The Journal Record Publishing Company held its annual Beacon Awards banquet here in Oklahoma City on July 12th, 2011. Element Fusion was honored to be invited as a finalist for the Beacon Award for philanthropic impact by a small business in the State of Oklahoma. We were even more surprised and honored when we were named the recipient of this award. We want to sincerely thank the Journal Record and the Beacon Awards for this very gracious recognition.

The Beacon Awards were established to recognize the philanthropic efforts of businesses across the State of Oklahoma. Element Fusion was recognized for two philanthropic programs. First, our Shine the Light! program, established in 2010, which enabled us to partner with our network of designers across the country to donate ten websites to ten different non-profits last year. Second, our Radium3 Website Giveaway program, through which we implemented a system of public nominations and voting to select four additional non-profits and donated a complete website design and CMS hosting package to each. In total, Element Fusion donated fourteen websites to fourteen different non-profit organizations last year.

As part of the Beacon Award recognition, the Journal Record is making at $500 donation to a charity of our choosing. Element Fusion has selected the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma to be the recipient of this donation. We're honored to get to deliver this additional donation to the Food Bank very soon.

The redesign has already been featured on several popular design-related sites, such as CSSMania and Line25. And for their hard work, we're immensely proud of our team!

The Store functionality provides our users with a complete ecommerce solution built right into their websites. The store lets users create products, organize them into product listings across their site, and provide their customers with a seamless, secure shopping cart and checkout experience. Its powerful backend management system helps store operators fulfill orders and communicate with customers.

We've also added twelve new, free design templates, created specifically for e-commerce applications, to allow users to easily set up their websites and online stores. The templates are freely available to all users of LightCMS and Radium3 and can be used as is or modified as our users see fit.

Complete information about the new store features can be found on the store pages on the Radium3 and LightCMS websites.

Over the past several weeks, we have met with Love Link Ministries to discuss their site's new design and to get their old content moved to its new home with Radium3. You can see the new site design below or by going to  http://www.lovelinkministries.org.

By integrating their site onto Radium3's CMS, they are now able to use our powerful, web-based tools to update or create new content. That means keeping their site up-to-date and fresh will be easier than ever before.

Love Link Ministries (visit the new site)

OKLAHOMA CITY –  Element Fusion, developer of premier Web content management system LightCMS, introduces its Shine the Light! program, a philanthropic initiative to encourage Web designers to give back to their communities. When a LightCMS Web design reseller donates time to design a Web site for a non-profit organization of their choice, LightCMS steps in to provide the non-profit with its powerful, Web-based tools, hosting, and support for an entire calendar year, free of charge. LightCMS has donated 14 pro bono projects over the past year and plans to double that number in 2011.

Recent Shine the Light! recipient Sean Lukasik, freelance designer of CreAgent Marketing and adjunct professor at Corning Community College in Corning, New York, leveraged Shine the Light! to host a competition among students in his Web design classes. Under his guidance, Lukasik’s students utilized LightCMS to develop and launch an actual Web site for a pre-selected local non-profit, the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes. The Web site project helped students learn about Web design via the state-of-the-art LightCMS platform. Student winner Derek Slife gained hands-on experience, while giving back to local community arts initiatives.

“Through LightCMS’s Shine the Light! program, my students donated their time and expertise to a local non-profit, while working with a professional program that provided all of the design, hosting and management tools they needed to create a creative, functional site – completely free for the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes,” says Sean Lukasik.

Recognizing the need for Web design amongst non-profit organizations, LightCMS gives its resellers the ability to design a Web site for the non-profit of their choice. Once a non-profit is selected and a designer donates his or her time, LightCMS steps in to provide the non-profit with free access to its entire system and array of tools. Neither the non-profit nor the designer ever have to worry about hosting configurations or software upgrades, and the robust Web-based tools allow the organization to easily manage its site’s content.

“We’re excited to be able to create an outlet for designers to donate their design expertise and provide a service for non-profits,” says Tim Wall, Director of Product Marketing with LightCMS. “Using LightCMS, Web designers have a sophisticated Web design platform that gives them the necessary tools and hosting needed to create a high quality Web site for an organization that may not otherwise have the financial means.”

To participate in LightCMS’s Shine the Light! program, Web designers must be enrolled in the LightCMS Rewards programs. When designers reach a bronze level ($100 in recurring revenue using LightCMS), they become eligible to support one Shine the Light! project per calendar year. Click here more information on LightCMS’s Shine the Light! program.

Our Shine the Light! program (available through our LightCMS product) was highlighted by The Wall Street Journal last week. The Journal ran a story about small businesses with New Years resolutions, and mentioned our own resolution to double the number of websites we donate through our Shine the Light! program in 2011. We donated ten Shine the Light! websites in 2010 and we plan to make that twenty in 2011. Of course, we can't do it without the help of our LightCMS customers, who partner with us to donate their own design services, creating a complete website package for our non-profit beneficiaries.

If you're a LightCMS designer, we hope you'll consider participating with us through Shine the Light! this year.

It's that time again. Time look take a look back at all that's happened this year and look ahead with anticipation for all of the great things to come.

2010 was an amazing year for Element Fusion. It was the year our company turned Ten Years Strong, and with that milestone came another step in our transformation from local web design shop to international web software company. Consolidating our products into two brands, LightCMS and Radium3, makes us stronger, better positions us to meet the needs of our current customers, and opens the doors to accelerated growth in the years to come.

Recognition of our company's strong growth continued in 2010, landing us on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America for the third consecutive year and Oklahoma City's Metro 50 for the fifth consecutive year. We're very pleased with the opportunity to celebrate strong growth in the midst of a struggling economy, a major business transition, and while continuing to maintain an investor-free and debt-free position.

Perhaps the most exciting number to share is the number of websites we were able to donate in 2010. Through our Website Giveaway program now running on Radium3, we selected four non-profit organizations to receive complete website design packages and free hosting on the Radium3 system. But additionally, through LightCMS's Shine the Light! program, we partnered with designers all over the world to provide an additional ten non-profits with free websites. That's a total of fourteen donated non-profit websites in 2010, which is by far the most we have been able to accomplish in a single year.

2010 has been a great year, but we look forward to an even better year in 2011. We're currently working on a massive project which we've code-named Project Tuscany. This project, to be released in 2011, promises to be the most significant upgrade to our product line yet. In addition to Tuscany, we'll be hard at work on a host of other features and, as always, at providing the exceptional level of customer service you've come to expect from us. Hold onto your hats because it's going to be another great year!

These generous organizations will receive custom website designs as well as one year of free hosting on the Radium3 content management system. We are looking forward to working with them to develop their new websites in the days ahead.

For more information, check out the official announcement from Radium3 here.

Why Element Fusion?  Check out our top reasons to work here.

We're looking for:

• Clean design style, intuitive user interfaces, and innovative concepts
• Excellent Photoshop and XHTML/CSS skills
• Technical expertise balanced by creative thinking
• Ability to work on multiple projects and meet frequent deadlines
• Attention to detail
• Unique and creative portfolio

The web designer should be adept in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) and capable of taking a website from design concept to fully-functional HTML and CSS. We’re especially interested in standards-based designers with strong XHTML/CSS skills. Experience with Adobe Flash, ActionScript, JavaScript, or other dynamic scripting (such as ASP or PHP) is a plus.

Element Fusion offers an energetic, casual work environment and provides excellent benefits.  Please see our jobs page for more information and details on how to apply.

As a part of our 10 year anniversary celebration for 2010, we are giving four website packages valued at $5,000 each to four different non-profits this year. We gave away the first two in the early part of the year, and now we're giving away two more through the all-new Radium3 Website Giveaway.

As we have done in the past, we're asking for your help in finding and selecting the recipients of these giveaways. We're accepting nominations for the giveaways through October 29th, 2010. After that, we'll select a group of finalists and hold a public vote which will aid us in selecting the two recipients.

While past giveaways have been open to Oklahoma-based non-profits, the Radium3 Website Giveaway is open to any non-profit organization in the United States.

For more details and to submit your nominations, please see the Website Giveaway page on Radium3.com.

Today, we're announcing the launch of Element Fusion's newest product. Radium3, the world's most elegant website system, is now up and running. Check it out at radium3.com.

Radium3 isn't a brand new product. Rather, it represents a consolidation of our two retail website products, WaterCMS and SkyCMS, into a single, unified brand. Websites running on WaterCMS and SkyCMS have been automatically migrated to Radium3 and users of these systems will not see any differences in the way their websites function. Radium3 offers all of the same, amazing features previously found on WaterCMS and SkyCMS.

Please note that customers on our LightCMS product, our CMS that designers can resell to their own clients, are unaffected by this change.

Though the Radium3 product itself is identical to WaterCMS and SkyCMS, the change to Radium3 does represent an exciting new era for Element Fusion. Consolidating our retail brands opens up new opportunities to improve the way we interact with our retail customers. Through the move to Radium3, we look forward to bringing you:

• A larger, stronger team dedicated to our products
• More frequent software features and updates
• Improved customer support through dedicated account managers
• New internet marketing options for your website
• And more ...

All of Element Fusion's client-facing services, such as design and internet marketing, will now fall under the Radium3 brand. This won't change the way you interact with us, but you might see the Radium3 logo popping up in place of the Element Fusion brand, so we wanted you to be aware. This will also impact the way you get information from us, as we'll be communicating with our retail customers mostly through the Radium3 brand rather than Element Fusion.

For example, Element Fusion's Twitter account (@efstatus) is going to be replaced by Radium3's Twitter account (@radiumThree). If you are following @efstatus, you will soon find that you are following @radiumThree instead. Since Radium3 now encompasses Element Fusion's client-facing services, it made sense for us to simply change the Twitter account to Radium3.

Also, you'll want to look to the Radium3 blog for articles and announcements related to our Radium3 product and its related services. The Element Fusion blog will now primarily publish company news and will be updated less frequently. You can also "like" Radium3 on Facebook to get product information delivered to your news feed. Element Fusion will still maintain its Facebook page, but it, like the blog, will also be focused mostly on company news, rather than product information.

LightCMS customers will continue to get information related to the LightCMS product through the LightCMS blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page.

Thank you for your support during this transition. We're excited about this change and we strongly believe it will mean great things for all of our customers in the days ahead. We look forward to serving as your website partner for years to come!

As a part of Element Fusion' ten year anniversary celebration this year, we've launched a special giveaway through our LightCMS product. We're giving away an iPad every weekday for the next ten days. That's right! 10 iPads in 10 days.

Entering the giveaway is simple, but it does require that you have a public (non-protected) Twitter account. If you're on Twitter, simply tweet the following content on the days you wish to enter:

Win 1 of 10 iPads from @LightCMS - RT to enter or read more http://lightcms.com/iPad

Every day at 4pm CDT, we'll select a winner at random from that day's entries. To get all of the details about the giveaway, including a full FAQ to answer your questions, just check out the official giveaway page.

We were also excited to see several companies on the list that we’ve worked with as clients over the years. Congratulations to them and to all of the great Oklahoma City businesses that made the list.

Here are some pics from the event. I apologize for the dim lighting, but my lowly iPhone 3Gs doesn’t have the fancy flash and HDR capabilities of the newfangled iPhone 4. Ah, well.

 
Usually, we post a picture of our owners, Ryan Whitaker (left) and Justin Cowan (middle). This time, Chad (right) crashed the picture in order to ensure he would make it on the blog.

Here’s Vivian (Internet Marketing Specialist) and Travis (Senior Consultant) taking a break from using their iPhones in order to smile for the camera.

Here's Neill and Joseph (developers) not taking a break from Neill's iPhone in order to smile at the camera.

And here’s the cheesecake I ate.

Everyone getting ready and learning the flags:

Chad shows us the latest in headsock fashion while Travis intimidates his opponents by flexing those rippling guns:

Ryan approves of this racetrack:

"I know I rammed her into the wall, but did you see how slow she was going?!" explains Ethan frantically

And here are the champions! Richard in first place, Matt in second, and Ethan in third:

Cherokee Strip

Woodlake Church

Crosswind Church

Bayside Christian College

Murphy's Jewelers

The first is another milestone in making the system more accessible from mobile and touch devices. Recently, we enabled touch devices to access element menus and settings screens. Now we’ve made the content areas themselves editable. Previously it was impossible to edit the content in text elements, blog posts, and calendar events because of the limitations of mobile web browsers. The new update allows our system to recognize when you access it from a mobile browser, and it provides you with an alternate content-editing tool.

The new editing interface is quite simple, but you will need to be familiar with basic HTML tags (like <p>, <h3>, <br>, and <ul>) to enter content effectively. To access this new editing interface, login and pull up any content-editable element on a mobile device. The new interface will appear, allowing you to insert content and HTML into the content regions.

Did you know? We’re now publishing information about smaller changes to the software as they happen. You can follow it to stay up to date on all the tweaks and changes to LightCMS and even have some fun along the way. Follow @aLightCMSserver.

This year’s list tracks growth across the three year span from 2006-2009. During that period, Element Fusion saw an increase in revenue of 81%, landing us at #2,774 out of all private companies in the US and #24 out of the 34 Oklahoma-based companies that made the list.

As you can see, the period measured encompasses the great recession our economy has suffered recently. Inc. points out that finding growth in companies has proved itself more difficult this time around:

"It will probably comes as no surprise to savvy Inc. readers that it's not as easy to find growing companies as it was a couple years ago. In 2008, the second year of Inc.'s expanded list of 5,000 growing privately-held companies, there was much enthusiasm as firms across the country showed eagerness to be part of our list. The three-year growth rate of the company at the No. 5,000 rank doubled from 20 percent in 2007 to 40 percent in 2008. This year, the enthusiasm was still there, but very often, the growth was not. Our measuring period of 2006 through 2009 encompasses the recession, which economists say started in December of 2007 and lasted through the end of last year. Poignantly, many firms applied for this year's list even though their 2009 revenue was less than that of 2006.”

- from "Finding Growth in a Recession" by Jim Melloan

These sobering reflections on the state of our economy make us ever more grateful for the support you all have shown us which has resulted in our continued growth over this difficult time period. We truly are humbled and honored to have you as our customers and we look forward to continuing to serve you for years to come.

This new feature will allow touch devices to:

• Access the "manage posts" page on blog elements
• Access the "manage entries" page on form elements
• Access the "settings" pages for all elements
• Use the "move up" and "move down" buttons to move elements within a region
• Use the "delete" button to delete an element

This update is a small, but important step toward making it easier to manage your website from a mobile device. We hope you enjoy it!

This sharp young man started with us his senior year of high school, where he graduated as a valedictorian, and is leaving us to begin his first semester at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he plans to major in graphic design and information technology. On a parting note, Glen says to potential clients considering Element Fusion, "The designers at Element Fusion really know what they're doing. They're talented artists, they stay up to date with the latest trends, and they know how to make designs customer-friendly. If I could say anything, it would be that you can trust your designer at Element Fusion."

When asked what his favorite part of interning at Element Fusion has been, he said, "The environment. It's like a family, and that connection is really beneficial to good work. Everyone takes serious pride in their work and in the company, and that makes the whole environment just a really nice place to work... that and there's soda."

American Mothers

Calvary Chapel Olympia

Immanuel Baptist Church

Reaching Souls International

Terwillegar Community Church

Shout out to @efstatus for your quick response about my website. You guys ROCK! I anyone needs a low-price but AWESOME CMS, check 'em out.

Thanks so much, Jen!

The stylish Chad is an instant sensation with this summery shirt set on display. Are those arrows symbolic of Element Fusion's rising success or are they directions to the gun show?

At the beginning of this year, we began a series of giveaways for non-profit organizations. After much deliberation, nominations, and public voting, the Swaziland Partnership was selected as the first organization to receive our donation of a free website design and one year of free hosting on our CMS system. We've had a fantastic time working with them on their site's design, and we're excited to see what their new site allows them to do.

Below, you can see what their website looked like before we redesigned it and what it looks like now. By integrating their site onto our CMS, they are now able to use our web-based tools to update their site's content, making it much easier for them to keep their information current and fresh.

The Swaziland Partnership (visit the new site)

The old site

The team that made it happen

We took this picture after one of the meetings when the partnership's representatives met in our office to discuss their site. From left to right is Matt Grimm (developer / designer with Element Fusion), Pat Burton (Swaziland Partnership), Lynn Bloomer (consultant with Element Fusion), Barbi Moore (Swaziland Partnership), Bob Miller (Bethany Nazarene), and Brian White (project manager with Element Fusion). 

Cathedral of Faith

GoVirtualStaffing

Wiedemann Insurance Agency

“Why so tentative?” you ask.

This is a pretty major upgrade that touches almost everything on the platform. As a result, we’re involved in a vast amount of testing, re-testing, further re-testing and testing some more as we hammer away to ensure everything is exactly right before it goes live. We want to get these new improvements out as soon as possible, but most importantly we want to ensure your upgrade experience is as seamless as possible.

Server upgrades still scheduled for tonight

The interface improvements mentioned above are separate from our server upgrades that are still scheduled for tonight. Remember, our maintenance window is from 12am to 1am CDT (GMT-5) Wednesday morning with an expectation of about 15 minutes of downtime. Though many of you will likely be asleep at the time, you can check our system status website for updates on the progress of the upgrades.

It seems as if the year has just begun. But here we are, and we're already launching the website for our second website giveaway this year! (Our first giveaway's winners, the Swaziland Partnership, are still tweaking their site. It's due to be launched in the coming weeks.) After much deliberation, nominations, and public voting, the Jayla Alexsis Tuck Cancer Foundation was selected as the non-profit organization to receive our donation of a free website design and one year of free hosting on our CMS system.

Over the past several weeks, we have been meeting with them to discuss their site's design and to get their content loaded on our CMS. Now the wait is over and the site is launched! You can check it out at bugginoutforkids.org. 

Of course, we've also posted a few images below so you can see the new home page design and what it looked like before. By integrating their site onto our CMS, they are now able to use our web-based tools to update their site's content, making it much easier for them to keep things current and fresh.

Jayla Alexsis Tuck Cancer Foundation (visit the new site)

The old site

The partnership

We took this picture after one of the meetings when the foundation's representatives met in our office to discuss their site. From left to right, there is Brian White (project manager for Element Fusion), Kelly Hartling (co-founder of the Jayla Alexsis Tuck Foundation), Andrea Decker (consulting director for Element Fusion), Andrew Johnson (web designer for Element Fusion), and Julie Tuck (co-founder of the Jayla Alexsis Tuck Foundation).

In order to make these upgrades, we will have to take our LightCMS, WaterCMS, SkyCMS and Icebrrg products offline. We are scheduling a maintenance window of one hour, from 12am to 1am, though we anticipate the upgrade process will only last about 15 minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience. We’ve scheduled the upgrades at the time of lowest system usage to minimize their effects.

We appreciate your understanding and support. As always, these upgrades will benefit all users on all of our software products so we look forward to bringing them your way.

Please note: these upgrades are separate from the new user interface improvements we have previously mentioned and scheduled for release on Thursday, June 17th.

If you are a designer using LightCMS, you should take a look at our article on the LightCMS blog which overviews these coming changes from a LightCMS designer’s perspective. This article here will focus primarily on the changes as they relate to our end user clients on WaterCMS or SkyCMS.

[please note that screenshots presented here are preliminary and may differ slightly from the end product when it is released]

New look for the top toolbar

The first thing that’s changing is the look of the top toolbar. It’s being redesigned with an updated look that no longer uses drop-down menus but still gives you one-click access to the pages you need. Here’s a look at the new toolbar.

Additionally, you can customize the colors of the top toolbar if you wish. In fact, the ability to customize colors is already live and available for you, in case you want to make your adjustments before the new toolbar actually goes live in a couple of weeks. This functionality primarily exists for our LightCMS customers, but users of WaterCMS and SkyCMS my also want to take a look. Access the toolbar color settings under “My Account –> Account Settings" or find out more about setting toolbar colors on the LightCMS blog

New look for admin pages

The second big change is that all editing screens will now have a unified look and feel matching the look and feel of the top toolbar. Currently, when you go to edit a piece of content, the editing interface is presented on a template that is a part of the design of your website. We’re changing this to where the interface will be presented on a system template that matches the look and feel of the CMS tools. You'll still see the editing control bars overlaid on your website content as normal, but when you click to edit a piece of content, the controls will be presented in a unified admin interface. Here’s a look at an example, showing the WYSIWYG editor in its new interface.

There are lots of reasons we are making these changes. First off, they make a great visual improvement to the system overall. Secondly, they make things consistent throughout the system, whereas now some admin screens use system templates while others use website templates.

Perhaps the most important reason, however, is that these changes set us up to create much better user interfaces for all our tools in the future. As long as we are allowing each website to have a unique template for its editing screens, we are severely limited in how much functionality we can implement on these screens without causing conflicts or other issues. Moving to a consistent, system template for all editing screens will enable us to provide much better tools for you in the future.

Tentatively scheduled for Thursday, June 17th

We have tentatively scheduled the launch of these improvements for next Thursday, June 17th. Please stay tuned to our blog and Twitter feed for more details as the time of launch nears.