Moonfruit Lounge - General chat

What a year!

Walt — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:15:00 +0000

2007 was quite a big year for SiteMaker, as far as features, fixes and new widgets flying off the shelves were concerned. The highlights have been:

New features and widgets - Google site search, comments widget, mail to a friend, copy & paste, new forum, themeable technology across several widgets, multiple select, a lot more new media, new advanced (fully configurable) form
Improved features - More disk space, more templates, page permissions and ordering, enhanced tables, rebuilt chat widget, FAQ search, text formatting
SEO - Published HTML now W3C compliant, Google Webmaster tools (Verify), auto-generation of a sitemap file

Below you will find our 2007 release dates with a more detailed list of the main components for each of those releases:

14 February 2007

We added new templates, a downloadable font picker in PDF
We made improvements to the Flash detection system and publishing of alternative content for sites
Improvements to the video player controls and better feed back when video feed fails
FavIcon selection now more flexible
Improved management of page permissions
Popup gallery now closes correctly when changing pages
Enabled jukebox player to continue playing when viewing a slide show
Toolbar login now identifies correct user
Using 'Del' when editing text will only delete the selected text and not the object
Fixed the disappearing ‘Multiple File Upload’ button in Internet Explorer

30 April 2007

Table enhancements - better text selection while editing, plus new 'table' templates including a new folder with useful pre-built tables
Google Site Search: visitors can search your site using Google search (as long as your site has been indexed by Google)
Increased disk space - on all SiteMaker accounts
Positional page adding – permits changing of page order in menu
New FAQs
Member edit bug - members can now user the File Manager correctly
Colour editor - typing in alpha value to HSV tab now updates the selected object
Black Juke Box - now works correctly on the Page Master

17 May 2007

Added Comment widget (with RSS feed)
Added Mail to a Friend widget – so visitors can mail your URL to other people
Membership enabled for all packages
Kewego added to the video widget - now adds videos from www.kewego.com
Site HTML (published automatically behind the site's web pages now W3C compliant - passes W3C compliance, so now much better for SEO
New Press section on moonfruit.com
Widget names can now be changed in the selection label
Video/images sizing bug has been fixed

21 June 2007

Rebuilt the Chat widget - allowing live chats to be hosted on a site
SiteMaker caching - better management of application files to speed up loading of sites
Usability improvements to text boxes
Improved FAQ search
Pages panel with 500+ pages - no longer generates “script running slowly” error
Improved thumbnail quality for uploaded GIFs
Object rotation – angle field now works correctly
Group emails – now sent from site name/site email address not username/user email

21 August 2007

Added Copy & Paste – paste (duplicate) object on same page at new position
Added Copy & Paste - paste object on new page at original position (paste in place)
Added new design templates
Fix for Myspace videos which will now consistently load
Video player will no longer display 'buffering' (and hang) at the end of play back
Audio from video will now stop when navigating to other pages
Fix for double pages loading (stacking on same page) - after using rapid menu clicks
Images can now be loaded directly into widgets e.g. image effects, slide show, polaroid tool
Link buttons now display correct name after link added e.g. site name, email address, page name

24 October 2007

Added new Forum – enabling variable resizing, setting permissions and edit rights for moderators, locking of subjects, searching of all posts, and RSS feeds for all topics
Added new Theme technology allowing easy customisation of widget appearance - applied to new Forum, Comment, Mail to a friend, Chat
Added Multiple select – using click and drag over multiple objects, holding the 'control' or 'shift' keys and clicking on objects to add or remove from selection, or using ‘Select All’ from the ‘Edit’ menu
Enabled Multiple Select so user can drag objects as a group, nudge using the arrow keys, delete, and copy and paste (even between pages!)
Added new media – including: 40 new fonts, 15 new crop tools, 40 new graphic elements, symbols and logos

20th Dec 2007

Added new Advanced Form – themeable, providing customisable fields and boxes, plus required fields and validation, emails sent from the person filling in the form, and data is saved for downloading in CSV
Support for Google Webmaster tools – Google Verify can be enabled
Automatic generation of sitemap file for website – which will be picked up by search engines
Text formatting - justified (proportional spacing) text now supported in standard fonts
File downloads in IE7 no longer show an error message
Updates to moonfruit.com including new design templates, better navigation, quicker access to the Forum and the Moonfruit Blog.

We’ve looked back over the last 12 months and the whole team are very pleased with what we’ve achieved. Obviously, with what we released last year, we set a precedent for delivering a lot of good features, minimising bugs, and improving communications. So, hang on to your hats, 2008 should be even better!

Missing Forum on moonfruit.com - back now

Walt — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:54:00 +0000

It's back now! Thanks. --- We are currently doing some work on the Moonfruit Forum so it will be out of action for a short while. This is unrelated to the scheduled maintenance we had earlier this morning. But worry not, we will have a forum back online very soon.

Ooooo the good stuff is nearly there...

Joe — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:38:00 +0100

I've been testing the new forum and multiple select features, and I must say, I'm pretty excited. The forum is going to be a really powerful new tool, and will finally allow you to manage large discussions and deep content message boards on SiteMaker. And the multiple select, well it just feels right. Much easier to move things around, nudge them, drag them, delete them and copy and paste them between pages.

Should be with you in 2 weeks or so. Nice.

Gandi.net launches .co.uk extension

Joe — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:03:00 +0100

www.gandi.net (Moonfruit's sister company in France) has launched the .co.uk extension, which is great for many Moonfruit customers who come from the UK. And don't worry if you're not from the UK, Gandi offers .com's, .net's, .eu's, and a lot more besides. Because Gandi is Moonfruit's sister company they are used to working with Moonfruit customers and can set up your domain to work with your Moonfruit site quickly and easily. Go on, have a go!

Nice weather we're having!

Joe — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:13:00 +0100

I've just got back from holiday in Cornwall. Apparently the warmest Easter weekend since 1985! Well worth it. Been anywhere nice recently?

But enough of my holiday antics, I'm sure you're more interested in the next release. We're dealing with a few unforseen bugs with the FP8 upgrade, so once we have a handle on that, I'll give you an update on when we can expect the comment widget. In the meantime, enjoy the sunshine!

Happy New Year!!

Joe — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 16:56:00 +0000

So it's 2007, and we're all back at work looking forward to the challenges this year will bring. We've got a few things were working on for the first part of 2007, like a new shopping cart, and better domain name integration, but what would you like to see this year? What should 2007 bring for Moonfruit and it's customers. Let us know, and we'll see what we can do.

What is Moonfruit and what do we stand for?

Joe — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:26:00 +0000

Moonfruit believes that everyone should be able to participate on the web, being a creator as well as a consumer. The original vision for the company when it was founded back in 1999 was to allow people to 'share their passions online'. A lot has happened since then, but this is still key to our vision. We aim to remove the barriers to technology and enable people to achieve results beyond their expectations quickly and easily.

Our tools are nothing without the customers who use them, and we want to recommit to this vision and work with you so that we continue to build the tools for the future.

It's been a tough ride since 1999, surviving the dotcom crash and all that went with it, and it hasn't always been easy to stick to that vision. But much has changed in this last year and we're ready to go again.

This new site is part of that process and contains a number of improvements for you. This blog will be our communication channel with you and through it we want to update you on what we're doing, and take your views on what we should be doing next.

We've also completed and are working on a number of new features which we've heard from you are important for your sites, and fixed a number of outstanding bugs that have been problems in the past. These include;

New features

Support for Google AdSense
Enabled back button
Table widget
Video player
Video upload and management
Custom colour saving
Google search widget

Fixes/enhancements

Long link support
PayPal link editing/shopping cart
Transparency bug fix - stops objects fading!

What we're working on

Full site statistics
Improved ecommerce features

So sit back and enjoy the ride. We're ready to help you create something extraordinary and we hope you'll support us in that vision.

What's new at Moonfruit?

Joe — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:24:00 +0000

At the end of last year, the management team of Moonfruit and a partner in France set up a new company with the aim of creating a new European internet group. This put Moonfruit in the UK together with Gandi in France (www.gandi.net - a top seller of domain names in France with over 500,000 domains) and created the opportunity to produce something larger than either of them.

Gandi was founded in 1999 and rapidly became the No 1 domain seller in France because of its commitment to strong internet ethics, always putting the customer and the rights of the customer first. This made it unique as an ethical and non-marketing led domain name company, and is still what drives it today. (Learn more about Gandi at www.gandi.net and www.gandibar.net)

We felt this was a great fit with Moonfruit who had a strong vision for enabling people to participate and publish on the internet regardless of their skills and experience.

Since that time both companies have been working hard to make this vision a reality. Gandi has relaunched its services and website, and is rolling out new domain extensions and multiple currency support. Moonfruit has redeveloped a core part of its software to support multiple languages, and will launch the French version in the weeks to come.

With both businesses we aim to offer a home on the internet (your domain name), as well as the means to build your house (SiteMaker), and this is only the beginning.

So it's been a busy year for us, but most of the change is now behind us, and we can concentrate on the future. We hope you'll enjoy being a part of that with us.