Health Month

Lots of excitment!!!

vanhost — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:18:17 -0700

Hello fellow Health Month-ers,

It has been quite some time since the last blog post (we do apologize), but please don’t take this to mean that we haven’t be hard at work - we have been! And we’re pleased to announce a new batch of changes coming your way. See below for a list of updates that will hit the site within the next week. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please email us at team@ and we’ll get back to you.

Thanks,

Derek & Billy

Change Rule Reminder Settings - applicable to paid accounts only

For already finalized games, you may now toggle or change the schedule for rule email reminders from “Notification Settings” under “Game in Progress” and “Play Next Month” in the footer.

Health Month Widget

Do you want to embed your live Health Month statistics into your blog or website! Well, now you can. Get your widget embed code from your Health Month home page.

Email Nofications for Updates from Followed Users (Optional)

You can now receive email notifications for game wall notes from people you follow - even if you are not on the same team. Simply enable this setting under “Email Notifications” in your profile management page.

Improved Compatibility for IE browsers

If you are a frequent user of Internet Explorer, you have probably already noticed that this has already been improved. We appreciate your feedback regarding this, and do let us know if you encounter any more glitches.

Daily Updates

Daily emails are much smarter now and will no longer ask you to play for the day if you have already checked in.

Invitation Rewards

We are always grateful when you ask your friends to join our community. We now track metrics for determining which users are most active at doing so and will be using these metrics to implement a reward system that gets you really cool stuff.

Private Rules in Emails

Emails we send to you should now have proper descriptions of your private rules.

Email Bug - "Ongoing game..."

vanhost — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:15:01 -0800

It appears that with our last update, we introduced a new bug to the system that many people seem to be affected by. An email is being sent out with the subject “Ongoing game on Health Month” that is suppose to remind people who haven’t played their turns in awhile to come back and do so. Unfortunately, it is sending them to everyone currently playing a game with us.

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are aware of the issue and are working on solving it for our next batch of updates (within a week). I apologize for any inconvenience and thanks to everyone that made us aware of the problem.

Derek

Update Changelog - Monday Jan. 14

vanhost — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:39:37 -0800

Sorry for the short notice (and delayed notice in a couple cases below), but we will be updating the site with a few items on Monday January 14th. The primary reason for the upgrade is that a security hole has been found in the version of coding HealthMonth uses currently, and therefore, it needs to be patched. So we’ll take care of that, along with adding the following changes:

- fix display of Team Points. This issue has persisted far longer than we like, but believe it to finally be fixed. Let us know if we’re wrong.

- email reminder for incomplete game setups. Have you ever started to setup a new game and then forgot to move forward with it - we’ll help you remember now.

And unfortunately, I wrote a blog post about a couple changes done on the 1st, but just realized that it didn’t publish. My apologies. At any rate, those changes include:

- timestamp for wall comments. Every comment now has a timestamp for when it was posted - not just the original comment.

- re-order user’s home page. The News / Updates section has been moved above the past games section on user’s home page to allow for easier viewing.

If you notice anything wrong with the above, please let us know. Thanks again to all for your feedback - it is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Derek

Happy New Year Promo 2013

vanhost — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:06:44 -0800

Tired of setting resolutions for the new year that you don’t stick to? Try something that works - HealthMonth.com.

To kick off 2013 with a bang, we’re offering a deal that is too good to pass up. For just $20.13, you’ll enjoy all the benefits of a premium account to HealthMonth.com until the end of June. And, if that wasn’t enough, we’ll also throw in 2 sponsorship chips so that you can share HealthMonth.com with a friend.

To purchase the promotion, follow the link below.

http://healthmonth.com/choose/new_year_promo

So from all of us, to all of you…Happy New Year and happy Health Monthing!

Update Changelog - Friday Dec. 21

vanhost — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:25:00 -0800

We will be launching some new updates tomorrow that we have been working on. Most of these updates are bug fixes, but there are a couple of changes as well. If you have any questions, please let us know.

Problem with top-nav displaying in Firefox on a Mac (bug fix)
Buying sponsorship chips doesn’t go to PayPal screen in Chrome (bug fix)
Improvements for team organizer sidebar (enhancement)
General updates to PayPal links (bug fix)
Unsubscribe confirmation screen added (enhancement)
Daily Reminder emails not being received (bug fix)
Animations for rule boxes not working properly on some versions of Firefox (bug fix)
Elements of Health not displaying properly (bug fix)
Team Point calculation (bug fix)

Team Points Now Correct

vanhost — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:50:59 -0800

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we’ve upload a fix for the bug regarding team points. For the past couple of weeks, team points were not being calculated or displayed correctly - causing rankings to also be thrown a curveball. This should now be fixed.

If you notice anything still wrong with them, please let us know.

Thanks.

HM Gift Certificates Available

vanhost — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:29:10 -0800

Stuck for a Christmas gift, why not give them the gift of HealthMonth? Available in 3 and 12 month certificates, follow the steps below to acquire one:

1) Purchase the gift certificate amount you want via PayPal.

- 3 months @ $15.00 - CLICK HERE

- 12 months @ $50.00 - CLICK HERE

2) Once you have made a payment via PayPal, make note of your Transaction ID - you’ll need it for the next steps.

3) Download the appropriate Gift Certifcate Template. 3 months 12 months

4) Type or write the Transaction ID where it says GC ID in the PDF.

5) Print the PDF and stuff it in a stocking on Christmas, or Save the PDF and send it to your loved one.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at team@healthmonth.com.

Usernames now displayed by default

vanhost — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 09:51:37 -0800

Due to popular demand for more privacy measures throughout the site, we have started making changes in that direction. One of the consistent requests we got had to do with the display of usernames vs. real names - depending on what page people were viewing, they would see a username or the person’s real name. The obvious argument became “why do I have a username, if you’re going to display my real name anyways?”

We agreed.

Therefore, by default, throughout the site, a person’s username is now displayed by default (keeping their real name private). If you would like to show your real name instead, this is also doable by following these steps:

1) Login to your HealthMonth.com account.

2) Click “You” from the footer and then “Edit your Profile”.

3) Scroll down to the bottom.

4) Toggle the box that says “Use my real name throughout the site”

5) Click the “Save Changes” button

6) Your real name will now be displayed throughout the site instead of your username

Note: Regardless of what option you use, you will always use your username to login to the site.

As some people noticed these changes before this post was written, and were not terribly excited about it (having not known prior), we will be writing blog posts prior to uploading any new changes from hereon out (except for emergency bug fixes).

If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know.

Thanks,
Derek Thornton
HealthMonth Team

Hamsters at Work

vanhost — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 20:56:53 -0800

We’ve been working hard the past month to bring a major update to the Health Month community. And now, the wait is over. If you have gone to www.healthmonth.com and you are seeing this post, it means we’re doing some upgrades that require the site to be offline (sorry!).

So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that by popular request, we’ve made major improvements to “team” features:

- users can now join multiple teams

- users don’t have to request to join a team each month (once you’re on a team, you’re there until an admin says different)

- team organizers are automatically added to a team (rather than having to join a team they create)

We have also made some changes to the backend in preparation for some additional features - more on that later though.

As always, let us know if there are any issues we should be aware of. And please, keep the suggestions coming.

Thanks,
The HealthMonth Team

Rules Import Wizard

vanhost — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:00:44 -0700

A big thanks to the Health Monthers who notified us of a bug in the system, where it would not let you import last months rules into next month.

Good news - the bug has been squashed and it is now fixed. As soon as we heard about the bug jumped to action and cracked the whip on our dev crew.

So once again you can import your rules as expected. If anyone runs into any other problems or bugs with setting their new month just let us know and we’ll be more then happy to help out ASAP.

Take another lap, drink your water and have a Healthy Day!

Regards,
Team Health Month

Per-Rule Email Reminders

vanhost — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:32:56 -0700

Ever setup a rule for yourself and wished you could be reminded by more than just your daily nudge email? Well now you can.

All right, no more infomercial talk.

But seriously, you now have the option of being reminded for each individual rule - on a schedule that you setup. However, full disclosure on this one, you do have to be a paying member of the site. This means that even if you setup 3 rules or less, if you want a separate reminder for any/all of those rules, you’ll have to find 5 bucks in the couch cushions and send it to us (jars of pennies not accepted).

If you have already started playing the game for the month, we’re sorry, but you won’t be able to enable this rule until your next game. We tried to get it done before the end of September, but it just didn’t happen.

As always, feedback is important and helps make Health Month, um, healthier. So have at it and let us know what you think.

New Month Reminder Emails

vanhost — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:39:15 -0700

As you have probably noticed by now, your inbox was the lucky recipient of a freshly minted reminder email yesterday informing you that a new month is coming - and therefore, you should be thinking about a new set of rules.

Due to user feedback via the Idea Tracker, we’ll send this reminder email 7 days prior to the end of a given month.

Thanks for the feedback and continued support. Much, much more to come!

Dress Well (Better than Usual) now a rule...

vanhost — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:12:24 -0700

It’s true that clothes make the man (or woman) - both on the outside and inside. People will notice an improvement in your wear and compliment accordingly. The lasting effect of those comments will increase your mood and self esteem.

Fore these reasons, and more, we’ve added “Dress Well (Better than Usual)” as a new rule. Give it a try for September, or if you’ve already started the month, try it in October. You may surprise even yourself!

Team Health Month is here...

vanhost — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 20:01:50 -0700

Teams are great. They can support you when you need a pick me up, they can challenge you to go the extra step, they can make you feel like you belong to something bigger than yourself, etc.

That’s why we’ve created Team Health Month. Looking for a team, join ours. Want to compete against the owners (Billy and Derek), sounds good to us. Want to appear like we hand picked YOU to work your goals along side us, we’d love to have you.

Request your invite here: http://healthmonth.com/teams/show/874

Limit Video Games now a rule

vanhost — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:47:28 -0700

At the request of some lovely members, we have added “Limit Video Games” to the list of “Mental” rules. If you’re an avid video gamer, perhaps you should try it out for September and let us know how it goes.

Thanks,
Derek

Health Month page loading errors

vanhost — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:24:17 -0700

At present, this is the first time we have word from our provider regarding these issues. You can read them here:

https://status.heroku.com/incidents/417

In lay terms, the piece of equipment that allows people to access the site flawlessly had a heart attack and didn’t make it. I “think” we should be good now, based on the rest of the status updates, but please let us know if you have any further issues.

Thanks,
Derek

Currently down for maintenance

vanhost — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:34:23 -0700

Health Month is taking a quick water break! We’ll be back online and ready for your check-in before you can jog two laps around the block. We promise!

Regards,
The Health Month Team

Last Week's Announcement...we apologize!

vanhost — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:42:12 -0700

Hey all,

So it seems that a number of users received our announcement regarding the ownership change multiple times (some, upwards of 10x)…eeek! Please accept our apologies. This certainly was not intended and was not how we wanted to start out here.

However, we’ve got a new roll of duct tape and a hammer and we’ll be working on the mailing code so that this doesn’t happen again.

Thanks,
Derek & Billy

Health Month has new owners

vanhost — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:50:11 -0700

Hello Health Month friends,

I’m both happy and sad to report that I have sold Health Month. I’m happy because I believe that Derek and Billy (with their 20+ years of experience in the web industry) will be much better stewards of the vibrant Health Month community going forward. I WILL continue to be involved in some small way, but I’m sad that through a myriad of circumstances and priorities that my involvement will be lessened somewhat (not entirely).

What does this mean for you active Health Month users? It means that your customer service emails will be replied to more frequently! It means that bugs will get fixed! It means that new features will be added! No matter how you slice it, I strongly believe that it means good things for everyone involved (that was my top motivater for selling it in the first place).

I encourage everyone to say hello to Derek and Billy, they are good guys, and have your best interests in mind. ALSO, I encourage everyone that hasn’t been back to Health Month in a while to log in, sign up for next month’s game, upload a fresh new profile pic for yourself, update your info, do 10 jumping jacks, and drink a tall glass of cool water.

Start here! http://healthmonth.com/users/edit

Without further ado, I present to you the new owners of Health Month!

Your friend,
Buster Benson (http://twitter.com/busterbenson)

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Hello Loyal Health Month users,

We’re very excited to announce that we have acquired HealthMonth.com from HabitLabs. We’ll keep this brief, as we know that you all have some health rules that you need to spend time on, but we do want to highlight a few items that we’ll be working on right away.

1) Minor Site Fixes – we have noticed there are a few quirks and issues with the site and we’re committed to correcting them. Over the next few weeks, our focus will be to take care of the issues we can resolve quickly to give the game a more polished feel. The best way for us to learn about these issues is through our Idea Tracker (http://healthmonth.uservoice.com). Please submit any bugs or fixes and we’ll get back to you.

2) Idea Tracker – with that said, we want to acknowledge all the feedback that has, thus far, been given through our Idea Tracker. All feedback is welcome (good or bad) and we appreciate your time/efforts in doing so. We will be paying very close attention to this going forward.

3) Newsletter – in the near future, we plan on publishing a regular HealthMonth newsletter (maximum once per month). In it will be game highlights, rule suggestions/tips, recipes and more to keep you on track with your health goals.

4) Mobile – a lot of users have asked us to develop better mobile solutions for accessing the site – whether it be through an app or a more mobile-friendly web page. We are committed to introducing a better mobile environment; however, this kind of development takes time. We just want you to know that we’re working on it, and to ask you to continue to keep the faith.

Other than that, we’re super excited and look forward to great things with HealthMonth.com and welcome any follow requests and followers to our own profiles.

Thank you,
Derek Thornton (http://healthmonth.com/profile/derekthornton)
& Billy Cooter (http://healthmonth.com/profile/billycooter)

Health Month is up for auction on flippa.com

bustr — Tue, 29 May 2012 10:30:00 -0700

This morning, my listing for Health Month went up on flippa.com. Check it out! Pass it around! Make a bid! Etc.

(As a sidenote, so far my experience with flippa.com has been great. My contact at their company is a big fan of Health Month, and is doing a lot to help me make the listing as useful and informative as possible.)

It’s bittersweet to have to sell this site. The number of people who’ve already made offers (informally and formally) has been incredibly encouraging. I’m confident that no matter what happens, the site and spirit of the community will continue on in some form. In a more amazing form, even. One of my primary goals with selling it is that it will go to a person or company that has the time and energy to help it grow!

Why you should consider bidding on Health Month

Because it is awesome. Because you are awesome. Because you have ideas for it. Because you have the time, energy, and skills to make it more awesome. Because you want to have an entry point to making a real impact on healthy behavior change in the world.

If you can’t make a bid for whatever reason, but know someone who might be interested, please send this along to them! Friends of friends are usually the best place to find connections like this. Be the connector!

Here’s the link. Thank you.

Oh, and if you want, you can hop into June’s game here.