We've published a new version of our FAQ, one that explains many of the questions that people have about video and photo contests, and how to use the Strutta platform.

We've divided up into two sections; one for contest creators, and one for entrants/voters. We expect that it will see many revisions and additions, based on your feedback. Hope you like it. If you don't see your question, submit it to us using our contact form.

Of all of the services that we offer as part of our online contest software, it is our secure voting process and user verification that set us apart.

Settling on a user-friendly, safe and easy voting method has not been easy, though. In fact, since our launch in late December, we've made two major improvements to it, and completely redesigned the "look" of the process twice as well.

We thought it would be fitting to share a little "behind the scenes" of how our newest voting flow came to be. First, a little history, provide by our Senior Architect, Steven Wittens:

All of Strutta is built on top of the open source Drupal system. This is a popular platform that runs some of the most trafficked sites on the web. In particular, we use the Drupal Voting API module to tabulate our votes, which is a tried and true solution. The code for all of this is freely available at Drupal.org for review.

On top of Drupal's own high quality code, we add some additional measures to ensure fairness.  Firstly, we require all accounts to be signed up with a valid (and verified) e-mail address, and we have several safeguards in place to prevent abuse of common e-mail services. Secondly, our entry browsing system equalizes exposure for all contest entries, regardless of when they were added. When we present random entries to content voters, our system prioritizes those entries that have been viewed the least. Thus everyone gets a fair share of exposure, and the benefit you get from submitting early is minimized.

With a few notes about how this has been implemented on our site for the latest version of the voting process, here's Senior Developer Mike Holly:

Our users are required to verify their accounts (by clicking an activation link sent in an email) before voting. In an effort to streamline the registration process as much as possible, and provide "instant gratification" to our users, we initially decided to record all votes immediately. However, as users often failed to verify their accounts, unconfirmed votes were removed from the system after a certain amount of time. Unfortunately, this led to a great deal of confusion amongst our users, as decreases in vote counts were perceived as errors in the system.

We're glad to announce that we have resolved these usability issues and have run the new system through extensive usability tests. With the new system, anonymous users must still register when voting or submitting entries, but, this time around, all new votes and entries are kept in a "pending" state until the user clicks the email verification link. When the verification link is clicked, the user is notified that their votes have been made permanent and finally redirected back to the contest site. Once at the site, the user can clearly see that their vote has been recorded. We're hoping that these changes help make our system as transparent and usable as possible.

Thank you Mike, for that very clear and candid explanation. Even with all of this carefully considered development and execution, our system still needs a "front end;" what we in the internet business refer to as the "user experience. Tha masterful artist behind what you see in this most excellent voting process is none other than Ross Howard-Jones. Here's "HoJo" with a few words about the look and feel:

We really wanted to clean up the login/register iframe (the registration box that appears) within our competition platform to help with user flow and clarity. The first version wasn't quite as flexible as we needed it to be. We kept on running into issues of the size of the iframe, so one one the first things we improved was to have the iframe expandable.

The second was the look of the iframe. The design was simple, but still felt out of place when initiated within one of the unique themes that our users had come up with. We needed something that would work well across the board with all of the themes. We came up with a even simpler design that incorporates transparencies to blend with the theme behind it. This seems to keep the user's experience more seamless.

The last thing was to improve not only the language within the iframe but also position of the copy to make everything more obvious to the user. The user's actions now flow together to make everything feel a bit more linear and supported.

So you can see that a great deal of work and preparation go into something that is meant to seem intuitive and easy. That's the challenge; building a tool that is accessible to all levels of internet users, and that is low-friction for people to enter contests and cast their votes.

We've also been asked several times about "single sign-on" for member sites, and other methods of verifying identity  and we are exploring all of them, especially for our pending API.

We're pleased with this latest iteration of the voting process, but we know it's not likely the last change we'll ever make. As always, we invite your feedback. Let us know what you think in the comments, or hit us up using our contact info below.

And as always, you can follow us on Twitter at Twitter.com/strutta.

For the past few weeks, we've been hosting a live show from the couch here in our office, using UStream.

We've now "aired" five episodes, and plan to continue the tradition on working Fridays. Our first episode was more of a test than anything, trying to determine if it was an idea worth pursuing. We generated enough interest in that first episode to beging a tradition, and now we get great guests joining on the couch for some beer and chit-chat.

Subsequent episodes have seen us discuss "Tools" in episode 2, Viral Marketing, Fashion for Geeks and our most popular episode was dedicated to gaming:

Why not stop by the live page on Friday afternoon and ask a few questions? The topic for this week's show is "#followfriday." The popular Twitter meme become the focus of our whole show. Who do you follow that you want others to know about? Why?

Our guests will talk about their favorite micro-scribes, and we'll take suggestions boh from the chat and from Twitter. Join us at Strutta.com/live this Friday at 4pm, and tag your tweets #couchbeers. Cheers!

First, for our American visitors, a bit of history: The Hockey Night in Canada theme song resonates so well with Canadians that it has often been referred to as our "second National Anthem."

From the Wikipedia article about the theme, composed by Delores Claman: "(She) said she wrote her song to reflect the narrative arc of a hockey game; from the arrival on the rink, to the battle of the game, to the trip home, 'plus a cold beer.'" No wonder Canadians respond to it so passionately.

This year, the CBC (Canada's national public broadcaster) was unable to come to terms to renew the contract with the theme's composer, and CTV (a second Canadian network) bought the rights to the sacred hymn. In an effort to replace the theme with one that Canadians would agree was a suitable heir, the CBC invited submissions from all Canadians, and opened the contest up to a public vote.

Great idea. Awful execution.

And Then There Were Six

In the initial submission round, contestants were asked to upload their submission (with accompanying video) to be shown in the CBC's flash video player. Thousands of submissions were received, and in a matter of weeks, dwindled down to just six semi-finalists based on the public vote. This is where the CBC drops the ball.

Without conducting an exhaustive audit of their technology and site usability, we'll just address the biggest error in the entire campaign. In an effort to appease an advertiser (over providing a pleasant user experience), the Ceeb makes the bone-headed decision to run 15 second pre-roll ads before each of the six themes. To make matters  worse, it's the SAME AD ALL SIX TIMES. Even the advertiser themselves (wireless carrier Bell Mobility, in this case) has to see that as a major gaff.

So, to evaluate all six finalists in a contest that will determine a major part of our country's identity, we're forced to watch the same ad featuring an annoying rock has-been six whole times, no skipping. To say that this is frustrating would be something of an understatement. How many votes are being lost because no one of sound mind and body can endure the repetition? 

The Final Two

The vote is now down to the final two, and Canadian rock music producer legend Bob Rock has given the remaining contenders a bit of a polish in his studio. They sound good, an although the winner will inevitably take some getting used to, it won't be long before Canadians will be humming the winning theme from memory, the way we have with the original (and will continue to for years to come). To listen to the either one and cast your vote though, you're going to have to sit through the ill-placed ad. Chicoutamie!

Update: Above, one of the videos features the original submission by 13-year old Robert Fraser Burke. The embed codes from the CBC site that should show the post-produced finalist submission are embedding his original video.

Yet Another Update: In the embedded versions of the individual videos, the viewers is spared have to view the ads. Yet, to watch all six in one place, the above still holds true.