It’s release day and the team is stoked about the new features that have gone live today. It’s been a very busy and productive 11 days since our Beta 1.2 release so I hope you’re all enjoying the new release. In case you haven’t spotted all the new tidbits around the site, this post will give you an overview of exactly what we worked on as well as what’s to come. As always, we need your feedback to keep improving, so don’t be afraid to hit that big blue Comments link at the bottom of the post!

Get the full scoop after the jump!

First, Beta 1.2…

Our blog wasn’t up at the time we released Beta 1.2 so here’s a quick recap of what that release came with:

Search

Yes, a way to find the people and challenges you’re looking for! We know we’ve had the search bar up in the header since Beta 1.1, but now it actually works! We’re constantly working on improving the search algorithm, but I think it holds its ground pretty well right now. Give it a try!

Add friends… from anywhere

This was a request we heard loud and clear from all of you and wanted to implement a lot earlier, but couldn’t due to time restrictions. But low and behold, Beta 1.2 gives you the ability to add friends from anywhere on the site. Just click a name or a profile picture and you’ll either be taken to the Do Gooder’s profile or be prompted to add them as a friend.

On to Beta 1.3!

Privacy

Probably our most asked-about feature, Beta 1.3 now features a way for you to opt-out of getting your daily challenge via email. You’ll notice the added Privacy tab in your profile settings, where you can configure your privacy options. Soon, we’ll be adding more ways for you to customize your experience on Daily Challenge.

Who Accepted & Completed Challenges

As challengers, we always found ourselves wanting to know who had accepted and completed our challenges. As challengees, we also thought it’d be fun to be able to see who else had accepted/completed challenges that we had. So, we turned that curiosity into a new feature, and now you can see a list of Do Gooders who have interacted with every challenge by clicking on the Accepted this Challenge and Completed this Challenge tabs on each challenge page.

Upgraded Comments

We gave the comments section a bit of a facelift and also upped the functionality and fixed some bugs. You should find that the comments now recognize line breaks properly as well as links. Give it a try by commenting on your favourite challenges!

Network Bar

For lack of a better name, we’ve added a network bar at the top of the site. This section will link you to our profiles on other social networks so you can stay tuned on all the action. Help support Daily Challenge by:

• Joining our Facebook group
• Following us on Twitter
• Subscribing to our YouTube channel
• Browsing our Flickr photostream

Do Gooder Daily, the Daily Challenge blog

If you’re reading this, then it’s no news to you that we’ve launched our blog! We will be posting updates, videos, relevant news, and other fun stuff that will help us create conversations with the most important people in our world - you, the community.

Stay tuned to the discussion by subscribing to our RSS feed. If you’re not a fan of RSS, you can subscribe by email as well.

Coming very, very soon

This is really only the tip of the iceberg, folks. There’s tons more to come so sit tight! In the immediate future, you can expect to see an Invite function that will let you invite your friends to become Do Gooders. We’ll also finally be giving the Pass It Forward function an upgrade so that it looks and feels more like the rest of the site.

So there you have it! A somewhat-concise look at Beta 1.2 and Beta 1.3. We hope you’re enjoying all of the new features as we’re having a blast building and releasing them for you!

If you ever have any suggestions, questions or concerns, just speak your mind in the comments! We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback!