Well, you may have noticed things have been a little quiet around here for the past week. The weather here in Oklahoma turned rainy and cool, putting a damper on the HEATWAVE. But never fear because we're working feverishly on a HEATWAVE GRAND FINALE that will put a spectacular finish on what has been an amazing summer of new features and upgrades.
The big finish is tentatively scheduled for launch next week. You'll want to stay tuned to the blog and Twitter as we'll be offering more details about what's coming as the time grows near.
Remembering all the good times
While you're waiting for the grand finale, why not take a minute to reflect on all the good times we've had during this summer's HEATWAVE. Ah yes, it just seems like yesterday that spring was in the air. Then, things started to heat up. Here's a quick look at all of the new features and improvements that have rolled out over the past two months.
- Next-generation form-builder. Things got started with the launch of our completely reworked formbuilder, Icebrrg. I know, it's weird to launch a HEATWAVE with a product called Icebrrg, but none the less. This update added a list of huge improvements and new features to our formbuilder whether used as stand-alone or inside of our CMS systems.
- WYSIWYG improvements. The text-editor used throughout the CMS got a major overhaul with new features and improvements including a built-in image editor, vastly improved performance, and more.
- Blog archiving. Lots of people had requested it and we delivered a simple to use archiving system for blog posts.
- Free barebones templates. Next, we unveiled free barebones templates for designers to use as a starting point for their designs. These templates also give a comprehensive CSS reference for the CMS systems.
- Form payments. This one was huge. The form builder got a major enhancement with the addition of integrated payments opening up the opportunity create e-commerce experiences through a very simple-to-use interface. Since then, we've even provided a tutorial on creating a registration with payment and also setting up a form to sell products.
- Evites. Evite functionality was rolled out along with a tutorial on how to use evites.
- Blog import / export. We added the ability to import a blog from an outside system as well as to export a blog from our system as a backup or to move to another platform. We also added ordered class names on blog lists for the designers.
- Speed enhancements. Along the way, we rolled out major behind-the-scenes improvements which dramatically improved system speed, especially for larger websites.
- Blog and event detail pages. In yet another improvement to blog display (which also impacts calendar events), we created the ability to specify pages in the site as the container for the display of blog posts and events.
- SEO enhancements. Then, most recently, we added some major SEO improvements including the ability to specify a primary domain and avoid indexing on the publishpath.com domain. We followed this up with some instruction about how to best utilize your domain and avoid duplicate content.
Wow, it's amazing to take a look back at everything that has been changed, added or improved upon in just the last couple of months. But it's not over yet. Stay tuned for the spectacular finish of HEATWAVE 2008 next week. Plus, of course, the upgrades won't stop there. We'll always be working on new stuff, even when the weather is cool.
Posted on
Thursday, August 21, 2008
by Tim Wall