Hellogwu 3.0 is now online! New features introduced – dedicated to those of you coming to the US soon.

It's April again, another new year of growth. This should be the most anticipated, happiest, and most joyful time of year. Three years have passed, but this feeling still touches my heart. I'm about to arrive in a new country, make a group of new friends, and live independently… There's so much to look forward to, so many dreams to realize.

The Hellogwu system was recently upgraded, and those who were quick enough are already using it. The website update has also been completed manually. I want to write an article to introduce some of the new features and my thoughts on integrating them into the website.

Hellogwu, established on June 9, 2012, was initially built with great effort by the 2012 graduating class. It has experienced two major setbacks. The first was in September 2013, when data was lost. You might have noticed that all attachments, photos, and avatars from before September 2013 are gone. This was caused by a technical error, like a nuclear bomb exploding over the city. It was heartbreaking at the time, and after several hours of anguish, we decided to rebuild it because I discovered the database was still there, which felt like a glimmer of hope. We worked almost day and night for several days to rebuild hellogwu 2.0. This 2.0 version, because it was recovered from fragmented data, had various minor issues that we hadn't had time to fix until recently. Until recently, with new students arriving, I felt compelled to do something, and on a whim, I got to work, resulting in this 3.0 version.

Over the past three years, the website has explored various functions, including dating, app development, Q&A, airport pickup, food listings, and social networking. However, its primary users have remained rentals and transactions (used and car markets). This trend isn't limited to GWU; it's gradually becoming an information platform for the DC area, with even Koreans and Vietnamese using Google Translate. The website's traffic is also far ahead in the Washington D.C. area. Therefore, I believe we need to highlight our unique features. The new website retains all the necessary systems: CSSA news, event news, rentals, used goods, and car markets. All mergeable sections (such as Q&A and discussion forums) have been combined into a single large discussion area for users to exchange ideas. Group functionality has also been added, encouraging users to build long-term communities.

For the UI, we use the latest HTML5 and CSS3. Even though the standards aren't fully developed yet, I think it should be able to handle things for a few years. Haha~ I'm quite confident in the UI, and I've put some effort into the details. I can't say it's the best-looking website for international students, but I'm confident that it's a leading international student community in UI design. I hope you like it.

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Having said all that, here comes the important part: the introduction to the functions.

1. Contact information hidden:

The reason I'm starting with this is because it's extremely important for everyone. As we all know, international students are a prime target for scammers, but you can't leave your contact information when renting apartments or buying secondhand goods. Although we already have controls on .edu email registration, there's no control over how the information is displayed. Now that we've implemented this feature, users who aren't logged in won't be able to see the contact information in the post. Of course, if you don't mind the information being spread, you can also include the information in the post body.

2. Delete your own post:

This feature has been criticized for a long time. I initially thought it was fine (because I was using an administrator account), but later I discovered that regular accounts indeed cannot delete their own posts. After investigation, I found that this was a bug in the system itself, which I fixed myself, and I also reported the bug and how to fix it. However, I hope everyone will try to avoid deleting their own posts (because we have already done a lot of information protection work, and deleting posts will have a certain impact on various aspects of website optimization).

How to delete: Open your post, click the edit button at the bottom, then go to the extended information section, where you will find the delete button.

3. Post expired:

This feature was developed before, but due to the incident mentioned earlier, it had some issues and was temporarily disabled. It has now been fixed. Specifically, it works like this: when posting, there will be an expiration time. If you select this option, expired posts will not appear in the filter options. In other words, people won't find your information through filtering.

4. Optimized category information:

You'll notice this when you post: all the categories for secondhand goods, rentals, and cars have been optimized and are more user-friendly. The rental area categories, in particular, have expanded north to Rockville and Gaithersburg, and west to Reston. Areas like Silver Spring, College Park, Bethesda, Annandale, and Falls Church have been added. This basically covers all the major Chinese communities near Washington, D.C., thanks to the expanding user base. Hopefully, this will bring convenience to everyone, as life overseas is tough for everyone. Of course, this is just a rough idea; feel free to contact me with any feedback: admin@hellogwu.com, Weibo @陶御轩

5. WeChat Community Features:

You can easily scan the QR code on your post (on the right side of the page; if not, there's a WeChat button inside the post) to share it to WeChat Moments or WeChat groups.

Tip: Friends in your WeChat Moments can reply directly without registering. You can also link your Moments account to your hellogwu account through the WeChat linking feature on the website.

6. Group Functionality:

This is an experimental feature, and we hope everyone will carry it on. For example, interest groups—people who play football, sports, etc.—can find their own communities. It's a bit like Facebook Groups and Renren homepages; you have your own homepage and your own independent forum. However, we don't know how interested people will be.

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That's basically the update. I did all of this on my own, so there are bound to be shortcomings. I hope everyone can offer valuable suggestions. If you have any new ideas, feel free to work on them together. My contact information is: admin@hellogwu.com, Weibo @陶御轩

The website has stabilized these past few days, and seeing over 100 posts a day makes me very happy. It reminds me of when the website first launched in 2012, when seniors, brothers, and friends were all here, posting over 200 posts daily. Now everyone has graduated and gone their separate ways, and sometimes it's a little sad. I wonder if this will be the last major update. The people from the class of 2012 who helped build this website are gradually leaving. I've been trying to invite more people to join, but I just don't have the energy. I hope ambitious individuals and new students will join! (ノ｀Д´)ノ (ﾟ皿ﾟﾒ)

Welcome new students and their families to visit HelloGWU! www.hellogwu.com