We've recently been working hard on some issues related to system performance. There's nothing more important to us than the reliability and speed of our applications, and we know it's important to you as well. So, we wanted to fill you in on some improvements we've made over the past month.

Random slowness issue resolved

First off, we've corrected an issue in our LightCMS, WaterCMS, and SkyCMS products that was causing random and occasional slowdowns. These episodes would result in pages taking longer than normal to load. You may have never even experienced this issue, but just in case you did, we wanted to let you know that it has been resolved.

This occasional slowness was caused by an issue in one of our vendors' third party applications, and was in no way related to the capabilities of our hosting infrastructure or our applications. We worked with experts at all of our vendor companies as well as outside contractors to resolve this issue. Now that it has been corrected, system performance is solid and lightning-fast with plenty of server headroom at all times.

Nonetheless, we continue to work hard to stay two steps ahead in supporting our growth. LightCMS in particular has gained a ton of popularity lately, resulting in continually increasing traffic loads. You can be sure that we are prepared to continue scaling up as needed to stay ahead of the demand.

Performance enhancements

As a part of the process of digging through the system in search of the above-mentioned issue, we have made and continue to make tweaks and changes to improve system performance. The result is that things are running faster than ever and will continue to improve in the future.

New system status page

Finally, in an effort to better communicate with you about performance-related issues, we've created a system status page. This page will serve as a one-stop location for information related to performance and uptime on all of our company's products. You can view the page here:

http://status.elementfusion.com

We'll be posting information about any performance-related issues as we have it available in order to keep you up to speed on what is happening. So, if you have a concern about performance on one of our products, you can check this page to get your information first hand.

Great days ahead

We've got some great plans for more improvements and features to come in the weeks and months ahead so stay tuned. As always, we appreciate your support of our company and our products.

I'm back in the office today after spending most of the week in Phoenix at the Church Solutions Conference. It was a great experience all around. Turnout at the conference was lower than the previous year (so I'm told) but we still acquired a good number of leads and talked to a lot of people about websites. I found most everyone I talked with, whether churches or businesses, to be very interested in website issues, especially anything that can make their work on the web easier and more effective. That's great, since that is what we specialize in here at Element Fusion.

It was also good to spend time with our friends at Church Community Builder. At this particular conference, we actually shared booth space with CCB (you can see a pic of our space below), and it was also good to spend time with Steve and Jamie from CCB, sharing ideas and discussing what's happening in the church technology world. Thanks to them for the great conversations.

Thanks also to everyone who took the time to visit with me at the conference. It was great to meet so many people from so many different places. We look forward to working with you in the future.

Finally, I want to thank President Obama for making a stop in Phoenix while I was there. I didn't see him or anything related to him as I was buried in a trade show at the time, but the cab driver who took me to the airport Thursday did show me the spot where they parked Air Force One on Wednesday. It really was amazingly close to the road and he assures me it was a really impressive sight.

Our next travel stop will be SXSW in Austin March 14-16. That one will be all about LightCMS. Hope to see you there.

Our space at the Church Solutions Conference, shared with Church Community Builder. Please note: the girl in the picture is actually an image on CCB's backdrop, and not a legless giant.

On Monday, I'll be heading to Phoenix, Arizona for the Church Solutions Conference. I'll be exhibiting SkyCMS, our website system for churches, at the trade show there. If you're at the conference, please stop by and say hello. We'll be at booth #114 alongside our friends from Church Community Builder.

In addition, Steve Caton from Church Community Builder and myself will be presenting a seminar entitled "Building Community — Turning Your Crowd into a Tribe." Steve will be covering some great information about building community in the church and I'll be adding my thoughts on how websites, blogs, podcasts, Facebook and Twitter can be a part of your church's strategy for community. I'm really looking forward to this workshop and I'm hoping that soon after it's over, I can publish some of the content we cover here on the blog. So, stay tuned for that.

I'll be publishing some updates and hopefully some pics from the conference next week here on the blog and on twitter (@efstatus). Of course, the rest of the Element Fusion team will still be here in OKC, hard at work on all of the exciting updates on the way. In fact, we even have a small upgrade planned for next week. Watch for details.

This year, we'll be exhibiting our SkyCMS product at the Church Solutions Conference. This show is coming up February 17-19 in Phoenix, Arizona. I know it's not quite as big a show as SXSW, but just in case any of you are planning to be there, I wanted to extend the invitation to please come by and say hello.

We're actually exhibiting in connection with Church Community Builder, a SkyCMS partner in the church management software space. Not only will we be a part of the trade show, but Steve Caton from Church Community Builder and myself will be co-presenting a seminar session during the conference as well.

Well, here we are again. Twice in one week. We're launching more free design templates into the system. These are SkyCMS templates so they are only available on websites created for "ministry." No matter what product your site is on, you can get a hold of these templates by adding a new, free website to your account (go to My Account --> Websites) and selecting "ministry" rather than "business" when asked. Then, login to that site and visit the design gallery to find these templates.

As always, they are yours to use however you wish on our system. Download the source, edit via FTP ... etc. The choice if yours. So, without any further chit chat, please enjoy ... Ninth Street

RDS Advantage, a church management software company, has thrown its support behind Element Fusion's SkyCMS, promoting it to their clients and others as their choice for a church website system. In their November 10th press release, RDS Advantage included the following write-up about SkyCMS:

RDS Advantage announces its support for the powerful SkyCMS church website system. This web-based set of tools includes all the features needed to build and manage websites with advanced features such as blog, video, photo gallery, form builder, SEO, RSS, cross-browser compatibility, hosting, calendars, image editor, FTP access, podcasts, donations, file management, website search, statistics, secure private content and more. There is no programming or HTML needed.

When using SkyCMS for your website, the events in your RDS Advantage Scheduler can be exported directly into the SkyCMS calendar(s).

SkyCMS websites are available in five sizes from free for smaller churches to only $199.00 per month for mega-size churches. All options include all features and free hosting on a Tier IV Data Center.

We are excited to receive this support from RDS Advantage and we look forward to working with their customers to help create outstanding public websites that integrate with RDS's church management functionality.