As we mentioned last week, the team up here is crazy busy finalizing a list of new features and improvements that will close out this summer's fantastic HEATWAVE. Well, the time has been set for 8am CDT on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008. That's when we'll be pushing all of the changes live.
As is my custom, I want to give you a heads up on what's coming. Believe me, we'll be diving into more details on each of these features is future posts once everything is live, but for now, we'll just hit the highlights. So, turn up the thermostat, grab a nice, cold beverage, and let's take a look at the HEATWAVE Grand Finale.
Free, World-Class CMS Templates
Our designers have been working hard on a host of new website templates that will be included on the system at no cost. These templates will be available for use as is or as a starting point for your own designs. These templates are some of the highest-quality designs you will find anywhere. We know you're going to love them.
Design Xpress
Along with the templates, we're unveiling a new design option. We call it Design Xpress and it will make its debut priced at $495. Design Xpress is a service that takes one of our amazing new templates and customizes it for your organization. You get to provide a logo and slogan, images for a slideshow or feature region, other template images, and your contact information. We'll integrate your materials into the template of your choice and get it running on our system. This will be a great new option for those looking for something more customized than free templates but less expensive than Custom Xpress.
Overhauled design manager
Along with all of these new templates and designs, we've put together a much more robust design manager. The new system allows you to more easily view all of the designs available, scroll through the various templates and layouts in each design, and apply the design to your site. As always, you can download and edit our designs, or even upload your own as well.
Drag and drop elements
That's right, you heard me. This is really great. Just drag elements to reorder them or to move them between regions. Nice.
Brand new front-end marketing websites for WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS
This one doesn't affect our customers too much, but I mention it because it's what makes the next feature possible. Plus, I thought you might be interested just to check out the new looks that go live on Wednesday. We're redesigning and redeploying all of our CMS marketing websites with new content and new designs. It's also important to note that our product names are officially changing to WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS (previously, they did not all include "CMS" in the brand).
Dynamically updated online marketing materials for resellers
Ok, this is where the new marketing content can really do nice things for our network of resellers using LightCMS. Now you can copy and paste a simple javascript snippet onto your own marketing website which will automatically reproduce content from our marketing websites, all the while protecting the private label by hiding any content you wouldn't want your clients to see. There are two pieces of content available:
- Features list. This renders out our new features list which is a comprehensive listing and description of the CMS website features. Currently, it is text only, but over the coming months we will be adding short screencast videos as well to demonstrate each feature. As we add videos or make any changes to the content, they will be automatically reflected on any page using our cut and paste script.
- Pricing grid. We're also making our new, enhanced pricing grid available. This grid has a greatly improved feature list along with information about the package levels and limits. We're giving you the ability to customize the prices that display for each package, and we're hiding all account-level or non-generic content to protect the private label. As we make changes and add new features, those will be reflected in your grid automatically.
User interface refresh
The user interface throughout the entire system is getting a refresh. Functionally, everything will remain the same, but it will look a little different so you'll want to check it out on Wednesday.
Form builder entry management
The form builder will now allow you edit and delete entries to your forms through an easy to use interface. We've also added "download to Excel" in addition to the standard .csv export. Excel maintains better formatting on your entries and generally works better when downloading.
SSL support on Icebrrg
Our Icebrrg form builder now offers SSL support on some of its paid packages. Forms built inside our CMS systems have always provided SSL support at all package levels, so this is a change to stand-alone Icebrrg forms only.
Even more speed enhancements
That's right. Especially for those of you with larger sites, things should continue to run even faster.
Dramatically increased storage limits
Just to really go out with a bang, we're dramatically increasing the file storage limits on all websites on WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS. The new limits are as follows:
- FREE — 10 MB (a 100% increase)
- BASIC — 500 MB (a 500% increase)
- PLUS — 1 GB (a 400% increase)
- PRO — 3 GB (a 600% increase)
- PREMIER — 12 GB (a 100% increase)
There's always more to come
We're all said to see the HEATWAVE come and go, but remember, we'll never stop bringing out the new features. We've got a lot in store for the fall and beyond so, as always, stay tuned to the blog and to Twitter to get the latest from Element Fusion.
Posted on
Monday, August 25, 2008
by Tim Wall