What a year!
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!
Comments
Nice one guys. Thanks for everything over the past year! Looking forward to 2008!
Love the new goodies! im still learning to play with all the new things!
happy new year!
cheryl turtlemoon
hi all ,.... i've been trying to verify my webiste on google and they are telling me to create a html file and upload to the title text of my landing page of my website ......
i cannot do that .....for love nor money .....moonrfuit customer service don't seam very helpful either
is there any way round this
good luck all
J
Hi Jems, yes you can do this. Google offer you two ways to verify your site, either by uploading HTML, or putting an ID in the HTML of your site. We give you an interface to put this ID into your sites HTML, which you can get to in 'edit' - 'manage your site' - 'admin' on the 'site information' tab. Simply cut and paste the ID they give you into the box on this tab and you're done.
I hope that helps,
Joe
Hi boys,
can't upload any pictures anymore!
Please help.
Thanks
Elle
I have just joined WebRing, and they want me to add an HTML code to my site, on the welcome page at the bottom. How do I add this code? Their support is sending me round in circles and I've already paid for inclusion. Please help.
Hi Joan,
Unfortunately SiteMaker is built using Adobe Flash and while, from time to time, we can replicate what some slices of HTML can do, the software will not accept HTML.
Allowing for this type of HTML inclusion is not something we could develop quickly and while I'm sure a tool or panel to insert WebRing code would be useful for a number of our customers we already have a program for developments of new features and software upgrades that will span the next 6 months. But thanks for the request I'll pass it on to the team.
Im looking to use recurring billing - does anyone have a solution for doing this with a moonfruit site? I'm not a developer but paypal have a subscriptions button generator but it requires server set-up API ... does moonfruit do this?
I have a number of sites with Moonfruit now.
It has really been very good for me and my partners.
Some of the latsest imrovements are very good too.
However, as I learn more about this web design game, I have noticed that Flash Animated sites are moving quickly toward a higher quality design standard.
I recently found a service which offers 100's of high end Flash Animated teplates which one can download then easily modify (or have some one else modify-even online).
Those templte sites leave Moonfruit templates for dust. Extreme rick media content and feel.
I will not mention the site here to avoid upsetting anyone, but I think Moonfruit's next challenge is to start providing richer Animated content and templates before people start to realize that more advanced options are out there and ready to use.
I'd like to stay with Moonfruit, but I would like to see some awesome animation options be made available...logos that swing onto page whilst spinning clockwise/anti clockwise, image galleries where the previous image shatters and dissappears into the new image as it assembles itself etc etc.....Audio samples that can be easily added to each button or menu item or move of the mouse. Ditch the "keepy uppy" animation and smily fa and replace them with sleek, new age images that will blow people away.
I wonder if Moonfruit will make that leap, or are happy with staying where they are? The trend will certainyl be toward sites that look and feel like the latest Nike advertisement, or Nokia ad etc...
I hope Moonfruit keeps up with the play.....Perhaps even a partnership deal with a supplier of these rich animations would do the trick?
:Happy customer who would like to see it go to the next level. eg) Moonfruit Premium Content.
Cohen
i think that out of all the web builders i tried this is the best so far but it needs to support flash so i can put online flash game on the site!!
Hi Kieran,
Thanks for the comments. As for supporting Flash, the software is built using Flash. If you want to upload Flash files that can be used on your site then you need to create SWF files that conform to our requirements. You can find the requirements in our FAQ under Adding Animations and Flash Content.
You could also have a nose around the Forum, as we have some very talented Flash developers using our sites who may be able to provide you with advice, if you need it.
Hi there,
My website is only a few weeks old so I'm new to all this; it's even the first time I've written in a blog (spot the middle-aged Radio 4 listener!). It's all been fairly straightforward except that I couldn't cut and paste the meta tags into the Google Analytics so I had to type them in; did I miss something here? The first time I did a search for myself on Google, the first entry was a pole dancer by the same name, but fortunately I'm now appearing ahead of her, thanks to links from a couple of directories I got myself listed in. I'm about to start on the excellent SEO guide, but would be grateful for any hints on how a music teacher can get recognised on the search engines. Many thanks, Pam
Thanks You
Hi
I have got my verivication code from google & i have went to "ADMIN" "SITE INFORMATION" on my moonfruit site,here i am presented with 4 input box's site name,site email,site keywords & site description all of which contain the relevant text my question is in which of these 4 box's do i insert my google veri code & do i have to remove the text that is there to accomadate this.
many thanks.
Hi Wayne, you actually need to use the Google Webmaster tools button at the bottom of the panel. The 4 fields are for meta data so leave those as is.
More details on how to set up Webmaster Tools and use Verify can be found on an earlier blog of ours:
http://www.moonfruitlounge.com/post...
Good luck!
Time setting on comments widget is wrong! When people send comments at 8.30 am, it was written 20:30! Please help!! Thanks
Hi Ochie,
The widget picks up the time on your computer. Perhaps you should check the time settings on your system. You may see 8:30 on the bottom corner but it's actually 8:30 PM and set to a 12 hour clock. If someone posts a comment on the widget any where in the world but it's 8:30GMT when they post and your computer is set to GMT then that is what you'll see: 8:30am GMT.
Hope that helps.
Walt