After a few weeks of keeping the new Clubhouse site closed to only pre-registration for our charter members, we're now opening up the application process to everyone!  You can help us add more community members by helping to spread the word to your friends and family.

We've created a few tools you can use to tell people about the Clubhouse and encourage them to check it out.

First, we have a few graphics you can add to your Space, by putting them inside a custom HTML module (check out this post for more details on how to do that).  Here are the HTML snippets you can use:

<a href="http://windowslive.com/clubhouse/join">
<img src="http://ybkabg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1paNIsbX-mYsb_gvLWVTAWo8JtnZmKJLPgiXK_RwRA2ORPlyKZFacwWI48cH6B6WYoQ7c2gUmjhWQ/Microsoft_Banners_120x60_1.gif">
</a>

<a href="http://windowslive.com/clubhouse/join">
<img src="http://ybkabg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pzLzLFa8j9UAMEUw2DLQ1m77d1TCKXvfGYQ2G4VLJT2FFGV8eBLpgaWSGNMS45I5cOX8RT-xoaNk/Microsoft_Banners_120x60_2.gif">
</a>

<a href="http://windowslive.com/clubhouse/join">
<img src="http://ybkabg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pOf2pFpx_RUJil4kLRJUYHozWSzxxtwei3zxaeqbXVx5nvEzMp9c9SEvrtRQkSfvR-zfhuUoTlT8/Microsoft_Banners_300x125_animated_1.gif">
</a>

<a href="http://windowslive.com/clubhouse/join">
<img src="http://ybkabg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1p2W02URO_ZOKaOfmgd_i7ku3PJZtQUR7x36U_Vp4CayU4MM0iLrVNDq8LSl4Lyl8MNO8TFtiGyRs/Microsoft_Banners_300x125_photos.gif">
</a>  

Second, you can add a custom signature to any e-mail you send from your Hotmail or Windows Live Mail.  For Hotmail, we suggest something like this:

Proud Member of the Clubhouse

You'll want to replace the hyperlink under "Member" with your own link to your own profile on the new Clubhouse.  The link above uses my profile as an example.

For Windows Live Mail, you can use a text signature like the one above, or you can use our HTML signature option:

You can download this HTML file off our SkyDrive folder. 

Those are just a few examples to get you started, and we welcome your creative approaches. 

Thank you again for your support as charter members during our initial launch.  With your help, we'll spread the word about our community and welcome many new members into the Clubhouse!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

As members of the Windows Live Community, we wanted you to be some of the first to know about some of the changes coming to Windows Live Hotmail.  We've launched a new site that previews some of what you can expect to see in the next release of Hotmail:

You can find out more by visiting http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/ComingSoon/.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

For security reasons, potentially malicious content is stripped from RSS feeds coming into the Clubhouse.  As a result, videos simply embedded into posts will be removed from those posts when they appear in the Clubhouse and subsequently on windowslive.com if the post is highly rated.

You can enable those videos to appear by including a special HTML link above the video you are embedding. The format of the HTML link is:

<a href=” http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=xxxxx” rel=”clubhouse video”>My Video</a>

The bold portion of the link above is required. Before you post video to the Clubhouse, please verify that you have inserted the hyperlink directly above the video.

Inserting Video Tags with Windows Live Writer

To create a video link in Writer, type the desired title above the video -- Butterfly Video, in the example below. Select that title text and click on Insert Hyperlink.  This will open the Edit Hyperlink window.  Enter the URL to the video.  The example below is from MSN Soapbox, but you can also embed videos from other sharing sites.  Click the Advanced button on the bottom-right. Type clubhouse video or clubhousevideo in the Rel: text box.

For more general information about sharing videos on the web, you might want to check out my Video Sharing 101 blog entry.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

We're starting to think through what's next for the Clubhouse and we'd like your help.  Please click the big orange button below to take our brief survey and let us know your thoughts.  The password for the survey is clubhouse. 

As you take the survey, you'll be able to check out our initial ideas for "Clubhouse 2.0" and let us know what you think. What works for you – and what doesn't? What would make this a better experience?

The survey will only be up until the end of the day on Monday, August 25, so please check it out soon.

I’m looking forward to your input!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

One thing we definitely want to keep doing inside the Windows Live community is having regular Live Meeting events.  Here are the ones we've done so far:

• Windows Live Spaces Event
• Windows Live Photo Gallery Event
• Guided Tour of New Windows Live Clubhouse

What do you want to see next?  Something about a different product or service?  Or more in-depth sessions on a particular area?  Please leave a comment on your ideas for future Live Meetings and we'll work to get them scheduled!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

I'm happy to announce that we're back in the challenge business!  Long time Clubhouse members will remember how we used to do weekly and then monthly challenges here in the Clubhouse Space.  The challenges are our way of proposing an idea for you to blog about.

With the new Clubhouse site up and running, we've moved the challenges over there.  Just click on Challenges on the top navigation to see this month's challenge:

You'll also see a reminder of the current challenge and some of the most recent responses on the main Clubhouse site, along the right side of the page:

Our new club points system rewards Challenge responses and you can also earn the coveted  Challenge Artist badge for highly rated responses.

We all look forward to seeing your contributions to this most recent challenge!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

The RSS aggregation service is back up and running.  All of your recent posts tagged for the clubhouse should be appearing now.  Check out the latest, greatest posts up on http://www.windowslive.com/Clubhouse/connect/posts/recent.  And don't forget to rate them after you look them over!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

If you've been creating posts, tagging them, and wondering why they aren't appearing in the new Clubhouse you're not alone.  We're doing some minor maintenance work on our RSS aggregation capability right now.  We plan on completing that within the next day or two and then your posts will start appearing again.  In the mean time, feel free to review and rate the posts that are up there now.

Thanks for your patience!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

We've updated a lot of the posts featured up on www.windowslive.com after a great first week of being up and running.  You'll see a couple familiar faces featured on the home page now:

Two of our most prolific contributors -- Jamie and Politically Incorrect (a.k.a. Greg) -- both having achieved Bronze level status!  Congratulations, guys! 

Many of the rest of you will find your updated posts in various places around the site.  Explore around and see how your how-to tips and stories really make the site come alive.

This will probably be the last time we manually place these posts.  Next time, we'll flip the switch and let the placements start to happen automatically based on the ratings that you decide for your fellow community member's posts inside the clubhouse.

Thanks for your posts, your ratings, and your overall support!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

It's been great to see the positive reception that we've had for the new www.windowslive.com site.  People are really grooving on the how-to tips and stories you've been sharing.  We'll be refreshing what's displayed up there soon, so there will be even more great stuff for people to read.

I started thinking about how it might be good to show off your contributions with a link up on your Space.  So I created a little button and uploaded it to my SkyDrive, then added a custom HTML module to my Space to show it.  Here is the end result:

If you want to do this too, here are the steps:

1.  Add a Custom HTML module to your Space.

2.  Inside the Custom HTML module, paste in the following:

<a href="http://windowslive.com/connect/profile/9e61cc84-9091-416a-9387-85c364956946/ce266bab-afa9-4be0-987d-dccc512d6e2e">
<img src="http://oagryg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1p4Xvs5cn7QV90D9eiMs2Nsi8SKxgePXphs-uaFBGVhIGhKbqHW372wyrHbZAheJEb6_upw8x-Zto/seemyposts.jpg">
</a>

3.  Edit the first HTML line (that includes /connect/profile/) to include your profile URL from www.windowslive.com.  The example above is mine.  Then click .

4.  Edit the custom HTML Module Settings to hide the title.

5.  Click to finalize your changes

It's pretty easy, but please let me know if you have any questions.  It's a great way for you to show off all your hard work and how you've helped build a great community-driven website for Windows Live.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

As you might have noticed, we're in the process of revamping this Clubhouse Space to remove some of the redundant things that are now up in the new clubhouse.  Going forward and as I mentioned earlier this week, we're going to keep the Clubhouse Space focused primarily on this blog and your comments.  Plus, we'll keep hosting on-line events from here and post the on-demand recordings here. 

Last but certainly not least, keeping up the Space and having all of you as friends of the Space makes sure we can all see what's going on in the What's New summary on the Spaces home page.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Lisa (pictured here) is one of my colleagues here at Microsoft.  She is the editor of the Windows Live Newsletter that you'll find in your e-mail in-box every month or so.  In the latest edition, you'll see that the Windows Live community you helped create has it's own place (actually two places) in the newsletter limelight!

We are showing two of our featured members in this new Community Spotlight section:

And we're also talking about the whole community right at the top of the newsletter with this:

We'll definitely keep telling everyone about all great things you all are contributing!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

As I mentioned earlier today, with tremendous help from all of you, the new Windows Live and Clubhouse sites have launched!  So the natural question on everyone's mind is probably:  "Now what happens?"

Pre-Registration for Charter Members (you!)

If you haven't already, please take the time to pre-register for the new site.  By pre-registering as Charter Members, you can get in early and check the new place out.  You'll also be recognized as a charter member in the site with the badge you see shown here.  But we need that key pre-registration information from you to get your Windows Live ID credentials recognized by the new site.  Please allow a few days for us to get your pre-registration processed.

Things to do in the new Clubhouse

Once you're inside, take a look around.  Use the items in the top navigation as your first opportunity to explore:

One of the first places to go is My Profile to make sure you like everything you see there.  We take most of this from your Spaces profile.  There is a "Why I use Windows Live" section you can edit directly on this page, however.

Next, click on About Clubhouse and How Tos to learn more about how the new Clubhouse works, how points are tallied, badges awarded, ratings are done, and all that important housekeeping stuff that makes a good Clubhouse.

Finally, click over to View Posts where you can look at all the great things your fellow community members are posting.  Click through them and rate them on a 5-star scale as well as on the type of person best suited to this post (newbies, everyday folks, or power users).  You can also flag stuff you think is tagged incorrectly, off-topic, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate. 

You make the call on what you like and, together with everyone else's opinions, help decide what makes it onto www.windowslive.com. We'll be "flipping the switch" to replace the posts we picked for the launch with the highly-rated posts from you and the community later in August.  Reviewing and rating posts is definitely a key thing we all need to do over the next few weeks!

If you run across any problems, bugs, or issues, click here to fire off an e-mail to our team.

General Registration

Also over the next few weeks, we'll be closing down pre-registration in favor of our general registration process.  When we have that completed and those pages added to the new clubhouse, we'll announce that here on the Clubhouse Space. 

Future of this Clubhouse Space

Even though we have the brand new Clubhouse up and running, this Clubhouse Space will still keep going strong.  We'll be renovating it a bit, removing some of the redundant stuff that you'll find up in the new Clubhouse, and generally streamlining it to be the best place for all of us to keep in touch.  This blog will stay here where we love to get comments from all of you.  We will continue to host on-line events from here and post the on-demand recordings here. 

And, since we're all linked together as Spaces Friends, we can keep up with each other using the What's New summary on the Spaces home page.

I sincerely appreciate everyone's help in getting us to this point, and can't wait to see where we take the community next!

- Marcus

Check out www.windowslive.com and take a look at all your great stories and how-to tips being showcased to the world!

If you pre-registered, you should be able to sign-in to the site and then see the new clubhouse.  Take a look around at let us know what you think.  Start reviewing and rating some of your fellow community member's contributions.  If you haven't pre-registered, please do so now and we'll get your log-in credentials added to the new site as soon as we can.

I'll do another blog post here later today with additional tips on using the new clubhouse, but for now I just wanted to let you all know that we're launched and to say:

- Marcus

Earlier today, several members of the Windows Live community got together with Joe Bono, one of the Program Managers on the Windows Live Spaces team.  Joe walked us through the basics of setting up a Space, went into some of the more advanced features, and took some of our questions.  Here is the recorded version of our event:

Thanks to everyone who participated and a special thanks to Joe for being our guest presenter!

Look for more of these sorts of events in the months ahead.  We might slow down a bit from our weekly schedule, but we definitely are committed to continuing to provide these forums for all of you to interact with folks on Microsoft Windows Live team.

- Marcus