Today, we rolled out another feature patch to the Chore Chart manager as well as the Printed Chore Chart page.

Patch Description 

Import Chores Feature:  allows you to import Chores from another child to the currently selected child.  This feature will allow you to quickly synchronize chores between your children without having to manually add and adjust each chore for each child.  It's a huge time saver when you have more than one child on the same chore list.

How To Import Chores:

1. Navigate to the Chore Chart Manager
2. Select the child you want to import Chores to
3. Click the Import Chores button
4. If you wish to delete the existing chores in the child's account that will be importing the chores, select the "Delete existing Chores" option.  Otherwise, leave the "Append Chores" option selected which will simple add the chores not already in the list.
5. Select the child that you want to import the chores from
6. Click the Import button

Printed Chore Charts: Chores that have descriptions attached to them, will now print the description under the title on the printed chore chart. 

Parent Dashboard Page: the "Most Active Forum Posts" panel is now activate.  It will now display the Top 5 active forum posts.  We encourage everyone to click into these posts and participate!

Today we rolled out a small patch that corrected some issues in the parent section that was preventing Safari Browser users from using the Chore Chart manager.  After selecting the child who you wanted to create a Chore Chart for, the browser would basically do 'nothing' when you clicked the button to add more Chores to the Chore Chart.  If you loaded the page in Internet Explorer or FireFox, the page would behave correctly, and the Chore Options panel would come up  allowing you to assign a point value to the Chore and assign a schedule to the Chore.

There are a few 'known bugs' within Safari, and unfortunately this page was falling victim to it.  Any web-programmer will whine and moan (like I am about to do) about how difficult it can be to develop web-applications that behave consistently in all browsers.  Honestly, it's gotten *much* better over the years, but it's still a constant battle.  Anyway, I created a new user interface for the Chore Options panel, one that won't croak in Safari, and it seems to be working well.  People who have been using the Chore Chart Manager for a while will immediately notice that we are no longer using the 'modal panels' to set the Chore Options. 

I am leaving the option open, however, to re-implementing the pop-up options panels if I can get something going that is a little more reliable in all the major browsers.  For now this will do though.

Sneak Peak On Upcoming Features

1. Import Chore List from other child:  You can create a chore chart for one child and copy it over to your other children
2. My Page Overhaul: The kids "My Page" section is going to get an overhaul to include a lot of the "Coming Soon" features that have yet to be coded (Message Board, photo gallery etc).  We will also implement some security features so that parents can restrict who can visit the pages.

With today's patch parents now have the ability to print a chore chart for each child directly from that child's chore list in the Childzilla system!  While we originally envisioned the Childzilla Chore Chart system to be an online only tool, we have listened to the requests from parents who simply want to easily create a chore chart online and print it off week by week for the children to check off day by day.  The nice thing is, parents can now have the best of both worlds!  Kids can check off, or color in, their completed chores on the printed chart, and the parent can then quickly transfer the printed page every week to keep a running 'score' of the completed chores.

Presently, all printed charts will print with the default Childzilla theme, however we will gradually enable each design theme to have it's own customized printed chore chart.  For example, the "Hockey Theme" will have the goofy hockey player at the top, and the check marks will be replaced with hockey pucks or hockey sticks.

To print a chore chart from the Childzilla Chore Chart system, simply follow these steps:

1) Login to the Parent Administration area
2) Click on the Chore Manager link on the left navigation
3) Select the child you want to print the chore from so their online chore list shows up
4) Click the Print Chart button

Note, the printed chore chart will automatically implement the chore schedule that you set in the Chore Manager.  So, if a certain chore is only due on Monday and Thursday, all the other days will be 'blocked out' so your children can easily follow day by day their responsibilities.

Let us know how you like this new feature!  While a geek like me can't quite comprehend all this 'paper stuff', I am sure other parents will appreciate it :)  Seriously though, I really think this is a good feature upgrade that a lot of parents will opt to use instead of a 100% online chore chart solution.

You can issue Demerit Points to your children for a specified day by going into the Award Points page in your Adminstration area.  Here is a brief overview on how to do it:

1) Login with your Parent account and go the Administration area
2) Click the "Award Points" link on the left navigation
3) Choose the day you want to work with on the Calendar
4) Select the child account you want to work with
5) Click the (new) link in the Points From Parent area
6) The panel defaults to Award Points, but you can now click the Demerit Point link to   issue demerit points.

Demerit points will show up as sad blue faces for all design templates for now.  Our designer will create a custom demerit icon for each design template as time permits. 

Over the last few months, the Childzilla Team has been working hard to finish a lot of the core components of the site.  Just recently, we rolled out a totally revamped Chore Chart editor which was a huge improvement over the old Chore Chart manager.  Behind the scenes, we also did a very significant overhaul to the Membership and Authentication system to accomodate for the various Childzilla Community components that we rolled out this week.

Even though we have made some very significant accomplishements with the service in the last few months, we still have a *ton* planned!  Here is a quick break-down of our short-term development goals:

• Printable Chore Charts: While we originally developed Childzilla so that kids can check off their chores every day, we've found that a lot of parents would prefer a printed chart that can be entered into the system less frequently.  Based on this feedback, we will be developing components to allow parents and kids to print off their week of chores which kids can check off and enter in the system at the end of the week, or whenever they wish.  The printed chart will be styled based on the child's selected theme.  So, if they have the "Skateboard Kid" theme activated, their chore chart will be styled according to this theme.
• Blogging/Journaling for kids: We already have a very very simplistic daily journal active for kids to leave "Day Notes" for each day, but we are going to implement a much more robust blogging engine for kids to use, and parents to monitor.  Parents will be able to monitor and limit this feature.
• Message Board: Kids will be able to have their own Message Board, for friends/family to post messages to.  Again, we will take our time on this feature to ensure parents have 100% control over content being posted on their children's Message Board.
• Prize Support: While we already have virtually millions of prizes available for you to search for, we want to integrate with a few more sources to give you even more options.  We also intend on tweaking the Custom Prize pages to further enhance the functionality.
• More Games: While we have a pretty good selection of games available, we are going to work on getting even more games.  We will also strive to provide games for a wider range of age groups.
• More Themes: We have about 100 unique themes that kids can choose for their site.  We will continue to develop themes that we develop, but we will also develop a theme editor to allow people to develop their own themes.  We will likely develop the editor in two flavors, one for people who want to change colors or images, and another for advanced users who are comfortable in working with HTML and CSS files directly.

We will tackle each of the above feature goals one by one until the list is complete.   Of course we will continue to make small changes/fixes, but as far as major feature additions, the above list is our priority.

If you feel there is something missing from the list, please post your suggestions to our Feature Request forum!

Today, we launched our brand new forum system for Childzilla members.  This new forums system will serve as a conduit for parents to interact not only with the Childzilla Team, but with other parents using Childzilla.com. 

For communication with the Childzilla Team, we have the Technical Support Forum so that you can post questions about using the Childzilla System or to report bugs/difficulties you might encounter.  The Feature Request forum is a place where you can post ideas to improve the system, make things easier, or more interesting for your kids to use.

There is also a plethora of other parent to parent forums to discuss general parenting issues, learn creative parenting techniques or just kick back and talk about anything!

You can login to the forums with your same user-name/password that you use for your Childzilla site.  If you do not have a Childzilla Account, you can sign-up here: http://www.childzilla.com/signup.aspx

The Chore Manager has been updated to a much more intuitive layout and flow.  Here is a quick overview of the changes to the chore engine:

• Template Chores: You can now quickly pick pre-made chores and assign them to your children.  Previously, you were required to create your chores, then assign them, resulting in a lot of duplicate 'custom' chores being stored in the database.  With the pre-made template chores, you can very quickly assign common chores like "Do your homework" or "Clear the table", while still maintaining the flexibility of being able to add your 'custom' chores like "Feed Zelda her cat food".
• Dynamic Chore Values: The value of the chore is now specified when you assign the chore to a child, not when you create the chore.  This change was necessary for the Chore Templating engine, but more importantly, it allows you to assign different values to the same chore, based on who is being assigned the chore.  For example, Johnny who is 3 years old might 5 points for brushing his teeth before bed, while Jimmy who is 10 yrs old might only get 1 point.  Same chore, different values.
• Re-Order chores: You can now re-order the chores in a child's list
• AJAX based management panels: You will notice the user-interface is a lot faster since a lot of the interface is now 'client side' meaning its running right on your browser and communicating with the Childzilla Server in 'the background'.