New Event UI + Google Map Integration

This morning, we released a new UI for our event page.  With the increased amount of functionality (especially with Enterprise Qlubb) and data now being presented on the page, we felt it was getting a little cluttered and frankly stale.

You will also notice that events now have Google Maps integration with an event location.

Try out our new UI and let us know what you think.

Qlubb Instructional DIY Videos

For the past several weeks, we have been hosting regular weekly webinars for new users - "Room Parenting Made Simple."  These 30-minute webinars are a great way to quickly get up to speed on how to organize your volunteers.

But still many of you have been unable to make these webinars and wanted some type of quick tutorial to help them get started.

Well, your wish is our command.  Today, we are releasing Qlubb DIY videos.  Each video is less than 3 minutes long and quickly goes through a different aspect of the Qlubb service.

The first five DIY videos are:
1) How to create a Qlubb

2) How to create an event and sign-up sheet

3) How to create a recurring task and event

4) How to create a poll and copy a task and its details


5) Volunteer reports and basic Admin settings


Check them out and let us know what you think!

New Help Community

Today we released our new help community from Get Satisfaction. With our growing user base, we wanted to tap your expertise in helping the greater Qlubb community answer questions, post suggestions and just share your experiences.

We have received so many cool ideas in the past year through our help@qlubb.com and feedback@qlubb.com, we felt it was a shame not to share it with the rest of you.

So as of today, our http://www.qlubb.com/qlubbs/help now gets redirected to our Get Satisfaction page. If you have a question, please check Get Satisfaction first. If you can't find the answer, post a question and we will answer it online.

However, if you have an issue that is specific to your Qlubb, your email ID, etc... please send it to help@qlubb.com - we want to keep your info private!

Qlubb Experts Speak: 5+1 Room Parenting Tips

We recently asked our 60,000 users to share their room parenting experiences and we were overwhelmed with the response. For most of the surveyers, being a room parent exceeded their expectations and a large number of Qlubb users have been room parents more than 5 times!

With so many experts in the Qlubb community, we thought we would share some of their best tips on being an effective room parent.

1. Communicate regularly with the teacher - meet weekly to plan out upcoming events and volunteer needs.

2. Communicate regularly with other parents - keep parents in the loop and informed on how to help.

3. Use a centralized website to coordinate activities and to reduce email traffic (www.qlubb.com)

4. Coordinate thoughtful group gifts - they don't have to cost money but can be homemade gifts your class make together (e.g., cookie basket, jar of notes).
   
5. Start and plan early - give parents the opportunity to plan their volunteering into their busy schedules
   
   AND
   
   
6. Smile - everyone appreciates a positive, can-do attitude: teachers, children, and parents (even the difficult ones!)
   

Room Parenting Made Simple Evening Webinar

Many of you have wanted to attend our regular Room Parenting Made Simple Webinars but couldn't make the mid-morning times. Well, we are listening and we are scheduling our new webinar to be next Monday at 7pm PDT (10pm PDT). Register here

Welcome Center'd Plan users

This past weekend, Center'd and Qlubb reached a partnership in which Qlubb would migrate and transfer existing Center'd plans over to Qlubb. The partnership was formed as a result of Center'd strategic decision to focus its efforts upon their new local deal aggregation service. www.thedealmap.com.

We, here at Qlubb, welcome Center'd plan users to Qlubb and want to make the transition as smooth and painless as possible. So if you are a Center'd plan user and have a plan you would like to transfer over, please fill out this form and we will automatically transfer the details/sign-up sheets over. http://www.qlubb.com/centerd_transfer.

Of course, Center'd users can also create their own Qlubbs from scratch by going to www.qlubb.com or www.qlubb.com/centerd_new - either one works.

We are holding two special webinars for Center'd users to help them with the transition. If you are interested, please register here....

• Thursday, Aug 5 at 10am PDT https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/781032921
• Wednesday, Aug 11 at 10am PDT https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/896793784

So once again, welcome Center'd users and let us know if you have any questions.

Sometimes When Sh*t Hits the Fan, All You Can Do Is Sit Back and Avoid the Splatter

Early this morning, we saw a bit of instability at Qlubb. We checked around our servers, our Amazon EC2 and saw nothing unusual. We quickly learned that the DNS servers at our DNS hosting service, Mydomain.com, had all (including redundant and backup servers) failed, a victim of a sophisticated DOS (denial of service) attack.

Though the service appeared to come back mid-morning, it was temporary. Our team discussed potentially redirecting our domain to a different DNS host provider. Though straightforward for simple websites, moving to a new DNS host provider mid-day was likely to introduce even more problems given the integrated way Qlubb's functionality is all tightly integrated with the DNS (e.g., mail server, our domain mapping functionality, other Qlubb services). So we decided to stay put, hoping that mydomain.com would quickly re-stabilize their services.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten hours later... we are finally up. I apologize that Qlubb was unavailable today as I know thousands of you rely on our service to organize your group activities. However, rest assured we are planning to deploy a secondary DNS server to avoid this type of scenario (though rare) in the future.

Looking back, I am glad we did not attempt to move to another DNS service provider as it would have opened a whole new can of worms. But it certainly wasn't comfortable watching the sh*t hit the fan...

Good night.

mydomain.com is down and out... and so it Qlubb

Early this morning, we noticed that we were unable to get onto www.qlubb.com or any of our Qlubbs. We quickly realized that the problem was not in our court but rather with our DNS provider (Mydomain.com). Apparently all their DNS servers went down due to malicious attacks (or so they say). Around 8am, things appeared to be resolved, and www.qlubb.com was back up. However, about two hours ago, we noticed that browsers could not resolve www.qlubb.com.

We have been in contact with mydomain.com and they are aware of this widespread issue and are attempting (albeit rather unsuccessfully) to fix this problem as quickly as possible. Let's hope they don't resolve to golf balls, sand, old tires and mud.

We will let you know when it is stable and fixed. We are also looking into alternative/backups DNS providers to avoid this problem going forward.

Again, we apologize for any inconveniences you may have experienced.

Let mydomain know you want this fixed ASAP via twitter. http://twitter.com/mydomaindotcom