The server upgrades that have been going on for over a week now have been completed. This will give users faster page loads and better streaming quality when listening to music. Users with slow internet connections can also access the website without difficulty now.

Startups Nigeria, a new blog about Nigerian web 2.0 websites has put an article out about Sturvs. The blog’s header image even has a collage of many Nigerian web 2.0 website’s logos, and our logo is one of them, which is an honor. We will try to keep up with publications about Sturvs even though we are very sure we won’t be able to keep up very soon.

MyNaijanews.com just put out an article about Sturvs Website Tools. You can read it here: http://www.mynaijanews.com/content/view/1276/86/.

Sturvs has launched Website Tools you can use to promote your blog or website. These tools will make it easier for your content to reach the Sturvs audience and the rest of the world.

1. Sturvs Vote Button
   
   This button when placed on any web page displays the current number of votes the associated article has on Sturvs and a link for users to vote for the article from your website. If the article hasn’t been added to Sturvs yet, then a “Sturv It” link will be displayed which will submit the aricle to Sturvs when clicked.For a page which will have only one article and only one button use this code:

   <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.sturvs.com/button"></script>

   An example of this can be found here.

   For a page which will have more than one article and more than one button on it (e.g a blog’s home, category or archive pages) use this code:

   <script type="text/javascript">
submit_url = 'ARTICLE_URL';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.sturvs.com/button"></script>

   An example of this can be found here.

   ARTICLE_URL is the url or permalink of the article that particular button belongs to. The equivalent codes for this on popular blogging platforms are:

   1. Blogger
      <$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>
   2. Wordpress
      <?php the_permalink() ?>
   3. Typepad
      <$MTEntryPermalink$>
2. Sturvs Bookmarklet
   This is a tony bookmarklet to allow people to submit your blog posts or articles to Sturvs if you don’t need to show the number of votes your article has or you just want something small.

   <a href="http://www.sturvs.com/submit?url=ARTICLE_URL"><img src="http://www.sturvs.com/images/sturvs.png" alt="Sturvs Bookmarklet" width="16" height="16" border="0" /></a>

   ARTICLE_URL is described above.

3. Custom Link
   If you want to create your own custom link to allow your users to submit your articles to Sturvs or vote for existing articles, just give the link the url:

   http://www.sturvs.com/submit?url=ARTICLE_URL

4. Automatic Import
   Click here to apply to have your latest blog or website content imported automatically into Sturvs. Please put the folowing information in the contact form message:

   Regarding: Automatic Import

   Message:
   Blog/website url
   Sturvs Username (you have to be registered to use this feature)
   Category (based on Sturvs categories)

   Or you could just email the above information to imports.at.sturvs.com (not trade imports).

You can play ludo and ayo in the Sturvs Facebook Application, which is now accessible to the public. You don’t have to have a Facebook account to use the application anymore. You can also keep up with the latest nigerian news when you’re done playing :).

For now these games which are popular in Nigeria are only available in our facebook application, not on the website. We are currently deliberating on whether to put it on the main website or not.

Sturvs.com will be undergoing some server upgrades this coming weekend so users might experience some glitches here and there. With Sturvs Music running, it would only be wise to put more resources into streaming music 24-7. If the website ever goes down during this period please bear with us and check back within a few hours. We will try to make this process as seamless as possible.

After launching the mp3 upload capability, there was the question of continuity when users listened to music and also the inconvenience of having to go back to the Sturvs.com window to click play again whenever an mp3 finishes playing. Definitely the only way to solve this problem would be to create a player that will pull all mp3 files uploaded to Sturvs.com and place them all in a flash player with playback controls. But to put some sort of control on what shows up on the player, we decided the player would only pull mp3 files who’s submissions had been published to the home page (that had become Hot Sturvs). Even though it currently takes only 3 votes to make it to the front page, this method will be effective on the long run since the number of votes required will definitely increase in the future.

And why is Leona Lewis trying to use us for publicity?

We didn’t leave our facebook application out of the equation, it has a Sturvs Music player too.

Ok so I just discovered a pretty neat achievement Sturvs has made, but will rather not say anything about it so as not to trigger any hate. Just imagine the writer of this blog post pulling his fingers away from the keyboard so they wont type what it is…yeah, something like that.

All I can say is, Lycos likes us.

Sturvs.com added the functionality to be able to upload mp3 files with a new Sturvs submission.

For mp3 submissions, articles or events, users don’t need to enter any URL in step 2 of the submit process. Then in step 3, there’s a file upload box. We are currently working on making this upload more user friendly and we’ll also fix some bugs that have to do with editing an existing mp3 submission.

Please see item #4 in the Sturvs Terms & Conditions for any issues regarding copyrights.

The Sturvs Facebook Application was launched on October 12, 2007 and started displaying Hot Sturvs, Latest Sturvs & Sturvs TV. At the time it was the first ever Nigerian facebook application. There are many more now though. Oladele had his new album Razz Is The New Cool out so we had him featured on the home page of Sturvs.com and used an animated image of his “Spray Me Money” phrase to attract people to the Share Button and Invite your Friends Link.

Sturvs TV was the main attraction at the time as it showed up on user profiles along with the 5 Latest Sturvs. It pulled and played random Nigerian videos from Youtube, Google Video, Dailymotion and many other major video websites.

The application is also movable and can be put in the left facebook sidebar, showing only Latest Sturvs as Sturvs TV wont fit into the sidebar.