Product news

24 October 2007

A big one this month! The new forum finally arrives, as well as an upgrade to lots of the other new widgets. Enjoy.


New features:

Forum
The new forum feature is out and live! It includes the following features:

Customisation/design features
- resize to any width/height
- use of new 'themes' technology
- ability to change text size, colour, and background colours independently

Functionality
- Subjects/topics/posts views for many different threads of discussion
- Ability to set permissions, e.g. guests, or members only
- Ability to set edit rights for moderators (e.g. members, or a group of members)
- Ability to lock subjects
- Ability to set posts as 'sticky'
- Search all subjects/posts
- All topics have their own RSS feed
- All posts can contain rich text formatting, e.g. bold, etc., plus links
- All posts have emoticons
Plus more I've probably forgotten. Have a play with it.

NB. We can migrate data from the old 'message board' feature on request via customer support.


Multiple Select
You can now select multiple objects at the same time on your page! This can be done either by:

- dragging the selection box, e.g. click and drag to create your selection box (any object inside the box will be selected)
or
- holding the 'control' or 'shift' keys and clicking on the object that you wish to add/remove from your selection. (You can also click on the list of objects within the drop down menu on the 'edit' panel to add them to your selection)

Once you have a set of objects selected you can:

- drag them as a group
- nudge as a group using the arrow keys
- delete them as a group
- copy and paste them (even between pages!)


Theme technology (version 1 release)
We have introduced a new 'theme' technology to allow the easy customisation of the appearance of different widgets on your site. All of the new generation of widgets have had this theme technology added to them. The themes editor is available on the 'style' tab of the widget. These widgets current using themes are:

- Forum
- Comment
- Mail to a friend
- Chat

The theme technology allows you to pick a look and feel from a defined list. This will change the colours (background and text), plus the button styles and boarder styles of the widget. Once a theme has been chosen, you can customise individual elements on the 'style' tab.

Version 1 of the these technology is now live, but we hope to release extended versions of it soon. This will allow you to set up and save your own themes, and set default themes for your whole site, so the appearance of all widgets could be changed at once.


New Media
40 new graphic fonts
15 new crop tools for images
15 new stock images
18 new image cut outs
40 new graphic elements, symbols and logos


Upgrades/changes:

Comment
- Addition of themes technology
- Addition of rich text formatting (including links) in comments

Mail to a friend
- Addition of themes technology

Chat
- Addition of themes technology

21 August 2007

Lots of bug fixing this month, a couple of new things, and the new forum is working in development but not yet complete for release.

New stuff:

Copy & Paste - between pages!

- Paste (duplicate) on same page at new position

- Paste on new page at original position (paste in place)

Design templates - some new templates from us, and we're going to release a guide to allow you to produce and submit templates to us which we can add to the build process.

Bug fixes:

Myspace videos should consistently load

Video player should no longer display 'buffering' at the end of play back and hang

Audio from Video should now stop when navigating to other pages (with multiple video players on a page)

Double pages loading - stops multiple pages loading simultaneously on rapid menu clicks

You can now load images directly into widgets e.g. image effects, slide show, polaroid tool, immediately after uploading

Link buttons now display correct name after link added e.g. site name, email address, page name

Coming soon:

New forum

Multiple select

New graphic font styles

21 June 2007

This month we've been laying a few foundations for new things to come in the future and tidying up a lot of old code, but we've still found the time to get a few new things out. Check out the list below.

New stuff:

New Chat feature - Chat has been rebuilt allowing you to host live chats on your site!

SiteMaker caching - Better management of our application files, so they will be quicker to load

Membership enabled on new sites - New sites will allow 'join' by default

Usability improvements to text boxes

Improved FAQ search


Bug fixes:

Pages panel with large number of pages (500+) no longer runs slowly

Improved thumbnail quality for uploaded GIFs


Coming soon:

Multiple select

Copy and paste between pages

17 May 2007

Our latest release is now out. We've focused on increasing the interactivity on your sites (comment widget), providing you with marketing tools (mail to a friend) and enabling all sites to support membership. See the blog article for more details.

New stuff:

Comment widget (with RSS feed) - allows visitors to post comments on your site

Mail to a friend widget - allows visitors to mail your URL to other people who might be interested

Membership enabled for all packages - allows you to enable membership and have people 'join' your site

Myspace and Kewego added to video widget - now add videos from www.myspace.com and www.kewego.com

Site HTML now W3C compliant - site HTML now passes W3C compliance, which is better for SEO

New Press section on moonfruit.com - see our press section and learn more about us


Bug fixes:

Allows you to change the widget name in the selection label

Video/images sizing bug has been fixed


What we're working on:

Copy & paste between pages

Multiple select of page objects

and other secret things...

30 April 2007

Our latest release is now out there. Check out the additions and bug fixes in the list below. For those of you looking for the comment widget, this has been delayed till the next release, but will be out in May with some other goodies...

New things:

Table enhancements - better text selection while editing the table widget

New 'table' templates - we've added a folder to the file manager with some useful pre-built tables

Google Site Search - allows your visitors to search your site contents using Google search (this only works if your site has been indexed by Google)

Increased disk space - we've upped the disk space limits on all SiteMaker accounts

Positional page adding - when you add a new page, you decide where it appears in your menu

New FAQs - information for the Video widget, Domain name pointing, Google AdSense, etc.


Bug fixes:

Member edit bug - members can now use the File Manager correctly

Colour editor - typing alpha values into the HSV tab now updates the selected object

Black JukeBox - now works correctly on the Page Master

Your Sites "Last Login" - will now show the correct time

12 February 2007

We thought we'd kick of 2007 with the software equivalent of New Year resolutions - bug fixes! So this release has less of the new stuff, and more of the old stuff working better. We've also been working on some tools behind the scenes that will pave the way for the next generation of widgets, but these won't appear until our March release. And the launch of moonfruit.fr should be just around the corner...

So here's a summary of the changes in this release;

New stuff:

New templates - new templates during the build process, particularly for business customers

New page templates - You can find these when you 'add a page'

New PDF download for font picker - Download and print out a list of all our graphic fonts for easy reference

Flash detection - Improvements to Flash detection/alternative content for sites

New FAQs - Google, PayPal, Keyboard Shortcuts


Bug fixes:

Video player - Now displays the video controls by default; gives feed back if the requested video can't be found.

Jukeboxes - If the playlist is left open when saving, visitors now see the full list; the correct song is now displayed when playing (instead of just first song on Jukebox playlist); the Play button is now more responsive; the Jukebox no longer stops when viewing a Slide Show; links and Alt tags have been disabled to provide correct operation.

Tabbing - Now works on all forms plus provides improved tabbing in ‘Admin Panel’ on ‘Site Information’ tab

FavIcons - Selection is now less picky ( variations in size now permitted)

Pages - Are now created with the correct ‘visibility’ flag; page settings cannot be changed while editing the page master; there is improved management on page permissions.

Membership - Membership questions now show all text instead of 'defaultValue' when question runs to two lines; a ‘Cancel’ button has been added to "Join this site" for non-members.

Popup gallery - now closes correctly when changing pages

‘Del’ key - When editing text in a panel e.g. Alt tags, using the 'Delete' key will only delete the selected text and not the object

Multiple File Upload - The Hidden ‘Multiple File Upload’ button now visible in all conditions for Internet Explorer

Support pages – The Submit a query form now working again in all browsers

If you spot any problems with the new release, please let us know by submitting a query.

15 December 2006

After our last release on 21 Nov, we thought we'd just do a small manageable release so we could get it out before Xmas, but it looks like it's turned into a monster release packed full of new features! Don't know what happened, must be all the mince pies we're eating.

Here are the main changes:

Improved video player - Autoplay, hide controls, keep aspect ratio, etc.

Google Analytics integration - Add Google Analytics to your site and start getting detailed site stats about page views, visitors, geographical location, etc.

Full 'arrange menu' options - Allows you to better arrange objects on your page in terms of layering, e.g. send to back, bring to front, move forward, move back.

Keyboard shortcuts in edit mode - Delete key works and many more, you can see them in the advanced view of the SiteMaker toolbar.

Custom site size - Have a site of any size and shape.

Favicons - Upload your own favicon for display in your browser address bar.

Border (HTML) images - Upload your own image to your HTML border.

Scale and position bug - Some objects were difficult to line up, they would move 1 or 2 pixels after a save - this no longer happens.

Try out some of these and let us know what you think. And post a link in the Forum to your site, we'd love to see how you're using them.

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas from all the SiteMaker Team!! (ho ho ho).

21 November 2006

We've released some great new features and made some general improvements to the way your SiteMaker site works. And since you're reading this you'll have found our new website and probably seen our blog at www.moonfruitlounge.com.

This release includes:

Video player - Upload FLV (Flash Video) files to play in your site. Or link to your favourite videos from youtube.com or google video.

Meta data per page - Add HTML page titles, keywords and descriptions to each page of your site. This helps Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Many experts recommend making them different on each page and making them relevant to the content of each page.

Alternative content for visitors without Flash - Your site will now display an alternative text only version when visitors without Flash arrive at your site. This conforms to W3C guidelines for accessibility of your content, ensuring that everyone can see some of your content and further improving search engine optimisation.

PayPal shopping cart improvements - PayPal links will now open in the same window! And for 'Add to cart' and 'View Cart' links, the window will have a 'Continue shopping' button encouraging your customers to return to your site.

New www.moonfruit.com website - Our site has been overhauled to make it cleaner, quicker and easier to use. We hope you like it!

www.moonfruitlounge.com - Our new blog will make it easier for us to keep you up to date with what's going on at Moonfruit. Have a read!

That's it for now, let us know if you have any issues, and please report them through our Customer Support Query Form as normal.

Coming soon:

Google analytics support

Google webmaster tools support

Moonfruit.fr

20 October 2006

Following our release last week, we've had some great feedback, but also had some bug reports. So this week we are doing an interim release to provide some important bug fixes:

Page length/resizing - issue #1 - Fixed page not resizing for some pages - Using an apostrophe (or an extended character) in your menu/page name caused issues with page not resizing.

Page length/resizing - issue #2 - Using masked forwarding with a domain name (loading your site in a frameset) to your site (instead of IP Pointing) caused a specific problem with IE on Win2000 which prevented page lengths working correctly. We've released a work around for this, but recommend you set up your domain using IP point (see our FAQs), which also ensures they are indexed correctly with Google and other search engines.

SiteMaker Toolbar menus - The SiteMaker toolbar now appears in the correct place in every case - the drop-down tool bar was intermittently collapsing against the left hand margin, which made it difficult to access the sub-menus.

Custom Colour Saving - Fixed for widgets, backgrounds and other page items - Custom colours weren't implemented in every colour picker, meaning you couldn't always get to your custom palate.

Restricted page permission errors - Visitors to site pages requiring permissions now get redirected to the home page rather than get an 'errors on page' message.

Rollout Menu Flash 9 player bug - Fixed - we've rewritten the rollout menu code to fix the intermittent crashing of web browsers with Flash Player 9.

Google Search widget - Fixed - the Google ID on search was not being sent correctly, so some searches were not being logged.

Google AdSense on Free sites - SiteMakerFree sites are now running ads powered by Google.

Thanks to all our users who alerted us to these issues and provided us with vital feedback.

11 Oct 2006

It's release time again. And thanks to all of you who took part in our customer survey. Many of these new features are based on your feedback, and there will be more to come.

This month we have:

Google AdSense - SiteMaker supports Google AdSense. You can now add Google ads to your site and make money from it! (see Edit --> Google AdSense in the SiteMaker Toolbar)

Google search widget - you can also add a Google search box and make money from those searches too.

Back button support - you can now use the forward and back button in your browser to navigate your SiteMaker site just like any other page.

Page length - when you create a page of a different length, your site will resize without refreshing the page, so music will still play continuously. This works with the back button too!

Custom colour saving - now you can save the colours that you pick and add them to your own custom palate for use throughout your site.

Flash and JavaScript detection - we have updated the Flash and JavaScript detection for visitors to your site with the latest technology available. Anyone without the player will get detailed instructions on where and how to get it.

Transparency bug fix - objects will stay at the same level of transparency forever (no more rounding errors!).

WorldPay payment screens - now open in the same browser window to avoid pop-up blockers preventing easy payment.

Coming soon:

Video player widget - upload and play Flash Video (FLV files).

New Moonfruit.com - including the moonfruit company blog.

New Moonfruit.fr - you will be able to get a Moonfruit subscription in French.

And more...

01 Sept 2006

Some important new features have arrived!! This latest release includes:

Links, fixes and enhancements. We have:

Link limits - removed the 80 character limit on links, now as long as you like ;-)
Fixed PayPal links - you can edit them after setting them
Added AUS$ to PayPal - now accept payments in Aus dollars
HTML links - text links, button links, images links improved, all reproduced in your HTML for search engine indexing and HTML has been optimised - to reduce size of the site as it loads

More to come soon. What's in our next release?

Google AdSense - make money from serving ads on your site - if you want to ;-)
Back button support - navigate normally with the back button
Additional bug fixes - custom colour saving, and more

02 August 2006

Some important new features have arrived!! This latest release includes:

Text table widget - arrange your text in grids of columns and rows
Moreover news feeds - receive customised news feeds direct to your site
Application loader - gives you feedback while the edit environment loads

Coming soon will be (already in development, but not yet ready to go);

Support for Google Adsense - place ads on and make money from your site
Moonfruit.fr and new Moonfruit.com (including the moonfruit development team blog)

And more exciting things later in the year. We hope you're having a great summer!

19 April 2006

We've upgraded all our paid packages with DOUBLE the storage space, including the storage space of all our existing paid customers too. Now you can upload twice as many photos and mp3s for the same subscription price!

15 March 2006

So what have we been up to? Well it's a long story.

Since the launch of SiteMakerFree back in June 2005, we've had massive increases in volumes of people using SiteMaker. We're now getting over 1000 people per day trying SiteMaker for the first time, a large proportion of whom go on to become regular users of the free or paid product. So there's been a lot going on!

Therefore in the past few months we've been focusing on improving the infrastructure that runs SiteMaker to make sure that we continue to grow inline with our customers, and you still get a world class infrastructure. For example, we've just added a further 2 Terabytes of disk space to our server farm in the UK, beefed up the capacity on the database and application servers, and we're currently building a whole new server farm in France to support the launch of moonfruit.fr (more about that later).

But what about new features? Well, we're working on those too. As we move to supporting a fully multilingual version of SiteMaker, we've needed to make some changes to the core parts of the software to cope with this added complexity. This has meant less work on features, and more work on infrastructure. But you'll be pleased to know, we're nearly finished.

Moonfruit.fr will be the first launch of a new language version of SiteMaker, and will be with us in June, along with a new version of our website, www.moonfruit.com. We've also teamed up with www.gandi.net, who are the largest provider of domain names in France, so later in the year, we'll be able to offer you domain name services too, at low prices.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FEATURES? They're next. We're going to have a bit of a feature blitz once we've got the French version out. There are lots of things being talked about, so we can't commit quite yet until they're nailed down, but ideas include RSS feeds, Blog tools, better site statistics, and a fully featured shopping cart system for our ecommerce users. On the new version of Moonfruit.com, we're also going to have a SiteMaker blog, so we'll be able to keep you better updated about what's going on.

So that's about it for now. We'll let you know when the new French version arrives, and as we confirm new features, we'll make sure we tell you.

21 January 2006

Moonfruit is nominated as one of the top online brands in the UK and will be included in a new book called 'eSuperbrands' to be released this spring. See the website at http://www.esuperbrands.org

3 November 2005

Moonfruit releases new loading bars. You can now choose from a selection of loading bar styles in the file manager. Go to the 'Loading bar' section under the 'Design' menu on your site.

8 September 2005

Our eagerly awaited form widgets are released! To find these look in the 'Forms' folder in the file manager from within your site. Choose from one of our pre-set forms or create one of your own. You can change the number of fields, customise the titles, adjust the field sizes, change the colours, and choose the submission email address and end message. When a visitor to your site fills in the form and clicks submit, it sends you an email with their responses.

26 August 2005

Moonfruit releases 6 new site templates, several of which are aimed at customers wanting to build business sites. Check out the build page above to view these.

15 August 2005

Moonfruit releases a load of new media to spruce up your site. These include new horizontal menus, new clip art and images, new icons, and lots of new backgrounds. Have a look in the file manager to try them on your own site or look at this example site to see a selection in use. We also developed a set of 40 new gradients and effects widgets which are useful for creating moods and backgrounds for your site. Have a look in the 'gradients effects' folder in the file manager or click here to see them in action.

16 July 2005

Our new slide show widget is released. A great feature for sites with lots of photos to display. You can even add music for visitors to listen to while they view your snapshots.

8 June 2005

SiteMakeFree is launched! Moonfruit has again made a free version of it's award winning SiteMaker software available to use. SiteMakerFree provides everything you need to create a great site using the power of the fantastic SiteMaker tools. Each free site can have up to 15 pages, 5 MB of webspace, and won't cost you a penny!

8 June 2005

New Moonfruit.com launched! Moonfruit has redesigned its website to create an exciting new platform for SiteMaker 4. The new site includes more detailed product information and support, an extended site gallery and search features, and new ways to access your account history and settings.

Oh, and you can still build new SiteMaker 4.0 sites and try out the best website authoring software on the internet.

2 May 2005

Moonfruit launches new image effects! SiteMaker 4.0 now allows you to apply a number of different effects to any image you use on your site. Whether you want your images to fly-in, fade-in, or simply appear on your page, it's all possible with our new tools. Why not have a go and see what a difference it can make to your site!

13 April 2005

Moonfruit has been recognised as a leader in the Flash development community by winning the Best Application Award at the Flash Film Festival held in San Francisco.

This is a great honour for Moonfruit, as it reflects the views of the Flash community and the awards are only given to the best Flash content available on the internet.