myEarthLink Portal Product Blog

If there's something on your start page that bugs you, I have some good news. With today's release, you can now remove any of the features on the middle of the page (Email Preview, News & Updates, Entertainment and Shopping). If you change your mind, it's easy to add everything back again later.

To give one of these features the boot, mouse over the upper right-hand corner of the box. A trash can icon will show up. Click on the trash can, and the feature will vanish.

For example, if you wanted to remove the Entertainment feature, you would click on the trash can here:

After you click the trash can, Entertainment will disappear and a new link ("Entertainment") will appear at the bottom of the page, under the text "More myEarthLink Features (Click to add)." To add the feature to your page again, you would simply click on the word "Entertainment."

Note that you can also remove any of the sites in the Favorite Sites list on the left side of the page. This has been in place since we launched, but I've heard from a few of you who weren't sure how to got about removing a site. To ax something in this area, click "customize" at the top or bottom of the Favorite Sites box. You'll see a trash can icon next to every one of the sites.

Click the trash can next to a site to remove it from your list.

At this point, you can't chuck the features in the dock at the top of the page (weather, stocks, reminders, sports scores and internet security). But rest assured, we are planning to make these features removable as well, later this summer.

Posted by at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

You'll see some changes on the new start page today. It's easy to miss one of the big ones, but it certainly means a lot to the portal team: after two months, we've removed the Preview label.

But what does this mean, other than a tweaked header?

Simply put, we've declared the page "ready for prime time." We feel that the start page is in good shape for you to use everyday, as a replacement for the old start page.

A few key factors went into this decision:

1. The new start page is stable. The two months of the Preview phase surfaced the major hiccups, and we've addressed them. Our expectation is that you can count on the new start page working well consistently, and that should be your expectation too. (If you do see problems, please email us to let us know).

2. We've had a good bit of time to hear from real, live, objective, opinionated users, which has helped us honestly evaluate what we've built. Many, many thanks to all of you who put the start page through its paces during the Preview phase and reported your impressions back to us. You've detailed your likes, dislikes, desires and expectations, and collectively, that feedback has been an extremely thorough report card. Keep it coming.

3. The core features are in place. There's much more coming down the pipe, but we feel that the start page has the functionality it needs to leave the Preview tag behind.

The major functionality addition that pushed us over the line was version 2 of the "News and Updates" feature. In the Preview stage, this area consisted of AP headlines from the myEarthLink news channel. In the new version, you can add local headlines, as on the classic start page, plus headlines from just about any major news source or blog you want. Check out this post to learn all about it.

We're excited to to graduate the start page from Preview, and we hope you're excited about the new tools. We are continuing to tweak the page and add features regularly, but at this point, the new page is ready for you. If you haven't already, we heartily encourage you to switch over.

You can make the switch by clicking the button that says "Click here to make the new myEarthLink your personal start page," just below the Stocks button. This will redirect the URL for your old start page, so that the new start page comes up automatically.

Posted by at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)