Pandamian

• 2011-11-07

  Pandamian widget now available

  We have just pushed a small feature update on Pandamian that allows authors to embed a widget on their personal blog or website to show the progress of their Pandamian books. 

  If you head on over to the “Customize” tab of your book, you’ll notice a new category called “Widget”.

  

  This is where you can get the widget HTML code to embed anywhere on your own website. Here’s a screenshot of how the widget will look.

  

  We think this is a great way to share you book’s progress, other than through our social network integration feature. If you are NaNoWiMo-ing this month, this widget should help you keep your friends up-to-date on your progress and also help you track their’s. Word count and all. Keep on fighting NaNoWriMo warriors!

• 2011-10-27

  Public ebook downloads now available

  We have implemented user-facing downloads for authors who want to allow their readers to download an ebook version of their books for offline reading. 

  How is this done? Head on to the “Customize” tab of your book and you will notice two extra options at the top of the page:

  

  Select the options that you require and this is what your readers will see on your book:

  

  Notice at the bottom right corner, your readers are now able to select the ebook format that they prefer and download a copy of your book. 

  This new feature is something we are testing out for Pandamian. Instead of being just a publishing tool for writers, there seem to be more need for Pandamian to be a “staging” area for books. One where writers can host their work-in-progress, pass them along in various formats to their readers, get feedback and work on improving their books. Try this out and let us know what you think?

• 2011-08-24

  Sssh - Things You Might Not Have Noticed

  We’ve pared back our blog posts over at Pandamian, and for good reason - it’s very tempting to shout about new things when it’s not completely ready. But here are some things we didn’t talk about in the past, but were pushed quietly into the product:

  1. We have a completely updated, redesigned backend.
  2. We have CSS editing so you can change how your book looks. (hint: look under the customize tab)
  3. We added book deletion and subdomain editing (if you want to change from xxx.pandamian.com to yyy.pandamian.com)
  4. We’ve also added Pen Names, so you can display different names on a per-book basis.

  So what are we doing now? Well, we’re pushing to complete a list of three features, after which we’ll redesign the whole front-facing site and make a big push for users.

  The feedback we’ve gotten from our first 700 users has been invaluable, even as I’ll readily admit that we’re still not crystal clear on how one might use Pandamian (we have lots of hints, and an overarching vision, but there are several things we’re seeing that don’t match up). Our hope is that the next big push for users would give us the data we need. Perhaps I’ll talk a little about that in a bit.

  For now - we’re back to whittling down that last 20% of features needed for complete (and polished!) ebook conversion. So back to programming it is!

• 2011-07-13

  Announcing Antispam and Mobi Conversion

  When we launched Pandamian, we knew that we’d have to build antispam protection into our comments sooner or later. This has increased in importance, especially over the past few weeks, as several writers on our platform have tweeted or emailed to complain of a growing spam problem. Well, I’m happy to report that Akismet antispam integration is live and working on all Pandamian books. Today, if you submit a comment on any Pandamian book, it hits our antispam system before being approved.

  Here’s what a spam notification looks like on your front page:

  

  To enable this, you’ll need to enter an Akismet API key to your book. Simply get one from Akismet.com, and copy and paste that code into your book’s Customize page. (Writers who don’t paste an API key still get rudimentary spam protection from Pandamian, but it’s not as comprehensive as using your own key.)

  

  Also, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve pushed full-book .mobi conversions to all Pandamian accounts. As of today, basic conversion to all the major ebook formats are live and working. (We’ve got image uploading and metadata to complete, so watch this space for future updates).

  

  Happy writing!

• 2011-07-05

  Twitter and Facebook Autopost Is Live

  If you’ve ever had to log into your Twitter or Facebook accounts to announce new chapters for your Pandamian book, fret no more! Autoposting is now live on all Pandamian books.

  Autoposting is easy: first, link your book to your Twitter or Facebook account. We’ve made the linking process granular, meaning that each book can link to a specific Facebook or Twitter account, should you wish this to be so.

  The linking interface is under your Customize tab:

  

  And once you’re linked and running … that’s it! Everytime you publish a new chapter, Pandamian will automatically format and post a notice on both your Facebook and Twitter streams. And because we use OAuth, we never once store your password, meaning your data’s safe where it belongs.

  Stay tuned for more updates - we’ve got three other features developed locally, and should see a push for them later this week.

• 2011-06-08

  Google Analytics, and a few bugfixes

  Today, we’ve added the option to add Google Analytics tracking code to your Pandamian books. It’s under your Customize tab, scroll to the very bottom and you’ll see something like this:

  

  To start tracking, add your Google Analytics Domain ID and save. Your Domain ID is the code that begins with UA, and looks like UA-123456-7. This shows up when you create a new project in your Google Analytics panel.

  For instance, I’ve created a new analytics project for MBA Mondays, and the code is as shown below:

  

  Once you’ve saved, the analytics tracker will be automatically added to all pages in your Pandamian book. There will be a delay of a couple of hours, though, before your stats begin to show in GA.

  In other news, we’ve fixed a number of bugs since the last blog post - the majority of them related to ebook generation. It’s not working completely just yet, but we’re whittling down the number of bugs that might’ve given you a 500 error page over the weekend. Expect a number of other smaller feature releases this week, as we work on finishing the last few bits of ebook conversion.

• 2011-06-02

  [Beta] eBook Conversions Are Live

  I’m pleased to announce that beta ebook conversions are now live. (It’s beta because it’s not 100% complete, but it’s live so you can play with it while we’re finishing up the last bits!)

  This is what book conversions look like:

  

  And this is what chapter conversion looks like:

  

  So what’s left to do? Well, we’re currently working on:

  • Metadata entry (adding genre, price, etc)
  • Images (cover images and embedded images require image uploads to be done, which we’re working on)
  • Full-book mobi conversions
  • Standards-compliant epub output (it’s not 100% valid at the moment) Fixed!

  We’ve got a bit more work to do, so I’ll shut up now and get back to proramming. Till then, enjoy your new ebooks!