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Everything listed under: new features

  • Launch of new interface improvements moved to next week

    Just a quick update on our new interface improvements that were tentatively scheduled for this Thursday, June 17th. We’ve decided to delay this launch one week and tentatively rescheduled for next Thursday, June 24th.

    “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.

  • New interface improvements coming to our CMS

    If you have a website on our WaterCMS, SkyCMS or LightCMS content management system products, you’ll notice some improvements when you log in starting in a couple of weeks. These changes don’t affect your public websites in any way. They only affect what you see when you are logged in and managing your website.

    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.

    Toolbar_750

    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.

    WYSIWYG_admin_750

    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.

  • New feature: set reply-to email in form notifications

    We upgraded our WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS content management systems today with lots of behind-the-scenes improvements and a nifty new feature as well. This is a form-builder feature, so it is also added to Icebrrg, our stand-alone form builder product.

    As you know, you can choose to have notification emails sent to any email address whenever a person fills out a CMS form. Now, you can tell the form to use the email address provided by the person filling out the form as the “reply-to” address on the notification email that is sent. So, if you wish to reply to the person who filled out the form, you can simply hit “reply” on your notification email and your email client will automatically know who to send the email to.

    From this point forward, when you add your first email field to any form, it will automatically enable that field to be used as the “reply-to” address. However, we haven’t forced this change on any existing forms that already had email address fields, so if you want to “turn it on” for those forms, you’ll need to manually do so. All you have to do is edit the form, click on the email field you want to use, and check the box at the bottom of the field settings tab as shown in the image below.

    replyTo_email

  • WYSIWYG improvements coming to WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS

    Tomorrow morning, March 3rd, 2010, we'll be releasing some exciting improvements to the WYSIWYG editor inside our WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS systems. The WYSIWYG editor is the interface you see when you edit a text element, blog post, calendar event, or any other rich text area on a website in our CMS. We are constantly working on ways to improve this interface. We have received tons of feedback from many of you and that feedback has informed our own discussions as well. 

    Simplified toolbars

    The most noticeable improvement will be a simplification of the toolbars. We are rearranging some of the tools and creating a "simple" and "advanced" mode. When you first load up the new editor, you will see only a single row of the most simple tools. This view is pictured below. You will also see a new button on the right that says "show more." Click the "show more" button and the second row of tools will appear, containing the advanced editing features you currently see on the editor.


    This is the new editor toolbar in "simple" mode

    Adding a few new features

    The new toolbar also contains some new functionality. First off, the "Page Links" drop down box (pictured above) allows you to easily create links to pages on your own website. Simply select the text you want to make into a link and then choose the page you wish to link to from the drop down. Nice!

    The other new tool is our "insert video" tool which allows you to easily drop in embed code from video hosting services like YouTube and Blip.tv.

    The final new feature of the editor isn’t actually a toolbar button, but a built-in behavior. The new editor will automatically treat all content that is pasted into the editing window as plain text. This not only solves the issue of bringing in unwanted formatting from outside sources, but also eliminates the need for the multiple format stripping tools that currently exist on the editor.

    Removing a few buttons

    As a part of this change, we're also removing a few of the toolbar buttons. Here is a list of the tools that currently exist but won't be a part of the new editor:

    • Insert paragraph – this tool is fairly redundant since you can create a new paragraph in the editor by pressing the enter key or by choosing "paragraph" or "normal" from the style heading dropdown.
    • Format strippers and “paste as” tools – as mentioned above, these tools will be replaced by default behavior that forces all pasted-in content to be pasted as plain text.
    • Strike through, Justify and Remove Alignment – these lesser-used tools will be removed to reduce clutter on the simple editing toolbar.
    • Media manager – this tool does not function effectively and so it is being replaced by two things. First, the new “insert video” tool mentioned above will provide a more effective and current way for users to include video content on their site. Second, if the user wishes to upload media files to their site, they can do so using the document manager tool.

    Enjoy!

    We are excited to bring you these improvements. We also have more in the works for the WYSIWYG editor. Tomorrow's release represents phase one in our plans for the WYSIWYG, so stay tuned because there is much more to come.

    The update is scheduled for Wednesday morning, March 3rd 2010. We do not anticipate any downtime with this upgrade.

  • Fall Kickoff: multi-currency donations, speed enhancements and more

    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.

  • Fall Kickoff: new features coming tonight

    The fall football season rolls on and tonight we're rolling out a handful of new updates to the WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS systems. Please take a look through what is new and see our notes about maintenance and scheduled downtime below.

    Design template archiving

    For designers who work on design template files, this one is big. We're excited to add archiving of all save points on HTML, CSS, and JS template files on every design on every website. So now, as you make changes to your design template files, you can easily roll back and restore previous versions. The saving happens automatically every time you save a file either inside our editing interface or via FTP.

    Non-Latin character support

    We're updating our database to offer support for non-Latin characters on all user-editable content areas. You will now be able to enter content in non-Latin languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic ... etc. The only exception at this point is our form builder, which will not support non-Latin characters just yet, though we do plan to complete that in a future upgrade. Non-Latin characters will be supported in all other areas where you enter content. This has been an often requested feature and we're excited to roll it out.

    Captions in Photo Gallery slideshows

    Another photo gallery slideshow enhancement is included in this release. This time, it's the ability to overlay a photo's caption on top of the lower portion of the image in slideshow mode. Simply edit your caption, then check the new box in your photo gallery skin settings.

    Scheduled maintenance window and expectations

    While our feature upgrades generally do not require system downtime, the non-Latin character portion of this upgrade requires us to make significant changes to the system databases. As a result, we need to schedule a one-hour maintenance window to complete these changes. During this one hour window, we anticipate a period of sporadic service and possible downtime lasting approximately 45 minutes. As a result of these requirements, we are scheduling this upgrade at the period of lowest system usage. Our maintenance window will be Thursday morning, October 22nd from 1am to 2am Central Daylight Time (GMT-5).

  • Fall Kickoff: photo gallery and time zone enhancements are live

    The game is underway and new plays are live. After much demand, we are excited to launch a new enhancement to the photo gallery slideshow mode and add time zone offsets to WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS.

    Add linking images to your slideshow

    CMS users have always enjoyed the presentation of the rotating imags and the easy upload tools of the Photo Gallery. Now you can also have linking images. Simply upload your images to the Photo Gallery element, and then set your photo gallery setting to slideshow mode and set your preferences as normal. To apply a link to an image, click on the Add/Remove Photos from the Photo Gallery element dropdown menu, then select click on the Edit link below an image, and add the url to link the image. You can also choose for the link to open in a new window by selecting the Open link in a new window option under the link (see below).

    After your images are loaded and slideshow settings put in place, each image will rotate with the timed slideshow, or your users can use the new navigation arrows to manually click through the images. It's that simple.

    How to set your time zone?

    CMS users across the world can now set their local time zone in the Website Settings.  To modify the Time Zone settings for each website, login to your account and click on Settings under the My Website dropdown menu in the admin toolbar.  You will see the option for time zone settings and you can select from the drop down menu the proper time zone. This setting will have your blog posts and calendar events show at the correct time.

     

    If you have questions, please feel free to leave us a comment or contact support. Plus, be sure to stay tuned for more feature updates as part of the Fall kickoff!

  • Beyond client billing

    A couple of weeks ago, we launched our new billing and account interface on our WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS systems. Our communication focused on one of the most significant aspects of the new system — client billing — which is available exclusively on LightCMS. However, the release actually includes a host of other improvements that benefit all accounts on all of our CMS products. I want to take a minute to highlight some of these additional features so that you can check them out.

    View an improved website list

    We've always given you the ability to manage any number of websites under a single account, but now we've created an improved website listing page. Click on "websites" on the submenu in the account section, and you'll see your website list. You can quickly filter the list to show just free or paid websites, or type what you're looking for into the "find" box. Plus, we give you a snapshot of the details of each website, including a look at the recent traffic so you can easily identify which of your sites are being actively visited.

    Search a detailed billing history

    Visit the "Account billing" page and you'll find a summary of your account information as well as a detailed listing of all billing activity to your account. You can quickly pull up past invoices which show the details of each charge you've incurred.

    Change your billing email address

    This is a small thing, but really handy. Now you can change the email address we use for billing purposes without changing the email you use to login to your websites. The billing email address is where we send all billing-related correspondence, so keeping this address current is very important. Just edit your account billing information to make this change.

    Disable websites

    On your website's detail page, at the very bottom, you'll find an option to disable your website. Disabling takes the public website down, but leaves the content in place so you can later enable it again. It also stops the billing for the website for as long as the site is disabled. This can be helpful if you just need to stop payments temporarily, but you think you might later need the website again. Also, if you are a reseller and one of your clients hasn't paid you on time, you can disable their site so we won't charge you while you work out the payment issues with them. Previously, your only option was to downgrade the website to free, which required removing much of the content, so disabling gives you a very powerful option.

    Delete websites

    Deleting a website is irreversible, so we don't recommend it, but if you have a lot of extra free websites under your account that you don't need and you want to clean things up, we've now given you the option to delete your own websites permanently. Just keep in mind that there is no undo and we cannot restore a website for you once you have deleted it. Don't worry, there's a confirmation page that explains all of this to you very clearly and requires you to check a box before you are allowed to delete anything.

    Find support resources

    We've also improved our support page inside the account interface, which now provides quick links to all of our relevant support resources, making it a good central location to discover all of the helps we have available.

    Enjoy

    Whether you are a retail website user or a LightCMS designer / reseller, our latest features offer you a greatly improved account management experience. So take a look and let us know what you think. And stay tuned for more improvements and features on the way.

  • Introducing the billing system built for you and your clients

    Over the past three years, we've launched an enormous number of improvements to our suite of content management products, but today's release is quite possibly the most significant improvement to date. Not only because we've completely redeveloped the way the system processes payments and lets you interact with your account, but also because we've taken another huge step forward in our support of web designers around the world.

    Built to support your web design business

    The decisions we make about our software products aren't based on what's new or trendy. They aren't based on a desire to provide every type of functionality available. Rather, they are based on our time-tested experience in growing a successful web design business and our understanding of what it takes to make such a business succeed. It is that motivation which has led us to develop an amazingly powerful billing system and to offer it at no cost to every customer on LightCMS.

    That's right — no cost. Accounts on LightCMS are free. There's no set-up fee or commitment of any kind to use our software. And now, bundled into every one of those free accounts, is the option to let us handle your client website billing for you. It can save you a ton of time and effort, which is what LightCMS is all about.

    Time to take a look inside

    We invite you to take a look at the all new billing system. Simply login to your website and click "My Account" on the top toolbar. Then, take a look around and let us know what you think. If you don't have a LightCMS account yet, you can create one for free in just about a minute.

    In the days to come, we'll be posting more details about various aspects of the new system. Stay tuned for that. For now, if you're looking for more specifics, you can review our preview of client billing from a few weeks ago.

  • New account and billing system to launch Tuesday

    Well, if you've been following our blog over the past few weeks you know that we've got some major new features about to roll out on our CMS systems. About ten days ago we announced that we weren't ready for public launch, but that we were open for beta users. We had a good response to our beta invitation and have received some excellent feedback from our beta users over the past week.

    Our development team has also been hard at work hammering out the issues that caused this delay, and now we are ready to release the features system-wide. We're scheduling that launch for Tuesday, June 23rd at noon CDT (GMT -5).

    So, stay tuned Tuesday for final updates on Twitter and our blog. Once everything is live and running, we'll be posting more information over the following days to help explain all of the new functionality to you.

  • No launch this week, but open for beta

    Well, it's been a wild week here. If you've been following our announcements regarding the new billing system, you know that we've been very close to launching this week. So close, in fact, that we could practically reach out and touch the finish line. That's why it's just as frustrating for us as we know it is for you to say that at the last minute we've uncovered an issue that's going to prevent us from launching to the public this week.

    Open for beta users

    While we're not quite ready to launch live for everyone, the system is fully functional, and we could benefit from having a few of you take it for a spin. So, if you're itching to get started and if you have some clients you can move to client billing very soon (even immediately), then we'd love to let you get started now. You'd have to be ok with the possibility of a few minor glitches along the way, but you'll have our full support in the process. In fact, we'll be very tuned into your activity and your feedback as we work toward taking the system live.

    If you're interested in using client billing during this brief beta period, please email me (tim@elementfusion.com) ASAP. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about the process.

    PLEASE NOTE: We've had a great response to our beta invitation and we've reached our limit for beta accounts, at least for now. However, we will continue to add more accounts as we are able so please continue to send in your requests and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. And remember, the full public launch won't be far behind (see below).

    So when is it really going live?

    We're going to take a step back and put a new, tentative date out there. That date is Tuesday, June 23rd. It could possibly be earlier than that, just as it could possibly be later. I can promise you one thing, we are working extremely hard to get this completed as nothing will make us happier than having this product live for everyone.

    What's the issue?

    The issues we've encountered are a bit hard to explain succinctly. They aren't really issues with the functionality of the system, but rather concerns about the potential for issues that could develop given a certain set of circumstances. With a few people using the system, we'll be able to monitor these issues closely and correct them if they occur. But, we just don't feel comfortable bringing everyone onto the system until we take a little more time to eliminate the potential for those issues completely.

    Thank you for your continued understanding and support. If you are interested in using the system immediately while in beta, please let me know.

  • New feature preview: automated client billing

    We've mentioned our new billing and account management system casually over the last few months, but today, we're giving our first "official" preview of what's about to be launched. There is a lot of stuff involved in the coming release but in this post, we're going to focus on the biggest new feature — automated client billing. This functionality will be available exclusively on LightCMS.


    A preview of the website detail page in the new billing system (using sample data). 

    What is Automated Client Billing?

    LightCMS has always given you the ability to manage all your client websites within a single account, but this new release makes huge improvements in the way you manage them. To this point, all websites under your account have been billed to a single credit card. The idea has been that we charge you our discounted rate and you bill your clients whatever you wish through your own billing system.

    Automated client billing now offers you another option. You can choose to bill an individual website to a client's credit card directly. You set the price that the client pays and we pay you commission on the difference between our discounted price and the price you set.

    If you bill my clients directly, won't they find out about LightCMS or Element Fusion?

    No. We'll be running all CMS charges through a generic entity and that entity's name will show up on your clients' statements. You'll just want to tell them to expect charges from this new entity for their website service. We've even set up a website on the new entity's domain to help explain the charges in a non-branded way in case they have questions. Oh, and the entity's website's domain utilizes private registration as well.

    How much commission can I earn?

    With automated client billing, you decide how much commission you'll earn. That's because you set the pricing for the websites under your account. Our base pricing always stays the same, so the higher you set your pricing, the higher your commissions will be. If you utilize our suggested retail pricing, you'll earn around 35% commission on every website, every month. Of course, you can set your commissions higher or lower if you wish.

    How do I receive my commissions?

    Once you have websites paying through client billing, your profits will accumulate in what we like to call "your money pile." You'll see your money pile on most of the pages in your account management console. Whenever you're ready to withdraw them, you can simply click on "withdraw funds" and we'll send them to you by PayPal. PayPal is the only option (for now), so you'll need an account to withdraw your funds.

    Do I have to use client billing?

    No. When we roll out the new features, all of your websites will continue to bill to your account. You will have to manually change them to client billing if you choose to do so. You can move any number of your sites to client billing and the rest of your sites will remain billed to your account. You can also change a website back and forth between client billing and account billing whenever you wish.

    Can my clients upgrade / downgrade their own websites?

    Yes, if you choose to let them. You'll have to login to the account section and set up the names and prices for your website plans. Once you do that, clients who are being billed individually will be able to login and upgrade / downgrade their website. The pricing and plan names they see will be what you set for them to see. Also, clients who have free websites under your account will be able to upgrade themselves to one of your paid plans if they wish (you can turn off this functionality if you want). We'll cover more on how this works as we get closer to launch. Plus, it's all explained very clearly inside the new interface.

    What else is new?

    There's an improved user interface across the entire account management section; a simplified, filterable listing of all websites under your account; a full detail page for each of your websites; the ability to delete or disable any website under your account; detailed listings of billing activity for your account and for each client-billed website; and much more. We'll be sharing more about all of these features in the days ahead.

    Enough already! When's it going live?

    We know that many of your have been looking forward to this for a while, as have we! We are very, very close, but we want to be cautious about putting hard dates out there in case something unexpected happens that pushes things back. That said, we are unofficially and tentatively planning to launch everything on Thursday, June 11th, 2009. Again, that date might change so please don't make any plans around it. We're simply providing it to keep you in the loop on our plans.

  • New account messaging system is up and running

    We're continuing to roll out pieces of our billing system overhaul, heading toward the big finale coming soon. Today, we added another step in that direction with the launch of our account messaging system. This system provides notices to you, as the account holder, about important issues with your account, especially relating to payment problems that could lead to service interruption. These messages are never seen by your clients or other website users. Only the account holder sees these messages when logged in.

    We've added this feature to help ensure that we're communicating with you in every way possible regarding your account. We already send out email notifications whenever there is a critical message to communicate. This internal messaging just adds another layer of communication. Please keep in mind that if there is ever a problem with payment on your account and you need help, we are always here to work with you so please just contact us and we'll walk you through what you need to do.

    One nice thing about the new messaging system is that you can "close" messages after you have read them and they will go away.

    The new messaging system rolled out alongside a bunch of other behind-the-scenes improvements, taking us another step closer toward our new account and billing interface. Stay tuned.

    Here's a look at how the messages will look inside your account.

  • New features: improved WYSIWYG editor and file management

    We've got some new features and improvements scheduled to deploy this week and we wanted to give you the heads up. This upgrade centers on our WYSIWYG editor, which is the foundation of many of the system tools in LightCMS, WaterCMS, and SkyCMS. The editor also handles file management and several new features to improve file management are included in this release.

    So what's new?

    The editor is getting a big upgrade with hundreds of changes and improvements. Many of these enhancements are things you won't see, as they are behind the scenes and designed to keep the editor up to date and compatible with modern browsers. But, there are several pretty significant things that you (and your clients) will notice and enjoy.

    Multiple file upload. That's right! Access any of our file managers (images, documents, video, flash) and click on "upload." The new upload screen lets you select multiple files and upload them all at once. Here's a sneak peak at the interface.

    Drag and drop file management. Use a familiar interface to organize your files. See image below for a visual.

    Image properties. Now you can set image properties from inside the image manager, before inserting the image into your layout. The screen shot below highlights the file management interface as well as the image properties pane.

    Full IE8 support. IE8 just went mainstream and our new version provides support for Microsoft's latest browser.

    Faster rendering speed with progress indicator. There are several speed enhancements and a new animation to indicate when things are loading.

    Improved UI. A sleeker, improved look makes navigation easier than ever.

    Scheduled for Wednesday, April 8 Wednesday, April 22

    This release is currently scheduled for Wednesday morning, April 8th, 2009 at 8am Central Daylight Time (GMT-5) Wednesday morning, April 22nd at 5am Central Daylight Time (GMT-5). There will be a brief downtime while the update is pushed out. In the past, similar updates have resulted in less than five minutes of downtime, and we would expect this update to be about the same.

    UPDATE: We discovered an issue with the new features while taking them live on Wednesday, April 8th. As a result, we have reverted back and have delayed the updates to next week April 22nd while we correct the problem. Our apologies for the delay. Thanks for your patience while we work to ensure that everything works flawlessly.

  • New feature: improved search

    Tomorrow morning, we'll be rolling out improved search functionality on our LightCMS, SkyCMS, and WaterCMS systems. All websites running on these products will receive the upgrade automatically at no extra charge. The search functionality is completely rebuilt, offering a much improved experience. Here's a look at what will change:

    1. search results page on WSLEverything runs faster and indexing takes place a lot faster, so content can be indexed more frequently (two times per day).
    2. Search results are generated at the page level instead of the element level, making the results much easier to decipher.
    3. Search results are paginated for a more orderly display.
    4. The search terms are now highlighted on the search results page.
    5. The search field now supports some basic inputs such as boolean logic (using "AND" or "OR"), phrases (using quotes), and exclusions (using NOT).

    There you have it. The upgrade won't require any changes on your part. Just go searching and things will work a lot better. And also, stay tuned in the weeks ahead as we've got even more search improvements on the horizon.

    Scheduled downtime

    The update is scheduled for 9:00am CST (GMT-6) on Thursday, December 18th, 2008. There will be a minimal period of downtime (estimated at less than 5 minutes) as the changes go live on the system.

  • New features: blog tags, photo gallery slideshows, and more

    We've got a major release of new features scheduled for tomorrow on our LightCMS, SkyCMS and WaterCMS products, so we wanted to give you the heads up. These are some major enhancements and some items that many of you have asked for so we know you're going to really love this release. We'll follow up in a couple of days with more details.

    Blog tagging or categories

    Some call 'em tags, some call 'em categories. We're calling 'em tags but they also work just like categories. You'll be able to assign any number of tags to any blog post. It's easy. Then, once you've added tags to your posts, you can create lists of all of your tags where users can click a tag to view all posts with that tag. And, for the super fancy blogger out there, we've even created a built-in "tag cloud" view as well. Of course, for the designers, the tag lists are marked-up as lists so you can style them however you want.

    Photo gallery slideshows

    The photo gallery gets a huge upgrade with the slideshow skin. This lets you display the images in your photo gallery one at a time, transitioning  from one image to the next. You can control several settings including whether you want the system to resize your images and to what size, how you want the slideshow to transition (fading, scrolling, or no transition), plus length of transition and duration of each slide hold. This hugely requested item is super easy to set up, giving you the power to make a real visual splash on your site.

    Improved photo gallery captions

    Also on the photo gallery, you will now have the ability to add longer photo names and rich text captions, including links. The new image information can be edited via our familiar WYSIWYG editor allowing you to set up detailed image information.

    Launch and downtime

    This exciting release is scheduled to launch tomorrow morning, Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 7am Central Standard Time (GMT -6). There will be a minimal period of downtime (less than 15 minutes) as the changes are rolled out. We will follow up with more information including links to new support articles on using these features soon after release.