New Release 17 May 2007

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By Joe on Thursday, May 17 2007, 12:56 - Release notes - Permalink

Our latest release is now out. We've focused on increasing the interactivity on your sites (comment widget), and providing you with marketing tools (mail to a friend), and the ability for all sites to support membership. There's a summary and then a detailed description of some of the new features below.

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
Kewego added to video widget - now add videos from 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

cut & paste between pages
multiple select of page objects
and other secret things...

All the new widgets can be found in our 'favourites' folder of the file manager. Enjoy.

Comment
The comment widget is a tool that site builders can add to any page, which allows visitors to their site to post comments which are visible to everyone. You can have several 'comment' widgets on the same page, and give them a title relevant to what they're about, e.g. 'what do you think about this video?'. The comment widget allows you to moderate comments before they are shown, or delete inappropriate comments, so site owners have complete control. The comment widget also publishes comments to an RSS feed, which means that visitors can subscribe (not paid) to the feed and receive updates when new comments are added. The impact of all of this is that site builders can have far greater user generated content and interaction on their sites, which will keep people coming back for more.

Mail to a friend
The MTF widget is a tool that site builders can add to any page that allows visitors to send the site address to a number of their 'friends'. The idea is that when visitors see something they like on the site, they can mail the address of that page to other people that might be interested. The impact of this is that all sites will then have a marketing tool that they can put on every page which encourages people to spread the word about their site.

Site membership
Site membership is not a new feature, but has now been enabled on all packs. Every new site built will be set up so that visitors can 'join' the site and get a username and password. The site builder can create 'members only' pages, set edit rights on pages for certain members (to allow collaborative working/contribution), set certain features to allow only members to post, e.g. the comment, and do their own member mailing lists to update people with changes, new pages, etc. It's a bit like a friends list, but without publishing a list of all your friends on your site (which we might do later).

Comments

1. On Thursday, May 17 2007, 16:39 by MJGB

Awesome stuff MF. Keep up the great work.

2. On Thursday, May 17 2007, 17:02 by DJRYB13

Woo hoo! I have been checking this site every day to see when the Comment widget would be available! I can't wait to put it up on my site. I think this will be huge for increased traffic and return visitors.

Nice work guys!
www.thirsty13.com

3. On Thursday, May 17 2007, 19:39 by LavenderofPilat

cut & paste between pages
multiple select of page objects

These would be invaluable tools for my database website. How's the 'Search' tool coming along, for within a website, I wonder ? It was mentioned that one other than the present one was being worked on.

4. On Thursday, May 17 2007, 19:51 by joe

We're released the google search which works within your site (though only if you site has been indexed by google), but anything beyond that may be a while away.

Joe

5. On Thursday, May 17 2007, 23:45 by julietsweet

not sure if this has to do with the new version but last night i could move my menu, loading bar, ect. on page master. now i am only able to move the background box and title. nothing else is even recognized. like does not realize it should be able to be moved around and edited with page master. everything else is fine on the site, but i would really like to be able to fix a few things.

6. On Friday, May 18 2007, 09:59 by Walt

Hi Julie,

Thanks for letting us know. We've got our dev team working on a fix for this asap so we hope to have some good news for you soon.

Walt

7. On Friday, May 18 2007, 18:10 by criptor9

Hi there moonfruit,
This months release seems to be a fine addition to our library. The comments widget i am most content with but even better is the mail widget, i didn't think moonfruit could do it! There is a FAULT with the mailing widget though. When you put it on page master then use it like that, it will appear behind everything on each page.

I have an xbox 360 website on that requires each member to have their own member page. I am delighted that we have now got this addition to moonfruit, once again, thanks again.

Criptor 9.

8. On Saturday, May 19 2007, 18:22 by Marvin

I am not understanding the HTML! Did you add HTML? Cause in the update it said HTML, how do you use the HTML?

9. On Saturday, May 19 2007, 20:14 by adam

Marvin: What it means is that the HTML version of your site (which is read by search engines, people without flash or javascript) is now fully web standards compliant, not that you can add your own HTML to a site. This means that your site is cutting-edge in terms of being readable by search engines, screen readers and the like. It shows that moonfruit is committed to web standards and to making sure that your site is accessible to everybody.

The next time someone asks if your flash site is fully compatible with search engines, or accuses you of ignoring blind or partially sighted people, ask them if their site is W3C compliant like yours is. See http://validator.w3.org/ to check.

In terms of adding HTML, No, you can't 'add HTML' to your site, but there's almost always a way of doing what you want within sitemaker. It depends exactly what you need the HTML for, really...

10. On Saturday, May 19 2007, 20:46 by Scapehackers

Yes! This is exactly what i have been waiting for! Thank You So Much for the Members Only Pages! Yay! Now i can actually make my clan better and now i do not have to send out weekly newsletters and just have it on my site instead! (ill prlly still send newsletters, don't worry you Runescapers)

11. On Monday, May 21 2007, 20:21 by Atlas

Hi Moonfruit,

Thanks for the new widgets and all. I have a request, is it possible you make sitemaker like CMS content management sites, I would like to create a football news portal and I don't want to go look somewhere, I have been with Moonfruit for 7 years now and I like it but some widgets need to be renewed like the news blog, the directory, the chat and calender.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

PS: Joe, you did not reply to my post on the other topic.

12. On Tuesday, May 22 2007, 11:33 by joe

Hi Atlas, we're working our way through these old widgets now. The chat will be the next one that gets remade, and then we'll move on from there.

I'm not sure what CMS you are after, as the whole of Moonfruit is really a kind of CMS. Is there a particular feature you're after?

Joe

13. On Tuesday, May 22 2007, 14:01 by Atlas

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your reply, I am looking for a news feature where members can post news and where the visitors can leave their comments on any posted news. The other thing is special characters like é è ë ö which you can find in German, French and Dutch etc they need to be available again in the news widget.

Atlas

14. On Tuesday, May 22 2007, 14:20 by Jeff

Firstly a 'Big well Done' to Moonfruit for providing some useful new interactive widgets, like the comment Widget and the Send to a Friend one!!
It's a great addition to the sites which allows visitors to actually do something whilst online!!
Is there any chance that a Widget could be set up for people to send an instant message to another user on site? like on myspace etc? i have loads of Members on my Community Site and it would be great if they could see who is online etc and send a Message to them...
I have found a Free instant messenger programme at: http://www.userplane.com/webmesseng...
Is there any chance that a widget could be made to accept the coding of this? or indeed if Moonfruit could have there own similar Version?
I'd be grateful for any reply... as Moonfruit have good facilities already, but i think needs to move forward in providing visitors/members with more to do on the sites?
Anyone agree?
Thanks, jeff

15. On Tuesday, May 22 2007, 21:44 by Phil

Another great addition to your fantastic catologue of features... again making the impossible, possible. As for LavenderofPilat, the Multiple Select of page objects has been a feature I've longed for esspecially if you have images such as albums where you want to prioritise them from the 'latest'. It's also useful when you make changes on the layout. Cheers!

A feature I'd like to see is an 'Add to Favourites' link and an updated Forum and Guestbook to look as slick as everything else.

16. On Wednesday, May 23 2007, 11:17 by joe

Hi Altas, all the new widgets we produce will support all european characters, so you'll get them eventually. We will start work on a new forum and news type feature soon, though they may a while to produce.

Jeff, we'll take a look a the SMS options, though I'm not sure how the free versions will work.

And Phil, we've looked at the bookmark issue quite a lot, but have yet to produce a widget that does it, because there are cross browser compatibility issues. Our general position has been that we will only produce tools that we know will work on all browsers, rather than ones that will only work for some of your visitors. If and when we get a solution we are happy with, we will release it. ;-)

17. On Thursday, May 24 2007, 14:24 by Beridox316

Please let us know when the Youtube option will be fixed for our sites. We really need our videos back.

Thanks Moonfruit for being such a great company to host our web sites!

18. On Friday, May 25 2007, 02:27 by Jeff

It would be helpful to all of us if there was a "company-site" or display type site showing the NEW WIDGETS in action. I know there are things I've never tried yet and i find some of the things are buried in there. Or if they were coloured differently so we know what is new, newer, ..etc..

Jeff

19. On Friday, May 25 2007, 11:13 by joe

Hi Jeff, yes, we've had a number of requests for that. We'll try to put something together for some of the new releases, and when we send out our monthly newsletter we'll put a link in that too. Thanks,

Joe

20. On Saturday, May 26 2007, 05:59 by Byronious

I'm still dissapointed that the Site membership set up is still sitemaker co-branded. In other words, please drop the option on the Site membership sign up area to opt-in to a Sitemaker product offer/sign up offer.

21. On Saturday, May 26 2007, 06:06 by Byronious

All the new updates are great but what about a more robust file/image managment system on sitemaker...one file for all of my sites images make life way more time consuming and challenging.

I hate to seem like a complainer but these sitemaker usability issues that I'm talking about are so basic and would really enhance my Sitemaker experience.

22. On Monday, May 28 2007, 13:56 by Atlas

Hi Joe,

There's a bug in the comment wigdet, it does not show the latest posted comment on top but somewhere in the middle which is not good as the site visitors may think there are no new comments posted.

Thanks!

Atlas

23. On Tuesday, May 29 2007, 09:25 by joe

Hi Byronious, we will be working on a new file manager later in the year, and membership may get an overhaul too.

Atlas, you're quite right, very strange! I'll get the guys to have a look at it. Thanks,

Joe

24. On Wednesday, May 30 2007, 00:46 by Byronious

I will pay extra for a workable membership and mailing list option. I would also payextra for a full cms (content managment system) RSS Blog.

25. On Wednesday, May 30 2007, 19:19 by Atlas

Hi Joe,

Thanks the bug is fixed now the comment widget is working just fine!

I support what Byronious mentioned, I would love to have a full cms witth RSS blog as my site depends of latest soccer news.

Atlas

26. On Saturday, June 2 2007, 01:56 by 4wardeva

Hi there MF,

The new widgets are great and we have set up both the forward to a friend and comments widgets on our website - great work.
Just one thing we noticed in the test though - the email received by the friend shows the MF URL and not ours (www.mikeypowell-campaign.org.uk). Have I done something wrong or is this another possible future fix?

Great work anyway!

27. On Saturday, June 2 2007, 06:14 by Mike

MoonFruit RoCkS!!!!

28. On Saturday, June 2 2007, 22:42 by Atlas

Hi Joe,

There's a scirpt running each time I refresh my site, I think it's caused by the comment widget, please fix this bug.

Thanks!

29. On Sunday, June 3 2007, 03:35 by Atlas

Hi MF,

Are all Moonfruit sites down or am i the only one having this problem? Thanks!

30. On Sunday, June 3 2007, 18:25 by joe

Hi Atlas, what you do you mean by a script running? What are you seeing that's causing a problem? Thanks,

Joe

31. On Sunday, June 3 2007, 19:05 by 4wardeva

Joe,

I'm seeing the same problem as Atlas. When browsing pages sometimes the web page just goes blank only leaving master page elements visible and you have to refresh the site in the browser to get it back.

I left an earlier message about the forward to a friend feature (above).

Thanks

32. On Sunday, June 3 2007, 20:52 by Atlas

Hi Joe,

I get an Adobe/flash message that I need to let a script continue or make it stop. And I get this message each time someone leaves a comment on the comment widget. Just look here >>>http://img526.imageshack.us/my.php?...

Thanks

Atlas

33. On Monday, June 4 2007, 13:12 by joe

Hi Atlas, thanks for the info, we'll investigate. Can I ask what computer you are using, including processer speed and RAM?

4wardeva, are you getting the same 'player running slowly' issue as Atlas, or is your issue different?

Joe

34. On Monday, June 4 2007, 14:34 by Steve

The comment widget is great, but I think u MUST allow for the users to delete their own comments if they make a mistake

Cheers,
Steve

35. On Monday, June 4 2007, 21:29 by Atlas

Hi Joe,

I am using a Dell pc with processor of 2.40 Ghz and 512 mb RAM.

Atlas

36. On Tuesday, June 5 2007, 00:48 by 4wardeva

Hello,

Yes, the same as Atlas, only the page also goes blank except for page master elements.

Also, the email received by the friend shows the MF URL and not ours (www.mikeypowell-campaign.org.uk).

Cheers,
Tippa
4WardEver

37. On Tuesday, June 5 2007, 07:44 by joe

Ok, Altas/4WardEver, let me send you a mail and we'll try to work out what's going on. Thanks,

Joe

38. On Thursday, June 7 2007, 09:08 by Nesey

Is it possible to have the mail to a friend send your own domain name instead of the free one? I would like to make my own domain name the primary one

39. On Thursday, June 7 2007, 10:25 by joe

Hi Nesey, yes we're working on that. The probelm is that because sites can have multiple addresses, we're not always sure which one is the primary address. We'll make a change in the next few weeks that will allow you to pick which address is the primary, and hence that one will be used in communications about your site. Thanks,

Joe

40. On Friday, June 15 2007, 17:03 by MJGB

Hey Joe, just been thinking and to capitise on what someone previsouly mentioned, i think you should set up a place on the Moonfruit website, from where people can Post their ideas for nwe widgets and allow MF users to vote on them and so you can learn about the most wanted widgets and work from there. Just a suggestion :). Keep up great work MF

41. On Tuesday, August 14 2007, 03:28 by 租車

Is it possible to have the mail to a friend send your own domain name instead of the free one? I would like to make my own domain name the primary one

42. On Tuesday, January 8 2008, 02:43 by 航空公司

Just one thing we noticed in the test though - the email received by the friend shows the MF URL and not ours.

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