As many of you will notice, this weekend we released a major update to EasyOutsource. Below is a list of the most prominent feature updates and improvements.

1. Upgrade to WordPress 3.1 and BuddyPress 1.2.5.

We upgraded the site to the newest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress. It took a significant amount of work to get the site ready to upgrade to the new version of BuddyPress, but it’s well worth it. This new version has many improvements and we’re now on the upgrade path to future updates as they come out. Later in the year you should expect improvements to privacy, search and messaging as these updates are rolled out in the “BuddyPress core.”

2. Favorites list replaces the Friends list.

We used to have a reciprocal friends list, much like Facebook. We came to the conclusion that this isn’t the ideal way to manage user connections on a job site, and so we removed it. Instead you will now see an “Add to Favorites” link on all user profiles, and if you click it the user will be added to your Favorites list. This is a private, one-way relationship. Users do not know they have been added to your list. The purpose is to let you build up a list of people to contact and refer back to whenever you want.

You can access your Favorites list (if you’ve added people) by clicking Hire Workers and then clicking the Favorites tab.

You can also see your Favorites in a new section in the right sidebar.

3. Improved sorting of workers and jobs.

We moved the search bar and categories to the top of the screen on the Hire Workers and Get an Online Job pages to make them easier to access. We added sort filters to these pages so you can easily sort by date added, recently active, etc. We also are now displaying the categories for each job in its description.

4. Improved job interaction

We redesigned the job admin area to make it easier to manage your applicants, and also to delete the job and update its settings. We also added an Activity page to each job showing all updates for that job. Any user can add a comment into this activity stream. We believe this feature will help to facilitate conversation around each job, and will let workers more easily determine if a job is still active.

Note: We are aware that there is a bug in the activity stream for jobs which is causing comments to occasionally display twice. We are currently working on a fix for this bug. Edit: This is now fixed.

5. Monthly Rate added

We added a new field for workers – Monthly Rate. This is now a required field so as people start updating their profiles you will see it displaying more and more often. Workers, please go ahead and update your profiles with your preferred monthly rate.

6. Complete cross-browser support

The old site experienced some display issues in certain browsers, particularly older versions of Internet Explorer (every web developer’s worst enemy!). This new design has been tested in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, IE6, IE7 and IE8 and found to be compatible with all of these browsers. If you discover any display issues please let us know.