubt contact the group admin(s). If you want to see only your group posts in the 'recent forum post' list on the main page there is a new preference to do that. It will also filter the display on the forum page (technically that's the same thing). You can also just switch when you have the forum page open (this will alter the preference setting as well). The trip feature that finds more and more users got a facelift and is much prettier now. If you care for your privacy you're probably happy to hear that you can now decide on the visibility of your posts directly when you reply. Additionally the preselected value for new posts changed so that group posts should normally stay in groups now and all forum posts are visible for all members but not the world. For the full monty see the changelog. Thanks to beatnickgr, crakk, crumbking, foodle, globetrotter_tt, james_oder_dave, jeanyves, jsfan, jonjon, lantii, mahouni, midsch, octobertales, pablobd, sanderr, planetcruiser, shevek, and sitatara for all their help. If you find errors, please post them in the bugs group. If you have a suggestion to improve things, please post in the feature requests group. Cheers, shevek BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/1760 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/shevek/1760 shevek As you may have noticed, we have removed the donation bar from the front page. That is good news, because it means we have reached our yearly donation goal of 1,260 euro for running our website. Thank you all for all your generous donations. Your continuous support makes it possible for us to run without any need for external funding or advertisement. Long live free hospitality exchange! BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1874 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1874 thorgal67 The second Unconference of 2013 will be hosted by leopoldr in the beautiful city of Bamberg (Upper Franconia, Germany) on 6 and 7 April.  So far 3 participants have confirmed their presence, so there is still room for more!  Feel free to participate in both the dedicated forum thread and the wiki where you will find all relevant info. BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1961 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/thorgal67/1961 thorgal67 Last weekend (6-7 April 2013), a BeWelcome unconference took place in Bamberg, Germany. The participants discussed about the introduction of a "New Member BeWelcome Team", how to activate inactive members, and many more topics. The meeting minutes have just been published here: http://www.bewelcome.org/wiki/Bamberg_Unconference_April_2013_MeetingMinutes. The previous unconference took place from 1-3 March, 2013 in Brussels, Belgium. Important topics were the decision making on BeWelcome, member saftey, and the structure for groups and forum. The meeting minutes are available at http://www.bewelcome.org/wiki/BXL_Unconference_March_2013_MeetingMinutes. An unconference is participant-driven meeting that avoids the worst aspects of a conventional conferences such as high fees, sponsored presentations and top-down organization. At an unconference, the agenda is typically created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim time and a space, and thereby such meetings often feature open discussions rather than having a single speaker at the front of the room giving a talk. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference) If you would like to organize a BeWelcome unconference, please post your suggestions here: http://www.bewelcome.org/forums/s4627-Organizing_a_BW_Unconference BeWelcome Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 GMT BeWelcome http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitatara/2106 http://www.bewelcome.org/blog/sitatara/2106 sitatara