The football season is winding down and our Fall Kickoff is coming to a close as well. Today, we pushed live a few more features and we’ve got one more push scheduled for next week as our grand finale. But don’t worry, the end of Fall Kickoff does not mean the end of new features. It just means the end of all of the playful and rather uninspired football allusions. We’ve got plenty more new additions ahead so stay tuned. For now, here’s a look at what’s new today.

Multi-currency support in the donations element

This oft-requested feature is now up and running. You can now accept donations in a variety of currencies by simply choosing the currency you want on the settings tab of your donations element.

Significant speed enhancements

Today’s release also unleashed a lot of backend improvements, including some significant speed enhancements. These improvements are especially noticeable on pages which include blog elements. We measured an almost 100% improvement in load time on our Element Fusion home page (which contains our small blog list) as a result of this update.

Coming tomorrow: new default template

Tomorrow, we’ll be changing the default design template for our entire CMS system. You will really only notice this change in two situations:

1. When you create a new business website under your account, the new design will be used by default on the new website. Of course, you can change this design at any time.
2. If the design you are using has an error in it, the system will automatically load the site in the new system default template, allowing you to continue to access your site while you work to correct any errors in your own design.

The new default template will be the Northern Light design, which you can see featured on this blog post.

Stay tuned for next week’s finale

There’s more new stuff on the way next week, just in time for the holidays. Stay tuned.

Well, here we are in November. The season is well underway, and while football fans here in our home state of Oklahoma are a little less than thrilled with the performances of our home teams, there's still a lot to be excited about here in the Element Fusion offices. This week, we've got a couple of nifty new features and a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes improvements to be rolled out on LightCMS, WaterCMS, and SkyCMS.

FTP Secure

We're enhancing system security even further with the release of FTPS secure access. We've provided standard FTP access to your websites for years now (a rarity amongst hosted solutions), and now we've improving it with the ability to connect securely. It all works just as it has worked before (view our FTP documentation), but you can now set your FTP client to utilize FTPS protocol and all traffic between you and the server will be encrypted.

Links to uploaded files in form entry notification emails

This is another very often requested feature. Now when you allow your users to upload files to forms you create with our form builder, we'll include a link to download the file right inside the notification email (if you turn email notifications on). Previously, to access the file, you needed to log in and visit the "manage entries" screen on the form element in question. Now, you'll be able to access your files instantly. Neat!

Behind the scenes magic

In addition to the publicly visible features listed above, our team has been hard at work optimizing and improving all the magic that happens behind the scenes. Though you might not immediately see these changes, you can be assured that we are taking care of everything that's under the hood.

Update schedule

This release is scheduled for Thursday morning,  November 5th, 2009 in a window of 8am to 9am CST (GMT -6). We don't anticipate any system downtime for this update.

Last week, we announced the beginning of Fall Kickoff, our fun fall promotion where we all score big with new features. This week is the kickoff of the Fall Kickoff and I'd like to share with you the line up for this week.

New LightCMS website

First off, we've got a brand new LightCMS product website. The website is completely redesigned, restructured, rewritten, and re-just-about-everything-you-can-do-to-a-website. 

"Sure," you say, "but a website is just a marketing piece. How does that help me?" 

Well, one thing we've done to help all of our LightCMS customers is created a new resources section, which will serve as a one-stop location for all of the resources we provide for you. This new section houses a great selection of resources currently and it will make it easier for us to expand our resource offerings in the future.

Another things we're adding is a dedicated LightCMS blog. We're separating it off from our company blog in order to be able to provide more LightCMS-specific content for our LightCMS customers.

Finally, we're also adding the all new LightCMS network and partner listings. More on this feature below.

LightCMS Rewards

Now, this is a big one. We've been working a long time developing ways to reward our growing base of LightCMS resellers, and now we are ready to unveil LightCMS Rewards.

This program offers you value-added benefits based on the amount of LightCMS revenue your account generates each month. You will qualify for LightCMS rewards with as little as $100/mo in LightCMS revenue. From there, you will promote up through various levels and earn more benefits (including cash back) as your revenue stream grows. All of these benefits are, of course, in addition to the profit you already earn as you set your own pricing on the LightCMS system.

We're going to hold off on publishing the specifics of all of the benefits on all of our rewards levels. You'll be able to view these specifics as soon as our new website is live. You'll also be able to access full information about LightCMS rewards and enroll in the program on your account dashboard. Once these new features are launched, login and visit the "My Account" area and you'll see a new sidebar element giving you the details about your current revenue and whether or not your qualify for LightCMS rewards. If you qualify, you'll see the image to the right, inviting you to complete the quick enrollment form and get started.

The LightCMS Network

Everyone who enrolls in LightCMS rewards will have the option of listing their business on the LightCMS network. The network is a public listing on our new public website that lists your company name, a link to your website, your location, and a list of the website services you provide. The network is designed to help customers who are looking for the services you provide to find you and connect with you easily. You don't have to be listed publicly on the network to participate in our rewards program, but we strongly encourage you to consider this opportunity to get your business out in front of a whole host of potential customers.

Shine the Light!

Another benefit of the LightCMS Rewards program is eligibility to participate in our new Shine the Light! program (I know, so many "programs"). Shine the Light! is a brand-new opportunity to partner with us in donating websites to deserving non-profit organizations. You pick the organization. You donate your design services. We'll donate a LightCMS subscription on any of our website plans for a period of one year.

Much more

There are many more benefits included in the LightCMS Rewards program. We're excited to introduce the whole program to you, but you'll have to wait just a couple more days for full details.

Game time

Speaking of the details, we are currently planning to kick off on this Wednesday morning, September 30th. We'll post more specifics on times via Twitter when we know for sure. 

UPDATE: these upgrades are scheduled for Wednesday morning, September 30th, in a window of 8am to 9am CDT (GMT-5). We do not anticipate any downtime during these upgrades, but we are providing the maintenance window so that you will be aware.

We're excited to get this game underway. And remember, this is just the beginning. Fall Kickoff will continue with more feature releases in the weeks and months to come. While this initial release focuses on LightCMS-specific features, there will be plenty of features to come that benefit all of our CMS products. Stay tuned.

Fall is in the air. Cooler weather. Changing leaves. And, at least in our neck of the woods, it's all about College football. But whether or not you're into the gridiron, we've got a kickoff celebration we know you'll be able to get excited about. It's Element Fusion's Fall Kickoff where we all score big with new system features.

If you were using our products in the summer of 2008, you will likely fondly remember the Summer Heatwave which brought you hot new features all summer long. Well, Fall Kickoff is a lot like that except that it happens in the fall and instead of using cheesy allusions to how hot it is, we'll likely be using cheesy football-related references instead.

The game plan

See, the clever sports lingo has already been implemented. Nonetheless, here's the scoop.

The Fall Kickoff will officially "kick off" next week with a spectacular start. We've got a major LightCMS release lined up and we're aiming for a launch on next Tuesday or Wednesday. What is this amazing new release, you ask? Well, that's a secret for now, but we're almost ready to release some details. Stay tuned for more.

Following next week's grand beginning, we'll continue on throughout the fall with new features. Our standard mode of operation is to announce these features one or two days ahead of time and then follow up as needed with more details as things are officially released. So, you'll want to stay tuned into our blog and Twitter feeds throughout the season as things will be changing fast.

It's almost here

The pre-game is almost over. The band is marching off the field. The coin is about to be tossed. Just hang in there for a few more days and get ready for a great fall.