New release - 15 September 2008
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. You can also now transfer your domain names over to Moonfruit and use our website builder if you're with another provider. So have a look through the notes below and let us know what you think. Enjoy!
New features
- Domain transfers - customers can now transfer domain names to moonfruit.com for use with their SiteMaker site and to benefit from the free webmail
- 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've taken a bit longer than expected to finish all our domain name work and some other backend changes, so 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 ;-)
Comments
Sounding good Joe. Interesting to see your ecommerce tools. Hope the team had a good summer.
Can't wait to find out more about the eCommerce tools, thats the only feature thats lacking in sitemaker. I really can't wait to see them. yay. thanks for your continued work
Great changes.
Also can't wait for the ecommerce tools. Could you add customisation of your PayPal pages? I love my moonfruit site so much that i'm only holding on because i'm waiting for the ecommerce improvements - otherwise i would have flown the coop by now ;-)
Otherwise, great to see that the team's been busy with great results...
Great news! However i almost went back to my old provider as i asked last week how long it would be for the above and got a "no release date" reply. Anyway Moonfruit is the best site maker by far and glad i stuck around... Roll on the new year for the Ecommerce tools.
Keep up the good work.
I am ecstatic on the release. :) When is the next release that will contain more visual needs -- Horizontal slideshow -- runs across screen.
--- for designers that create flash from scratch that implement xml -- need to integrate this -- pretty important update. Would like to have a gallery that you click on the thumb and it shows up to the right -- imageviewer/ galleryviewer as some call it.
I cannot bring custom things into my design work because the mf doesn't allow it. PRETTY PLEASE bring it in.
Shame we cannot transfer in all extension i.e. .org.uk
@ lips-and-hips - glad to hear you're staying ;-). We don't always give release dates in advance as the development times can vary and even when the feature is complete, testing can still slow us down before launch. When we have firm dates we do try to communicate them, but we often don't know until the last minute.
@ Paul - you should be able to transfer in all extensions. The .uk's are slightly different from the other extensions as you need to start the transfer process from your existing registry (a push) rather than with us (a pull). Thanks,
Joe
So glad the domain transfer has finally been released. One quick question tho - if I transfer my domain over to Moonfruit, will I be able to set up mailboxes as I've done with other domains I've bought directly through Moonfruit?
Hi tiggernibble, yes once the domain is with us you can setup the mailboxes just as you would with other domains. Thanks, Joe
Why is the site still saying that you can't transfer in .uk domains? Am I right in saying this is something which was supposed to be possible with the new release?
Hi Leigh, yes you're right it was part of the new release. However our domain registrar has a temporary problem with .uk transfers so we've had to restrict this for the time being. We expect to be able to unlock it again in the next few days. Sorry about that, but we're working with them to resolve the bug on their end. Thanks, Joe
Hi Joe-
Thats great news, will look forward to seeing that fix in the next few days then. Just desperate to transfer a domain over.
Cheers!
Great work guys, keep it up.
Since you've mentioned e-commerce tools. Would there be any chance adding a feature to assist digital downloads, something to communicate with PayPal's 'IPN' (Instant Payment Notification) so that we can we can sit back, relax and let our website run on autopilot (for digital downloads that is). I'm currently using third party tools (digivendor) which means that buy now links are sometimes blocked as a pop up through my website (changing how external links are opened would be great also), I also have another e-commerce website (with Interspire) which has this feature as standard so can't see it being too difficult to implement.
Just an idea which think could convert more Moonfruit visitors into customers and help myself out at the same time.
Hi James, yes we are looking at having digital downloads as part of the new ecommerce features, but none of it is finalised yet. Thanks, Joe
regarding downloads and security - in particular for indie bands hoping to use moonfruit as a platform to sell their own music, is there a way of keeping music which may be accessible as a sample to listen to safe from shareware harvesters such as 'Real' or Ares which often seems to be used to harvest music from sites viewed in a browser.
Hi Oriain,
Unfortunately, there is little we can do. Any media than can be viewed or listened to by a visitor provides the opportunity to be 'intercepted' by the software you mention and then offered for download.
You simply offer a short 'sample' as Amazon have done in the past. This can still be downloaded but as it is a sample and not the entire song then your catalogue isn't really compromised.
That's the best solution we can offer at the minute. We yet find a way to block this sort of intervention but it will not be any time soon.
-Walt
There seems to be big problems with MF and video you tube links not working and Flash videos uploaded to sites are not playing sound .
Could you lets us all know what you are doing to fix this
Thank you for the update. Will you be releasing a new video player that allows for a playlist?The purpose would be to allow viewers to select one of many videos and it would play in the same video player. Please reply as soon as you can, it's becoming a pressing issue for my work. Thank you!
What are you guys doing...this is a big business you have hear...not the old days when you just addressed or talked to us when you felt like it or got around to it...BELEIVE US..WE MAKE MONEY ON WEBSITES...this is not a KIDS WEBSITE BUILDER ANY LONGER!!!!
Thank you Bikini Joe, we are very aware of how important site features are to our customers and we do our best to ensure that they are robust. We do not for minute take any of our customers needs lightly.
As to the video player, this is only being seen for links to YouTube, not MySpace or Kewego. However YouTube does appear to be the biggest supplier of videos to our customers and therefore causing more impact.
Our video player gets a feed from YouTube which relies on their parameters and data being consistent so that we can publish what is being broadcast by them. Of late they have been making small changes on a regular basis which is breaking the feed. In some cases we have had to fix this to adjust to their new data feed while in others they have fixed the problem themselves. We are still trying to find a way to ensure that any changes at YouTube do not affect customer's videos but that fix is still proving elusive. In the past YouTube have made very few changes, so the need was not there. But of late the changes appear more regular so we will keep looking for a longer term solution.
In the meantime our developers are working on fixing this current feed problem as quickly as possible to get all (YouTube) videos working again and we will post in the Lounge and the forum as soon as it has been fixed.
Thank you for your understanding.
The bug has now been fixed!
We will post a more lengthy article on YouTube, the video problem and long term solutions shortly.
Thanks
Hi, the new updates sound interesting as usual - good work. However, I asked some time ago if any future updates were going to include the ability to place an image amongst a scrolling block of text. At the moment we can create a fixed size box for text to scroll up and down but are not able to insert an image. Is there any movement on this? Is it likely to happen? Moonfruit works very well for me but this is one feature I am literally desperate for on most of my websites. I really don't want to have to bore myself to tears by brushing up on and switching back to Dreamweaver. Sitemaker is so much more fun to use. Thanks, Daniel.
Hi Joe
The seems to be a problem with the way that page meta data is used on the new release. My website has dropped right down in the google ranking since the new release was introduced.
The new moonfruit displays the SITE meta data in the HTML page that search engines index. The old version displayed the PAGE meta data, and gave much much higher page ranks.
At the moment, the page meta data you enter for each page doesn't seem to be getting used properly.
Could someone have a look at the way that page meta data is used? Moonfruit sites seem to be slipping right down the search engine page rankings because of this problem.
Hi Andrew, let me take a look into that and get back to you. You have to go into HTML mode to see the data on each page, but I see what you mean. Let me find out more and I'll get back to you ASAP. Thanks, Joe
Hi Andrew, you were quite right. This bug has been fixed now and the pages should be showing the the correct information. Apologies about that. Joe
I was wondering, is there anyway to get my blog/news page to work like this news/page.. that is have a short story and the ability for visitors to comment on it.
I know there is already a comment widget, but really looking for something exactly like what I'm posting on now.
Hi Joe,
Can you confirm that problem that Andrew had has been fixed for all of us, because when I click source to see the html code in other pages, the meta data is also showing as the site meta data....
sorry to spam 3 messages in one go - just want to add that when I use google web tools and look on site: mywebsite.com - it generates a link of all my google indexed sites but they all show with the same description (the site meta description) instead of their individual page descriptions.
Hi wing, yes it has been fixed for all of you. You need to go to 'view' 'html version' to browse the html version of your site before clicking 'view source' on each page. If you are browsing the flash, the keywords will always look the same, because the actual HTML page does not refresh.
If google is showing the same data for each page, this may be because it indexed them while this error was live. But next time it reviews them it will show the correct data. I hope that helps,
Joe
Excellent work guys. Are .ca transferable? Probably not I think you need to have an office address in canada. So if the .com is transferred than one cans et up pop mail in outlook etc, ?
thanks
Jeff
Hi THT,
As you thought, .ca is not a top level domain we currently support. If you do transfer a .com then you will be able to set up email and access if using POP/3 and IMAP, so Outlook will work quite easily.
Walt
Keep up the good works peeps!
Sorry about the power failure... hope all is well now! As we at the radio station where scuffing our hair up over it!
Glad its sorted now.
New features are pretty cool now to.
Hi, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but on my moonfruit created website,
www.caisbistro.com
you can see on the welcome page that i have a twitter feed. A drop-down sub menu "Our Menus", when dropped down, disappears behind the twitter feed. Can anyone out there help me fix it? Thanks very much in advance!
Hi Moose, the HTML Snippet widget uses a floating layer so you have to move it out away from any other site functions including the menus as they will open beneath the widget. So, you simply need to reposition it.
Regards,
Walt