News

December 18, 2008 - New Release

So this is Christmas (laaa, laaa, laaa, laaa), and what have we learned (laaa, laaa, laaa, laaa), another year older (laaa, laaa, laaa, laaa), etc.

Keeping up the theme of releasing Google based widgets at Christmas we thought we'd add the much requested Google maps feature to SiteMaker so that you can help your customers find you - if you want them to find you.

Google Maps Integration

• Add a Google maps interface directly into your site
• Set a location beacon to show your exact location on the map
• Allow your customers to manipulate the map (zoom/drag) to help them get their bearings
• It's in the 'functional' folder called 'google map'

Improved YouTube Video Feed

We have also updated our video player to use YouTube's very own video API to ensure reliability. This will mean that if YouTube change how they serve videos, you don't have to worry about your video failing, we will pick up any changes and ensure the video feed is maintained.

However, please be aware that if the video owner has set or marked the video as "private" or "embed only", the video will not be available via our player.

Some other stuff

• 4 new templates to choose from
• File manager reorganisation, including up to date 'all' folders to help you find things more easily

And...that's it. Not quite the usual Christmas bonanza granted, but we've been working on several big pieces of new functionality and haven't been able to complete them in time to get them to Santa.

We tried outsourcing some of our development to Santa's Elves to speed things up, but the economy at the North Pole is still largely based on traditional manufacturing and hasn't yet made the transition to a service sector based economy with strong conceptual software skills, so that didn't work out so well. On the plus side they did make us a nice set of toy soldiers.

September 15, 2008 - New Release

After a long wet summer, we've finally got some news to cheer you up. It's release time again! We've streamlined a few widgets, added social network bookmarking, and we're setting the stage for releases later in the year. So have a look through the notes below and let us know what you think. Enjoy!

New Features

• New fonts - 20 new fonts added to the graphic fonts selection to enable further customisation of your site
• Social bookmarking widgets allow visitors to quickly bookmark the site to services like Digg, De.licio.us, and facebook - see the 'social bookmarking' folder in the File Manger to add one
• The Comments widget now provides 'pages' so that the widget is more responsive when it contains lots of comments
• Thumbnail images are now larger (144 x144px, up from 100 x100px) - which should improve quality on screen

Bug Fixes

• Site addresses (domain names) can be added to a new site, even if the site address is already attached to a deleted site
• The countdown timer no longer freezes on the page master
• Members and visitors should now be able to add entries to the News/Blog again

What we're working on

• Ecommerce tools - for those of you who are waiting for these, we are working on them! We'll publish an article soon which will give more detail on exactly what the tools will contain and it will show some early screenshots of how things are looking. We are not expecting to release any of the ecommerce features until the end of the year, or more likely January. But don't worry, they'll be worth it ;-)

July 8, 2008 - New Release

Help, it's another monster release! It's just too big; we can't keep giving away so many new features. The poor development team, they really need a holiday. But it's good news for you and our website builder! So, keep reading...

Improved alternative HTML version (how the search engines see your site)

• The HTML alternative for your site is now much prettier and better organised
• Go to ('Edit' ->) 'View' -> 'HTML version' in the SiteMaker toolbar to see your HTML pages and navigate through them
• You can then 'View source' on each of these pages to see your keywords and other meta data in the HTML

Advanced form improvements

• You can now add a file upload field to your form so users can submit files
• Files are uploaded to a specific folder of your choice in the file manager

And plenty of bug fixes, including fixing the Google SiteMap error in Webmaster tools, logging into sites from the portal, fixes for image problems in Directory and Calendar.

That's about it for now. We are of course working on more goodies for the future, but you'll have to wait and see for those. Let us know if you have any feedback or any problems with the new features. Thanks, and happy holidays!

May 1, 2008 - New Release

It's release time again and this one is a biggy! Lots of things we've been waiting to get out for for a very long time, with something for everyone. Get ready for some excitement, quiet in the back row please, here it comes...

New File manager!

• Larger, clearer and easier to use interface
• User folders - create folders and organise your files
• Integrated multiple file uploader (no more Javascript popup window or Java applet)
• Native support for PNGs & GIFs (including preserving transparency)
• Rename files and folders
• Multiple select, delete and move

Improvements to SEO (HTML) version of sites (viewable from Edit->Page Settings->View HTML version)

• Nested navigation list now mimics the Flash Version
• Better grouping of elements, preserving things like tabular layout and sidebars

AdSense revenue share for SiteMaker Free users

• Users of SiteMakerFree can sign up with Google to share ad revenue generated by their site
• For each click on a ad on your Free site, you get 50% of the money
• So now you get a free site AND free money!

Other stuff:

• New design templates
• New backgrounds
• We've added new PayPal currencies: CZK, DKK, HUF, NZD, NOK, PLN, SGD, SEK, CHF

So there you go, a whole heap of stuff. That'll keep you busy for a while! Let us know if you find any problems and we'll get back to the grindstone to work on some more things for the months to come. Enjoy!

April 2, 2008 - Bug fixes and site updates

We were worried that if we released bug fixes yesterday, no one would believe us (being April Fool's day). So we held off a day, did some more testing and felt happier getting them out today. Some of you may think we play computer games for 3 weeks and then have a mad rush of development over the last week to get work completed. If only! We've actually been busy fixing some bugs, while work continues on some big ticket items.

Today we released these changes to correct some annoying bugs and added a useful guide for those interested in Search Engines:

• Blurry thumbnails for the pop-up gallery (as well as slide show and image effects) have now been fixed
• Editor (File Manager and other panels) which sometimes hid in the top-left corner and wouldn't budge should be back to normal
• Users can now set up Google Analytics with the new tracking code - the 'ga.js' tracking code - although either will work fine

That's it for the moment.

March 25, 2008 - New Release

This week marks the arrival of our 2nd release for the year with some goodies and some bug fixes. We continue to finish and refine a larger project - a new File Manager - and this will be launched very soon. But rather than keep you waiting we wanted to give you a few new features to play with while we polish the other features and we wait for the real spring to arrive.

So what's on offer this month? You'll find details below:

New Features

• 'Viewport' added to make editing and managing files easier
• Improvements to W3C compliance and some tidy up
• HTML version of page now opens in new window
• Making Title tags more prominent in the HTML
• Addition of 10 new templates
• Improvements to multiple selection with changes to using the Control or Shift keys
• Ctrl key required for 'logout' from widgets when editing

Bug fixes

• Making the File Manager more context sensitive when adding images, audio and video
• Resetting the Video widget will now hide the video provider label

Viewport

Editing your pages, especially long ones just got a whole lot easier. Viewport is the name we've given to a great new feature that in simple terms enables the Editor panel to follow you around your page. In the past editing long pages meant dragging the Editor panel down the page or scrolling back up the page to find it. But not any more. Once you open a long or wide page for editing you only need click on an object and the Editor will appear on the border of the visible page.

Changing pages no longer sends the editor back to the top right hand corner of the new page, it will maintain its previous position, unless the view changes but at the very least it will stay visible. And opening up the File Manager will respect the same conditions by opening up within the visible browser - if opened up by the Editor's mini menu.

These improvements also mean that any media being added to the page will also remain within the visible browser so that you will never lose, for example, images you've just added to a page.

HTML Enhancements

One of our commitments has been to improve how we publish your sites. With this release we have changed our focus slightly by tweaking and refining how we generate HTML from your site content so that it meets with W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) compliance. We've also refined our software so that if you wish to use the Generate HTML button to view the HTML version of a page on your site, it will now open in new window, making 'View source' a little easier. The other big improvement has been to Title tags in HTML. We've applied rules so that the first Title text box renders as an H1 tag in the HTML with all other Title text boxes generating a H2 tag. The H3 tag will be applied (after some rules) to text that has been set as bold. But a more complete explanation will be published later in the week by one of our team members.

Editing Improvements

To make editing your site just a little bit safer we have now applied a new rule to the 'Log in/Log out' widget. If you added one of these to your page you must use the 'Ctrl' key to logout when in the edit environment. This is to avoid accidentally clicking this button to test it, causing you to log out and lose your latest changes. This makes the 'Log out' widget like any other link button.

Multiple selection received some attention too. We updated the keys used to mark multiple selection on your pages. You can use either Control or Shift - but not both, which still allows Ctrl-Shift-D to be used for duplicating content.

New Templates

Every release we try and add a few new templates or designs and this release is no exception. We've added 10 new design templates to the Personal and Professional sets, so once you've decided the Site Type you now have 10 new designs on offer.

Bug Fixes

Some of our widgets had their own eccentric behaviours when it came to adding media using the File Manager. We have made a big step forward in making this behaviour closer to normal so this is less a bug fix than an improvement. For example, in the past adding an images to your Pop-up Gallery or the Slide Show, would have meant using the tool itself to add an image as using the File Manager would have added an image to your page and not into the widget. This has now been changed, so that the File Manager will know you are editing a specific widget and add your media to it and not the page. This newly 'context-sensitive' behaviour means you can now add audio, image and video files to the appropriate widget directly from the File Manager.

We also tidied up the Video widget so that the previous video feed provider label was removed when the player was reset to play your own video. Please note: If you replace an externally fed video with another (externally fed e.g. Youtube, Google etc) then we will display their label as a professional courtesy.

Febuary 8, 2008 - New Release

It's the first release of the year! Hurray! And hopefully a good one too. We've got a few big changes to site navigation, some edit improvements and some bug fixes/enhancements. Details below.

So the new features are:

• Updating page URLs and bookmarking
• Undo/redo (for moves and scales)
• SEO improvements (page title changes)
• Forum improvements

Bug fixes:

• Kewego videos work again
• Thumbnail generation improved for galleries

Updating page URLs and bookmarking

When you navigate your site, the URL (web address) in the browser will now update to show the address of the page you are on. This means you can now bookmark any page in your site, or email a link to someone so they can jump straight to a page.

Undo/redo (for moves and scales)

We've now introduced undo and redo functions for certain edit features in your site. This means that whenever you move or scale objects (either single objects or in multiple selection) you can now undo/redo those changes. This is particularly useful for when you move something by accident. The current undo will not undo certain other actions, e.g. object deletion, text edits or colour changes, but we may be able to introduce some of these features in the future. This has been a big project and there is a lot happening under the hood, so to speak, even if with just moving or resizing objects. So at times it may take a few clicks for you to see visible undo or redo actions occurring. Have a play and let us know what you think, we think it will be a useful new addition!

SEO improvements (page title changes)

Just to prove we do actually listen, we got lots of feedback that the 'Page title' field that we set in the HTML for your site was too short at 50 characters, so we've increased the amount of text available to 120 characters. Apparently Google will only use the first 66 characters of the page title in its indexing, but Yahoo will use up to 120. So the thing to do is write a single title that has a useful message/keywords in the first 66 characters and further detail up to the 120 limit.

Forum improvements

We've made a few minor changes to the forum. These are the introduction of 'move topic' which means you can now move topics to other subjects if they are posted incorrectly. And navigation improvements which allow you to jump to the first/last post of a topic. We've also fixed a couple of bugs, for example you couldn't post a reply if you found a topic via the search function and when you did reply to post you got returned to the first page.

Bug fixes

Firstly, Kewego videos should now work again following a change to the way that they posted the video source. And secondly, we have changed the way that thumbnails are produced which should improve the quality of thumbnails in the galleries. Please note that for the thumbnails to improve you will need to (delete and then) re-upload your images, e.g. the current thumbnail will not change, only new ones will use the new conversion process.

We also updated the robots.txt file so that customers using Google Verify should no longer see the '403 - Forbidden' error message, although please bear in mind this may take Google from a few days to a few weeks to re index your site and pick up the change.

And that's about it for you.

December 20, 2007 - New Release

Ho ho ho. T'was the week before Christmas and all through the office not a developer was moving, not even those usually most active. Probably tired, but that's another story.

Anyway, it's Christmas present time! That's right, FoxMaker Claus has his goody bag stuffed full of little software updates for all the good boys and girls (and even those who haven't been so good). So here's the list in full...

New features

• Form 2 - the form strikes back
• Support for Google Webmaster tools
• Automatic generation of Sitemaps
• Text formatting - justified text supported in standard fonts

Bug fixes

• File downloads in IE7 no longer show an error message

That's the summary, but here's the detail for each of the new features including some guidance on how to use them.

Form 2

The new form widget can be found in the 'Forms' folder in the File Manager (Advanced Form). There's just one for now, but we'll add some new pre-configured versions in the New Year. The new form has a lot of new features which include:

• Support for drop down boxes, list boxes, radio buttons, check boxes
• Required fields - set fields to be compulsory and validate for 'email', 'numbers', or 'text only'
• Emails now come from the person filling in the form, we thought you'd like that one ;-)
• Forms are themeable and scalable just like the other new widgets
• Data submitted via the form is not only emailed, but also saved in a data store (CSV file) which you can download from your site (in the Edit panel), so you'll never lose data to junk filters again!
• All text on the form is now customisable, including buttons, titles, success and error messages

Note: We haven't added file attachments in this release, but hope to do it in the future.

Support for Google Webmaster tools

We heard many requests from our customers to support site validation for Google Webmaster Tools. If you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, you can now paste the validation tag they give you into the 'Site Information' panel which will add it to your site HTML and allow you to be validated. For more information on Google Webmaster Tools see their pages on it.

Sitemaps

Slightly related to Webmaster tools, sitemaps are a list of all visible pages in your website. They are a tool to help search engines correctly index your site. We now generate one automatically for your site. Any page that is in your menu is automatically included in the sitemap and for pages that are not, you can add them in manually using a check box on the 'Page Settings' panel. You don't need to do anything to get the benefit of a sitemap, as search engines look for them anyway, but you can download it if you like at: yoursite.foxmaker.com/sitemap.xml.

Justified text

Not a biggy but still important, we've added justified text formatting to standard text boxes. This means you can now left align, right align, centre or justify your text boxes as you like. We hope to add this to the graphic fonts in the New Year.

And that's your lot. Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and we'll be back with some more changes in 2008. Ho ho ho.

November 1, 2007 - Latest Bug Fixes

Following our release last week we encountered a few bugs. These have now been fixed and a list of the fixes can be found below:

• Group permissions have been modified to make them more understandable and easier to use
• Forum group permissions (setting a forum group) no longer affect member views of subjects list
• A group can now be removed from permissions if required
• You can now edit subject permissions multiple times (as you would expect)
• When you open a single post with "read more" you will no longer see an additional 'ghost' post.
• Fix for mini toolbar items - copy, paste, duplicate and delete now work as expected