Hey, Dogsters,

We know we pawromised you the site would be updated by now, but we’ve decided there’s no reason to rush what has become a very beautiful process. The launch of the site redesign that was scheduled for last month has been postponed for another few weeks or so. We look forward to showing you all the great new editorial content and redesigned homepage, but we’re not quite there yet.

All of us here at HQ are using the new site, alongside some longtime members of the Community, and everyone at SAY is helping to make sure the new design is great. We want to give ourselves pawlenty of time to make the user experience as good as it can be.

We want to make it clear that the upcoming launch will concern homepage design and navigation and new editorial content, and will not include any changes or additions to the functionality of Community features like Pet Pages, Forums, or Groups.

Stay tuned, and we will be sure to let you in on the new design as it’s evolving. We’ll share some screenshots here in the coming weeks!

Kind woofs,

Your friends at HQ

Image credit: Dogster Huey helps HQ bring you the news

Hey, Dogsters!

A few weeks ago, we revealed that new, exciting changes for Dogster were happening at HQ.

Testing is going really well, and we’re feeling good about the upcoming launch. In fact, a few Dogster members will be testing it for themselves this week, and we are confident they will find no trouble customizing Groups and Pet Pages!

We’re making great pawgress and will continue to keep you posted here!

Woofs,

Your pals at HQ

Hi, everypawdy!

We mailed a TON of our new Dogster stickers right before the holidays, so we hope you got yours. We filled the very last bunch of sticker requests earlier this week.

Now we’re asking Dogsters to send us photos of all the creative places you’ve put them! E-mail your pics to Community@Dogster.com and we’ll share some of our favorites on the site.

Here are a couple of photos we’ve already received.

Flicka and Lucas put their stickers on a tractor-trailer.

Margot added the stickers to her truck’s collection.

And Buddy the Rottie is proud to wear his!

If you still want stickers, or didn’t get yours last time, please send an SASE to Dogster Stickers, 180 Townsend Street, San Francisco 94107.

Hey everyone,

Our tail is between our legs about an issue that was live for a little over three hours today.

Sometime between 10:30 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. Dogster Time (PST), if you updated your photos via your photo managers, your tags for each photo for that pet were deleted. If you only looked at your photo manager but didn’t click save, your tags are fine. If you didn’t go to the photo manager page today, there’s no chance you had a problem.

You can quickly tell if you were affected by going to your photo manager for your pet(s). You’ll see your tags as you normally would. If you don’t, please let us know which pets they are missing for and we will be able to restore them from a backup.

Again, we doubt many Dogsters were affected by this, but we wanted to be transparent and let you know we can fix it. Just use the contact form below if you were affected, or contact us at support@dogster.com and let us know which pet pages encountered this glitch.

This was a very unusual bug, and we’re very sorry we didn’t catch before it went live.

Your Friends at HQ

Tis the season to be furry!

And to celebrate, we are offering the mistletoe gift FREE in the Dogster Gift Store — through Christmas Day!

P.S. Today and every day, hug your pups and smother them with kisses!

In the photo: Dogster member Chesney Blue

Happy Howlidays, Dogsters!

We’ve been working on getting ready for some pawesome changes to Dogster, and we’re at the point where we can start telling you what those changes will be. We’re expecting to debut these improvements in the second half of January.

The biggest change is that we will be updating the look of our pages’ headers, footers, and background images. One enhancement we think everyone will like is that we’ll be removing the top advertising banner spot altogether as part of our parent company, SAY Media’s, Clean Campaign. Yes, we’re really going to have fewer ads on every page!

Something we think is important for pet and group page customizers to know is that our new top navigation links will have drop-down menus for each section, as the Community tab does. This means that the current button customizations won’t work identically. BUT we are 100 percent committed to supporting page customization, and we will be working VERY CLOSELY with Pawsome Pages during this rollout to ensure that all of your customizations continue to look and work exactly as they did.

We’ll also be changing the content on the main site homepage (though the Community homepage content will stay the same) as well as our informational pages such as News, Puppies, Health & Care, Food, and Behavior & Training. We’re doing this because we’re building a new publishing tool for our blog and article content that will integrate much better into our sites than our current options. This does mean that the blogs will be changing slightly, mainly so we can serve them all at www.dogster.com and integrate our great posts with the rest of the site.

We’re sure some community members may be a little concerned or unsettled, but please rest assured that besides the new headers, footers, and top navigation page links, there will be NO changes to the Community areas. Pet Pages, Groups, Forums, Diaries, Gift Giving, Answers, Adoption, Local, and the Community homepage will all stay exactly as they are now.

We also want to reiterate that we’ll be working closely with a select group of Dogster Community members to thoroughly test all areas of the site. We will go to great lengths to make sure that these changes do not affect customized Pet Pages and Groups.

As we get more specific information on the site upgrade, we’ll post updates and share screen shots, launch dates, and places to discuss the changes, so do check back.

Much woof,

Your Friends at Dogster HQ

Pictured above: Dogster Dutchie McBarkis-Lane at a construction site! (She is a girl!)

Hello, Dogsters,

I hope everyone is doing great and gearing down (or up) for holiday season.

We have a little bit of housekeeping to update everyone who makes custom-designed pages.

A long time ago, we started supporting a JavaScript framework called Frame_ID.js that allowed people to do original customizations. It was made by a brilliant member and become quite popular. To make things easier, we started hosting the script so the member didn’t have to.

When we redesigned the site layouts in mid-2010, we made sure to add explicit IDs for all editable parts of pet and group pages so that the same changes could be made without having to load an external JavaScript file on every page. Pawsome Pages (an amazing voluntary group of members helping others learn how to decorate pages) picked right up on this, and now recommends that everyone use this superior, faster, and easiermethodology. (BTW, go to Pawsome Pages right now to see their amazing customized homepage design!)

We’ve heard that there is still some confusion about which method to use, and some people arrive at Pawsome Pages looking for help using the old JavaScript, which isn’t nearly as flexible. Since the new methods are so much better and exclusively what Pawsome Pages recommends, we’re going to deprecate the old JavaScript code.

What this means is that we’ll still host FrameID.js and you can keep using it as long as you want, but we won’t support it anymore. If you are using it, you are free to keep it as long as you are happy with it, but we won’t be able to help if future browser versions break it.

The Pawsome Pages folks have made tons of documentation on how to use the modern ID-based customization methods, so we hope you’ll find it easy to use.

Have a great woofend, everypaw,

Ted @ HQ

BowWOW, you guys! We are drowning in self-stamped envelopes and sticker requests here at Dogster HQ! Last week, we were able to mail out the first batch of Dogster stickers, but due to the overwhelming response, we had to order a ton more!

The second batch of stickers will arrive at HQ shortly after the Thanksgiving break and we’ll get busy stuffing the rest of the envelopes you sent our way. Thanks for your pawtience!

Here are some photos from our first sticker-stuffing pawty!

Show off your enthusiasm for Dogster with our pawesome new stickers!

Put them on your car bumper, bicycle, notebook, computer, or anywhere else you’d like. The pawssibilities are endless!

To get some: just send us a self-addressed, stamped envelope and we’ll send some your way, FREE!

Our address is:
Dogster Stickers
180 Townsend Street,
San Francisco, CA 94107.

Once you’ve received the stickers and found great places to put them, PAWLEASE send us photos!

You may e-mail photos to Community AT Dogster DOT com. We’ll post the most creative ones on our For the Love of Dog Blog!

Ahoy, me hearties! Monday, September 19, is National Talk Like a Pirate Day, where scurvy-ridden landlubbers put on hats and eyepatches and say “Arrrr!” a lot.

Dogster’s piratical pups are invited to get in on the fun with Bark Like a Pirate Day, the canine version.

And to celebrate, we are offering a free Jolly Roger gift in the Dogster Gift Store — but only for today.

So swab the poop deck and make one of your mutineering mutt friends happy by sending them some treasure.

And don’t furget to tag your photos with “pirate” to join the Bark Like a Pirate Gallery!