Yipeee!
All members now have a custom biography field they can use, and Plus members now have 8, count’em 8!
Custom bio fields are fun because you can tell the stories most important to you. People use them to tell the story of how their pet got their name, their pet’s health history, stories about their family or geneology or whatever.
Other people use them to embed background images, audio, glitter names, slideshows, games and all types of crazy stuff. Unfortunately we cannot guarentee that each and every third party embedded widget will work on our site as there are thousands of them out there, but most everything works so far, so have at it.
Yipppeeee!
Hi everyone!
We realized that while we post the proper etiquette and community guidelines throughout the site, we hadn’t made them all available in one convenient place that can be referenced any time. Until now.
Everyone can now find a link to our definitive Community Guidelines page where we post the expected etiquette and ground rules for anyone that wants to participate in our community. The link is found on the footer of every page. Let us know what you think, or contact us for any clarifications. These terms are simply what you the community have asked us to uphold. Since everyone’s having such a good time we’re going to do all we can to keep it that way.
Let us know if we’re letting you down and we’ll act double quick to improve it.
This is your community, we just make it the way you want!
Meow! Meow! We’ve been working round the clock here at Catster HQ to bring you some new, very important, site improvements in order to specifically help our furry friends who need to be adopted. We’re really excited that we were able to make these changes and hope that they lead to lots of kitties finding their furrever homes!
A quick rundown of the changes:
* We’ve added a way for logged in members to directly contact the guardian of a cat that’s up for adoption via their pet page! If you check out an adoptable cutie like Mommy Calico you’ll see a new field called “Adoption Contact” at the top of her bio. Clicking on the link takes you to a form that allows potential adopters to e-mail the pet owner directly! (note: if you don’t see the Adoption Contact field on the page, give the kitty a treat and it should magically appear)
* We did a massive clean up of adoptable cat profiles and changed the “Adopt Me” stroll so that it sorts by most recently updated profile. Check it out!
* When a new adoptable cat is added to Catster, the Community Manager receives an e-mail to review the page to make sure it’s legitimate so we can keep the bad kitties out.
We’ve also made some changes in the forums that we hope will foster lots of great information sharing, positivity and happy endings. We added new forum topics like “Choosing the Right Cat” and made some changes to a few existing forum topics related to Adoption and Rescue. Thanks to all of the Catsters who gave us great feedback in order to make these changes happen!
We really are so excited and impressed by how shelters, rescue organizations and private rescue folks have been using the site lately. There are so many amazing new pet pages for adoptable cats! We want to do everything possible to make Catster a purrrfect place for the kitties and the people who care about them and will stil be working on some more new ideas (there’s another furrrbulous one coming soon…shhhhh ;))
Big meows to all of you from Catster HQ!
We are so excited to announce the 2nd Annual The World’s Coolest Dog & Cat Show! All of you super photogenic Dogsters & Catsters…here’s your chance to have your 15 minutes of fame.
The contest has been live for just 5 days and we already have over 13,000 pawsome entries and over 410,000 votes. How incredible is that? We are really just floored at the turnout but want to make sure that everyone knows about it because it’s just too much fun. Seriously-there are so many super cool, funny, adorable and intriguing photos that we don’t know what to do with ourselves…we just can’t stop looking and voting.
Check it out and enter to win lots of cool prizes and furry fame in the Dogster & Catster community!
Woof and meow!
Now we have two pawsome gifts that anyone can give away to their special buddies. You know about Rosettes - the fun blue ribbons with a message that will stay on someone’s pet page for a month. Well now there are Stars, too! These yellow babies are similar to Rosettes but even more special: they will stay on your furpal’s page fur-ever.
You don’t have to be a Plus member anymore to give away fun stuff like Rosettes. Now any pup can purchase Zealies – the new currency on Catster. (In the future, we will have ways in which you can earn Zealies as well). You can use your Zealies to give away both Rosettes and Stars to anyone you like. If you are a Plus member and want more Rosettes, say for the holidays, you can use Zealies to get them. If you are not a Plus member but want to give a few Rosettes away, Zealies will enable you to do so. Stars are super special and are more valuable. They are currently only available through Zealies.
We know this may be a little confusing so we have given each and every member 10 Zealies for free to try it out. To use them you simply click on the gift box icon underneath the primary photo of the kitty you wish to give a gift to (if you don’t see the Gift Box icon right away, the page may be cached - giving a bone/treat will fix that up). The next screen will ask you if you want to give away a Rosette or Star. If you already have some Rosettes from your Plus subscription perhaps and you choose to give a Rosette, we will pull the Rosette from your Rosette balance when you give it away. If you have no Rosettes or choose to give a Star, we will pull from your Zealies Balance. We promise it will be clear once you give it a try- that’s why we have given everyone 10. Use those 10 wisely. More Zealies will cost a few bucks. The good news is that all money will be reinvested in the site to make even better features and more fun stuff.
You can always find your Zealies balance on your Account page.
FAQ
More information about Zealies
Purchase Zealies
Let us know what you think. We really do value your opinion. Many members asked us for something like this and we want to make sure that we have done it right. We have started a forum thread to discuss.
Meow!
Neato! You can now show your love for your cat(s) and Catster by adding a cool badge to your web site, blog, MySpace page or any other Internet pages you control. You can make yours now!
Web badges are small widgets you can add to your web page just by copy pasting a small code snippet we make for you. You can make one for each cat in your family or make one badge for all of them. You can customize what color you prefer and you can have it output in HTML/Javascript or HTML/Flash.
If you’re scared by the geek mumbo-jumbo, don’t worry. We’ve made it so all you need to do is point and click and copy and paste!
Have fun! When it’s live post a link in Tips & Tricks to the badge on your outside pages so everyone can see your pages! If you’re having problems check in in Tips & Tricks where we’ll be helping out.
Woof woof!
Dogster HQ and some awesome local Dogster (and Catster) members are going to be walking in the 2006 Doggone Fun Run on October 14th in Golden Gate Park. We are so excited because this is a grrrrrrrrrreat Bay Area event that is raising money for furrbulous organizations like the SF SPCA and PAWS.
We’re trying to raise as much money as pawsible because we know it is going to help so many doggies, kitties and the people who love them. Can you help us out? It super easy…all you have to do is visit our our special Dogster team webpage and you can make a donation online. We’re on our paws and knees…any little bit will help!
