There are import security related changes with this release. These include the following:

• Blog spam filtering
• New Password Strength Requirements
• Incorrect Password Lockout

Blog Spam Filtering

Basic spam filtering is available with Captcha. For advanced spam filtering, you need to obtain your own Akismet API subscription. After you obtain the subscription, you can enable advanced spam filtering by adding your API key in the website settings for your website. After you do this, spam filtering will be applied to all blogs on your site.

New Password Strength Requirements

Passwords are now subject to more secure restrictions. Previously passwords had to be at least six characters in length. With this release, passwords must be a minimum of 10 characters. The password must also contain at least three of the following character types:

• lowercase letters
• uppercase letters
• numbers
• special characters

After the release, existing passwords will continue to work, but any new passwords are subject to the new requirements.

Incorrect Password Lockout

This release also introduces a new security measure for password entry. Now if a user enters an incorrect password the user account is locked for a configurable amount of time. After the specified time lapses, the user can attempt to login again. As an alternative to waiting, users can contact support to have their account unlocked.

Slide Show Enhancements

This release brings a couple of important enhancements to the image gallery. You now have several new transition effects for the gallery. Additionally, galleries now let you use indexed navigation for slideshows.

Previously, you had a limited number of transitions for slideshows. These were no effect, slide, or fade. Now, when your gallery is formatted as a slide show, you have many new effects to choose from. These include:

• No effect
• Collapse
• Fade
• Fade/Rise
• Fade/Slide
• Scale
• Slide
• Wipe 

Another new feature for slide shows is indexed navigation. Previously, your navigation choices were previous and next. Now you have the option to add indexed navigation to the slide show. By clicking an item in the index, visitors can jump directly to that image in the slide show. You can format the index as numbers.

You can also format the index as dots.

Site Search

Site search brings you two new enhancements to the search functionality on your site. These include

• Targeted Search Results
• Exclude Page from Search Results

Targeted Search Results

The search token now lets you specify new attributes to enable targeted searching of content. The attributes include:

• target=determines which types of items are being searched. The value is a comma separated list. For example blog, calendar, store.
• displayAdditionalInfo=True or False value that determines if additional information is included on search results page.
  
  • When the target is store and this attribute = True, the search results page includes the default item image and price range.
  • When the target is calendar and this attribute = True, the search results page includes the date of the event.

For more information on the search token, see the Search Token help topic.

Omit Page from Search Results

Certain pages such as hidden pages and pages that have not yet been published are automatically excluded from search results. You may have other pages, that are accessible on your site, but that you want to exclude from search results. You can now specify if a page should be excluded from search results. See the Exclude a Page from Search Results help topic to learn how.

Enable Featuring for Blog Post and Calendar Events

Blog entries and calendar events now give you an option to set them as a featured entry or event. Featured items display at the top of blog or calendar elements formatted as a list. If the blog or calendar element has multiple featured items, then they will all appear at the beginning of the list, and will be ordered by the default order setting for the list, for example, chronological or alphabetical order. Additionally, the featured event and post use the featured CSS class so you can style featured items differently from the rest of the list.

New Attributes for Shopping Cart Status Token

The shopping cart status token now let’s you format the cart status to also display items in the cart. See the Shopping Cart Status token help topic for more information.

Design Layout Updates for Viewing a Blog Post

The blog post view now includes a new layout and design to help simplify custom styling. Additionally, the blog view now includes the ability to reply to blog post comments. If you want to use the new layout for the blog post view you must opt in. You can do so on the advanced tab of the website settings. Simply select the Enable New Blog Post design box. It's important to note that after you enable the new blog post design, you cannot revert to the old blog post design.

See the 2017.2 Release Notes for what else you can find in this release

2017.2 Release Notes

New Features

• Added new attributes to the search token to enable targeted searches.
• Added the ability to exclude pages from search results.
• Added the ability to automatically close digital downloads. 
• You can now mark a calendar event as a featured event.
• You can now mark a blog post as a featured post.

Enhancements

• Added new transition options and indexed navigation for slideshows.
• Added Aria tags on the global navigation menu. New title and data-button-link attributes are now rendered.
• Added new attributes to the shopping cart token to allow for display of items in the cart.
• For digital download orders, marking the order as complete no longer notifies the customer that the order has shipped.
• Digital download orders are now marked as complete after the customer downloads the item.
• Updated design and layout for viewing blog posts. New design provides for easier styling and includes a reply option for blog post. You must Opt in to use the new designs. You can do so on the Advanced tab of the Website Settings. After you opt in, you cannot revert to the old layout.
• The Store General Settings tab now provide an option to allow switching between "Grid" and List" layouts for product tag listings.
• Added the ability to create an All Day event. The time is not displayed on the calendar for all day events.
• Added the ability to allow entry of customers address for digital download orders.

Issue Resolution

• Shopping cart and checkout pages are now disabled when the store feature is disabled.
• Blog tags now display properly on the tag cloud.

Order Refunds

You can now issue full or partial refunds to your customers from the orders detail pages. This feature is available only for orders that were paid for by credit card and only if your site uses the Stripe, Authorize.net, or PayPal Web Payments Pro payment gateways. When an order meets these criteria, the Refund Payment button is displayed in the Payment details section of the order details screen.

Clicking the button displays the refund amount field. By default, the refund amount is set to the total of the order, less any previous refunds for that order. You can change the amount if necessary.

Any refunds issued for an order are listed in the Order History section of the Order details page.

Redesigned Store Pages

Several store related pages now have updated designs that make it easier for developers to style the pages. These pages include:

• Shopping Cart
• Product Details
• Product Listing

For existing sites, the new page designs are not active. This is to keep them from possibly having an adverse effect on any custom styling you may already have in place for those pages. So, if you want to use these redesigned pages on a site, you need to opt in. You can do this on the Store Settings, Options tab. Simply select the Enable updated store designs box.

It is important to note that after you enable this option, you cannot revert to the old page designs.

Any new sites will automatically use the new page designs.

Sort and Pagination for Customers and Orders

The Customers list and the Orders list now give you the ability to sort the list by clicking a column heading. Clicking a heading once orders the list in ascending order, and clicking the heading again sorts the list in descending order. Additionally, the lists now also include pagination so you can quickly and easily page through them. You can specify the number of rows to include on each page by selecting the number from the Show dropdown menu in the upper left corner of the list.

Product Customization

You can now enable customizations of a product, for example custom printed or engraved merchandise such as a coffee mug or an inscribed necklace. When enabled, the product detail page displays a customization field where visitors can enter their customization information. To enable product customization, edit the product and go to the Advanced tab.

Images for Product Variants

You can now assign specific images to product variants. You assign images on the product variant details. When you click the Assign Images to Variant button, you can choose a specific product image to assign to that variant. Only images assigned to the product are available for selection.

Disable Escape to Login

The Escape key has always served as the shortcut key for displaying the login page for a site. However, it’s also common practice to use the Escape key as a cancel key. This can inadvertently lead to a site visitors displaying the login screen. You can now disable the Escape key for logging in to your site. To display the login screen, you instead go to the login URL. To enable or disable the Escape key for logging in, go to the Website Settings Advanced tab.

Select the Disable Escape Action box to disable the feature, or clear the box to enable the feature.

Show Description for Image Gallery

Previously, the description for an image in a gallery was not displayed in the slide show. Your only option for displaying formatted text was to enter raw HTML code in the image title and configure the slideshow to display titles. This release of LightCMS brings a new feature to the Image Element with a Gallery Style of Slideshow. The Show Description option now lets you display the formatted description text in the slideshow. This makes it possible for you to use the WYSIWYG editor for writing your description and then have that description display for the image.

To see what else is included in this release, review the following 2017.1 Release Notes.

2017.1 Release Notes

New Features

• Added the ability to disable the Esc to Login feature. To enable or disable this feature go to the Advanced tab of the site settings. Select the Escape Action box to disable the feature or clear the box to enable the feature. When disabled you go to the login URL to log in.
• Image elements with a Gallery Style of Slideshow have a new Show Descriptions option. Selecting this option displays the description for an image in the slideshow.
• The shopping cart, product detail page, and product listing element have all been redesigned with new layouts designed to simplify custom styling. Existing sites continue to use the old designs, but you can enable the new designs by selecting the Enable updated store designs box at Store > Store Settings > Options tab. It's important to note that you cannot disable these designs after they are enabled. New sites use the new designs.
• The Order Details page now includes a Refund button for orders that were paid with a credit card through the Stripe, Authorize.net, or PayPal Web Payments Pro credit card gateway. Clicking the Refund button initiates a refund.
• You can now enable customizations of a product, for example custom printed or engraved merchandise. When enabled, the product detail page displays a customization field where visitors can enter their customization information. To enable product customization, edit the product and go to the Advanced tab.
   

Enhancements

• The recycle bin now includes a Shortcut column that displays the shortcut for a deleted page. The column is blank for deleted elements.
• The Websites admin page now lets you sort the site list in ascending or descending order by clicking a column heading. Additionally, the list provides pagination for accounts that have a large number of sites. You can specify the number of sites to display on a page, by selecting the number from the Show dropdown list.
• The Allow search engines to index publishpath.com domains option is now cleared by default for publishpath domains when you select a custom domain as the default domain. This is an important SEO consideration when a site has a public custom domain. Allowing search engines to index the custom domain and the publishpath domain can result in lower rankings on search results pages. Indexing only the custom domain can yield higher search engine rankings.
• The Site Settings Advanced tab now includes a Body Class field that enables you to specify a body class to every page on the site.
• The store checkout settings now includes an option to use VAT (Value-Added Tax) instead of taxes on checkout. This option is to accommodate international sales.
• The Manage Customers page now provides the ability to sort the customer list in ascending or descending order by clicking a column heading. The list also includes pagination for stores with a large number of customers. You can change the number of customers to display on a page by selecting the number from the show dropdown list.
• The Orders page now provides the ability to sort orders in ascending or descending order by clicking a column heading. The list also includes pagination. You can change the number of orders to display on a page by selecting the number from the show dropdown list.
• The store currency format for Including Currency Type and Without Currency Type is now set to a default format based on the currency value if the store owner does not set the format.
• The Code element now includes a Title field. You can select the Display this title box to display the title at the beginning of the code element. Leave the box unselected to not display the title.
• You can now create product-specific discount codes. To make a code product specific, on the discount code setup page select the Limit Discount Code to Specific Product box, and then choose the product.
• You can now assign specific images to product variants. To assign an image, edit the product variant and click the Assign Images to Variant button, you can then choose a specific product image to display for that variant. Only images assigned to that product are available for selection.

Issue Resolution

• When the user highlights text in the text editor and then clicks the Document Manager button on the toolbar, the highlighted text is now set as the text for the document link.
• The checkout shipping country now defaults to the country where the store is located.
• The checkout screen now displays "Included Taxes" when it is applicable.

Text Editor

The new text editor gives you the same important features you’re accustomed to with a streamlined design, yet familiar approach to WYSIWYG editing. Here are some important highlights of the editor.

Design/Code View

Previously, Design view and Code view were accessed by clicking the corresponding button at the bottom of the text editor. These view are now controlled by a single button on the toolbar. Clicking the code view button once toggles the editor to code view. Clicking the button again returns it to the WYSIWYG view. Code view comes with other awesome new features: syntax highlighting and line numbers.

No More Show More

With the old text editor, the show more/show less button enabled you to expand the toolbar to display all available tools. The new text editor displays all tools from a single toolbar.

Contextual Toolbars

The new text editor displays context related toolbars in the editor depending upon the context of the task you are performing. For example, if your document includes an image, when you click the image a small toolbar with image related tools is displayed in the editor.

When you click a link in your text, the link manager toolbar is displayed below the text. This toolbar lets you edit the link or remove it. You still add a new link by clicking the link manager button on the main toolbar.

You can insert a table by clicking the table button on the toolbar and selecting the number of columns and rows. By selecting a cell or cells in the table, you can reveal the table options toolbar.

The Media Manager

The new media manager has a vastly different appearance from the old media manager, while providing you with the same important features, plus some exciting new ones.

As before, the media manager is accessed by clicking one of the media buttons on the text editor toolbar, these include the Image Manager button or the Document Manager button.

More Elbow Room

At first look, you see that the most noticeable change with the media manager is that the window is much larger than the old media manager. This makes for easier navigation and image management. The window layout is familiar with folders on the left side of the window, files in the middle, and file properties on the right side of the window.

Show File Types

One exciting new addition to the media manager, is the option to display files of specified types. With the old manager, the displayed file types were dependent upon how you accessed the media manager. For example, if you clicked the insert image button on the toolbar, then the media manager showed only the image files. The new media manager lets you choose the file types to display by selecting them from the dropdown list at the top of the window.

 Options include:

• Show: All
• Show: Audio
• Show: Documents
• Show: Video
• Show: Images

Drag and Drop to Add Files

To add files with the media manager, you can click the add button and browse to the images you want to upload. This method is similar to the old media manager, but now you have another option for uploading images. Drag and drop! Simply select one or more images on your computer then drag and drop them on the media manager window. This uploads them all to the currently selected folder in the media manager.

To add an image to your text, click the image in the media manager to select it, and the right pane displays the image properties and lets you set the attributes, including SEO related attributes such as title and description and formatting attributes such as height, width, and alignment.

After you set the image properties, simply click the insert button to insert it into your text.

See the following release notes to see what other changes this release includes..

2016.4 Release Notes

Enhancements

• Updated the text editor.
• Updated the media manager.

Resolved Issues

• Modified iCal feed updates to not overwrite thumbnails and featured images.
• RSS feeds now correctly update.
• The PayPal payment option for the store no longer requires the email address.

Addition to Head, Body Header, and Body Footer

For quite some time, LightCMS has given you the option to easily include code such as Google Analytics tracking code or CSS in the area of your LightCMS pages. You could do this at the site level and on a page by page basis. This release greatly expands on that feature by giving you the option to also add code to immediately after the opening tag and to immediately before the closing tag. When you use a combination of additions to and on the website settings and also on page settings, the result appears like this:

This greatly simplifies the process of adding code to specific areas of a page. Need to add Google Tag Manager Code to immediately after the opening tag? Simply place it in the new Body Header field on the Website Settings Advanced tab.

Do you have special CSS in the HTML Head of the website settings, but need to override it on a specific page? Simply place the CSS override code in the HTML Head area on the Page Settings Advanced tab.

The Body Footer field on the website settings lets you add code to immediately before the closing tag on the page. For example, add your AdRoll Re-Targeting code to the  Body Footer field on the Website Settings to include it immediately before the closing tag on every page.

You get the idea. These new options greatly simplify the process of adding code to your pages The Store Checkout settings also lets you add code to the HTML head, body header, and body footer. Any code that you add to the checkout settings, is included on the checkout pages and on the Thank You page.

Quicker Access to Editing Template Code

Previously, editing template code was several clicks away from whatever page you were on. The page bar now includes a new Edit Template Code button that lets you quickly open the code editor.

Clicking the button, opens the code editor and displays the code for that page’s template.

New RSS Options and Improved Feed Validation

This release also brings expanded options to the Blog Elements RSS settings. Previously the only configuration option for RSS Feed was Alternative URL. Now you have several more options which help improve feed validation for services such as iTunes. These options include:

• Language, the default is English, but you can choose from many others.
• Category which lets you specify a category for the feed.
• Explicit notification regarding the feed:
• Yes-explicit
• No-not explicit
• Clean-a cleaned up version of explicit material
• Enter more information about the feed in the Description field.
• When Include the featured image in the RSS feed is checked, the featured image is included in the RSS feed.

One additional new option for RSS feeds is the RSS Cover Art. This lets you specify an image to use as cover art on services such as iTunes. The image file must be either be in .jpg or .png format. Image dimensions should be square with minimum dimensions of 300 x 300 pixels and Maximum dimensions of 3000 x 3000 pixels. The suggested size is 1400 x 1400 pixels or greater. To qualify for featured placement in iTunes, the dimensions must be 3000 x 3000 pixels. Learn more about featured image requirements here.

Now Streaming

As part of the RSS enhancements and improved RSS validation, the system now supports byte-range requests. This means the system now supports the ability to stream the most common audio and video formats. Previously, if a visitor clicked a link to an audio or video file on your site, the full audio or video file had to be fully downloaded before it could be played. Now when a visitor clicks a link to an audio or video file, the media begins to stream and there is no need to download the file.

New Responsive Design: Flex

As if everything listed above wasn’t awesome enough, how about we top it off with a new responsive design? A new theme, Flex is available in the Featured Designs section of the Gallery. Click the image below to see an expanded view of the theme.

You can also see it in action for yourself at designs.publishpath.com/flex.

See the following release notes to learn more about this release.

2016.3 Release Notes

New Features

• Added a Body Header field to the Advanced tab under Website Setting. Any content entered in this field is placed immediately after the opening tag on the page.
• Add a Body Footer field to the Advanced tab under Website Settings. Any content entered in this field is placed immediately before the closing tag on the page.
• Add a Body Header field to the Page Settings Advanced tab. Any content entered in this field is placed immediately after the opening tag.
• Add a Body Footer field to the Page Settings Advanced tab. Any content entered in this field is placed immediately before the closing tag.
• Add an HTML Head field to the Checkout Settings General tab. Any content entered in this field is placed immediately before the closing tag on the checkout pages and on the Thank You page.
• Added a Body Header field to the Checkout Settings General tab. Any content entered in this field is placed immediately after the opening tag on the checkout pages and on the Thank You page.
• Added a Body Footer field to the Checkout Settings General tab. Any content entered in this field is placed immediately before the closing tag on the checkout pages and on the Thank You page.

Enhancements

• Renamed the Google Analytics field on the Store Settings SEO tab to HTML Head and moved the field to the Advanced tab.
• Any code in the HTML Head field on the Website Settings, now also renders on the checkout pages and on the Thank you page.
• Created a new Users and Roles tab under Website Settings and moved website access options from the Advanced tab to the Users and Roles tab.
• Added Additional RSS configuration options including:
  • Language
  • Category
  • Explicity
  • Description
  • Include Featured Image in RSS Feed
•  Added a new Edit Template Code button to the page bar. Clicking the button opens the code editor and displays the template for the current page.
• To prevent spamming, the Evite element now restricts the number of messages that can be sent in a day to 30 messages.
• The system can now handle streaming for the most common audio and video formats.

Design agencies such as Striking Alchemy, Collision Media, Marcher Designs, Prime Inc., Screen Four and so many more are all taking advantage of the LightCMS Developer Program and seeing great success.

But having the right platform in place is just one part of what goes into running a successful design agency, albeit, a very important one.

We covered this topic before where we shared some of our own tips for running a successful design business. For this post, we sought out some tips/advice from designers and agencies who are working on the frontline every single day serving clients while also building their business. Here are some of their best tips.

Never Stop Hustling

Dennis Michael from Wake Creative, a boutique design studio based in Canada and Travis Bennett, managing director at Studio Digita both suggest that designers must think like a business owner first, designers second, and never stop hustling. Even when you think you are too busy to take on more clients, you still need to be out there looking for new work. Bennett warns that “if new leads aren't coming in regularly, or you're not able to convert the ones that do come in, your agency will be dead in the water before you know it.”

First Impressions Are Everything

If you don’t look good, do you really think prospective clients will want to work with you? According to Michael from Wake Creative, they definitely won’t. He warns that “designers need to put their money where their mouth is. If you are selling logo design, make sure your logo is awesome. If you are pitching brand development to clients, make sure your brand is spot on.”

You’re Only as Good as the People You Hire

Without the right people to serve your clients, your business could suffer. Jean H. Paldan, managing director with Rare Form New Media has an interesting approach to finding the right employees by asking perspective employees if they like their family. “Your employees are essential when you are growing. They have to be good at what they do, that's a given, but what is even more important is that they fit in with your company. When we hire people, one of the last questions we ask during the interview is if they like their family. Even if they come from the family from hell, if they are willing to disparage their family to you, that's a warning sign about loyalty and their overall character. Over the years we have had employees who had horrible families, but when they answered, they did so with respect for them.It's amazing how powerful this question is, and it will help you get the right people working for you.”

Don’t Try to Sell What You Don’t Do Well

Don’t spread yourself too thin. Sajeel Qureshi from Computan shared, “most boutique agencies are experts in a few disciplines, but they communicate themselves as a full-service agency. If you’re an agency that does design really well, then continue to do design really well. Don’t promote yourself as capable of web development, SEO or copywriting. In contrast, if you’re an agency that does development really well, don’t promote your design skills. As a result, you’ll attract the right clients and will be able to exceed expectations.”

Know What Your Ideal Client Looks Like

The perfect client/agency relationship isn’t always that easy to come by. Sometimes that chemistry just isn’t there. While most agencies don’t have the luxury of being too selective when it comes to taking on new clients, Jodi Hersh, President and Creative Director for Orange Star Design, Inc. suggests that “agencies should define upfront what their ideal customer will look like, what problems/needs will they have and how will they solve them?” Sticking close to this methodology, according to Hersh, will help determine which clients you choose to accept.

Do you have any of your own tips to share that have helped your business be successful? Please share in the comments below.

Learn More:

Download the LightCMS ebook for even more tips to help you run your design agency.

Product List Tag View

For quite some time you have had the option to tag your products. This release of LightCMS lets you put those tags to use in a tag list layout for the Product Listing element. This layout lets you give visitors to your site an alternative method for browsing products based on their assigned tags.

The tag list serves as a great supplement to an existing product list. For example, the main body of your page may include products in a list or grid layout, and the sidebar displays a tag list of products.

To create a product list with tag list layout, simply create the product list and choose the tag list layout option in the settings.

Tag List on Product Detail Page

This release also brings you a new feature that lets you include a tag list on the product detail page.When enabled, the product detail page displays a listing of all tags assigned to the item. This way shoppers can quickly access a listing of similar or related products. Clicking one of the tags displays a listing of all products that have been assigned the same tag.

You can enable this feature on the Basic tab of the store general settings.

Calendar List with Summary

We recently brought featured and thumbnail images to the Blog element, and this release brings you another exciting new option for the Calendar element: List with Summary. Much like the list with summary works on the blog, this view lets you format the Calendar element as a list of events with the event name, time and date, and a summary of the content for the event. This is a great view to use, when the event name just can't do the event justice, and you want your visitors to know how unmissable the event is!

To format a calendar for list with summary, simply select the List with Summary option from the Style list in the calendar settings.

New Design, Swyft

This release also brings you an exciting new design theme, Swyft. Click the thumbnail below to view a larger image or check it out at designs.lightcms.com.

To see the design in action for yourself, log in to LightCMS and select Design on the admin toolbar. You can find the design in the Featured Designs section of the gallery.

2016.2 Release Notes

New Features

• Added a new List With Summary view to the Calendar element.
• Added a new Store Tag view to the Product Listing element.
• Added a new design theme, Swyft.
• The store settings now includes an option that lets you include a list of a product's assigned tags on the product's detail page.

Resolved Issues

• Thumbnail and featured images are now copied to all instances of recurring events.
• Calendar iCal import now handles recurring events that have been edited after the original creation.
• When a site had a large number of pages, users were prevented from granting view and edit rights on the edit role page.

We’d love to get your thoughts. For those LightCMS users, did the reviewers miss anything that you feel is important? What would you add?

For those new to LightCMS, what questions do you have about LightCMS?

LightCMS: A Hosted Solution For Creating Websites

What is LightCMS?

LightCMS is a Content Management Software that you can use to build websites in a simple and intuitive interface. It can be used to power any type of site, be it a blog, an ecommerce store, or an online portfolio.

However, just because LightCMS focuses on ease of use, it doesn’t mean it lacks in features or does not allow you to customize your design properly. Everything you build with LightCMS is fully responsive and mobile-friendly.

But that is not all. LightCMS offers a full set of custom templates that you can choose and configure to suit your needs. And if that does not work for you, for advanced users, LightCMS also offers the ability to tweak the code in HTML, CSS or JavaScript, thereby allowing you to truly customize your website as per your requirements. For that purpose, LightCMS has an inbuilt code editor.

Regarding working, you can add content and elements to your pages within minutes using the point-and-click interface of LightCMS. It offers drag and drop, so you can edit directly on the front-end, and also preview your changes as you go along. LightCMS supports all that you might need to display on your site: images, media, blog posts, photo galleries, custom forms, and a lot more!

If you are looking to set up an ecommerce store, LightCMS has specialized tools and features to help you out. You can quickly add products to your ecommerce store, and sell any combination of physical or digital goods right from your store. LightCMS also offers a secure shopping cart and checkout workflow, in addition to handling payments and letting you communicate with your customers from within the CMS interface.

And before you ask, LightCMS comes with fantastic SEO features. It offers automated XML sitemaps, Open Graph metadata and tags, keyword-rich URLs, 301 redirects, robots.txt files as well as analytics and statistics for your website. You can integrate Google Analytics to help you assess the growth and performance of your site.

As LightCMS is a hosted CMS, it takes away the hassle and tension of web hosting from you. Your content is stored on secure and redundant cloud servers, with guaranteed uptime and scalable performance. You need not worry about any such thing as installation, upgrades or troubleshooting, as all of that is taken care of by LightCMS. Plus, irrespective of the amount of traffic you receive, you will not be charged extra, nor will your website be penalized if you get a sudden spike in traffic. So yes, you can relax and stay away from worries related to web hosting, and focus on the creation and management of your website.

Pricing

LightCMS offers several different payment plans that start at $19 per month and go up to $99 per month for an unlimited plan. The actual monthly cost is dependent upon the number of pages, storage and products each individual needs. 

All plans include the standard features such as galleries, blogs, form builders, calendars, etc. Also, you get SEO features, premium hosting, ability to use custom domains, and all the other offerings of LightCMS.

Note that if you are creating a blog, your blog posts will not count against the page limits.

Conclusion

LightCMS is a versatile tool that can be used to put together websites within minutes. While the trend of late is for self-hosted CMSs such as WordPress; hosted Content Management Systems have a market and target audience of their own, and this is where LightCMS fits in.

If, for example, you are looking to quickly get online, and setup your online store or website within minutes, without having to deal with the hassles of web hosting or website maintenance such as software updates and security issues, LightCMS is very easily your best bet for this purpose! It takes care of web hosting, software maintenance, and updates as well as all other tasks, and allows you to focus on the creation of your website.
On the other hand, what if you are a web developer? Is LightCMS meant for you? Should you not go for something that gives you absolute freedom, and can be run on your own server?

LightCMS has a particular plan meant exclusively for developers. You sign up for LightCMS and are given the ability to resell LightCMS to create websites for your clients. You can set up your own pricing model, and among other things, LightCMS grants you SFTP access to get going quickly. More importantly, you do not have to deal with annoying tasks such as upgrades, server issues, etc. All of that is taken care of by LightCMS.

As a developer, you can work with HTML and CSS in LightCMS, and even modify the source code if you have a custom design in mind. LightCMS also handles automated client billing for you, leaving you with more time to focus on actual web development.

As such, LightCMS is an ideal pick if you are looking for a hosted solution that does not cost a fortune, and at the same time, gives you ample features and tools to build websites without having to worry about upgrades and web hosting. More importantly, LightCMS does not lock you down to any proprietary code or language either — everything is in HTML or CSS, and you can play with the source code as well. So you have the freedom of doing things your way when working with LightCMS.

Links

• LightCMS Homepage
• LightCMS Developer Program
• LightCMS Pricing and Plans

“Our approach is to create visually striking websites that attract people’s attention and engage them,” said Kosanovich, who runs Striking Alchemy from Pittsburgh, Pa. “We do that through engaging imagery and text that aligns with what the client want to do — is it a call to action, to generate a lead, to sell a product?”

Since 2011, LightCMS has been a core technology platform for Striking Alchemy to deliver results to small business, non-profits and community organizations from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas, California and Washington. Design flexibility and robust functionality built into LightCMS have made the platform ideal for Striking Alchemy to delight clients and grow its business.

“We try to combine a visually striking website with a rock-solid platform, and for us that platform has really become LightCMS,” Kosanovich said. “Once you understand the LightCMS platform, you can really do some pretty creative and impressive things.”

‘A Fantastic Tool’

Founding the agency in 2009 shortly, Kosanovich initially worked with WordPress, Weebly and Joomla, with mixed results.

“Nothing really filled the gap for what we were looking for in a CMS,” Kosanovich said. “I was up to speed on best practices and what you should have in a CMS, so I set the evaluation bar very high. LightCMS had a great combination of a powerful enough system that could handle design and deliver functionality without being cumbersome and bogging us down.”

Another beauty of LightCMS, Kosanovich said, is that clients don’t get bogged down, either. LightCMS’ ease of use makes it simple for clients to manage their own site updates in content, images, blog posts and more, while built-in responsive design ensures that sites render well across all devices.

“LightCMS has been a fantastic tool that our clients have found exceptionally easy to use and maintain on their end,” Kosanovich said. “Making text changes is very easy and clients really like that there’s a framework in place to edit the site.”

Flexibility to Grow an Agency

With the LightCMS Developer Program introduced in 2014, Striking Alchemy is now able to offer clients unlimited pages, a huge advantage over other platforms that charge by page minimums, according to Kosanovich. The flexibility to customize pricing models helps Striking Alchemy offer attractive deals and build long-term relationships with clients that also engage the agency for ongoing marketing programs.

Calendar Featured Image and Thumbnail Image

A few months ago we enhanced the blog element, enabling you to add a featured image and a thumbnail image to blog posts. We immediately started receiving requests for a similar feature for the calendar element. This release brings you the ability to add a featured image and a thumbnail image for a calendar event.

Thumbnail images display in calendar elements formatted with a list display type:

Event featured images display at the top of the event detail page. You also have the option of specifying if the event list should include the featured image.

You add featured and thumbnail images on the event settings Images tab.

Store Image File Name

Previously, to avoid file name conflicts, we renamed files when you uploaded them and gave them a GUID name. But, this wasn’t optimal for SEO. With this release, we now keep the file name you give the image file. So if you give an image an SEO friendly file name, it keeps it. To avoid file name conflicts, we append a sequence number to the file name if a file with that name already exists.

HTML Billing Email

Previously, billing emails were generated in plain text. This resulted in limitations on the appearance of the invoice and the information it contained. With this release, billing emails are now generated in HTML format. This provides not only a more visually appealing email, but also enables us to expand on the content of the email. The new email format now includes the start and end date for the billing period the invoice covers, helping to eliminate confusion over what is being billed. Additionally, the HTML email also enables us to brand invoices with a logo. The Invoice we send you is branded with LightCMS logo.

Your client invoices have a generic white background.

New Responsive Design

We're also excited about our newest responsive design. Theme Pillar is a new design created with blog themed sites in mind. Click the thumbnail below to view a larger image or check it out at designs.lightcms.com.

To see the design in action for yourself, log in to LightCMS and select Design on the admin toolbar. You can find the design in the Featured designs section of the gallery. 

This is just the first release of 2016 and already we've brought you some awesome new features. We can't wait for you to see what else the year holds in store.

2016.1 Release Notes

New Features

• The calendar element settings now includes an Images tab, letting you specify a thumbnail image and a featured image for a calendar event.
• Billing emails are now formatted as HTML and include the billing start and end date.
• A new responsive design, theme Pillar is now available in the design area of the website.

Enhancements

• To support SEO best practice, image files are no longer renamed on upload, and the files will retain their original names. If a file name conflict exists, a sequence number is appended to the file name to create a unique name.
• The edit info page now displays the last 4 digits of the credit card on file.

Product Enhancements

Last year was jam-packed with product releases that improved LightCMS and also made life easier for many of our users. Here’s a list of our 2015 release notes, in case you missed any of them:

User Registration

• Use the same email address across any number of LightCMS sites
• New Login and Register element
• Enhanced user profiles

Store Users

• Store users can now be enabled on the Store Settings Options tab
• User profiles now show purchase history and allow for editing personal information
• Checkout has been updated into a two-step process

Customized Checkout

• Customize header image & background color of checkout pages
• Display your logo at the top of the checkout page
• Edit button colors and fonts

Source Editor Update

• Redesigned, full-screen source editor
• Quickly assign custom roles to pages from a central location

Plan Builder

• Resellers can now create their own pricing plans
• Blog posts can now display a featured image at the beginning of a post

Global Elements & Secure Sign In

• Site elements now assigned Global IDs.
• New element token enables sharing across multiple pages by specifying Global ID
• Secure Sign In now controlled at the site level rather than user level

Default Page Elements, Title Heading Levels, and Favicons

• Define default page elements that are automatically placed on your page when it’s created.
• Site settings Basic tab now includes a Favicon upload option.
• Greater SEO control - change all element titles to any heading level, from H1 to H6.

Blog Thumbnail Images, New Default Template

• Display thumbnail images next to blog title in a blog listing
• New sites now use Liberty as the default template
• LightCMS Starter Plan launched

Ordering for Blog and Calendar Views

• Order blog posts by title or publish date
• Display as a list by popularity, with body, and with summary
• Order calendars in chronological and reverse chronological order

Client Billing 2.0

• Improved billing process for LightCMS Developers
• New account dashboard redesign

Page Publishing & Updated Design Manager

• Specify the date and time a page becomes available on your site
• More intuitive design manager navigation

Element CSS Class & Thumbnail Dimensions

• Specify a CSS class for each element
• Select dimensions for gallery thumbnail images

New Templates

We launched 6 new templates in 2015, all of which are fully responsive and ready to be used. You can check them out by following the below links.

• Hitch
• Overture
• Knox
• Flight
• Arbor
• Vast

Sharing Best Practices

Throughout the year, we try to blog about topics other than our own product and share information related to web design. We had some awesome guest posts, so we thought we should share them again. Here are the five most popular blog posts from last year:

• Guest Post: Master the Design Handoff
• Top 10 Free Tools to Help Improve Your Website Business
• Guest Post: Designing & Developing a Premium LightCMS Theme
• 7 Tips for Writing Clean HTML Code Clients Will Love
• 5 Design Elements to Help Maximize Online Sales

Looking Ahead

As great as 2015 has been, we’re even more exited for 2016 and we’re looking forward to sharing what’s in store for LightCMS. We’re so thankful for all the suggestions we received from our great customers and we always welcome your feedback. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve LightCMS, please send us an email at support@lightcms.com.

Thank you again for your continued support of LightCMS. Here’s to a great 2016!

Gallery Thumbnails

The Image element now includes settings that let you specify the dimensions for image thumbnails. These dimensions are set in the image element settings on the Basic tab.

Thumbnail dimension requirements depend on the gallery style you select. For Cropped, Hover Effect, Mosaic, and Mosaic Tight gallery styles you can enter either the width or the height dimension, and the other value will be set automatically to the value you enter so that the resulting thumbnail is square.

For Uncropped and Shadowed gallery styles, you can enter both width and height dimensions. Optionally, you can enter either the width or the height dimension and the other dimension will be automatically calculated. To learn more about how the system determines the best thumbnail size, see the Image Gallery Thumbnail Dimensions help topic.

Other image gallery related enhancement in this release are a simplified listing of gallery styles and a show captions option for the Cropped, Shadowed, and Uncropped gallery styles. Previously, the gallery styles list gave you lengthy descriptions for the different gallery styles. We simplified style descriptions to make choosing a style easier.

If you select the Cropped, Shadowed, or Uncropped gallery style you are also given the option to display captions for images in the gallery. When unchecked, the captions are not displayed. 

The Show Captions option is not available for Slideshow, Hover, Mosaic, or Mosaic tight gallery styles.

Element CSS Class

This release of LightCMS also brings you a new feature for applying a CSS class to a specific element. Each element’s advanced tab now includes a CSS Class field.

By defining one or more custom classes in your site template’s style sheet, you can apply a class to an element to quickly apply the attributes. The CSS class for an element is specified on the element settings Advanced tab.

New Responsive Design

This release also brings you a new responsive design. Theme Vast was created with ecommerce sites in mind. As with all the designs, this design is available for use on any LightCMS website. You can use the design as is, or if you're an advanced user you can download the source files and use them as a starting point for a new custom design. 

Click the image above to see a full-size version. You can also see the designs at designs.lightcms.com. To see the design in action for yourself, log in to LightCMS and select Design on the admin toolbar. You can find the design in the Featured designs section of the gallery. 

2015.13 Release Notes

New Features

• You can now specify a CSS Class for each element. The class is specified on the element settings Advanced tab.
• You can now specify dimensions for gallery thumbnail images.
• The Image Gallery Settings Basic tab now includes an option for displaying captions for images in the gallery. This option is available only for the Cropped, Shadowed, and Uncropped gallery styles.
• A new responsive design, Vast, is now available in the design gallery.

Enhancements

• The order information email now includes any special requests that the customer entered for the order.
• Increased the length of the product title to 255 characters.
• Made changes for more stable and timely indexing.

Clean code is akin to a well-laid-out and error-free email. It conveys your message clearly and without ambiguity, saving time and energy for all parties. Less thoughtfully written code resembles a hastily scrawled note, full of spelling and grammatical mistakes, which opens the door to misinterpretation and aggravation.

Taking the time to write clean CSS benefits you, your team and your client. Grouping, naming and indenting your code are very important factors in writing clean code and much of what we said in our post on writing clean HTML code (link) also applies to CSS. But there are additional steps you can take to ensure your CSS sings.

1. Remember the Alphabet Song

Chances are you will find yourself writing the same lists of descriptions multiple times in a single piece of code, for example, ‘font, width, border, margin, padding.’ Putting that list in alphabetical order ‘border, font, margin, padding, width’ not only makes for better readability but will make it easier for you to immediately spot and correct any duplication of terms.

2. Be Mindful of Browser Support

This is an area that changes regularly so do ensure that you and any developer peers keep up to date on what browser vendors are using for prefixes so you write code that has the best browser support. You can hand code or use third-party text editor services that can help you plug in the most current vendor prefixes to fully automate that process.

3. Put Comments in Your Code

Adding comments to code can act as a visual memory aid to clearly indicate why you (or a peer developer) did what you did at a particular point in time. If you use comments, do write them in a straightforward, conversational tone so the meaning is very clear. I find it particularly useful to add in a comment whenever my code includes a mathematical calculation to flag and explain which kind of calculation is being performed and how the result of that calculation should be expressed.

Clean Code Benefits You, Clients

Clean and uncluttered code translates to a faster running website, teams that work faster and more efficiently, and clients that are likely to recommend developers who take the time to write code that is reusable and easy to modify.

Less is more when writing code.

If you write code with the reader firmly in mind, you will focus on the importance of creating clean, readable, and accessible code that not only makes sense in the moment as you’re writing it, but is still fully comprehensible a year or two in the future.

Blog View Order Option

This release brings an exciting new feature to the blog post element: list ordering. Previously any blog post formatted as a list ordered the list in descending order by publish date. Now you have the ability to choose the order for the posts in the list. Order options include:

• Alphabetical by Title
• Chronological by Publish Date
• Reverse Chronological by Publish Date

You can use the ordering option in many different ways. For example, you may have a blog element that has a series of informative posts and the chronology of the posts is unimportant. Now you can order the list alphabetically by title so that visitors to your site, can quickly find a post based on the name.

In a different example, you may have a blog element where you write a series of posts and each post leads logically to the next--maybe each post is one step in a larger process. By ordering the posts in reverse chronological order, the first post in the process appears at the top of the list so that readers can start at the top and work their way through the listing to the bottom, instead of starting at the bottom and working to the top.

As you can see, there are many possible uses for blog list ordering. You can set order options for any blog post element that is set to display as a list, including:

• List
• List by Popularity
• List with Body
• List with Summary

To sort a blog element simply go to the element’s basic settings, make sure that one of the list type displays is selected, and choose your sort order from the Order dropdown list.

The Order field is not displayed for any blog element that is not formatted as a list.

Calendar View Order

This release also brings an order option to the calendar element. Previously, any calendar element that was displayed as a list, ordered the events chronologically. Now you have the option to set the order for the event list. Order options include chronological order and reverse chronological order. These prove useful if you want to include a listing of past events. Sort order is available only for calendar elements with the List or List with Description style.

Updated Registration Notification Email

The release notification email has been updated to provide you with more information regarding individuals who self-register on your site. The email that you receive now will also include:

• Name of the element used for registering
• Full name of the person who registered
• Email address of the person who registered

New Checkout Credit Card Options

Previously when store users were logged in during checkout, their credit card information was automatically stored in Stripe and pre-populated for them the next time they made a purchase. Store users now have two new options regarding their credit card information during checkout: do not store credit card information and use a different card.

Do Not Save Card

Some shoppers may not want you to store their credit card information and prefer instead to enter credit card information whenever they checkout. The checkout page now includes a new check box directly below the credit card information on the checkout page.

If a visitor checks the Do not save my credit card info box, then his or her credit card information is not saved. By default this box is unchecked. Customers whose credit card information is already saved, can delete it from the Purchases subtab on the User Profile page.

Use a Different Card

Previously, if a store user had a credit card on file, during checkout, the card information was automatically populated and displayed in read only format and the user did not have the option to change the credit card for their purchase. Store users now have the option to enter a new credit card during checkout.

The Existing Credit Card option is selected by default, but selecting the New Credit Card option enables users to enter a different card during checkout. The new card replaces the existing card on file unless the Do not save my credit card info box is checked. These options are displayed only when the store user is logged in and he or she has a saved credit card.

Edit or Remove Credit Card Information from Profile

Some store users may want to change their credit card that you have on file or to remove it all together so that it is no longer stored in Stripe. Those users now have two new options on the Purchases tab of their user profile page, Edit and Delete.

Clicking the Edit link lets users make changes to the credit card they currently have on file. Clicking the Delete link lets them delete the currently stored credit card so it is no longer stored in Stripe. 

2015.12 Release Notes

New Features

• Added an order option to the blog element to enable ordering of blog element lists in chronological, reverse chronological, or alphabetical order.
• Added an order option to the calendar element to enable ordering of calendar event lists in chronological or reverse chronological order.

Enhancements

• Updated the registration notification email to include more information, including the name of the element used for registration, the full name of the person who registered, and the email address of the person who registered.
• The checkout page now includes a check box that lets store users choose to not save their credit card information during checkout.
• The checkout page now includes an option so that a user who is logged in can enter a different credit card during checkout instead of using the card that is stored in Stripe.
• The Purchases tab on the User Profile page, now gives store users the option to edit or delete their saved credit card information.
• The LightCMS Developer Program can now be purchased online.
• Store managers can now make the phone number a required field during checkout. This comes in useful when using shipping services such as Fedex that require a phone number. This is set on the Checkout settings Options tab.
• The LightCMS Developer Program now lets you also copy trial sites in addition to paid sites.

I like to think of our role as developers as similar to that of craft furniture makers. They spend time working on design elements that the ultimate owner of the piece may never notice, but that enhance its durability and quality. At the same time, it’s clear at a glance what the item is and what purpose it serves. I apply the same principles to writing HTML code.

Writing clean code is a matter of taking pride in what you do in the craft of web development.

Clean code translates to faster running websites, teams that work more efficiently together, and clients that are happier down the line because they can understand and amend the language to their needs.

The most talented developers code with those readers in mind – here are my tips for ensuring they’ll be clamoring for more of your writing.

1. Get Smart About Grouping

Consider how you put elements together in your code as a way of aiding navigation. Keep your code linear with a clear flow from the header at the top to the footer at the end.

2. Be General, But Consistent in Naming

Use naming conventions that are not overly specific. The danger in opting for a column name, for example, that references a particular color, font style or position in relation to other code elements is that all of the above are likely to change at some point in the life of your code. Overly specific names may no longer make sense in the long term, so choose wisely. Ensure that your developer team all use the same style for class names so there’s no variance, for instance, in how a name might be capitalized, hyphenated or underscored.

3. Use Div Tags Sparingly

Use the correct tag or attribute and, in particular, think about whether you are overusing divs as you group block-level code elements like paragraphs of text and images.

4. Give Your Code Some Space

One simple thing you can do to make your code more readable is to indent your code so it’s clear when you’ve introduced a new code element that is a child element of the tag above it. Be consistent if you apply indentation within your code so the hierarchy within your code is clearly delineated and readers can use your indentation as a way to navigate through your code. Overly dense code is hard to read – white space is your friend.

5. Recognize Differences in ID vs. Class

When you’re applying a particular style to one or more code elements, you’ll look to use IDs or classes. An ID is for a unique element so it should only occur once in your code, ideally in the sections for website logo or header or footer. You may use a class, like ‘quote,’ over and over again.

6. Give Clients a Guide

Write code with the expectation that your clients will go into your code at some point to make their own changes to it. For instance, plan on including an index at the top of your code to let your clients know where particular code elements can be found.

7. Be Open to Corrections

Once you’ve written and reviewed your code, run it through a third-party validation tool to pick up any lingering errors which, if not identified and corrected, might negatively impact the running or rendering of the website you’ve created.

Clean Code Polishes Work, Pays Dividends

Clean HTML code forms the building blocks of well-designed websites, and establishes you as a talented coder in your field. While writing cluttered and poorly organized code might seem like a quick fix at the time, you’ll end up creating extra work for yourself. Imagine returning to fix, maintain, update, or build upon code that you wrote that uses bad naming conventions and lacks structure.

Remember: clean code is reusable code.

As you code, think about clear and uncluttered layouts, easily comprehensible navigation, and all the potential readers who may visit your work. Writing clean, readable, and accessible code benefits you, your peers and partners and your clients.

Using Crayon, you can now access thousands of existing web designs built on LightCMS to get inspired and find great ideas about what to build next. Designers and Marketers can use Crayon to filter designs by desktop or mobile, select from 35+ page types, 40+ industries and organize all of their favorite designs in one place.

For Project Managers, Crayon is great for collaborating on new design projects (called Collections) with your team and/or clients. In addition, users can record and save comments for efficient communication between team members.

The best part about our partnership with Crayon is that it’s 100% free for the LightCMS community. Give Crayon a try today and access several thousand designs using LightCMS!

Customize Checkout Page

You can customize checkout by selecting Checkout from the Store Settings menu. The two following screenshots illustrate the checkout page settings and the resulting checkout page. Click an image to see the full page.

Checkout Settings	Custom Checkout Page

Header Image and Background Color

If you don’t want to use a header image, you can simply specify a color to display instead by specifying the hex value or by selecting the color with the color picker.

Logo

If you do not specify a logo file, then your site logo is displayed in the center at the top of the page, just as it is currently.

Headings

By default, the text of headings on the checkout page are black. You can change the color of your headings by specifying the hex value or by selecting the color with the color picker.

Buttons

You now also have control over the color of the buttons and the button font on the checkout page. This makes it easy for you to customize the buttons to match the color of your logo, header image, or header background color. To customize the color of the button, enter the hex value for the button color or select the color with the color picker.

This new feature will be available October 27th. For a look at what else is included in this release, see the following release notes.

2015.11 Release Notes

New Features

• Added a new feature that enables users to customize the look of the checkout page. Items that can be customized include:
  • Header Image and Color
  • Logo File and Position
  • Heading Font Color
  • Button and Font colors

Enhancements

• The "https://www.lightcms.com/checkingout" shortcut now redirects to the new checkout page.

Resolved Issues

• If shortcuts are included in a product import file, the system now uses the provided shortcuts when importing the items instead of generating new shortcuts.
• The checkout thank you page will now properly redirect back to the primary website URL so that the shopping cart information is retrieved correctly.
• PayPal email address validation is now properly enforced when PayPal is the only payment option.
• Product detail pages can no longer be accessed when a website is disabled or expired.

But Hokuf has also found that LightCMS also offers great flexibility on the technical development side of site creation.

“WordPress developers might see LightCMS as simpler and want more advanced features, but I feel there’s nothing you can’t do in development with LightCMS,” said Hokuf.

“It’s all about creativity. Being a good web designer is one thing, but if you’re also a good web developer, there’s a whole other level of creativity in what you can do with LightCMS.”

Hokuf speaks from experience. With both technical and design skills, Hokuf founded Evolve Creative in Minneapolis, MN, in 2004. She left a management position at Northern Tool + Equipment, where she headed a team of 10 graphic designers. What started as a part-time freelance practice has flourished into a thriving agency, now in Bemidji, MN.

“We’ve grown from myself working probably 20 hours a week to six people working full-time,” Hokuf said. “LightCMS has been a big part of our growth. More than 90 percent of our sites are on LightCMS, so it’s a key player in the services we offer.”

100+ LightCMS Sites and Counting

After initially using Joomla as a CMS when she launched Evolve Creative, Hokuf began looking for alternatives. Joomla was at the time not available as a hosted solution, which left client sites more exposed to security breaches. Clients also found the platform difficult to use for ongoing updates, meaning that Hokuf’s time was often filled with troubleshooting issues and keeping sites up to date.

After finding LightCMS in 2007, Hokuf put it to the test by building a website for her husband’s business, AirCorps Aviation, which specializes in the restoration, maintenance and rebuilding of vintage WWII aircraft. Evolve Creative took flight from there with LightCMS.

Since then, Evolve Creative has built more than 80 websites with LightCMS for small businesses, government agencies and nonprofits, while Hokuf also built an additional 20 LightCMS sites as a contractor for Think Creative, a digital marketing agency in Minneapolis.

Evolve Creative clients enjoy how LightCMS lets them easily update pages and content on sites that are mobile-optimized and designed to attract and engage visitors and drive business, Hokuf said. Unlimited pages, storage and products at a set price through the LightCMS Developer Program is another benefit for clients who build out their sites over time.

“Clients can have a great presence online and know that their site is always going to be up,” Hokuf said. “They don’t have to worry about technical maintenance and can focus on their business, not monitoring downtime or uptime. It’s also great to be able to offer LightCMS with no limitations in pages and storage.”

Innovation in Development

Evolve Creative has taken advantage of development flexibility in LightCMS in adding innovative features to client sites, such as additional animations that enhance slideshow presentations. Many of those innovations are bundled into a set of seven prebuilt templates that Evolve Creative has recently brought to market.

Suitably themed for restaurants, retailers, contractors, agencies and other organizations, the templates are white-labeled as EvolveCMS and available for clients who want to build their own sites and handle their own licensing with LightCMS. Like the hosted sites that Evolve builds for clients, EvolveCMS templates reflect the development and design creativity that’s a focus for the agency.

“We’ve really pushed the boundaries of LightCMS,” Hokuf said. “An element might be there for one thing, but we might get creative and come up with an innovative use. Because we have both designers and developers, we approach things as something of a puzzle—putting pieces together to work in an entirely new way.”

Store Users

Store users is a frequently requested feature, and this release brings it to you. For existing sites, store users is disabled, but it will be enabled by default for new sites. Enabling store users is a simple process. Go to the Options tab on the Store Settings page and check the Store Users option. You can then enter the required email information, including the reply to address, subject, and the text of the email.

This information is used to send a registration confirmation email to a new store user who chooses to sign up during checkout.

On the checkout page, visitors to your store have the option to log in or to sign up. When they sign up, they’re prompted to enter name, email address, and password. When they submit the form, a message is displayed on the screen letting them know to check their email for a registration confirmation. This confirmation contains a link they must click to complete the registration. The message stays on the screen, and the system monitors the status of the registration and once the link has been clicked, the screen automatically refreshes and populates the checkout form with the user's name and email.

After the user enters the billing and shipping information, it is saved in the user account. If your store uses Stripe as the payment gateway, then customer credit card information is also saved in Stripe. Stripe is currently the only payment gateway that allows storing of credit card information for signed in users.

User Profile, Purchase History

Earlier in our end of summer feature spree, we brought you a user profile page that enabled users to maintain their personal information including home and work addresses. This release extends the user profile page and adds a Purchases tab. This tab gives your store users the ability to see past purchases and to edit their billing address, shipping address, and payment method.

Updated Checkout

Last fall, we updated checkout to a responsive layout. As part of our store users feature we recognized a few other updates that would improve the checkout process even more. Previously, all the fields for checkout were on a single screen. With this release, checkout becomes a two-step process. The first step in the checkout process gathers customer email, shipping information, and shipping method.

The second step gathers billing information, including payment method, billing address, and special instructions.

Look for these new store user features on the morning of September 29. To see what else is included in this release. Be sure to read the following 2015.10 release notes.

2015.10 Release Notes 

New Features

• Store users can now be enabled on the Store Settings Options tab.
• The user profile page now includes a Purchases tab that enables store users to see their past purchases. 

Enhancements

• The checkout has been updated to organize checkout into a two-step process. During the first step, customers enter their email, shipping information, and shipping method. During the second step, customers enter payment and billing information.
• Change the search button from an input tag to a button tag.

In a week or a month, that client is going to email you with a basic question about how to use the site.

Do you have a plan for handling it?

The truth is that most of us designers don’t make plans like this. Instead, we plan every part of our projects—each email conversation, contractual requirement, and deadline—with only one goal in mind: get to the handoff. Most of us, my younger self included, think that once we design something, we should be able to just walk away and be proud of a job well done.

Then you get that surprise client call, and you struggle with what to do. The project is over. You don’t want to send them an invoice for an hour of answering questions about using a CMS or how to edit a blog post.

You probably don’t want to field these kinds of questions at all because they interrupt the new design you’re making for someone else.

Some smart designers do make plans for this. They’ll write up a brief tutorial about using the CMS or how to maintain the website they’ve made, and deliver it along with the final assets.

The expectation is that the client will read the document and understand what they need to do. This should prevent the designer from getting those unwanted calls, and, hopefully, set up the client to be successful.

But have you tried doing this? If so, you’ve probably seen that it never works.

The client doesn’t read the document. Or, they do read it, but still don’t understand. Some clients will do a great job of using the website for a month or two, and then suddenly stop. You might notice that they hire someone else for a redesign maybe even less than a year later, which is disappointing.

Educating clients on how to use our deliverables is wise, but there’s a more fundamental misunderstanding happening here.

Your clients aren’t stupid. It’s not that they can’t learn to use a CMS or that basic HTML editing is too complex for their poor little brains.

So why does this happen so often after a design project concludes?

Your client doesn’t even understand what a design is supposed to achieve in the first place.

Every single problem you face during a design project is at least partially caused by this single misunderstanding, including: the handoff, frustrating revision requests, late payments, and missed deadlines.

Your clients are paying you for design, but they don’t even know what it is. They don’t understand what should happen when that shiny new website is launched. Worst of all, they might not even realize that the design they just bought can actually affect the bottom line of their business in measurable, specific ways (beyond just “brand awareness”).

This means that mastering the handoff and avoiding those interrupting questions requires learning a different skill entirely.

You need to teach your clients about what design can do for them. You need to be a teacher.

For most designers, the sales pitch that we use to get hired reads something like this:

"I make beautiful and usable websites. I’ll help you to create a unique brand and style to differentiate yourself in the marketplace."

Of course, design can do a lot more than define a brand and voice. It can affect conversion rates, sales, and even the product itself.

If you’re a results-oriented designer, good job! You’re halfway there. Many designers don’t pitch their services in relation to tangible results. And that sets up so many problems that happen during the project.

However, it’s not enough just to know that design can achieve measurable results by yourself.

You must communicate that to the client, and then demonstrate specifically how your work is planned and orchestrated to bring results. That’s how you’ll get clients to stop emailing you with questions.

They don’t care to learn how to use a CMS because they don’t have a reason to.

But, if you teach them that effectively using the design will make them money, they’ll have a reason to read that tutorial document you delivered. They’ll have a reason to use the CMS. They’ll be invested in the success that these bring.

You need to teach your clients what design can do and why that matters to them.

Delivering a beautiful website isn’t enough.

Written by Jarrod Drysdale

Jarrod Drysdale wrote The Tiny Designer, a free course about how designers and non-designers can get along. He writes popular articles and books, and has been designing websites for clients small and large, glamorous and important for a decade.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/studiofellow
Website: http://studiofellow.com/

Page Publication Date and Time

Previously, the only way to prevent a page from showing on your site before you were ready, was to set the page as hidden, and then unhide it on the date you wanted to make it available to the public. This release of LightCMS brings you page settings for scheduling publication: Publish Date and Time.

By setting the Publish Date and Time, you specify when the page becomes publicly available on your site. Prior to the specified date and time, the page remains hidden and does not appear on any menus or in any search results. However, the page can still be accessed via direct URL.

If you want to schedule publication for a page all you have to do is to add the page to your site. After you add it, edit the page settings and set the publish date and time to when you want to make it publicly available.

At the scheduled date and time, the page will automatically be available on your menus and also be listed in search results.

Updated Design Template Manager

This release also brings an update to the Design Manager. The new, more-intuitive design simplifies browsing through the design collections.

Previously, you had to click several times to view the gallery and the designs in each collection. Now, your personal collection and each of the collections in the gallery are displayed together on the design home screen. Clicking a collection displays the designs in that collection.

To add your own design to your collection, click Your Collection, and then click the + button to upload the zip file of your design. Your design will then be available under Your Collection.

New Template: Arbor

This release also introduces a new ecommerce template: Arbor. As with all the designs, this design is available for use on any LightCMS website. You can use the design as is, or if you're an advanced user you can download the source files and use them as a starting point for a new custom design.

Click the image above to see a full-size version. You can also see the design at designs.lightcms.com. To see the design in action for yourself, log in to LightCMS and select Design on the admin toolbar. You can find the the design in the Featured designs section of the gallery. 

2015.9 Release Notes

New Features

• Added a publication date and time option to the page settings, enabling users to schedule page publication.
• Added a new ecommerce template, Arbor, to the design area.

Enhancements

• Updated the appearance of the Design Manager to make it easier to browse and locate designs.

This release of LightCMS brings you several important new user-related features, including user registration, an expanded user profile, and the ability to use the same email address on multiple sites. Keep reading to learn more about these and the other features you’ll find in this release.

Same Email, Multiple Sites

Previously, an email address was constrained to the site or account where it was originally used for sign-up, and the email address could not be used for an account on any other LightCMS site. This release removes that email restriction. Now you can use the same email address for accounts on any number of LightCMS sites, no matter if it is three or 300!

Login & Register Element

This release brings a new feature to the Login element and renames the element to Login & Register.

Now when you add the Login & Register element to a page, you specify the element type in the settings. If you specify that the element type is Login, then the element gives you the same familiar login element you are used to. If you select Registration as the element type, you are presented with several new settings that enable you to configure the element for new user registration on your site. These settings enable you to:

• Specify the custom role to which registered users should be assigned. You should define a custom role such as “registered” to serve as the default role. You can always change a user’s role later if you need to.
• Configure how registration confirmation should be presented. You can select from one of two options.
  • Modal with Custom HTML: If you select this option, you can enter custom text to appear on the modal once a user has completed the registration.
    
    
    
    
  • Redirect to Page: If you select this option, then you can specify the page to which a user is redirected after completing the registration form. Be sure to create your registration confirmation page prior to setting up the registration element. Normally, on this page, you will want to thank the user for registering and provide them with any additional instructions, such as reminding them to check their email and to click the confirmation link that is sent to them.
    
    
    
    
• Specify the email address where you want to be notified when a user registers.
• Configure the email verification options. This is the email that will be sent to the user who register. The configuration options include:
  • The email address that should be used as the reply to address. If you don't specify an address, then the reply to email will be sent to no-reply@yourdomain.com.
  • The subject of the email.
  • The text of the email you can use the standard default text or write your own. If you write your own, be sure to include the [verificationURL] parameter in the email. This parameter generates the link the user will click to complete registration. You cannot save your changes to the registration element if you omit the [verificationURL] parameter.
    
    

Updated Login Status Token

With the addition of user registration, you will likely want to provide a way for users to update their profiles. The login status token has been updated to provide more features to support the expanded user profile and registration. Here you see the default styling for the updated token.

The default display shows the user name and avatar. Pointing to the name displays the Edit Profile and Sign Out options in a dropdown list. In the following login status code sample, you can see that the token uses an unordered list with default styling. You can style the list to match the look of your site and also to include additional links.

If you don't want users to edit their profiles, then remove the list item for [editprofileurl] from the login status token.

Enhanced User Profile

Now that you can let users register on your site, you may want to gather more information about them. This release also brings you an expanded user profile page. Previously, you could store only basic information about your users. The expanded user profile lets you gather more information about your registered users. The profile now includes:

• Home and Cell Phone Numbers
• Company/Organization
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Home Address
• Work Address

Customized Template for User Profile

Now that users can edit their own profiles, we thought it was a good idea to present the user profile page on a normal site page, instead of through the administrator UI. You can create a custom userprofile.html to style this page however you like. If you do not create a userprofile.html file, then the user profile page uses the detail.html template file. If you don’t have a detail.html, the profile page uses the default template selected for the site.

Look for these great new user features on the morning of September 1. And if you haven’t already heard, September is going to be an awesome month for releases, with two more following on 9/15 and 9/29.

2015.8 Release Notes

New Features

• The Login element has been renamed to Login & Register and includes options for adding a registration element to your site.
• The user profile page can be customized through the use of a userprofile.html file.

Enhancements

• Changed the Login button and Search button from   to .
• Previously, an email address could be used for an account only on one site. Now the same email address can be used for user accounts on multiple sites.
• The user profile page has been expanded to include several new fields including home phone, cell phone, Twitter, Facebook, company/organization, home address, and work address.
• The Login Status token has been updated to include new options for editing a user's profile

Photography

• ImageOptim - https://imageoptim.com - If you’re a Mac user, ImageOptim is a must have tool in your website toolbox. It combines nine different image optimization tools for all your png, jpg, and gif file shrinking needs, and "...optimizes compression parameters, removes junk metadata and unnecessary color profiles." It can even shrink the file size of an image that was "Saved for Web" in Photoshop. In a world where speed is king, ImageOptim could help speed up your site. And, the answer to your current question is Yes, all photos on this post have been sent through ImageOptim at least once.
• Death to the Stock Photo - http://deathtothestockphoto.com - Sign up and you'll get free high quality photos emailed to you every month. The sooner you sign up for it the better! As the name implies, these won't be your average business man shaking another business man's hand stock photos.
• Unsplash It - https://unsplash.it - Unsplash is a popular site to use for high resolution photos. However, Unsplash It takes things a step further and allows you to embed Unsplash photos as placeholders. They have many different attributes that can be given to the image depending on your needs. Like Lipsum, it's a great tool to use if you just need dummy content on a site.

Text Editor

• Atom - https://atom.io - Released as a beta in early 2014, Atom, was created by Github, who know a few things about free and open source software. It is highly configurable and is marketed as, "A hackable text editor for the 21st Century." Some hardcore coders might still prefer Vim, but Atom is a great free editor for the rest of us.
• Brackets - http://brackets.io - Brackets is an open source text editor created by Adobe. While you can code in it, you can also use their Extract for Brackets feature to pull out design info from a PSD. 

Analytics

• Hotjar -  https://www.hotjar.com - Hotjar helps you visually see how people use your site. This includes heatmaps, recording of a user sessions, site visit funnels, surveys, forms, and more. This will help you see if someone is getting hung up navigating your site and how they get to a particular page.
• Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools - http://www.google.com/analytics / https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ - Technically these are two different products, but I think they tie together very well. Google Analytics gives you more info then you'll ever need, while Google Webmaster tools will help you find SEO issues that you might have.

Productivity

• Evernote - https://evernote.com - This is a tool that I use on a daily basis. Meeting notes and brain dumps are what I use Evernote for the most. If you've never used it or would like to use it more, read this wonderful article on The Verge, "The Verge at work: backing up your brain," and you will have a whole new appreciation for its uses and find inspiration on how to best use it. Also, using their web clipper will allow you to quickly save or bookmark things to later return to.
• Dropbox - https://www.dropbox.com - Dropbox was one of the early cloud storage companies. While many have caught up with, or surpassed their service, the simplicity of uploading and sharing a screenshot is why it made the list. While other screenshot services have put limits on their free offerings, Dropbox allows you to make as many screenshots as you want, as long as you have the storage space available. Note: this functionality isn't quite as robust on PCs (especially if you work on dual monitors) since the auto-save feature only applies to Print Screen captures. 
• Dribbble - https://dribbble.com - Showing off your work on your website is good, but submitting your work to a design community can help you get feedback to refine your craft as well as get your name out there.

Fjare had worked at a bar through college, but a gas leak at the establishment shortly before graduation removed any chance for him to ease his way into the workforce with a back-up job. So, when discussing potential freelance opportunities with his neighbor, Gregg Alexander, the two decided to form their own web design, print and branding agency.

To get started, they both knew they needed an easy-to-use platform that wouldn’t require significant developer skills. They found it with LightCMS.

Alexander and Fjare started out by designing websites for small businesses. Their company has steadily grown and evolved into Prime Inc., a Bozeman, Montana-based business with seven employees and customers ranging from makers of whiskey and champagne to a Seattle company selling plumbing supplies.

Watch the video below to get a close and personal glimpse into Prime Inc. and how LightCMS is helping to fuel the company’s growth.

Read the full case study about Prime Inc.

Time and time again, we have received the same requests from dozens of LightCMS resellers looking to purchase premium themes for LightCMS. Earlier this year we decided it was time to address this obvious need and developed our first premium LightCMS responsive theme we call FreshStart.

Here is an overview of how we approached LightCMS theme development.

FreshStart is the culmination of months of rethinking what it means to run a site on LightCMS. The goals for the theme were simple – make it extremely clean and visually attractive, take advantage of all of LightCMS’s core functionality, expand upon that functionality where necessary, and above all retain the ease-of-editing that LightCMS has become famous for.

Planning & Wireframes

The first decision to make was what type of theme to develop. Lots of niche ideas were tossed around for different markets, but in the end we felt it would be most appropriate for our first theme to be general purpose to best showcase everything that can be achieved with a little ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking.

Normally when designing a custom website one of the beginning steps would be to wireframe all of the templates necessary to best present a user’s content. In a general-purpose theme, however, it’s difficult to know exactly what specific content a user may have. Since our grid system is extremely flexible, we felt comfortable largely skipping this step and started focusing on the design immediately.

Design

Clean lines and lots of whitespace were the main guiding principles in the design of FreshStart. Too many CMS themes these days are based on whiz-bang features and unnecessary aesthetic embellishments, and we wanted to provide a clear message to our current and future customers – content and functionality will always take precedence over pure aesthetics.

Stripping away the desire for all unnecessary ornamentation left us with a smart, simple design that we are extremely proud of.

Code

We wanted FreshStart to be fully responsive, and that meant dissecting every aspect of the CMS and its default element styles (which, with the exception of single image elements, are inherently not responsive). Starting with a LightCMS-integrated version of Zurb Foundation, we sprinkled in lots of extra styling and functionality (for features like responsive web forms, large photo gallery thumbnails, and randomized testimonials) to create a LightCMS theme unlike any you’ve seen before.

Testing

Building a product isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Testing is an ugly and boring – yet necessary – part of creating a reliable theme. I’m a big fan of BrowserStack and we used it extensively during this phase of development.

Documentation

The most important part of a DIY website product like a theme or plugin is quality documentation. Including all the features in the world isn’t going to matter if a user doesn’t know how to use them – or worse – doesn’t even know they’re available!

Extensive documentation for FreshStart covers everything from installing and upgrading to making your own custom CSS modifications. It’s something I’ve worked hard on and continue to expand as feature requests come in.

Why we chose to theme for LightCMS

We’ve used a lot of content management systems for our clients throughout the years but never before explored the possibility of releasing a theme on those systems. There’s certainly a market for those other platforms, but there are a few particular benefits to theming for LightCMS that drew me in.

A limited set of modules and CMS functionality

When creating something from scratch, I often find that I’m much worse off when given little direction versus having a specific set of guidelines laid out before me. I spend too much time spinning my wheels evaluating the options instead of just tackling the task at hand. No one wants to make the wrong decision about what to include or focus on, and I’m a prime example of someone who suffers from analysis paralysis.

With LightCMS being a proprietary solution we can’t extend the server-side system functionality beyond what’s provided, so we’re immediately given a set of constraints within which we must work. With those constraints in mind, the path to creatively expanding around them becomes much clearer as the line is drawn in the sand between what we can achieve and what simply isn’t possible.

Design editor

When building a theme, customization is at the forefront of the developer’s mind. The design editor is a great tool that allows us to put the power of custom CSS in a user’s hands – without them having to change a line of code.

Page-specific settings

Every page in LightCMS has a multitude of settings that can be applied to it. Two of the most useful when developing a theme are the “Body CSS Class” and “HTML head” settings.

Body CSS Class allows us to tell the template that we’d like this page to take advantage of a particular style or set of functionality that is available globally throughout the theme. An example from FreshStart is the fullScreenHeader functionality – just add that class to the homepage and now your gorgeous header photo will expand to fill the screen – no extra coding or separate templates required!

HTML head is equally useful, but it’s usually reserved for functionality or customizations that will only take place on a single page. We don’t often use it in development of the theme itself, but it provides a useful way for users to enhance functionality without having to modify the core theme.

Extensive CSS class hooks

Each element in LightCMS generates HTML markup with extensive (and predictable) class hooks that allow us to style and manipulate output to our specific needs. A custom theme like FreshStart benefits enormously from this by being able to anticipate the structure of the data we’ll be styling and enhancing with custom JS functionality.

WYSIWYG editor integration (For applying custom styles)

One of the most useful LightCMS features to a theme developer is the ability to reach into the WYSIWYG editor and add custom styling options with the Apply CSS Class dropdown. This gives content administrators a point-and-click way of applying custom CSS classes to their content that the theme may then style as necessary.

In FreshStart, for example, we’ve included styles to manipulate text sizes, insert buttons, control content visibility across mobile devices, and add animations to any piece of content.

FTP Access

Only a handful of hosted website systems support FTP and LightCMS is one of them. This makes it extremely easy to publish templates to a staging site during development and quickly see how they’re performing.

LightCMS features that benefit resellers using themes

LightCMS doesn’t make things easy on theme developers alone, though. Several unique features enhance the reseller experience of using a LightCMS theme.

Source editor (for editing themes to suit your client)

LightCMS’s recently updated source code editor is state-of-the-art for a hosted CMS platform. It makes quick work of small HTML, CSS, and JS modifications without requiring the reseller to access these files via FTP.

Revisions

Make a mistake in the source editor or accidentally overwrite an important theme file? A quick glance into the file’s revision history (accessible via the source editor) is all that’s needed to go back in time and restore the original contents.

Site duplication for easy staging sites

With a properly licensed multi-use theme like FreshStart, the enterprising reseller can create a boilerplate site to use as a foundation for quickly scaling up new sites using a theme.

Other perks for building sites with a premium LightCMS theme

These features are inherent to any quality CMS theme, but we’re proud to finally be bringing them to LightCMS:

Decreased setup cost

A premium LightCMS theme costs a fraction of a full custom site development, and with native Design Editor integration you likely may not need to touch a line of code. Even when there is a need to pay for customizations you’ll come out thousands of dollars ahead.

Decreased development time

Resellers can crank out a new site for a client much more quickly when opting to use a LightCMS theme. A good premium theme also goes the extra mile to anticipate various use-cases and template layouts, meaning the end client is paying the reseller for their consulting expertise or niche domain knowledge and not for coding templates.

Lower ongoing development costs

As features and bug fixes are added to a theme, any site running that theme can be effortlessly upgraded to the latest codebase in just a few minutes. Being built on a flexible CSS framework also means that themes can easily be extended and customized with less time and expense.

Have you considered building or designing a theme?

Through LightIgnite, we’ve worked with a large number of extremely talented LightCMS designers. Knowing the beautiful work they’re capable of bringing to the world, I don’t want the theme development opportunity to be limited to those with a background in coding. That’s why I’m proud to announce that we’re now accepting applications for our LightIgnite You Design, We Code (YDWC) program.

With YDWC, we’re bringing the power of our experienced LightCMS development team to your designs – and splitting the profit with you. If you’re a talented designer or design team we’d love the opportunity to work with you to turn your ideas into amazing LightCMS themes that provide a recurring, passive source of income for your business!

A bright future is in store for LightCMS themes

We’ve had a great experience building themes thus far, but the party’s just getting started. With FreshStart, we’ve provided a glimpse of what’s possible when you combine LightCMS and creative thinking. The door is now wide open and an active community of resellers is ready for more. Whether it’s through your own development team or in partnership with LightIgnite through You Design, We Code, I encourage you to explore what’s sure to become a prominent part of the LightCMS experience.

About the author

Denny is the founder of LightIgnite, a valuable resource dedicated to helping LightCMS resellers build amazing websites. With the power and flexibility of LightCMS, he has been exceeding customer expectations since 2008.

Keep reading to learn more about these features and the other things you’ll find in this release.

Global Elements

In the past, the only way to share an element was to set the shareable attribute on the element and then share it on each page where you wanted it to appear. This is still a good method for sharing elements on your site, but it can also be a time consuming task, if your site has a large number of pages and you want to share the element on every page.

With global elements, account owners and administrators now have the option of sharing an element across pages in a fraction of the time that it took previously. Global elements are made possible by two new enhancements in this release:

• Global ID assigned to each element
• Element token

For example, you may want to display the calendar on every page on your site, instead of creating a calendar, setting the shareable attribute, and then manually adding the calendar to every page, all you need to do is create the calendar on one page, retrieve the element's global ID from the element’s settings, and then add the token to the template file. 

Global ID

Each element on your site is now assigned a unique Global ID. You can locate the ID on the Advanced tab of the elements settings. This ID is set as the globalID attribute in the element token. 

Element Token

Place the element token in the template file for the pages where you want the global element to appear. If you want it to appear on all of your site pages, Than you need to place it in each page template file, for example, the home page template, inside page template, etc. You can use the code editor to make this modification or make the change locally to your template file and then upload to the server.

The format of the element token is as follows:

<$element globalID='916c12dd-f338-43c0-9e88-75f2d1dcf463'$><$/element$>

Simply place this token in the region where you want the element to appear, and the element will be displayed on each page based on the template.

There are a few things that you should be aware of:

• If you delete the original element, then it is removed from the other pages on the site as well, although the element token is still included in the template file.
• You cannot use the element token to share a product listing or a login element.

New Template: Flight

This release also introduces a new responsive template that achieves some awesome effects with a large featured image that you can update in the code with your own image. Theme Flight is fully responsive and is available for use on any LightCMS website. Click one of the following thumbnails for a full screen view of the page.

Home Page	Inside Page

You can use this design as is or download the design source code to use as a starting point for a new custom design.

You can see the design in action for yourself here, or you can log in to LightCMS and go to the Design section on the toolbar. Choose the Gallery and look for featured designs. You can apply the design to your site or download the source files. You can also see the design in the LightCMS Design Viewer.

Secure Sign In by Site

Secure sign in means that users sign in over an encrypted connection and that the website’s publishpath.com domain is displayed in the URL after sign in. When secure sign in is disabled, the connection is not encrypted and the publishpath.com domain is not displayed.

Previously, enabling or disabling secure sign in was controlled at the account level by the account owner. Consequently, secure sign in was either enabled or disabled for all sites under that account.

With this release, secure sign is now controlled at the site level. To enable or disable secure sign in click settings on the admin toolbar to display the Website Settings. Select the Advanced tab and in the Secure Sign In area of the page, Check the Secure connection for user sign in box to enable secure sign in or clear the box to disable secure sign in.

Look for these exciting new features and enhancements July 28th. To see what else this release holds, see the following release notes.

2015.7 Release Notes

New Features

• Each element on the site is now assigned a unique Global ID. You can view each element's Global ID on the element settings Advanced tab.
• The new element token enables you to share elements across multiple pages by specifying the Global ID of the element. To use this feature you place the token in a template file and set the globalID attribute to the Global ID of the element you want to appear in that location. The specified element appears on every page that uses the template. 

Enhancements

• Previously secure sign in was controlled by the account owner at the account level. Account owners now have the ability to enable or disable secure sign in at the site level. This feature is set on the website settings Advanced tab. The feature is enabled by default for newly created sites.
• This release includes several minor UI enhancements to the calendar Add Event page to make its UI consistent with the rest of the admin UI.
• Pages that are marked as hidden are no longer included on the sitemap.aspx page. Since the page does not appear in the sitemap, it will not be visible to search engines and not be listed on search results pages.

Resolved Issues

• The subscription link is once again generated correctly for administrators on trial websites when the associated account has allowed administrators to upgrade trial websites.

It also allows him to focus more on his true passion – designing unique, custom websites for businesses in the area and leading a talented team of creatives. Through the early freelancing days and the rapid growth of his business, the content management system that has supported Steadfast Creative is LightCMS.

Watch the video below to get a close and personal look into Steadfast’s story.

“From the beginning it was the most easy-to-use front end solution,” Parnell says. “Clients can be trained on it quickly and understand it easily. To this day, it’s one of the foundations for my small business clients that need an elegant solution and an easy interface for content.”

Parnell tried working with a number of content management systems including Joomla and WordPress, but none of them seemed to fit the bill when he was starting up his company.

“I was trying to find LightCMS before I knew what it was,” he says. “From a business perspective, it’s been a very strong contributor and growth engine.”

LightCMS is lightweight and easy to use, both for Parnell and his team, but also for his clients. The ability to show prospective customers how easy it is to edit their own websites has helped to win deals, according to Parnell.

Additionally, since LightCMS hosts the websites and provides automatic feature upgrades, Steadfast Creative has a limited number of support requests, a lower overhead, and a larger recurring revenue stream. With other platforms, Steadfast’s resources are stretched by the larger time commitment for maintenance and upkeep.

Regular enhancements, like the LightCMS online store, also mean Steadfast Creative can expand its offerings with additional features as LightCMS adds new functionality seamlessly behind the scenes.

Recently, a financial services company for which Steadfast Creative built a website several years ago returned asking Steadfast to make its existing site mobile ready. Steadfast Creative was able to make these enhancements easily because of LightCMS’s native support for responsive design capabilities that enable a site to automatically adapt to whatever mobile or other device is used to access it.

Furthermore, LightCMS hasn’t placed limitations on the creativity and vision of the Steadfast Creative team.

“We lead with our custom design,” Parnell says. “With a lot of content management systems there are constraints on design or how things can be laid out. The beauty of LightCMS is that my designers can fully design without thinking, ‘is this going to work on LightCMS?’ I’ve consulted with a lot of freelancers and designers who are just getting started and LightCMS is always my go to recommendation.”

Watch the video below to learn how LightCMS’s Developer Program can help support and grow your business like it has for Steadfast and many other developers.

New Source Editor

The old source editor enabled you to edit design files on your site, but it was utilitarian in nature and limited on the features it offered. The new source editor takes editing the files directly on your site to an entirely new level! With its user-friendly and responsive user interface, the new source editor gives you an environment more closely related to what you would find in your favorite code editor. The source editor also gives you several features that were unavailable in the old editor, including:

• A full screen editing window
• Syntax highlighting
• Display preferences such as dark editor, line wrap, show gutter, and show invisibles
• Expand/Collapse template files list

Access the Source Editor

To access the source editor, select Design on the admin menu. Locate the template you want to edit, and then mouse over the template thumbnail. Click the options menu, in the upper right corner and select Edit Source.

Source Editor Display Options 

The new source editor gives you several options that were unavailable with the previous source editor. To set the source editor options, click the options button in the bottom left corner of the screen.

To change an option, click the button next to the option to toggle the option on or off. Source editor display options include:

• Dark Editor--Select this option to use the editor with a dark background and light colored font, instead of a light background with dark colored font.
• Line Wrap--Select this option to turn line wrap on.
• Show Invisibles--Select this option to display invisible characters such as tabs and spaces.
• Show Gutter--Select this option to display the gutter. The gutter shows the line numbers and the expand/collapse button for parent-level tags.

Same Familiar Features

The new source editor includes the same familiar and important features that you enjoyed in the previous source editor. These include:

• Download template file
  
  
  
  
• Insert CMS token
  
  
  
  
• View or revert to a previous version of a file
  
  

Roles Page Tree

This release also brings you a faster and easier method for assigning custom roles to a page or group of pages. Previously, if you wanted to assign a specific role to a page, you had to first go to the manage roles page and create the role. You then had to go to each page that should be assigned to the role and assign it. This could be a time-consuming task. 

With this release, you can create and assign custom roles to pages from one central location: the Manage Roles page. When you click the Add Role button, the Add Roles page is displayed and lets you enter a name and description for the new custom role. The Pages section of the screen displays a page tree similar to the page tree in the Page Manager.

Clicking a top level page displays all of the pages beneath that page in the tree. You can click the page again to collapse the view. By clicking the View and/or Edit options for the page you grant the role's permissions to that page and all pages beneath it in the tree. You can remove permissions from any page, by clicking the edit or view check mark. This lets you grant permissions to a parent page and all subordinate pages. You can then selectively remove permissions from a subordinate page by clicking the check mark. After you set permissions for the page, click the Update button to save the changes. Any user assigned that role then has the permissions to the page as defined by the role.

Look for these exciting new features on the morning of July 7. See the following release notes for what else to expect in this release.

2015.6 Release Notes

New Features

• The new source editor gives you an updated, user-friendly interface for editing design files directly on your site.

Enhancements

• The Roles page now gives you a page tree that lets you quickly assign custom roles to pages from a central location, rather than having to assign a role to each page individually.

Resolved Issues

• The following details are now copied during the copy website process:
  • Element IsShareable property
  • Show posts from other blogs settings
  • Blog detail page template

Keep reading to learn more about these two exciting new features and what else you will find in this release.

Plan Builder

Available to those LightCMS users in the Developer Program (Professional),  the plan builder lets you create up to 5 unique pricing plans for you to offer your clients.

To create a plan, go to the Developer tab of the Account Settings screen. You specify the following information for each plan:

• Plan Name
• Maximum number of pages
• Maximum GB of storage
• Maximum number of products
• Price for the plan

Click the + button to add a plan. As you add plans, new columns are added to the table. Enter your amounts for each plan option, and then click the Save button at the bottom of the screen. By selecting the Clients may upgrade or downgrade their websites, your clients will have the ability to switch from one plan to another. Your plans are displayed on the subscription page.

You can assign a plan to an account or let your clients upgrade their plans at any time. However, clients cannot downgrade to a plan that offers fewer pages, products, or gigabytes of storage than currently in use on their website.

Creating new plans has no effect on the plans your clients are currently on, although you can upgrade them to a new plan at any time.

Featured Image

The blog post featured image lets you assign an image to display prominently at the beginning of a blog post.

You specify the featured image for a blog post on the Blog Post Images tab. You can add a new image for your post or you can select a previously-added image.

You have two options for adding a new featured image for a post. The first method is to drag the image file from your computer and drop it on the featured image upload area on the Images tab. The second method for uploading an image is to click the Upload button in the featured images area on the Blog Post Images tab. Clicking the Upload button displays a browse dialog box and lets you browse to your image file.

Featured images are stored in the BlogFeaturedImages folder on your site.

To select an existing featured image, click the Select Existing button. This displays all images stored in your BlogFeaturedImages folder. Click an image and then click the Select button to choose an existing image.

The Show in List Views checkbox lets you specify if the featured image should display for blog elements formatted to display as a list, for example List, List with Summary, or List with Body. When unchecked, the featured image does not display in lists.

New Blog Post Images Tab

The blog post settings now includes an Images tab. The Images tab enables you to manage blog featured images and blog thumbnail images.

With this release you can also specify if a blog thumbnail image should be displayed in a blog element formatted to display as a list. A new Show in List Views checkbox, illustrated above, lets you specify if the thumbnail image should display for the post in list views. When checked, the thumbnail image, if assigned will display in any blog post formatted to display as a list such as List, List with Summary, or List with Body. When unchecked, the thumbnail image is not displayed, even if a thumbnail image is assigned to the post.

New Responsive Template, Knox

This release introduces a new fully responsive design: Knox. As with all LightCMS designs, this design is available for use on any LightCMS website at no additional charge.

You can use this design as is or customize it with the LightCMS built in Design Editor. If you're an advanced user, you can even download the design source code to use as a starting point for a new, custom design.

To see the design in action for yourself, click the image above or log in to LightCMS and go to the Design section on the toolbar. Choose the Gallery, and look for Featured Designs. You can apply the design to your site or download the source files. You can also see the design in the LightCMS Design Viewer.

Released May 28th

As you may have already seen these new features and enhancements were released today, Thursday, May 28th. For a look at what else to expect in this release, take a look at the 2015.5 release notes below.

Release 2015.5

New Features

• The blog post now lets you specify a featured image. The image is displayed prominently on the page before the post. Featured images are added on the new blog post Images tab.
• The new Plan Builder feature enables you to create up to five unique pricing plans for your clients. You create plans on the Developers tab of the Account Settings page.
• The new responsive design, Knox is now available in the design area. You can see the design in action here.

Enhancements

• The blog post settings page now contains a new Images tab. This tab lets you specify the featured and thumbnail images for the blog post.
• The blog post thumbnail image has a new Show in List Views option. When checked the thumbnail image displays for any blog element formatted to display as a list. When unchecked the thumbnail image does not display in the list view.

Resolved Issues

• The event date and blog post date displayed on the Manage Events and Manage Posts pages were incorrectly passed through a timezone conversion.  This conversion was unnecessary so it was removed.
• Fixed the issue that prevented IE 10 from displaying images on the Image element Add/Edit screen.
• If a blog post had no author and was exported from LightCMS, it could not be re-imported into another blog element. Exported posts with no author, can now be imported into another blog element.
• If a 301 redirect is set to go to the home page, it now redirects to the website root "https://www.lightcms.com/" instead of "https://www.lightcms.com/home".
• The website name is now HTML decoded in the order confirmation email subject line to remove HTML code.
• Corrected the issue that caused the thumbnail image upload to fail when an image was uploaded during new post creation.

Blog Thumbnail Images 

You can now add visual interest to your blog post listing by assigning thumbnail images to your blog posts. You can use this feature in many different ways. For example, you may want to add a thumbnail image that is related to the blog post, or you may have different icons that you use for different types of posts so visitors can quickly identify the type of post by the thumbnail image.

To use thumbnail images on your blog posts, you must:

• Add a thumbnail image to the post
• Choose a list type display format for the blog element

• Set the blog element to display thumbnail images

Add Thumbnail Images to a Blog Post

You add the thumbnail to the blog post on the New/Edit Post Page, Advanced tab. You can add a thumbnail image to a post by dragging the image file from your computer and dropping it in the image upload area of the page or by clicking the Upload button and then browsing to the image. You can also choose an image uploaded previously by clicking the Select Existing button.

When you upload thumbnail images, they are stored in the images/Blog Thumbnails folder on the your site. We will create the folder if it doesn't already exist.

Blog List Display

Thumbnail images will display for any blog post with a List type display option such as List, List With Summary, etc. The Display option for the blog is specified on the Blog Settings Basic tab.

Show Thumbnail Images

Thumbnails will display only when the Show thumbnail images box is checked on the Blog Settings Basic tab. Un-checking this box disables image thumbnails in the blog post list. To re-enable thumbnail images, check the box.

New Default Template

This release changes the new default template that is assigned when you create a new site. By default, new sites will use the Liberty template.

Liberty is a fully responsive design and is available for use on any LightCMS website. Click the image above to visit the design website and see Liberty in action for yourself. 

LightCMS Starter Plan

Since first launching the LightCMS Developer program, we've had many customers who are just starting their web design business and run the business in addition to working a full time job. We wanted to give these individuals a cost effective way to join the Developer Program and give them access to the essential developer features of LightCMS.

With this in mind, we are excited to announce the release of the LightCMS Starter plan, a less-expensive option to the Professional Plan, which remains unchanged. The Starter Plan is great for freelancers and small shops who are just getting started and may not need all of the features and functionality offered through the Professional Plan.

The Starter Plan gives you the following features:

• Multi-website site management
• No-cost developer sites
• Resell the LightCMS Unlimited Plan for only $19/month (an 80% discount)

The Starter Plan offers a limited set of features and does not allow for white labeling. If you want to white label your web design, we suggest upgrading to the Professional Plan. Starting today, you have the option to upgrade to the Starter Plan inside your LightCMS trial. If you have questions or would like to learn more, please email support@lightcms.com or leave a comment below.

For more information on the LightCMS Developer Program, visit our Developers page.

2015.4 Release Notes

New Features

• You can now specify a thumbnail image to display next to a blog title in a blog listing.
• The new LightCMS Starter Plan provides a less-expensive option for joining the LightCMS Developer Program. Visit the Developers page for more information on the LightCMS Developer Program.

Enhancements

• New sites will now use Liberty as the default template instead of Haus. The template can be changed at any time by selecting Design from the admin menu and choosing a new design. See Liberty in action by visiting the LightCMS Design site.
• Searching for a phrase encapsulated in quotes, such as "The big picture", now searches only for the phrase and not each word in the phrase.

Resolved Issues

• Internal server errors when attempting to view invoices have been fixed.
• The checkout screen once again displays the email address field for digital downloads.
• When a user record is created as part of the sign up process with the sign up element, the full name field for the user record is now set as well.

Groopt’s ideals of simplicity and functionally are what led the entrepreneurial company to seek an alternative for its outdated CMS solution that was difficult to use, required frequent troubleshooting and lacked the long-term viability that Groopt needed to scale its business. Groopt ultimately selected the LightCMS Developer Program over other CMS offerings they evaluated such as, Wix, Weebly and Squarespace, to serve as the website component of its offerings to its customers.

A ‘Night and Day” Improvement

Groopt has already migrated the majority of its web clients from its previous web platform to LightCMS and is reselling the platform under the white-label brand name of LoyalCMS. The LoyalCMS platform is available to Groopt’s new and existing clients who want to build their own websites with unlimited pages, unlimited storage and online store capabilities, including unlimited product capacity and multi-website management under a single account. Groopt is also able to offer its clients top-tier web hosting and responsive web design capabilities that come as part of the LoyalCMS platform.

Ease of Maintenance for Groopt and Clients

While Groopt clients benefit with attractive and feature-rich websites that enable easy self-service, Groopt is spared from its previous chores of managing and troubleshooting issues with its old web platform because the LightCMS Developer Program does it all for them.

“We’re extremely impressed with how turnkey and automated the LightCMS Developer Program is,” said Patrick Allen, Founder and CEO of Groopt. “The simplicity of LightCMS makes it very easy to support. We’re very confident we can put our LoyalCMS brand name behind the platform and have been beyond pleased in working with LightCMS.”

Check out the video below to learn how LightCMS’s Developer Program can help support and grow your business.

Default Elements for New Page 

If you repeatedly create pages with a similar design layout then Default Page Elements will simplify how you create new pages. If you need a page with a slightly different layout, simply delete the elements you don’t need. Or if one of your standard elements should reside in a different region for a particular page, drag the element where it needs to go.

Default element configuration is controlled by page template files. This lets you define the default elements based on the type of page.  To set up default page elements you add a defaultElements attribute to the region tags in the page template files. The values for the attribute specify the default elements that will be added to the region. 

Possible values include the following:

• blog
• calendar
• donation
• evite
• form
• image
• links
• login
• productlisting
• signup
• text

To populate a region with multiple default elements, enter a comma separated list of the values for the defaultElements attribute. The following sample region tag illustrates an example of populating the main region of the page with three default elements:

<$region name="main" defaultElements="image,text,form"$>

You can use the LightCMS source editor to add default elements to your template regions or you can edit the files locally and upload your template files. Use the method that works best for you. The following screen shot from the LightCMS Source Editor shows three different regions, each with defaultElements.

If a page region should have no default elements, do not add the defaultElements attribute to that region tag. 

When you create a page, the page layout is based on the site's default template, so be sure to add the defaultElements attribute to the default template files. After the page is created, you can change the template file on the Page Settings Advanced tab if necessary, and your default elements will remain on the page.

Default Heading Level for Element Titles

Every SEO-conscious site owner will appreciate Default Heading Levels for Element Titles. Part of optimizing your pages for search engines is to give the page structure and organization with headings.

The Element Title Default Heading Level feature enables you to set a default heading level to apply to each element title displayed on the page. This means when you create an element and check the Display this Title Box, the title will be given the heading level you specify here. With this release, all element titles will remain at the H1 heading level. Any title for new elements will be given the H2 heading level. This is more desireable since SEO best practice states that a page should have only one H1 heading.

To change the heading level for all of your element titles, go to your Site Settings and on the SEO subtab select the heading level from the Element Title Headings dropdown list.

Favicon Upload

Favicons are a finishing garnish on a thoughtfully-designed website. The favicon brands your site with an icon in the browser’s address bar, bookmarks, and history. With this LightCMS release it becomes easier than ever to set up your site’s favicon using the new Favicon Upload feature.

To upload a favicon, go to the site settings and on the Basic tab, click the upload button in the Favicon section.

This lets you browse to your favicon file. The file must be an .ico file, less than 5 MB in size, and the dimensions should be up to 48px by 48px. If the file is not named favicon.ico, at the time of the upload it will be renamed to favicon.ico.

After uploading, the page displays your favicon. To view the change, you may need to click the go here link on the screen and refresh the browser.

After you have uploaded a favicon, you can change it at any time by clicking the Change button and uploading a new .ico file.

To see what else this release includes, take a look at the 2015.3 release notes below.

2015.3 Release Notes

New Features

• You can now specify default page elements to automatically add to a page when you create it. Read the Editable Regions help topic for additional information.
• The site Settings Basic tab now includes a Favicon upload option. 
• You now have the ability to change all of the element titles to any heading level from H1 to H6. This gives you more SEO control with regard to the heading level used for your element titles. Titles for existing elements will remain at H1 and titles for new elements will be set to H2. You can change the heading level for all element titles on the site Settings SEO tab. 

Note: See the Default Page Elements, Title Heading Levels, and Favicons blog post for more information on these features.

Resolved Issues

• The website is now updated to show that Stripe payments are active when a user clicks the button to activate Stripe payments for their store and signs in to Stripe.
• Corrected the issue that occasionally caused an image import to fail when images were imported with products in a product import.
• The CVV field on the subscriptions page now allows entry of all zeroes for the CVV code.
• In some situations the form element displayed a message that the form was in trial mode even though it wasn't.

1. Create a Large Feature Area: Whether it’s used for announcing sales, new product arrivals or as a more novel form of customer engagement, a large spotlight area anchoring the home page creates incentives for customers to visit frequently and explore the storefront. Large visuals have a deeper impact on customers than a list of search results or even a normal product page. As a general rule, the feature area should be updated at least twice a month – a goal that sellers with frequent promotions or large inventory turnover should have no trouble hitting.

Even businesses with consistent inventory that avoid discounts can benefit from the large feature spotlight. It makes an ideal place to lure customers into blog content, or for deep dives into how the company's products are designed, manufactured and used. The technological requirements are quite light—many content management system (CMS) platforms offer built-in spotlight tools complete with randomized and/or sequential slideshow capabilities. If not, manually scripting such a feature area is a straightforward task.

2. Build Sites to be Responsive: The world just keeps getting more complicated for web designers. Desktop displays are growing larger and more plentiful. Some smartphones boast HD displays while others display at relatively low resolutions. The growing trend is responsive design, creating sites which are responsive to the constraints of the client on a case-by-case basis and that avoid throwing tiny, unreadable text at the would-be shopper. Responsive design, which can present a stripped-down version to mobile users without actually losing the underlying capabilities and code, is more sustainable.

3. Maintain a Clean, Texture-Free Layout: Even companies that prefer a busy, textured presentation for informational pages should think twice about cluttering their store design with anything but solid backgrounds and plenty of white space. Why? Because when the customer is browsing a storefront, they want to find products—not textures. Products, descriptions and prices are the reasons customers are engaging with the store. Simpler layouts, using flat design, ensure the information that matters to customers stands out.

4. Use Engaging, Right-Sized Product Images: What's good for storefront design is not the best choice for product imagery. Whenever possible, choose images that show products in use or in their natural settings, rather than floating against flat, white backgrounds. Customers want to see how and where they will use products, understand how the products will meet their needs and visualize how products will fit in with the rest of their belongings. Show that rake hanging next to a shovel on the garage wall rather than isolated in a sterile, artificial environment.

Additionally, minimize page loading times by pre-scaling images to their display resolution, rather than relying on browsers to scale them interactively. And adopt a uniform size and dimension for the products on your site. When image sizes vary, the result looks jumbled and unprofessional.

5. Enhance the Cart Icon: Spruce up the shopping cart icon so that it is more than a simple, static graphic linking to the cart page. Provide at-a-glance totals for the number of items and even the total, out-the-door price of all items added to the cart. The cart icon should be in the header of each and every page you display to the customer—because guiding the user to checkout is the final, crucial step in closing the deal.

Enhanced cart icons provide shoppers with positive feedback and confirmation that their selections have been logged and are ready for purchase, while still leaving them free to browse the rest of the store.

Making careful, considered design choices can mean a world of difference in maintaining a website that engages the customer and leads to a sale without constantly needing an overhaul.

Client Billing 2.0

We have been telling you about it for weeks, and today is the day. Client billing has gone live, and you will soon start realizing all of the many benefits this new method of billing your clients offers. Let’s review what this means to you.

• Billing is initiated on your behalf by LightCMS.
• The invoice sent to your customer is branded with your company information.
• Your company is listed on your client’s credit card charges.
• You no longer have to request your profits from us. Your money is paid immediately and directly to you by Stripe.
• Your profits are greater because the processing fees are less.
• LightCMS bills you only for your monthly base charges.

If, for whatever the reason, you did not activate client billing, then your clients have been switched to account billed, which means that you are now responsible for billing your clients outside of the LightCMS system. LightCMS will still bill you for your base monthly charges.

For more information on Client Billing 2.0, see the Client Billing 2.0 Blog post.

Account Navigation for Single Site Users and for Account Billed Users

Release of the new dashboard brings different account navigation for single site and account billed users. Previously, selecting Account from the User menu, took account billed and single site users to the account dashboard which provided no useful information because of the nature of the sites.

Now, when account billed users select Account from the User menu, they are taken to their Website List page.

When users with a single site select Account from the User menu, they are now taken to the Account Detail page.

New Account Dashboard and Account Navigation

This release brings a redesigned dashboard to LightCMS partner accounts. The dashboard gives you at-a-glance insight into your business and your client accounts. To access the dashboard, log in and click your name in the upper right corner. Select Account from the dropdown menu. 

As you can see from this screen shot, the dashboard organizes your account information into five primary sections:

• Financial Snapshot
• Accounts Status Summary
• Account Status Detail
• Revenue Graph
• Recent Blog Posts

Financial Snapshot

The financial snapshot lets you quickly see important financial information about your account revenue and fees. These include:

• Next Billing Date – the date you will next be billed
• Monthly Revenue – the sum of everything you bill your clients
• Monthly Fees – the sum of what LightCMS bills you for your client accounts
• Projected Annual Revenue – your monthly revenue multiplied by 12

Accounts Status Summary

This section of the dashboard lets you quickly see the status of your client accounts. This includes:

• The number of new sites added
• The number of sites upgraded
• The number of sites downgraded
• The total number of billed sites

Account Status Detail

• The trial accounts expiring
• A listing of accounts that have been upgraded
• A listing of accounts that have been downgraded

Revenue Graph

The revenue graph presents you with a line graph of your account revenue over the past 12 months. When the new dashboard is released, if you have revenue information available over the past 12 months, then the graph will reflect that revenue. If you have no history available, then the prior months will show no revenue, but as time passes and you receive revenue, you will see those numbers reflected in the graph.

LightCMS Blog

This section of the dashboard gives you a listing of the most recent posts on the LightCMS blog. You can click a blog post title to go to the blog and read the post.

Updated Terms of Service

The LightCMS terms of service have been updated and we now have terms of service for the partner platform. 

For a look at what else you will find in this release,take a look at the 2015.2 release notes below.

Release 2015.2

New Features

• Client billing goes live with this release and the new billing methodology becomes active. Read the Client Billing 2.0 blog post for details.

Enhancements

• Made numerous, subtle design changes across the sight to flatten the design, including buttons.

• Updated the CSS to improve page load times and reduce file size.

• Streamlined design code across the entire system to maximize performance.

Resolved Issues

• When a user signed up via the sign up element, the name field in the user table was not populated. Since the user name is used as the edit link on the user page and no name existed, the record could not be edited. Now, if no name is found, the link defaults to "Edit User".

• Image uploads for images with accepted extensions no longer fail.

• When exporting a blog from one LightCMS site and importing it into another, the post-url, if provided, will also be imported.

Client Billing 2.0 Activation Period

With this release, we roll out the first stage of Client Billing 2.0: Client Billing Activation.  We encourage you to activate Client Billing as soon as possible. Once activated, you are finished with your part, and all you have to do is to wait for Client Billing to become active on March 3rd.

Client Billing Activation is a simple process where you give us information about your credit card, your company, and your Stripe account. To activate Client Billing, simply follow the Activate Client Billing button on the Partner Program page. This button takes you to the Activate Client Billing page.  On this page, you will need to give us the following information:

• Credit Card Information - If we already have your credit card on file, the card information is automatically populated. For your security, only the last 4 digits of the card number are displayed. If we do not have a card on file for you, then you will need to enter it to continue. If we do have a card on file for you and it needs to be changed, you can do that on the Account Information page.
  
  
  
  
• Company Information - Your company information will appear in the header area of the invoice that is generated and emailed to your customer. You can view a sample customer invoice by clicking the invoice image. The email address will be listed in the header and will be used as the reply to address on the email.
  
  
  
  

If you already have a Stripe account you can sign in to it, or if you don't have a stripe account, you can set up an account by completing the form. You will be asked to provide information about your business, personal information about yourself, details to display on your customer's credit card statements, and your banking information for Stripe to pay you.

See our recent Client Billing 2.0 blog post for full details of Client Billing 2.0.

New Responsive Design 

We're excited to bring you yet another fully responsive design: Overture. As with all of the LightCMS designs, this design is available for use on any LightCMS website at no additional charge.

Home Page	Inside Page

You can use this design as is or customize it with the LightCMS built in Design Editor. If you're an advanced user, you can even download the design source code to use as a starting point for a new, custom design.

To see the design in action for yourself, click the image above or log in to LightCMS and go to the Design section on the toolbar. Choose the Gallery, and look for Featured Designs. You can apply the design to your site or download the source files. You can also see the design in the LightCMS Design Viewer.

Release 2015.1

New Features

• Client Billing 2.0 Activation is now available. Follow the Activate Client Billing button on the Partner Program page to activate client billing on your account. 
• A new responsive design, Overture is now available in the design gallery.

Enhancements

• The percentage discount code amount was limited to only three characters. This prevented entry of discounts such as 1.25%. The discount field now allows entry of up to 5 characters, and server side processing validates that the percentage is not greater than 100%. 

Resolved Issues

• In certain situations, a one cent rounding error occurred because the rounding method used for calculating freight was different from the rounding method used for summing the order. The checkout page now uses the normal rounding method for both. 
• The force password change at next log in check box would not save the setting if the box was checked and then unchecked prior to saving.
• Special characters in event titles are now stored correctly.
• Paths to digital product download files are now always generated the same way.
• If a store customer entered a billing or shipping company name, the name was not included on the order-print.aspx page.  Now the company name, if entered, is listed above the customer name on the order-print.aspx page.

The design of your organization's website is a bit like the layout of a retail store. You want customers to find it attractive and accessible, fun to browse but also efficient for those who want to buy and check out quickly. Unfortunately, designers often make mistakes when creating the look and feel of their company's site. Here are the top ones to avoid.

1. Not using a responsive layout. Responsive design is a method for ensuring a web site adapts to different client devices such as desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones and other mobile devices. Without it, you must update and manage several different templates, CSS files, and/or a completely different site. Responsive layouts ensure consistency of content and images for your customers regardless of their devices.
2. Use Flash. Apple stopped supporting Flash in all its mobile devices, and using it alienates all of those users. Presumably you could have one site for Windows desktop users who have Flash, and the rest done in CSS3 and Javascript, but why have all of that extra code to be responsible for? By sticking with Javascript and CSS3, you get similar effects and avoid duplicating your work.
3. Go heavy on artwork or unusual treatments. A decade ago, it was fashionable to push the envelope in web design with lavish graphics, layered art, curved or diagonal designs, and other out-of-the-box creative approaches. But today, so many people are using their phones and tablets to access websites that simplicity, consistency and predictability are of much greater importance than unusual web design. It is also more difficult to maintain a consistent look with responsive templates if you have an intricate and complicated design. If you're tempted to go a bit wild with your art and layouts, first check your site's traffic to see what percentage of your visitors are mobile. If you've got 40 percent or more mobile users, or even 30 percent, hold back with those interesting but unpredictable layouts and go for clean designs that will display well on any screen.
4. Crowd your site with images and text. Overcrowded web pages with little white space are difficult to navigate or read. Crowding literally tires the eyes and can cause visitors to move on. Pages need white space to provide boundaries, refresh the eyes, and enable readers to quickly grasp what is most important on the page. So be liberal with your white space. One caveat however: Don't "trap" a batch of white space in the middle of the page. That's jarring. Instead, use wide, but even, margins between the content, while lavishing a bit more on the outside margins.
5. Copy another site’s designs. It’s fine to take inspiration from other sites you admire, or even use some specific ideas. But copying all or large parts of someone else’s layout is a big no-no. The rule of thumb is that it’s ok to borrow ideas on things like color combinations, fonts, use of graphics, and navigation – but never OK to outright copy it. It will inevitably backfire on you when someone – a customer, partner, competitor, random visitor – notices the theft and comments on it in social media.
6. Don't provide enough contrast. Web sites should be easy to read and navigate, so contrast is important. It’s especially important to have good contrast for things like text, buttons and links. Contrast means both dark on light tones (e.g. black on white is better than charcoal on light gray) and color contrasts. Some colors, no matter how dark or light, don’t pair well. An example is orange with red, or green on blue. Even a light orange on a dark red is going to be hard on the eyes. If you’re not sure, ask the opinion of those around you.
7. Forget your visitors' needs. Do you cater to seniors or others with accessibility issues? Consider who and how people will be using your site. Seniors or vision-impaired visitors need bigger, darker text or easy to see buttons and images that can be enlarged. People who have arthritis may find it difficult to click through multiple links or manipulate sensitive drop-down menus. Others have trouble using mice and touchpads, so they appreciate sites coded to support keyboard navigation as well. And to ensure that color-blind visitors can identify a clickable link, use underlined or bold type as well as color to make it stand out.

You should consider the preferences of all your site visitors when creating your design. The goal is to make their experience as pleasant and productive as possible, so they'll want to come back. The more appealing and user-friendly it is, the better it will serve your company and make your bottom line a nice dark black.

With the old Client Billing method, LightCMS billed you for your monthly base charges and also billed your clients for their monthly charges. You then requested your money from LightCMS. Say goodbye to this old method, and say hello to a simpler and more efficient billing method!

Some of the important differences you will see are:

• The customer invoice has your company information, and your business is listed on your client’s credit card charge.
• The processing fees are less.
• Billing is initiated on your behalf by LightCMS.
• There is no more “Money Pile”. Your money is paid directly to you by Stripe.
• LightCMS bills you only for your monthly base charges.

We think you’ll agree these make Client Billing even better!

Client Billing Release

The change to Client Billing will begin on February 3rd. This is the date that Client Billing 2.0 will be released. The Client Billing activation period also begins on this day and lasts until March 3rd. March 3rd is the date that Client Billing goes live. This gives you an entire month to activate Client Billing. However, we encourage you to activate Client Billing as soon as possible when it is released so you will be ready for the changeover when the new Client Billing goes live. For the period between Client Billing activation and Client Billing going live, the current Client Billing method will still be in place.

How to Activate Client Billing

When Client Billing 2.0 is released, the first thing you must do is activate it. Activation is a simple process where you give us information about your credit card, your company, and your Stripe account. To activate Client Billing, simply follow the Activate Client Billing button on the Partner Program page. This button takes you to the Activate Client Billing page.  On this page, you will need to give us the following information:

• Credit Card Information - If we already have your credit card on file, the card information is automatically populated. For your security, only the last 4 digits of the card number are displayed. If we do not have a card on file for you, then you will enter it. If you need to change your credit card information, you can do that on the Account Information page.
  
  
  
  
• Company Information - Your company information will appear in the header area of the invoice that is generated and emailed to your customer. You can view a sample customer invoice by clicking the invoice image. The email address will be listed in the header and will be used as the reply to address on the email.
  
  
  
  

If you already have a Stripe account you can sign in to it, or if you don't have a stripe account, you can set up an account by completing the form. You will be asked to provide information about your business, personal information about yourself, details to display on your customer's credit card statements, and your banking information for Stripe to pay you.

The Customer Invoice

As we mentioned previously, LightCMS will bill you for your base monthly charges. We will also generate and transmit your client invoices and initiate billing of your clients, on your behalf. This is the way it has always been. However, now the invoices sent to your clients are branded with your company information, and no longer will they receive their charges from our generic WebsiteHostingBill.com. Client charges are processed using your Stripe account. This is especially beneficial to those of you who white label LightCMS. The resulting funds are paid directly to you by Stripe! 

Here’s an example of an invoice that we will send to your clients:

Don't want to use Client Billing?

There is nothing that says you have to sign up for client billing 2.0, even though it is to your advantage to do so. However, it is important you understand there are some negative consequences if you don’t sign up.

So what is the downside to not signing up?

• You will no longer receive profit from LightCMS.
• If you have a valid credit card on file, your account will be converted to account billing. This means that you will be responsible for billing your clients. LightCMS will bill the credit card you have on file for your base monthly charges. You will then need to bill your clients outside of the LightCMS billing system.
• If you do not have a valid credit card on file, then LightCMS will take control of your client accounts. Each client will be set up with their own LightCMS account and they will be billed directly by LightCMS.
  
  We would rather not take over your accounts, so please sign up as soon as possible.

Although we make every effort to verify the credit card we have on file for you, if you decide not to sign up for Client Billing 2.0, please take a moment to confirm that we have a valid credit card on file so we are not forced to take over your account.

Have questions?

If you have any questions regarding the changes to Client Billing and how it will effect you, please email support@lightcms.com or visit our Client Billing 2.0 FAQ's.

Product Enhancements

So let’s get to the meat and potatoes of what we’ve been up to. Throughout the course of 2014, we worked hard to bring our customers new features improved capabilities – ones that make LightCMS easier to use, and more secure. Here’s a list of our previous release notes, in case you missed any of them:

• New Element UI
  
  • New Element toolbar UI loads faster, and is more efficient
  • New, quicker way to add elements, reducing clicks by 50%
• Updated WYSIWYG Editor, Including Mobile Access
  
  • Updated UI to better match the LightCMS look and feel
  • Mobile browsers now provide a WYSIWYG editor
  • Full screen text editing feature added
• Password Protected Pages & Calendar Enhancements
  
  • Added password protection for pages without needing to create new user or role in system
  • New Manage Events page allows users to manage and search by names and dates
  • Added end time for calendar invites and visibility to timestamp on event summary view
• Responsive Checkout & New Templates
  
  • Friendlier, easier-to-use checkout experience
  • Two new responsive designs – Civet & Liberty
  • Form Builder updated with new look and feel
• Free Shipping & Stripe Enhancements
  
  • Added promo code that allows for free shipping on any order
  • More currencies now accepted via Stripe
• Blog Enhancements
  • Added publish time
  • Enhanced blog post management, allowing search & sort by dates, titles, etc.
  • Read More feature added

Sharing Knowledge

We’ve been in the web design business for a long time. We understand the unique challenges that our customers face on a daily basis because this is how our company started. We understand that LightCMS will only be as successful as the customers using our product – when you win, we win. We want to do everything we can to help you build fantastic websites, so we take time to share some of the lessons we’ve learned over the years. Here are just a few:

• 7 Best Practices to SEO Like a Pro
• Top Four Navigation Pitfalls to Avoid in Web Design
• Don’t Let Bloated Graphics Hijack Your Web Site
• Run Your Design Business Without Giving Up Your Life

Celebrating Success

In 2014 we continued to celebrate the success of our partners and customers. We shared this with you on our website throughout the year, and we had a blast pulling together the stories of several LightCMS partners. We love seeing our customers’ businesses grow and thrive, and we will always keep our customers at the heart of our product. If you have a LightCMS success story to share, we’d love to hear from you.

Communication

As of June 2014, we also started providing release notes to summarize the new features, enhancements, and issue resolutions included in each release. These notes give you an at-a-glance notification of everything to expect in each release, and each of these blog posts can be easily found by checking out our “release notes” tag on our blog.

< The Source />

Due to the unique needs of our partners and power users, we wanted to have a way to share specific information, recap recent feature additions, preview future product enhancements, and celebrate the success of our partners. We are now accomplishing all this and more via our email newsletter, affectionately known as The Source.

Looking Forward

We’re proud of the progress we’ve made thus far, and we’re looking forward to another great year. Speaking of… we’ll soon be announcing some pretty awesome news for our partners who use client billing. If you fall into that category, be looking for an email from us within the coming weeks.

We are honored to have so many great customers, and we’re grateful for your continued support. If you have any suggestions on how we can make additional improvements to LightCMS, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment below or shoot us an email at support@lightcms.com. Here’s to a great 2015!

As with all of the LightCMS designs, this design is available for use on any LightCMS website at no additional charge. The new design can be customized through the built in Design Editor, and advanced users can download the source code to use as a starting point for a new, custom design.

To see the design in action for yourself, click the image above or log in to LightCMS and go to the Design section on the toolbar. Choose the Gallery, and look for Featured Designs. You can apply it to your site or download the source files. You can also see the design in the LightCMS Design Viewer.

Below are my six top tips for making sure your images aren’t bigger than your bandwidth.

1. Compress, compress, compress. Digital pictures can take up an enormous amount of bandwidth if not properly compressed and that, in turn, can turn your website into a frustratingly slow experience. To keep images to a reasonable size, use a program such as Photoshop or Pixelmator and use the Save for Web and image export, respectively, to cut the size down. If you would like to make the image file size even smaller, you could also run the file through an image optimizer software like ImageOptim for the Mac. This application uses several compression algorithms to decrease the file size, yet keeps the image looking the same. ImageOptim can reduce PNG file sizes by 30-40%. The smaller the file size, the faster your site will load. Alternatively, you can reduce the physical dimensions of the image– for example, reducing a 3264 by 2448 jpg image from an iPhone 6 plus, down to 700 by 525, takes the file size down from 2 MB to 295KB. If you go a step further in Photoshop and save it for web, the file size drops to 71KB.
2. Know your image formats. Different image formats have different uses. The older GIF format produces small files, but the images aren’t as sharp, and limited to 256 colors. GIFs are best for images with text and flat colors, as well as cute videos of cats. JPG images, on the other hand, are great for photographs or graphics with thousands of colors. However, be prepared for large, files of 3 to 5 MB’s on average. JPGs can, and should be, reduced through resizing and compression (see above) but that could possibly sacrifice some image clarity and colors. For images with large blocks of solid colors, you have a need for transparency and PNG graphics are best. PNG files compress well, but they will have an overall larger size than GIF and JPG images.
   
   
   
   
3. Beware of large galleries. LightCMS (as well as other CMS applications) have an image “gallery” feature which allows web designers to put a number of small thumbnail-sized images on a single screen so the viewer can see them all at once. The viewer can then click on a small image and a larger version of it will load. However, you should keep in mind that galleries can load both the small and the large versions of each image causing the image files to compete for bandwidth.
4. Use 3rd party video services. In the old days of Flash players, websites would host their own .flv’s and visitors with free Flash players could view them. Now, however, hosting Flash videos on a site is pretty much history. Today’s answer is to post your company videos to sites such as YouTube or Vimeo and embed the link on your site instead. The video plays on YouTube, saving you the storage space and bandwidth.
5. Anticipate new technologies and how they may affect your site. Mobile devices created a need for more cleanly organized sites and fewer, smaller images. Now retina displays are moving things in the opposite direction with displays showing your site in a much higher resolution. To take advantage of the sharper capabilities of a retina display you can have two versions of each image, one for a retina-capable device and one for normal displays. The browser will look to see if the higher quality image is available and serve that image. If not, it will load the regular image.
6. Make sure images are your own. Finally, make sure all of your images are your property. Designers are often tempted to “borrow” good images from other people’s sites. Don’t. The odds that someone will notice are higher than you think, and in the era of social media, your theft of someone else’s intellectual property could become a trending topic. Don’t you want to showcase your own high quality content for visitors to admire?

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.—December 3, 2014—LightCMS, a NetSuite (NYSE: N) company that provides a powerful, yet easy-to-use cloud-based content management system (CMS), today announced that Steadfast Creative, one of LightCMS’s strategic partner agencies, has used LightCMS to build more than 60 unique websites for small and medium-sized businesses. LightCMS provided the technology platform that helped launch the one-person startup based outside of Fort Worth, Texas, and has fueled its rapid growth over the past three years into a thriving eight-person digital marketing, branding and website development agency. LightCMS has helped Steadfast Creative ignite its business success with easy-to-use features and the creative flexibility to design rich, elegant websites that distinctively mirror a client’s brand.

“LightCMS definitely gave us a solid backbone and enabled us to really leverage our creative skills to build the business,” said Steadfast Creative founder Brad Parnell, who founded the agency in 2011 and began using LightCMS as a freelancer several years earlier. “I’m a huge advocate of the platform and attribute a lot of our success to LightCMS. If we didn’t have it, I’m not sure we’d have as big a client base or be as successful as we have been.”

Watch the video about Steadfast Creative’s partnership with LightCMS here.

Steadfast Creative and its clients have benefited from the simple, intuitive site design and controls in LightCMS.

These benefits include:

• Using LightCMS has meant Steadfast Creative can focus on using their design expertise to deliver stunning sites that help the company’s clients attract and engage site visitors instead of spending time mastering specialized programming languages.
• LightCMS’s support for responsive web design ensures that every LightCMS site displays optimally for the device being used to access that site, whether desktop, smartphone or tablet.
• LightCMS’s simplicity makes it easy for non-technical users at client organizations to update and manage their sites themselves resulting in fewer support inquiries and more satisfied clients for Steadfast Creative.

Parnell added, “With LightCMS, I was finally able to offer clients a user-friendly platform for blogging, editing content, uploading images and managing pages—and it’s all hosted. We work with a lot of very busy small business owners who don’t have the time to learn the software. Giving them a beautiful site and showing them how easy LightCMS is to use makes their lives so much easier.”

Steadfast Creative recently joined the LightCMS Partner Platform program, designed to make it easier than ever for creative designers and resellers, like Steadfast Creative, to focus on what they do best—creating leading-edge websites with a standards-based platform. By taking advantage of the LightCMS Partner Platform, Steadfast Creative has introduced a new and simplified pricing model that provides its clients with websites that have unlimited pages, unlimited products and online store capabilities for a flat fee. For further information, please visit www.lightcms.com/partners.

“It’s fantastic to see Steadfast Creative and other LightCMS partners unleash their creative talents and realize great business success with the platform,” said Justin Cowan, Director of Content Management for LightCMS. “We’re gratified to be able to collaborate with agencies and designers through the LightCMS Partner Platform to make it easier than ever for them to reach new levels and delight more clients.”

About LightCMS

LightCMS is a NetSuite company that provides a powerful, yet easy-to-use cloud-based platform for creating beautiful websites and online stores. Guided by its philosophy of sophisticated simplicity, LightCMS offers an ideal set of tools for individuals, non-profits, and small to medium-sized businesses who want to communicate, conduct business, and sell products online. LightCMS is also a leading platform of choice for web designers and creative agencies. With industry-leading design flexibility, LightCMS offers designers and developers the opportunity to create custom websites their clients can easily manage themselves. More than 175,000 users from around the world leverage the simplicity and flexibility LightCMS offers to build standout websites and online stores quickly.

For more information about LightCMS, please visit www.lightcms.com.

Follow LightCMS's blog, LightCMS's Facebook page and the @LightCMS Twitter handle for real-time updates.

NOTE: NetSuite, the NetSuite logo, LightCMS, and the LightCMS logo are registered service marks of NetSuite Inc. or its affiliates.

Responsive Checkout

For quite some time you've enjoyed responsive design on your website pages and in your web store. Now, just in time for your holiday shoppers, this release also brings responsive design to the Checkout page. Your web store visitors will now experience a seamless and fully responsive shopping experience, regardless of the devices they use for making purchases from your online store. 

Click one of the images below for an expanded view.

Desktop/Notebook	Tablet	Mobile

Two New Responsive Designs

This release includes two new responsive designs. As always, these designs are available for use on any LightCMS website at no extra charge. You can use the designs exactly as they are or make your own "tweaks" to the design by using our built-in design editor. If you're an advanced user, you can even download the design source code to use as a starting point for your own design.

These two new designs are Civet and Liberty.

Civet	Liberty

To see these designs in action for yourself, click one of the images above or  log in to LightCMS and go to the Designs section on the toolbar at the top of the page. Choose the Gallery, and look for our Featured Designs. You'll be able to apply them to your site or download their source files. You can also see these designs in the LightCMS Design Viewer.

Updated Form Builder

This release gives the Form Builder an updated look, bringing its appearance inline with the rest of LightCMS elements. The form builder functions exactly as it always has, providing you with a simple-to-use and sophisticated tool for creating forms on your site.

Enhanced Form Builder Security

To promote increased security of LightCMS and your business, we have made a change to the Form Builder element on trial sites. This update is only for the sites created when a user signs up on the LightCMS.com website. Users on these trial sites can still create forms and see the forms on the page, just as they always have. Now, however, the user must be logged to submit the form. This limitation is lifted when the user upgrades to a paid site. By making this change, we will help keep the integrity of the IP and of all LightCMS sites.

Releasing November 25th

Look for these changes on the morning of November 25th, just in time for Thanksgiving! For a look at what else is contained in this release, take a look at the 2014.12 release notes below.

2014.12 Release Notes

New Features

• The Check Out page now has a responsive design, making for a friendlier, easier-to-use check out experience.
• Two new responsive designs, Civet and Liberty are now available in the Featured Designs section of the Design Gallery.

Enhancements

• The Form Builder element has an updated new look that brings its appearance inline with other LightCMS elements.
• Increased Form Builder security now means that a user on a trial site must be logged in to submit a form. This limitation is lifted when a site is upgraded to a paid site. Trial sites created by a reseller are not subject to this limitation.

Resolved Issues

• The system now provides descriptive error message instead of a generic message when reporting errors for the Stripe payment gateway.
• RSS feeds now account for blog post times.
• The LightCMS.com signup process now excludes special characters.
• Store currency selection is no longer limited when the Stripe payment gateway is in use.
• iCal imports from iCloud are working again.
• Leading and trailing spaces have been removed from the blog post title HTML when viewing a blog post.
  

   

How-to videos and documentation. On the LightCMS partner help site, you’ll find a lot of helpful articles, videos and documentation on using the LightCMS tools, as well as tips showing how to customize sites for different clients.

Free demo sites. LightCMS provides each partner with one free site. You can choose to use that as your actual business website, or turn it into a demo site to showcase your capabilities and the LightCMS platform. With the help of LightCMS’s free design templates, you don’t need to be an expert designer to quickly create a working demo. In fact, it’s possible to develop a demo site of two to four pages in less than an hour using a template, some of your own photos, corporate logo and web copy. In addition, you can leverage the LightCMS 14-day trial period that each new customer gets to create a custom demo for each hot prospect, then activate it when they’re ready to go forward.

Responsive design templates. Today’s websites have to be accessible by all types of devices, from cell phones and tablets to large desktop monitors. That requires responsive web design, an approach for creating sites that can automatically adapt to the screen sizes of a wide range of devices. To ensure your clients’ sites can support their customers’ diverse needs, LightCMS provides multiple responsive design templates, free to its partners. You can also develop and implement your own custom templates. Once you’re happy with your template, just drop in a tiny snippet of code wherever you want your users to be able to add or edit content. The LightCMS system takes care of the rest.

Flexible packaging options. LightCMS charges $19 per month per site. However, partners have a variety of different ways they can charge their customers. You can add 10, 20, 50 percent or more to the monthly price and bill customers the fees that you choose. Or you can have LightCMS bill you directly for the $19 while you bill your customers separately for hosting, design services, or other extras. Or you can bundle your services with LightCMS and create different packages to target different customer needs. For example, you might offer a one-time website and logo redesign package for a new business which wants to then take over management of its own site, while offering another package for long-term customers as part of a new customer web redesign package. Another bundle might provide long-term web site consulting, design and management services to a client who wants to outsource the oversight of it. You have the flexibility to create the packages and price structure best suited to your company.

Marketing assistance. LightCMS offers advice on how to market and grow your business. If you’re new to the business, think about what types of organizations you want to focus on, and what services to sell. If you’ve already designed a few websites, consider targeting other businesses in those niches. Local churches, nonprofits, legal firms, schools, fitness centers, medical clinics, hair salons . . . they all need help designing web sites just for their businesses. There are dozens of potential markets, but it’s best to start with two or three and expand as you get more reference clients. Your LightCMS account manager can provide feedback and advice, and you’ll also find articles and blog posts on the LightCMS web site.

Whether you're designing a single site or building a web design business, the LightCMS Partner Platform has the tools to help you do it well.

To find out what other services LightCMS can provide to get your business growing, visit http://www.lightcms.com/partners.

Don't cram content "above the fold." This is an old term from newspapers, which used to be folded in half, with the banner headline on top. Any story that ran above the fold of the newspaper was considered breaking news. However, websites don't have folds and the screen resolution of today's monitors is much better than it used to be -- they can display an entire page at once. Also, with the wide range of monitors, laptops, tablets and cell phones it's impossible to know where the fold will be for every display. So instead, arrange your content thoughtfully to draw people into your site and guide them through the page. Then let them use the scroll bar as needed.

Don't overpopulate the homepage. Likewise, don't treat your homepage as your only page. It's common for web managers, especially in small or nonprofit organizations, to gradually overbook the homepage as new and “important” content comes in, while the older content never gets removed. That can result in the endlessly scrolling home page. While people are used to some scrolling, they don't expect to navigate three-foot long webpages (as they might have in the early days of the web). Today people get bored quickly, so keep your homepage content fresh, interesting, and short. Provide links and navigation buttons for visitors to reach other content not located on the homepage.

Be consistent with typefaces, fonts and colors. The classic new designer's mistake is to fall in love with fonts and typefaces -- lots of them. But going overboard with multiple typefaces (the style, such as Garamond) and fonts (size and weight) makes it hard on readers. It winds up making a webpage look confusing and unprofessional. Instead, select two fonts, one for titles and one for content text. Usually, one will be a serif typeface (e.g. Caslon) and the other sans serif (Proxima Nova). Also avoid too much bolding, highlighting, underlining, colors, etc. Be bold with your design, but conservative with your font treatments. If you have a professionally designed template you can use, like the included designs in LightCMS, stick to it and avoid going outside its styles.

Update regularly. Once you start a blog, or a news area, or a series of articles -- keep it updated. Nothing says "out of business" like a blog that was updated a year ago or a press release from six months past. If you can't commit to updates, then keep the site simple with just contact information, an overview of your organization's purpose, and other static content.

Use SEO keywords carefully. It is often tempting to get as many keywords into your content as possible, to help it turn up in searches. However, too much repetition of keywords and phrases is a turn-off to would-be consumers who can quickly sense a ploy for hits vs. quality content. So select those four or five keywords that really represent your business. Use them whenever it makes sense, but not multiple times in one short article.

Most of all, know your audience and what content they want to see. Then give it to them in as clear and concise a manner as possible. They'll appreciate it.

When Mike Johnston and I (the founder and leading contributor of CMS Critic respectively) decided to create Website Builders Critic, it didn’t take long for us to add LightCMS to our very small list of recommended products.

The aim of Website Builders Critic - which we launched in October 2014 - is to show the less tech-savvy population that beautiful and powerful websites can be built far more easily than first thought.

Via website builder reviews and video tutorials, Mike and I have attempted to make life easy for website building newbies when it comes to choosing a platform, and then using it.

But of course, our advice can only be as good as the products we advise people upon. So, what made us choose LightCMS?

Why LightCMS?

A truly good website builder needs to be just simple enough for newbies to find their way, yet just flexible enough for those same newbies to grow and express their creativity. LightCMS fits that bill quite nicely.

On top of some truly good looking templates, LightCMS’ user friendly interface makes adding pages and page elements a piece of digital cake.

The drag-and-drop page building system makes working with LightCMS simple, whilst the wide range of page elements like sliders, galleries, products and forms makes it functional.

It also has built in blogging and ecommerce functionality, both of which are solid features in their own right.

The LightCMS Partner Platform also factored into our decision. The partner platform enables those who wish to churn out and manage websites for clients. Essentially, it’s a business model within a website builder, and that’s something we didn’t want to ignore.

Plus, as the winners of the 2014 People’s Choice CMS Award for Best Cloud CMS for SMBs, Mike and I certainly aren’t alone in our admiration of LightCMS.

LightCMS in Action

Our decision to showcase LightCMS as one of the world’s best website builders for even the less tech-savvy isn’t just talk. It’s video, too.

For example, we have already demonstrated how LightCMS can be used to  build a blog in 5 minutes, from signup page to published post.

We have also done the same for online stores, portfolios and business websites, all of which LightCMS makes light work of (excuse the pun).

This combination of speed and simplicity doesn’t just make it a good website builder. It makes it an approachable one for the masses - and that’s exactly why we recommend it.

Check out our LightCMS review, as well as our LightCMS video tutorials.

Author Bio:

Kaya Ismail is the Co-founder of Website Builders Critic, and the leading contributor of CMS Critic.

If you are planning to go or thinking about going (don’t think about it…just go), we would love to meet up with you. During conference, we will be exhibiting and providing demos of our Partner Platform which can help take your design business to a whole new level. Check it out here:

Please stop on by during your breaks from the awesome sessions, say hello, grab some schwag, enter to win an Xbox One, and while you are at it, learn how you can transform your design business just like these LightCMS design partners are doing.

Collision Media Balances Style and Substance with LightCMS - http://www.lightcms.com/lightcms-story-collision-media

Screen Four Creates Simple Solutions to Complex Problems with LightCMS - http://www.lightcms.com/lightcms-story-screen-four

LightCMS Helps Steadfast Creative Lead with Design - http://www.lightcms.com/lightcms-story-steadfast-creative

See you there!!

Too many levels.

Don't make visitors do a deep dive into your site to find information. If possible, keep the site reasonably shallow, around three levels, and keep the most important information on the first or second levels. Use design elements, such as sidebars to squeeze more information onto a page, and resist the urge to add another page link.

Unclear identifiers.

Avoid cutesy or long-winded language in identifying URLs and pages. Also avoid unclear words. For instance, "engage" is vague, but "contact" is clearer.

Too many words.

Visitors should be able to cut-and-paste a link without needing to copy a dozen words. That also means limiting your links to one or two words in length. Anything longer is a waste of time. For instance, "See How Our Product Works" is not a good title. But "How It Works" is better.

Avoid "mega flyout menus."

Some ecommerce sites with a lot of product categories will use drop down menus that spawn other drop down menus -- as much as four to five levels down. The problem is visitors can't see those hidden categories so may not go looking for them in the menu. Multi-level drop down menus also have a tendency to collapse, forcing the person to start over again.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.—October 21, 2014—LightCMS, a NetSuite (NYSE: N) company that provides a powerful, yet easy-to-use cloud-based content management system (CMS), today announced that Collision Media, a small creative design studio, has built a thriving business by working exclusively with the LightCMS platform since 2008. Collision Media, a boutique firm headed by husband-and-wife team Tommy and Emily Bailey in Nashville, Tenn., has used LightCMS to build more than 200 websites for businesses, ministries, and nonprofits. Collision Media continues to grow its business by taking advantage of the flexibility and agility of the LightCMS platform to design striking websites that meet and exceed client expectations. In addition, the intuitive ease of use offered by the LightCMS platform enables Collision Media’s clients to easily update their websites themselves which opens up bandwidth for the agency to take on additional projects while helping to preserve a healthy work-life balance.

“As a small boutique firm, we could not manage all of the websites we’ve created without a platform like LightCMS,” said Tommy Bailey, Co-founder of Collision Media. “LightCMS has a unique balance that helps speed and simplify the process in front-end design and site maintenance. Clients can update their own websites with a very small learning curve. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

Collision Media recently strengthened its relationship with LightCMS by joining the new LightCMS Partner Platform program, designed to make it easier than ever for creative designers and resellers to focus on what they do best in creating leading-edge websites with a standards-based platform. As a result of the LightCMS Partner Platform, Collision Media has introduced a new and simplified pricing model that offers clients websites with unlimited pages, unlimited products and online store capabilities for a flat fee that replaces a five-tier system that offered various prices based on limits to the number of pages and products.

“One of the biggest benefits of the LightCMS Partner Platform has been simplifying our monthly pricing for our clients,” said Tommy Bailey. “We’ve had great success with it. Our clients really like the new pricing structure and the unlimited nature of the platform so they don’t have to worry about limits on pages or products as they grow.”

“We’re seeing a lot of interest among designers and resellers in the flexibility and attractive pricing offered in the LightCMS Partner Platform,” said Justin Cowan, Director of Content Management for LightCMS. “Collision Media is a great example of an agency that got on board early and is passing along benefits of the platform to its clients to improve customer satisfaction and win new business.”

Collision Media chose LightCMS after previous experiences with WordPress and Joomla that left them needing more. LightCMS equips Collision Media with rich and flexible controls for managing the creative process and also accelerates website development without the need to master specialized programming languages. The responsive web design capabilities built into LightCMS enable Collision Media to deliver beautiful websites optimized to display and function on a wide variety of Internet-enabled devices from laptop screens to tablets and smartphones.

“LightCMS allows for a very quick turnaround. The coding and integration is simple and intuitive and allows us to produce quality work in a fraction of the time,” Tommy Bailey said. “Clients really love the ease of use, and that’s very helpful to us because it minimizes support needs after launching.”

To view a case study and video on Collision Media’s partnership with LightCMS, please visit http://www.lightcms.com/lightcms-story-collision-media.

About LightCMS LightCMS is a NetSuite Inc. company that provides a powerful, yet easy-to-use cloud-based platform for creating beautiful websites and online stores. Guided by its philosophy of sophisticated simplicity, LightCMS offers an ideal set of tools for individuals, non-profits, and small to medium-sized businesses who want to communicate, conduct business, and sell products online. LightCMS is also a leading platform of choice for web designers and creative agencies. With industry-leading design flexibility, LightCMS offers designers and developers the opportunity to create custom websites their clients can easily manage themselves. More than 275,000 users from around the world leverage the simplicity and flexibility LightCMS offers to build standout websites and online stores quickly.

For more information about LightCMS, please visit www.lightcms.com.

Follow LightCMS's blog, LightCMS's Facebook page and the @LightCMS Twitter handle for real-time updates.

NOTE: NetSuite, the NetSuite logo, LightCMS, and the LightCMS logo are registered service marks of NetSuite Inc. or its affiliates.

We thank you again for your continued support in making us the best Cloud CMS by creating beautiful websites and online stores for your businesses and your clients’ businesses. We cannot do this without your help!

Redesigned Users and Roles Page

The Users and Roles page introduces a new design that brings you improved form and function. Previously, roles were located at the bottom of the page, below the list of users. This proved cumbersome, especially for anyone with a large number of users. There was also no easy way to locate a particular user if you had a large number of users. The Users page now separates users and roles onto two separate tabs. Users are listed on the Manage Users tab, and roles are listed on the Manage Roles tab.

Manage Users Tab

The Manage Users tab includes several new features you will find especially useful if you have a large number of users.

Users are now listed in a table format that provides you with the same functionality recently introduced with Manage Posts and Manage Events.

• Search for Users - Have you ever needed to find a user named Jake or anyone with a gmail.com email address? The new search feature enables you to quickly filter the user list based on criteria you enter in the search field at the top of the users list. The search filters on user name and email address so you can filter to a specific or partial username or email address.
  
  
  
  

• Filter Users by Role - Have you ever needed to see only the admin users or maybe the users assigned to a custom role? No problem. Now all you have to do is select the role from the dropdown list at the top of the user grid and the list instantly filters to only those users assigned to the selected role. To display all users, simply select Show All Roles.

  
  
  

• Easily Delete a User - Previously you had to edit a user account in order to delete it. Now you can delete it from the user list simply by clicking the trashcan icon in the far right column.

• Pagination – Anyone with a large number of users knows how cumbersome a user list can be. The new pagination feature lets you limit the number of users that the list shows at a time, and the Previous and Next navigation links enable you to quickly page through the list.

• Gravatar – If the user account is configured to use a Gravatar image or if the account has an uploaded image, the first column in the grid displays the user image.

• Sort Users - Easily sort the user list by clicking a column heading. Click the heading once to sort in ascending order, and click the heading again to sort in descending order. Click the heading a third time to return to the original sort order.

  
  
  
  

Manage Roles Tab

The Manage Roles tab lists all of the roles you have set up in the system. This includes the system roles and any custom roles. You can edit a custom role by clicking the role name or delete a custom role by clicking the trashcan icon to the right of the role. Click the + button in the upper right corner to add a new custom role.

As with Manage Users, you can click the column heading to sort the roles in ascending or descending order, search for specific roles, and use pagination if you have a large number of roles.

Export Users

The new Export Users feature enables you to export your user account information to a CSV file. This serves as a useful tool for backing up your user information. You can also use this feature if you need to make mass changes to all of your users. For example, you may want to force all of your users to change their passwords. By exporting the users to a CSV file, you can set a flag in the file that requires users to change their passwords the next time they log in. You can then use the Import Users feature to import the modified user information and overwrite the existing user information.

To export users, go to the Users page and click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the page, then click Export Users. That’s all there is to it.

Import Users

The Import User feature enables you to import multiple users from a CSV file. This proves exceptionally useful if you have several new users you need to set up and also if you need to make changes to your existing users. To help you import users, you can first, export your users and use the export file as a template for the new users. You can also use the download a template file link on the import page to download a template file.

To import users, first study the data elements in the template file to gain an understanding of each, and then delete the user data. Do not delete the header row. You can then enter your new user data into the file. The columns in the file include the following:

• FirstName - User's first name.
• LastName - User's last name.
• FullName - User's full name.
• Email - User's email address.
• Password - User's password.
• RequireUserToChangePassword - FALSE means the user is not required to change his or her password at next log in, and TRUE means the user is required to change his or her password at next log in.
• Roles - A comma separated list of roles to which the user is assigned.
  
  Note: When importing users, a good rule of thumb for passwords is to use the same password for all users and then set the RequireUserToChangePassword flag to TRUE. That way, when the user logs in with the password you provide, he or she will be required to change the password before accessing the site.

To import users, go to the Users page and click the Gear icon in the upper right corner of the page, then click Import Users. This displays the Import Users page.

Click the Browse button to select the CSV file you want to import. After selecting the file, click the Upload button to upload the file and let the system verify the contents. The import displays the first record in the file and lets you view it.

After you have uploaded your file, you must click the Import Users button to complete the import.

Two New System Roles

The system roles now include two new roles that let you maintain tighter control over which users can upload or access files on your site.

• System File Manager – Any user assigned to the System File Manager role will have access to the File Manager in the text editor. With the File Manager, users can upload, rename, and/or delete files such as document and media files. If a user does not have the System File Manager role, the File Manager button is not displayed on the text editor toolbar.
• System Image Manager – Any user with the System Image Manager role will have access to the Image Manager in the text editor. With the Image Manager, users can upload, rename, and/or delete image files. If a user does not have the System Image Manager role, the Image Manager button is not displayed on the text editor toolbar.

By default, all users will be assigned both roles. You can remove the role or reassign it at any time from the manage user page.

Released October 21st

Look for these changes on the morning of October 21st. For a look at what else to expect in this release, take a look at the 2014.11 release notes below.

2014.11 Release Notes

New Features

• The new Search feature enables you to search for a specific user by user name or email address, and the user list enables you to filter users based on assigned role.
• Users can now be exported to a CSV file and also imported from a CSV file.
• The users list now includes pagination, enabling you to specify how many users to show on the page and Previous and Next navigation links for paging through the list of users.
• The new System File Manager role gives users access to the File Manager in the text editor. If a user does not have this role, the File Manager button is not available on the toolbar in the text editor. All users are assigned this role by default, but the administrator can remove the role from a user if necessary.
• The new System Image Manger role gives users access to the Image Manager in the text editor. If a user does not have this role, the Image Manager button is not displayed on the toolbar in the text editor. All users are assigned this role by default, but the administrator can remove the role from a user if necessary.

Enhancements

• Redesigned the Manage Users page to separate users and roles to different tabs. Users are now listed on the Manage Users tab and roles are listed on the Manage Roles tab.

Resolved Issues

• If a user was not assigned to an administrator role, but was granted access to edit a blog or event element, no items were listed in the Manage Posts or Manage Events grids.
• If a role is granted edit access to a page, any user in that role is given edit privileges for all elements on the page. The Manage Posts and Manage Events pages need to consider this security check.
• Search terms that include dashes now return matching results.
• When PayPal returned a payment status of "SuccessWithWarning," the LightCMS system recorded it as a failed payment, even though it was successful. The payment is now recorded as a successful payment.

Password Protected Pages

Granted, you may not want to password protect a page to keep your little sister out, but password protection on website pages enables you to restrict access to certain pages of your site, granting access to only those visitors who know the password. Of course, you've always been able to restrict access via LightCMS's robust system of Users and Roles, but we've had many requests for a quick and easy way to restrict access without having to create a user.

Plus, it's so easy to use.

To enable the feature, simply go to a page’s settings and select the Advanced tab. Enter a password in the Password field, and that page becomes password protected. It's really that easy. As you might guess, to unprotect a page, you clear the password from the field.

When a visitor attempts to access a protected page, the system displays the Protected Page message and requires the visitor to enter the password before it will display the page.

Registered users assigned to an administrative role, or any role that grants editing privileges for the page, can access the page without having to enter the password, as long as they are logged in.

Manage Your Events

LightCMS users who publish a calendar of events on their websites will be excited about the new Manage Events feature. Similar to Manage Posts for blogs, Manage Events gives you a listing of all of that calendar element’s events. To view the Manage Events page, go to the page with the calendar element and select Manage Events from the Calendar element’s dropdown menu.

You can sort the Manage Events grid by clicking a column heading. Filter the events in the grid by entering a search term in the Search field located at the upper right corner. You can also specify the number of events to display in the grid by selecting the number from the Show dropdown list in the upper left corner. If the calendar has more events than you choose to display, use the Next and Previous links in the bottom right corner of the grid to page forward and backward through the events.

Manage Posts

The Blog element's Manage Posts page now includes the same features that were introduced on the Manage Events page listed above. This includes sorting, filtering, and pagination.

It’s About Time!

Event time! You can now specify an end time for an event. Previously, you could set only the event start time. To set up start and end times for an event, enter them in the time section of the event settings page.

Display the Time in Event Summaries

Previously, event times only displayed on the event's detail page. Now, both the start time and end time can be displayed in event summaries in list or calendar view.

List View

Calendar View

A check box on the calendar element settings specifies if this calendar should list the start and end times for events.

When the feature is released, Display event time will be unchecked for any existing calendars. For new calendars, Display event time will be checked by default.

Released September 23rd

As you may have already noticed, these features and enhancements were released today Tuesday, September 23rd. For a look at what else to expect in this release, take a look at the 2014.10 release notes below. 

---

2014.10 Release Notes

New Features

• Added the ability to password protect a page. By password protecting a page you can restrict access to only those visitors who know the password. This enables you to secure and grant access to pages on your site, without having to set up a user for each visitor you want to give access to the page. To password protect a page, simply enter a password in the password field on the pages advanced settings. Then give the password to whomever you want to view the page.
• The new Manage Events page gives you an easy-to-use interface for managing your calendar events. To manage events, select Manage Events from the Calendar element menu. This page lets you sort events by name, date, and modified date. You can also search for events by name or date.
• You can now specify an end time for calendar events. Previously you could specify only an event start time.
• You can now list event start and end times on the calendar summary view. Previously, times were displayed only on the event detail page. To display event times, select settings from the Calendar element menu and check the Display event time box on the Basic tab. After release, this box will be unchecked for existing calendars. For new calendars, the box will be checked by default.
• The Blog element Manage Posts page now gives you the ability to more easily manage your blog posts. These enhancements include the ability to sort posts by title, publish date, and modified date. You can also search posts by title and publish date.

Enhancements

• The body and summary sections of the BlogML import no longer uses paragraph tags on every new line. The HTML is now imported as is.
• When blogs are exported from LightCMS, the system no longer serializes the attachments as part of the post. Instead, only the file name of the attachment is stored in the export XML file. The BlogML import process now also looks for and imports the file name of the attachment so it is stored in the new post record. With this change, users must move the attached files from one blog to another via FTPS.
• Now if a visitor encounters an error on a site or if a site is down, the system displays a page that lets the visitor know we are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it.
• You now have the ability to configure your element toolbars and menus to display in black instead of the default white. To enable black toolbars, go to your site settings and select the Advanced tab. Check Enable black toolbars in the Toolbar Options section.

Resolved Issues

• Default text now displays for an empty Files and Links element.
• Billing information fields now display at checkout when a customer purchases a free item that includes a handling fee.
• When a digital download product was created and the source of the digital download was a remote link, an error message sometimes displayed stating no file was found at the URL, even if a file existed at that location. 
• When a client billed website is upgraded by the account owner and a custom price is set, the custom price is only allowed if it is 5x the monthly price or lower. For partner platform accounts, this now allows a 10x price markup.

Time to Vote!

We haven’t won just yet and still need your help in making LightCMS the People’s Choice Winner for Best CMS for SMB. This time around the voting is open to everyone, so not only can you, our users, vote but you can also encourage your friends, colleagues and family members to help out as well! Voting is open now through October 17, 2014 at Midnight MST.

If you could, please take a minute and head on over to CMS Critic’s Voting Page and vote for LightCMS. Please note that you don’t have to vote for a winner in all 26 categories if you don’t want to, but if you do recognize any vendors in other categories, I am sure they would appreciate your vote as well.

Thanks so much for your continued support in making us the best Cloud CMS by creating beautiful websites and online stores for your businesses and your clients’ businesses. We cannot do this without your help!

If you want to make more money, you need to have more manpower to handle a greater amount of work. The catch, of course, is that hiring people also takes extra time, so small, busy firms tend to put off hiring staff because it is, at least temporarily, easier to handle things themselves. But that delay only adds to the pressure and can result in having to turn down key accounts or, worse, failing to deliver on deadlines for important clients.

Following are some guidelines to make the hiring process easier and more successful.

1. Don’t Rely Solely on Help Wanted Ads

The people really reading those ads are usually unemployed and generally less likely to be the top talent you want. Of course, there are exceptions to that rule, but if you’re short on time don’t waste it going through a stack of 200 mediocre candidates to find one gold nugget.

2. Do Recruit

Contact local designers' groups, professional organizations, and even current employees to find out who they might suggest. You’re looking for the all-star designers who may be interested in changing direction. These folks are known to their professional colleagues.

Not everything is about money, and that definitely includes a job candidate’s motivation to join your company. Of course, money is a factor, a large factor, in making the decision. But plenty of people join the Peace Corps, found their own startups, volunteer for nonprofits and do other things that offer a lot of personal fulfillment but not a lot of dollars. So understand your vision, your company’s future path, your brand, what aspects of your company’s vision are a good match with the job prospects', as well as any basic perks your firm has to offer – flex time, sabbaticals, gym memberships, great organic cafeteria on the top floor, etc.

4. Pay What the Job is Worth

You should make your salaries as close to market rate as you can. The more appealing your vision of the company, the greater the opportunity for creative or cutting-edge work, and the higher salary, the greater your odds of landing the perfect recruit.

5. Consider Their Personality

A “perfect” recruit is only perfect for your needs, not necessarily for your competitor’s. The skills are what make the prospect desirable, but personality will determine whether he or she will work out long-term. For instance, do you need a team player and negotiator who enjoys the give and take of groups, or do you really need an ingenious web designer who may isolate herself in her cubicle and get annoyed with criticism.

Prospects won’t always tell you upfront what their preferences are, so you may need to ask indirect, situational questions about their favorite projects and roles in them, or the best managers they've had and why. I’ve also used personality tests and generally had good results. Also, ask one or two colleagues to conduct or sit in on an interview, especially if the candidate is a strong one.

6. Protect Your Intellectual Property

While "work for hire" seems to be a clear-cut concept, it isn't so clear in some states and situations. You need an employment contract that spells out when and how something becomes company-owned or employee-owned. Check with your lawyer on that.

7. Protect Your Business

Your contract should also offer some protection from a termination-related lawsuit. When you’re a small organization – under 20 or so employees – you can usually hire and fire at will. But don't wait to terminate if you believe you've made a mistake. Waiting demoralizes the rest of the employees and can make it harder to fire. If the person has been there long enough for a performance review, for instance, he may expect to be given a chance to improve his performance. And, as always, consult your lawyer.

Finding the right person can be challenging, but when you do, that person has the potential to make your web design business a success. Never settle for someone that is just “good for now.” Hold out for that perfect fit for your organization and always listen to your gut.

The New Element Toolbars

First off, we've redesigned the Element Toolbars. You're used to seeing black bars at the top of each element. Our new toolbars are more modern and discreet. They're designed to blend into your site while still serving their main purpose of marking your elements and providing access to the element menus. The element menus themselves have been redesigned as well, sporting fresh new custom icons. Take a look at the new toolbars and menus in the image below.

The New Add Element Bar

Next, we've updated the Add Element bar found at the bottom of each editable region. The old Add Element bar was a thick, black bar with the same weight as the Element Toolbars. We felt this made it difficult to distinguish between the tops of elements and the bottoms of regions. We have replaced this bar with an add element button and a thin line to mark the location where you can add elements when in edit mode. This approach more naturally blends with the design of your site while at the same time subtly marking those locations where you can add elements.

As before, the Element Toolbars and Add Element buttons are displayed only in edit mode to logged-in administrators. See the new Add Element Bar in the image below.

The Add Element Modal: Beautiful, Responsive Design with Fewer Clicks

Now comes the most exciting change — the new Add Element modal. Clicking the Add Element button now brings up a beautifully-designed, responsive modal with fresh, custom icons representing each of the available elements. Simply click (or touch) the element you want and it is immediately added to your page. See the Add Element Modal in the image below.

The modal adapts to the size of your device's screen, enabling you to easily add elements on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. Plus, if you're a click counter, you'll notice that the new modal requires two fewer clicks for every element you add!

Sharing is the New "Copy"

We've also updated our copy element functionality. For one thing, we're now calling it "share" instead of "copy." For the most part, sharing an element works just as copying an element used to work. With sharing, you can place an element in multiple locations across your website. Updating the content of the element in one location automatically updates it everywhere it is shared.

However, we have made one big improvement in sharing vs. copying. Previously, when you copied an element, you had to select the element you wanted from a dropdown list that included every single element on your site. This list of elements could get very long and it could be quite cumbersome and time-consuming to select the element you wanted.

So, we've addressed this issue by creating a new Is Shareable property on the advanced settings of every element (see the image below). Now, only those elements that are marked as shareable are included in the share element list. By default, new elements will not be marked as shareable. However, when we release this new feature, we will automatically mark any element that you have currently copied as shareable.

All you have to do to share an element is to select the "Share an Element from Another Part of Your Site" dropdown list on the Add Element modal (see image of the modal above). Remember, this list displays only the elements you have marked as shareable, so if you don't see the element you want, you'll need to go to the Advanced tab in that element's settings and check the Is Shareable checkbox.

But Wait, There's More!

The new Element UI is a major upgrade and a big step forward for the LightCMS Platform. However, there are some other features, enhancements and resolved issues included in Release 2014.9 as well. For full details, see the 2014.9 Release Notes below.

Launching on September 2nd

Because of the significance of the changes in this release, we felt it important to give you advance notice of what is coming in 2014.9. These changes are tentatively scheduled for release on Tuesday, September 2, 2014. We look forward to bringing you these updates soon!

---

Release Notes for 2014.9

New Features

• Added an Is Shareable checkbox on the element settings Advanced tab. Selecting this box marks the element as shareable, and it makes it available for selection on the shared element dropdown list on the Add Element modal.
• Introduced the Add Element modal, offering a completely redesigned, mobile-friendly experience for adding elements to a page. This also reduces the number of clicks required to add an element by 50%.

Enhancements

• Redesigned the Element Toolbars, giving them a more modern and discreet appearance.
• Improved the appearance of the Add Element bar.
• Reduced the Element Toolbar markup and sped up the addition of an element.

Resolved Issues

• The checkout page would hang when the user entered the zip code if the currency format used periods for the thousands separator and commas for the decimal.
• For accounts on the Partner Platform, the Update Subscription page should allow a maximum 10x markup. However, the page allowed only a 5x markup, which is the maximum markup for legacy accounts not on the Partner Platform. The page now allows a maximum 10x markup for partner accounts.
• USPS First Class shipping was not calculated and presented as a shipping option for the customer, even when it was selected as an option in the store settings.
• Clicking the HTML button on the UI resulted in a minor display issue of the text field.
• The text area on the Blog Summary, Checkout and Payments Page, and on the Policies tab extended below the bottom of the frame, blocking the WYSIWYG controls located at the bottom of the field.
• Selecting the HTML button on the text editor displayed the HTML code, but clicking the Design button did not revert back to WYSIWYG mode, and the editor continued to display HTML code.
• Changes made within the Image Editor were not saved.

Take, for example, Hannah and Eric Granata. The Oklahoma-based couple has four young children, two giant dogs, a cat, and a few other pets. They educate their children at home and Eric works at a full-time job for a promotional products distributorship. Plus, in their “spare" time, they also own and operate Screen Four Solutions, a creative design and branding company specializing in developing beautiful, practical websites for a growing base of clients.

Their key to success is keeping things simple. Creating simple solutions to complex problems is a difficult task, but the Granatas have made a business of it, with the help of technology like the LightCMS content management system. With LightCMS, the Granatas are able to run and grow a profitable website business while still enjoying a very full life together as a family. In fact, the success and portability of Screen Four Productions allows them to dream of one day taking their life on the road.

“We’ve always had an idea that one day maybe we’ll sell everything and travel the country in an RV or something,” Eric Granata says with a smile. "Since we homeschool the kids we can educate them anywhere. And with Screen Four and LightCMS, we can still generate income no matter where we are. It’s a dream, anyway. A pretty nice dream.”

In the video below, the Granatas give us a sneak peek into their busy lives and share how LightCMS has lightened their load so they can find the balance between meeting the needs of their clients and enjoying life with their family.

Read more about the Granatas and how LightCMS meets the needs of their business on their full story page.

If you are a retailer who is being forced to find a new home, we want you to know that we are here for you and would very much like to become your Ecommerce platform of choice.

LightCMS provides a powerful, yet easy-to-use cloud-based platform for creating beautiful websites and online stores. Guided by our philosophy of sophisticated simplicity, LightCMS offers an ideal set of tools for small to medium-sized businesses who want to communicate, conduct business, and sell products online. More than 175,000 users from around the world leverage the simplicity and flexibility LightCMS offers to build standout websites and online stores quickly.

The holidays are quickly approaching and so is the February 1st deadline. If you would like to take LightCMS for a test drive, sign up for FREE to see just how easy running your online store on LightCMS can be. Sign up for your test drive here: https://www.lightcms.com/signup

See how other organizations like yours are leveraging LightCMS.

Here are a few case studies and videos featuring some of the many happy LightCMS users leveraging our platform to run their businesses:

• Sugarillashop Showcases Passion for Fashion with LightCMS
• Israel Diamond Supply Shines with LightCMS
• Video: Screen Four Creates Simple Solutions to Complex Problems with LightCMS
• Hoboken Coffee Roasters Brews Success with LightCMS
• Video: LightCMS Helps Steadfast Creative Lead with Design

A New Look

The most noticeable change is the editor’s appearance. It sports a sleek new look without compromising any functionality. The toolbar buttons and functions remain the same and are in the same familiar locations so you won't have any problem finding the tool you want. File browser dialogues for images, media, documents and others have also been redesigned to incorporate the new look and feel of the WYSIWYG editor.

WYSIWYG on Mobile Devices

Previously, when editing your site on a mobile device such as an iPad, Android tablet, or smart phone, text elements did not include the WYSIWYG editor. You were limited to viewing and editing only the text and HTML code. The updated editor now gives you the same WYSIWYG editor in the mobile browser that it provides in the Mac or PC browser. However, there are a few features that are unavailable in the mobile browser such as the file manager and full screen editing.

Full Screen Editing

The previous editor did not allow you to maximize it to full screen. Now, clicking a button on the toolbar changes the text editor to full screen. Clicking the button again, toggles the editor back to its original size. If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, F11 toggles full screen editing off and on.

Title Boxes For Image and Image Map Properties

The Image, Hyperlink, and Image Map properties dialogue boxes now include a Title text box. When set, the title will be displayed on mouseover.

Plus Much More

The above-listed features are just a few of the many changes in release 2014.8. For more details, please see the release notes listed below.

Launching on July 29th

Because this release presents changes to one of LightCMS's most-used features, we wanted to give you some advanced notice for this release. Therefore, we have tentatively scheduled the release of these features for Tuesday, July 29, 2014.

Release Notes for 2014.8

New Features

• Mobile browsers now provide a WYSIWYG editor. Previously the mobile browser provided only a textbox that allowed editing of the text and HTML code.
• The WYSIWYG editor now includes a full screen text editing feature. A new toolbar button enables you to toggle full screen editing. You can also toggle full screen editing by pressing F11.

Enhancements

• Redesigned the WYSIWYG editor, its icons and its file browser dialogues including the Image Manager, Flash Manager, Insert Media, and Document Manager.
• You can now resize images and tables in the WYSIWYG editor by clicking an image or table and dragging its handles. 
• New Title textbox in Set Image Options, Hyperlink and Image Map properties dialogues
• Removed the convert to XHTML content filter from the text editor to allow HTML 5 attributes.
• When a user configures the store to not auto-charge customers, the user should be able to capture the payments on the order screen. This feature existed for Authorize.Net and other providers, but not for Stripe. Updated the Stripe payment gateway to give users the option to capture a payment that was pre-authorized.

Resolved Issues

• Corrected an issue that caused the WYSIWYG editor to insert multiple
  tags into an element's HTML output when using IE11.
• If a user tried to contact a customer from the Customer Detail or Order Detail screens and an error occurred, the error message was not displayed to the user. Now if an error occurs when sending a message from the customer detail or order detail screen, any error messages will be displayed to the user.
• When an administrator or store owner used the order detail or customer detail screen to contact a customer, double and single quotes were not escaped before sending the parameters to the web service. This caused the service to fail. Updated the system to properly escape single and double quotes before sending the email subject and body to the web service.
• Corrected an issue that prevented users from uploading zero length files via FTPS.
• If a user was a store owner with permissions to edit a product listing, the element did not list the Add Product option on the element action list. A user with these permissions should be able to add a new product and also edit existing products in the product listing. Updated the system to list the Add Product option on the element action dropdown for store owner with edit content access for the product listing. 
• When a Stripe payment was authorized but not captured, the status on the order showed that the payment was made. Updated the system to record the status of an authorized payment as Authorized instead of Paid.

1. Get a Partner Platform Account. 

First, you’ll need to sign up for the new LightCMS Partner Platform. The Partner Platform gives you access to all of LightCMS’s reselling tools, plus a free website for your own company and 80% off the base price of the LightCMS Unlimited Plan. Learn all about the new Partner Platform and sign up for a FREE product tour on our Partners Page.

2. Add the Signup Element. 

The Signup Element is a feature of the Partner Platform that lets your customers sign up for 14-day trial websites under your LightCMS account through a form on your own site. You can upload your own design to be used on these websites and even use a custom sub-domain for the sites that are created.

3. Use Our Designs. 

LightCMS offers a selection of free responsive web design templates that you can sell to your clients or use as starting points for custom designs. Showcase our selection of built-in designs by using our handy Design Viewer.

4. Create Free Trial Sites for Your Clients. 

Since websites on LightCMS have a 14-day trial, you can create demo sites for all of your potential clients. They can sign up through the sign-up element (mentioned above) or you can create sites for them through your account dashboard. It takes just a few seconds to create a new site. With the Partner Platform, all of your websites can be managed under one single account.

5. Use Your Own Domains.

Even on trial websites, you can use your own custom domains. Just add a domain in your website's settings and then point the address record for your domain to our IP address.

6. Never Pay Until You're Ready to Launch. 

With the Partner Platform, you can continue developing and building your client websites even after the free trial has expired. Simply log in to build and manage your sites and then, when you’re ready, upgrade them to take them live to the public!

7. Bill Your Clients at Prices You Set. 

The LightCMS Partner Platform offers you a base price of $19/month for each website under your account, but you can bill your clients any amount of your choosing. With automated client billing, we can even do the billing for you at prices you set. What could be easier?

That's it! You can see why we call it quick and easy. With the LightCMS Partner Platform and all of its included features, it’s easy to begin building and growing your web design business.

Need more information? See for yourself how these design agencies are using LightCMS to grow and easily manage their successful web design businesses.

• LightCMS Helps Steadfast Creative Lead With Design
• Collision Media Balances Style & Substance with LightCMS

Free Shipping: Discount Code

You can now create free shipping Discount Codes. Normal discount codes give your customers a set amount or a percentage off the total order, but the free shipping discount code gives the customer the option to choose a free shipping method at checkout. 

Here's how it works: When a customer enters the free shipping discount code in the shopping cart's discount code field, the free shipping method is automatically selected for the order, and no shipping charges are assessed. 

However, the customer still has the ability to choose a different shipping method at checkout. For example, they might wish to select two day shipping instead of the free shipping. All that's required to choose a different shipping method is to select the preferred method from the shipping dropdown list on the checkout screen.

Free Shipping: Product Variant

You can now also offer free shipping for a product variant. This results in no shipping charge for a particular product on an order, rather than no shipping charge on the entire order as the free shipping discount code provides. When a customer purchases only the free shipping product, there is no shipping charge on the order. However, if the customer purchases multiple products and only one of those products is available for free shipping, the weight of the product with free shipping is excluded from the total weight of the order, and the shipping charges are calculated on the weight of the other products. 

One thing to keep in mind is that if you use a flat rate shipping charge and the customer buys multiple products where at least one product does not offer free shipping, then the total flat rate shipping charge is still assessed on the order.

Gold and Silver Support

In the past, LightCMS partners had to directly navigate through multiple clicks in order to access Priority Support (now known as Gold and Silver support). With this release, options for Gold and Silver support now appear on the LightCMS Partner’s user menu on the top toolbar. This provides easy access to the priority support screen from anywhere in the admin interface.

Additional Currencies for Stripe

For this release we've also updated the Stripe library which adds features not available in the older library. One of these features is support for additional currencies. Previously, Stripe was an eligible Payment Gateway only when the store currency was set to US Dollars. The new Stripe library also supports the following currencies:

• USD (US Dollar)
• GBP (British Pound)
• CAD (Canadian Dollar)
• EUR (Euro)
• AUD (Australian Dollar)
• CHF (Swiss Francs)

Stripe Credit Card Authorization

The updated Stripe library also enables you to authorize a credit card transaction without actually charging the transaction. To authorize a transaction without charging it, you must select "Wait until I approve the transaction" in the store Settings under Payments > Checkout . With this setting, the card will be authorized, but you must manually process the charge when you fulfill the order.

Increased Blog Post Title Length

Before this release, blog post titles were limited to 90 characters. Now blog post titles can contain up to 150 characters.

Flickr Social Icon

Sharing your photos is now even easier with the addition of Flickr to our Social Icons. To link to your Flickr account, go to the Advanced tab in your site settings. In the Social Media section, select the Flickr icon and add the link to your Flickr page. 

If you haven't discovered them for yourself, these enhancements have already been rolled out and are live today, July 8th. Enjoy and watch for even more exciting enhancements and new features still to come.

Release Notes for 2014.7

• Added the ability to offer free shipping through the use of discount codes.
• Added the ability to define a product variant with free shipping.
• The user dropdown list now provides direct access to Gold and Silver Support options for LightCMS Partners. Previously, links to these options were available only by direct navigation through multiple pages on the site.

Enhancements

• Updated the Stripe library to enable the use of Stripe as a payment gateway for a broader range of currencies. The new library supports the following currencies:

  • USD (US Dollar)
  • GBP (British Pound)
  • CAD (Canadian Dollar)
  • EUR (Euro)
  • AUD (Australian Dollar)
  • CHF (Swiss Francs)
• The new Stripe library also enables you to authorize a transaction without charging it. This option is controlled by the Transactions settings under Store > Settings > Payments.
• Meaningful messages were not always displayed when a credit card was declined at checkout. The system now provides more detailed authorization failure messages when a card is declined in your store.
• Previously, blog post titles were limited to 90 characters. Blog post titles can now include up to 150 characters.
• Social Icons now include Flickr.

Resolved Issues

• Form submission was sometimes slow when it was configured to email the website owner or the form submitter. Modified the method used for sending email to eliminate the slow form submission.
• Made changes to improve search indexing when text elements are updated or removed.
• If a website was configured to use a custom domain name and the customer used PayPal Express at checkout, the shopping cart screen was empty when redirecting back from PayPal. The redirect screen now displays the correct information for the shopper.
• Blog posts are exported in the BlogML format, and the summary of the post is included in the export file. However, when user imported the file, the summaries were omitted from the import. Modified the blog import feature to fully import the BlogML formatted file.
• The credit card payment option did not display when the customer had to pay only the shipping costs. Updated the checkout page to properly calculate shipping so the billing information panel is displayed.
• Shipping amounts calculated by some carriers were not rounded to two decimal places. As a result, when the total order was calculated, the final order amount may not have been rounded to two decimal places. The system now rounds the order total to two decimal places before passing it to the payment gateway.
• When users configured their websites to use Stripe for processing payments, the accepted credit card settings were left blank. Modified the system to now default the accepted cards to Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and Diners Club.
• The account owner was used as the "from" address in any email communication regarding digital downloads. Made changes to use the store email address as the "from" address in digital download email communications.
• If the store customer used a discount code which resulted in a free order and there was also free shipping and no taxes, the system did not save the customer's first and last name. Modified the system to save the customer's first and last name when there is no charge for the product, no taxes, and free shipping.
• Firefox's recent update to version 30 caused z-indexing issues that resulted in element menus rendering behind element content when editing sites with Firefox v30. This issue was resolved.

Nominations for the third annual Critics’ Choice CMS Awards are now open until August 15th and we hope that you will take a moment to nominate LightCMS to be considered in the categories of Best Cloud CMS for SMB, Best Website Builder, or Best Ecommerce Solution for SMB. We promise, the nomination process is simple and won’t take long to complete.

If you could, please take a minute now and go to awards.cmscritic.com/nominate to submit your nomination and share why you feel LightCMS fits into the categories you have selected. Don’t forget to provide a link to your website or websites you have built on LightCMS as an example of how you are using the platform.

Thank you so much for your continued support in making us the best CMS by creating beautiful websites and online stores for your business and your clients’ businesses. We cannot do this without your help!

The new Partner Platform, offering our Unlimited website plan for only $19 per month (regularly $99 per month), enables designers and resellers to focus on what they do best — creating leading-edge websites with a standards-based cloud platform that does not require special programming languages and takes away the burden of server maintenance, hosting and upgrades.

Hundreds of design agencies like Collision Media, Steadfast Creative and Independent Web Marketing are all using LightCMS to build and grow their businesses while giving their clients unique and beautiful websites and online stores they can easily update and manage on their own.

If you are looking for a platform that can grow with you, check out the video below to learn more about the LightCMS Partner Platform.

Here's more detail about each of the features coming in our 2014.6 release.

Publish Time

Want to write a blog post that goes live on your site at noon on Friday? Previously, the publish date was your only option for controlling when a blog post went live. You could write posts in advance, but those posts went live at 12:00am on the publish date. With the addition of the Publish Time on the Blog Post Basic tab, you now control the date and time of when a post goes live. If you want a post to go live on Friday at noon, all you do is set Friday’s date and enter 12:00pm as the publish time. If the publish time is not important to you, then simply leave the default time of 12:00am. The publish time is based on the time zone in your site's settings.

Meta Tags Description

The blog post Meta Tags Description now automatically defaults to the text of the blog post summary. In the past, if you did not enter a Meta Tags Description, then none was used for your post. By defaulting the Meta Tags Description to the auto summary text, we're taking an even more proactive approach to your SEO activities for blog posts. But what if you don't want to use the auto summary text? No problem. Simply enter your own Meta Tags Description as you have done in the past.

Custom HTML Head Field

You can now enter custom HTML Head information for blog posts. Previously, you could do this for pages but not for blog posts. This enhancement opens the door to many exciting possibilities for your blog posts, including JavaScript or styles specific to the post, easy addition of analytics code, or even post-specific Meta tags or open graph tags for sharing on social media.

Read More…

One popular display option for blog posts is List with Summary. This display option presents a list of blog posts in descending date order. Each entry includes the title, summary, and publish date. With this release, the List with Summary display now includes an option to place a “Read More” link at the end of each summary. The link text can be user-customized, so if “Read More” is too verbose for your tastes, you can change the link to simply “More…” or any other text that fits your style. The link displays in-line with the summary, and clicking the link displays the full blog post.

Look for these new features on Tuesday, June 10th.

Release Notes

You're used to reading about new features in blog posts just like this one. We're pleased to now expand on this practice and also begin providing you with more formal release notes beginning with this release. These notes are a short summary of the new features, enhancements, and resolved issues in each release. In addition to seeing these notes at the end of the features blog post, you can also see them on the Release Notes page. Accessing them there lets you see a history of past releases and the items included in each. 

To help organize and differentiate releases, we have adopted this release version numbering method: year.sequence. We are starting with release 2014.6 (since we are currently in the sixth month). Each subsequent release in 2014 will increase the sequence number by 1, so the next release version will be 2014.7, and so on. We may have more than one release per month so the sequence number won't necessarily always correspond to the month of release. When the calendar rolls over to January 2015, the first release version will be 2015.1.

LightCMS 2014.6 Release Notes

New Features

• Added a Publish Time for blog posts, making it possible to write posts in advance and schedule them for publication at a future date and time.
• The Meta Tags description for each blog post now automatically uses the post summary by default.
• Added an HTML Head field for each blog post, allowing you to enter custom header content such as JavaScript, CSS, or additional meta tags for blog post. This functionality was previously available for pages but not for blog posts.
• The Blog List with Summary Display option now includes an optional "Read More" link. This user-customizable text displays at the end of the summary, and clicking the link displays the full blog post.
• Enhanced server security by adding support for FTP Secure transfer of files to the server.

Enhancements

• Files with the SVG extension are now allowed in file uploads.

Resolved Issues

• The Import Products list now reports any erroneous records in the import file. Records with errors are skipped, and valid records are imported.
• Copying a website now creates the new site as a trial.
• Copying a site now assigns the site to the correct pricing scheme.
• The Copy Website dialog now populates with the default name.
• In some situations, upgrading a subscription failed, and users had to call support. Upgrade subscription no longer fails in these situations.
• The Form Builder did not allow users to clear the Reply to this Email box once it had been selected. Users can now clear the box.

Three years ago, he realized that the cloud was the future of the industry. This revelation meant that the company would need to move more than 100 clients off their existing content management system, which was a complex, antiquated system that was specifically built for the company and could no longer support its growth and the needs of its clients.

“I’m never one to have a few here and a few there. I’ve always wanted to find the true platform,” he says. “We've always used a CMS, as we've always wanted to empower the client, so over the years we have used quite a few. However, it was only when we discovered LightCMS, with its ease of use and total reliability, that the lights really went on for us.”

Since moving over to LightCMS, the firm has more than doubled its client base. That’s partly because LightCMS is an easy sell, Caswell says. Most clients have come to understand the importance of mobile browsing and the fact that IWM can easily deploy responsive designs with LightCMS is a huge benefit. Every site he and his team now builds is responsive and mobile-friendly.

In fact, because LightCMS runs in the cloud, Caswell is able to avoid the time and expense of managing infrastructure and software while his clients are able to do much of their own website management. As a result, the company has grown significantly without investing more in client support. Clients can get up and running on the platform quickly and they love its full-featured functionality that is also so easy to use.

“Every feature and function just does exactly what you dreamed it would do,” Caswell says.

Take, for example, the image element.

“This whole idea of being able to upload an image and it working as one image and that you can resize it and crop it, that you can turn something into a slideshow or an album, is a really useful feature, especially when you talk about things being responsive,” Caswell says.

Caswell is also confident in future enhancements to the platform. The advent of the LightCMS Partner Platform – offering unlimited users, data and pages for a deeply-discounted flat fee – creates a huge opportunity for the future of his business. This is great news because, as he has already proven, setting up clients on LightCMS has a very positive impact on client websites.

“Across the board, every website we build for a client on LightCMS gets more visitors and generates more business than the previous version of their website ever did,” he says. “We have more than doubled our customer base in the 30 months since we moved to LightCMS and we expect to double it again in the next 18 months.”

Learn how other organizations are growing and expanding their business with the help of LightCMS.

• LightCMS Powers Hundreds of Local Area Websites for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes
• Collision Media Balances Style and Substance with LightCMS
• Sugarillashop Showcases Passion for Fashion with LightCMS
• Israel Diamond Supply Shines with LightCMS
• Hoboken Coffee Roasters Brews Success with LightCMS
• Bethany First Church Stays Connected with LightCMS
• Council Road Strengthens Its Ministry with LightCMS

This new feature will roll out alongside our previously-scheduled Datacenter upgrades on June 2nd. You can get full details about these upgrades here on the blog. Once the upgrades are in place, all FTP connections will need to be made via FTPS. This will change a few of the settings you use with your FTP clients when connecting.

To help you, we’ve put together new documentation on connecting with LightCMS via FTPS. This documentation includes specific instructions for FTP clients such as FileZilla, WinSCP and Transmit as well as generic settings that should work for any FTP client that supports the FTPS protocol. As always, if you have any questions, please contact our support team at support@lightcms.com any time.

Social Icons and the Social Token

Looking for a simple way to add social icons to your site? Or, as a designer, are you looking for an easy way to allow your clients to manage their own social icons while still maintaining the integrity of the designs you create? LightCMS's new social token and social media settings offer this and much more.

The Social Settings

Once the feature is launched, you'll see a new section on the advanced tab of your website settings. This section allows the user to choose any number of social icons to include and to provide the URL to use with each associated social icon. Click the "Add" button then choose the icons you want to add. Once selected, your icons will show up in your list where you can drag them and drop them to reorder.

Please note that there are two special icons included that aren't really "social" icons. These are for phone and email and they allow you to provide these points of contact in your list of icons as well, if you so choose. Phone numbers and email addresses will be automatically prepended with the appropriate syntax to integrate with the internal emailing and dialing functionality of smartphones. So, when visitors touch the email icon from a phone, it automatically loads up a new email. When they touch the phone, it automatically starts calling. Nice!

The Social Token

In order for the icons to display on your website, your website's template must include the new social token. All of LightCMS's "featured" designs (plus a few others) will be updated to include the social token by the launch of the social feature. These designs include: Coast, Apollo, Gravit, Vanity, Nebula, Tendo, Pepper, Decim, Vere, Grasp, Origami, Devon-Poster, Haus, Helios, and Solus. You may apply one of these designs from the Design Manager if you choose to make use of the social icon feature. However, if you are using a customized template or a fully custom design, the social media token will have to be added to the code of your design files.

The specs of the new Social Token have been added to our Token Reference Guide. It's a very simple token to implement and once it's in place your clients can control the icons displayed and the URLs used through the simple settings panel described above.

By default, the social media token renders a default set of icons at 32px square. By using the cssClass attribute, you can adjust the size of the tokens and even replace the default icons with your own. Additionally, the token provides an opacity attribute allowing you to make the icons transparent at the token level.

The SEO Tab

Another improvement we've made as a part of this roll out is to create a new tab on the Website Settings screen. The SEO tab now houses SEO-related features for your website such as the 301 Redirect Manager, Robots.txt, and the Google Analytics / Additional Header field. All of these features work exactly the same, they are just on a different tab. This sets apart these SEO-related features while keeping the Advanced tab shorter and cleaner.

Developer Role on Sign Up

Finally, we've added a nifty new setting for LightCMS Partners to the client Sign-up Element. Now, if you choose, you can enable the sign up element to assign the Developer Role to users signing up. The Developer Role allows users to view and manage designs for their website. If you want your clients to have access to the built in Design Manager when they sign up, you can now make this happen. This new feature will be available on the Sign-up Element's settings screen.

Scheduled to Launch on Wednesday, May 7th

All of these new features are scheduled to launch on Wednesday morning, May 7. We're so excited to bring you these exciting new updates and we hope you and your clients enjoy them. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us anytime at support@lightcms.com.

For those who have custom domains associated with LightCMS websites, please DO NOT make any changes to your DNS records until after the move is made on June 2nd. We know we had previously prepared you to make these changes on May 5th and we apologize for any inconvenience caused by this delay.

Our team has been hard at work for months preparing for this move. We are so excited about the improvements and the exponential increase in server power and infrastructure LightCMS will enjoy in its new home. However, we want to take an extra month to be sure the transition is seamless and to create the best possible experience for all our customers.

For full details, please see our original blog post about the move, which has been updated with this new information. If you have any further questions, please contact us anytime at support@lightcms.com.

To see the designs in action, login to your LightCMS account and visit the Designs section on the top toolbar. Choose the gallery and look for our featured designs. The new designs are named Helios and Apollo. You'll be able to apply them to your website or download their source files. You can also check out images of the new designs in the LightCMS Design Viewer.

Featuring Sass and SCSS

These new designs utilize Sass and SCSS. Designers familiar with these languages can work with them natively in the source of these design files. This requires the use of a compiler such as CodeKit to render your SCSS code into stylesheets. If you are not familiar with Sass or SCSS, you can still work with these designs by modifying the rendered style.css stylesheet just as you would with any other design.

Responsive web design is an approach for architecting websites to enable them to automatically serve up content in the most appropriate layout for the customer's device. It's a better approach than creating individual versions for each device, as it doesn't require updating multiple versions of content. This saves time that can be better spent creating high-quality content.

Responsive design works on a grid principle, with each page element sized according to units on a grid rather than specific measurements, thus producing a display that is proportional regardless of the size of the display. The web architect creates different grid-based templates showing how the pages should be displayed for different devices. The site can then automatically recognize the screen size of the device accessing it and serve up the appropriate layout of the page.

The over-arching concept for responsive design is simplicity; simple layouts and graphics are more easily reduced and re-constructed without ruining their appearances. Visually-rich designs with complex layouts look great on laptops but need to be simplified on smaller screens.

In addition to simple design, here are some other tips for creating responsive websites:

1. Minimize Navigational Aids on Smaller Screens

If you have just two or three navigational items on a page, list them at the top. But if you've got four or five, instead use a navigational icon at the top and use JQuery to create a simple dropdown menu with navigational choices. This leaves more space for focusing on the content of the page.

2. Design for Screen Size Not Brand Name

Determine the different screen sizes you want to target in your CSS files. CSS doesn't recognize names of specific mobile devices but, rather, is programmed with screen widths.

Determine the most common screen sizes viewing your site then specify their measurements in the CSS media query. Also, include whether you want a portrait or landscape screen orientation. Below is an example of what that code would look like:

Remember tablets are becoming the new desktop. More and more users are working off of their tablets, forgoing laptops and desktops altogether. Generally, tablets do well with desktop layouts when in landscape mode, but may require a different template for portrait mode, depending on the number of components and the functionality to be included. Designing with tablets in mind can help ensure that the overall organization is simple and thus able to be designed responsively.

3. Organize Based on Importance

Organization and structure of page elements is different for mobile phones vs. desktops. To create a mobile device template, reorder the sections from your desktop version into full-width sections, like stacking blocks, based on their importance.

• Header, Logo, and Navigational Elements. These normally go on top, to identify the page and make it easy to find the navigational menu.
• Body and Main Content. The next component should be the article or other unique element that comprises the body of the layout.
• Sidebars and Advertising. At the bottom comes the advertising or other sidebar content. Sidebar content is the least important content on a page because it's usually boilerplate. It shouldn't infringe on the main content of the page.

Whatever your layout strategy, do include all of the content and functionality available on the main site. People get frustrated when they can't do the same things on a mobile site that they can on the main one. If customers can update their account preferences or view videos on the main site, they should also be able to view those on the mobile versions as well. There are some exceptions, of course, such as data-heavy elements that may be too much for mobile connections.

4. Test!

The best way to see how your website responds to different device sizes is to try it out. You can do this by resizing your browser to test media queries. Also be sure to test it on actual mobile devices to see what your visitors are experiencing. You may want to add more breakpoints (screen sizes) including device-specific ones to get the best appearance for the most commonly-used devices.

The goal is to make your website as attractive and functional as possible for all of the devices your customers use to access it, while also remaining easy to maintain. Following a responsive web design strategy is important for achieving both goals.

LightCMS Enables Responsive Design for Everyone

LightCMS offers many responsive design templates to choose from for creating fully responsive websites that adapt to fit in any browser across all devices. If you are a current LightCMS customer, check out the many different responsive templates by logging in to your website and selecting "Design" on the top toolbar. Then select "Gallery" to view a list of featured designs. It only takes a click to preview the design, apply it to your website, or even download the source code to modify on your own. Plus, as always, you can customize the design in the LightCMS Design Editor as well.

We’re pleased to announce that we are migrating the LightCMS system to a beautiful, new home inside one of NetSuite’s Datacenters. As you know, NetSuite is the parent company of LightCMS and we are very excited that this change will locate the LightCMS servers inside a Datacenter over which our company has control.

This arrangement holds many distinct advantages over our current situation. NetSuite and LightCMS will now have control over physical server security, maintenance and scheduling as well as the ability to improve our monitoring capabilities and scale more rapidly. Additionally, LightCMS servers will now gain access to NetSuite’s global load-balancing infrastructure which has the potential to improve system performance in some locations around the world. This move also sets us up for potential expansion to multiple data centers in the future.

Our team is already hard at work ensuring this transition goes as smoothly as possible. Our goal is to make the change as seamless as possible for you and your clients. However, due to the nature of this change, there are a couple of items that may affect you or may require action on your part. Please read the details below to ensure you are aware of all that is happening.

Scheduled Downtime - June 2, 2014

In order to ensure the server transition goes smoothly, we must take the LightCMS system offline entirely while we make the move. The maintenance window listed above reflects the time we plan to make this transition. When we bring the system back online at the end of this window, LightCMS will be operating on its new servers.

IP Address Update Required for Custom Domains

Moving Datacenters means that LightCMS’s IP address will change. This means if you are using custom domains with your LightCMS websites, you will need to update the IP addresses for those domains AFTER we have made the move on June 2nd. Don’t worry, your websites will continue to function even if you don’t make these updates. However, custom domains that are not updated after the move will resolve to their associated *.publishpath.com domains.

Changing your IP address means updating the Address Records for your custom domains. You must do this using tools provided by your DNS provider (GoDaddy, BulkRegister … etc.). When you originally set up a domain to work with LightCMS, you would have created an address record to point to LightCMS’s IP address. Now, you’ll simply be editing that address record to point to a new IP.

The new IP address you will need to use AFTER we make the change on June 2nd is: 64.89.44.97

IMPORTANT: Do NOT make any domain changes now. You should make these changes after we move LightCMS to its new home on June 2, 2014.

To help you with this transition, we’ve created a handy support article about the changes you’ll need to make. Please take a look and if you still have questions, feel free to email us anytime at support@lightcms.com and we’ll get back to you right away.

Thank you for your support of LightCMS. We look forward to continuing to serve as your website partner for years to come.

Your specific process will depend on factors such as time and the staff you have available. It might start with some initial research on the prospect’s company, followed by an introductory meeting and needs assessment, then the project proposal, a follow up Q&A, and the signing of the contract. The most important point is to have a process and follow it. And remember that selling is an expected, and valued, part of running a web design business. Designers sometimes feel uncomfortable selling themselves, but without an intentional sales process, many will struggle to bring in new business.

Here are six tips for successfully selling your web design business.

1. Follow Up – Again and Again.

Until you close a deal, or are told by a prospect that they’ve chosen another provider, you need stay in touch with your prospects by following up at each stage of the process. Each time you talk to or meet with a prospect, end with an agreement on when you’ll contact them next. By agreeing on the date, you avoid having to play telephone tag later or feel like you’re chasing the prospect. That said, if a lead needs time to decide, don’t necessarily give up on them. Sometimes a project gets put on the back burner, budgets get sidelined, and other priorities take precedence. You may have a potential clients who seem like a lost cause, but that still come back unexpectedly months later to close the deal.

2. Use Social Media

Setting up shop on Facebook and Twitter is a common, but nonetheless good, thing to do. These tools let you engage with your customers cheaply and easily. Both tools are great for sending out updates while allowing potential customers connect with you, ask questions and provide feedback.

3. Get Involved Locally

Selling is a lot easier when people already know and respect you. So, it’s worthwhile to join local business and community groups, including those in industries in which you work. You can also do volunteer work for local charities, but be careful. Too much free work is a drain on resources.

4. Advertise

An ad in a local paper and mailers sent out to areas businesses are tried and true ways to bring in leads. In the age of social media, the right print advertising still works. Even Google sends out mailers on a weekly basis.

5. Ask for Referrals

The biggest driver of most businesses is referrals, so it pays to ask clients for the names of colleagues who would benefit from your web design services. The best time to ask is during the successful launch of your client’s new site, when they’re most excited about your work. Also make it a habit to call clients once a year to see how they’re doing, how the web site is performing, and if they have any friends who need help improving their site.  Be sure to get the name and contact information of the referral, rather than letting them pass your name to them. Because you might never hear from “my friend Doug” and will have no way to reach him.

6. Sign Your Work

Work your signature and URL into your designs so that admirers can easily see the creator and contact you. It’s a surprisingly common way to get leads.

Finally, keep in mind that learning how to sell effectively is a topic worthy of long-term study. Go out and buy two or three popular books on the topic for starters. One suggested title I recommend is The Psychology of Sales by Brian Tracy. It might well be worth a few extra clients to you.

The best place to check out the new designs is on the LightCMS Design Viewer. Here are links to see a preview of each of the ten new designs:

• + Pepper
• + Coast
• + Nebula
• + Hive
• + Tendo
• + Solus
• + Quint
• + Gravit
• + Decim
• + Vere

New Feature: Custom Domain Check

We’re also rolling out another nifty, new feature called Custom Domain Check. The LightCMS system now automatically checks all the custom domains you register on our platform to determine if their address records are correctly assigned to LightCMS’s IP address. When you view your custom domains on the Advanced Tab of the Website Settings screen, you'll see a yellow icon with an exclamation point if there are issues that need to be addressed with that domain (see image below). Hover over the icon and you'll find details about what's wrong and what needs to be corrected.

Remember that DNS changes can take 24-48 hours to propagate completely, so if you recently made updates to your DNS you may need to wait a bit for our system to detect those updates.

“We looked at a lot of terrible content management systems,” admitted Danny Burns, Director of Digital Ministry for the FCA.

Ultimately, FCA found LightCMS, a perfect fit with functionality allowing their staff the freedom to build and manage sites on their own while staying true to the organization’s look and feel.

FCA works with athletes and coaches in a vast array of sports to not only improve their athletic performance, but also grow in their Christian faith. It does this through four primary areas of ministry: camps, campuses, coaches and community.

Up until a few years ago, the FCA was running all of its sites with a home-grown CMS. Knowing it would need a new system to expand beyond its 100 sites to the nearly 250 it has today, the FCA began a year-long selection process that ultimately ended with LightCMS.

Local FCA staff, administrators or volunteers manage their regional and local sites, like NortheastFCA.org. Support and training comes from the FCA National Support Center in Kansas City. This means the organization requires a system that isn’t overly technical and can be implemented with minimal training. LightCMS meets this need beautifully.

LightCMS’s on-page editing style is a huge benefit for FCA’s non-technical users, allowing them to see the changes as they’re made. Plus, FCA’s site managers are thrilled with the vast capabilities LightCMS offers such as photo galleries, blogs, calendar of events and form builders. These were not available on FCA’s previous system.

LightCMS’s flexible templating system allows FCA to offer staff the ability to choose and customize their own website designs, while still ensuring each design is consistent with the FCA brand. FCA even developed its own “Site Customizer,” a custom application that works with LightCMS to provide even more design options to site owners.

“One of the main reasons we chose LightCMS was the freedom and flexibility of the templates,” Burns said. “For the non-technical user, we wanted to protect the look and feel of our brand, while giving our users the flexibility and control over some of the design aspects. LightCMS allows us to give them a lot of control but also to keep them in line with our best practices and consistent branding.”

Together, FCA and LightCMS have provided an incredible array of design options for FCA websites, including fully responsive designs which work well on desktops, tablets, and smartphones alike. According to Burns, LightCMS’s capabilities have far surpassed the FCA’s early expectations.

“I don’t think we ever envisioned the kind of customization we’re doing today,” Burns said. “It’s really easy for those without design experience but if you have design experience it doesn’t handcuff you.”

Following its launch on LightCMS, FCA saw demand for local sites more than double over two years. The support that the FCA receives from LightCMS has helped the organization to handle this growth, according to Burns.

“We’ve traded enough emails and been in the relationship long enough that we feel like we know the team and we are really excited about the partnership,” he said. “It never feels like we’re just another number. That’s super encouraging especially as LightCMS continues to grow.”

LightCMS’s cloud model also spares Burns and the FCA a lot of the overhead, patching and infrastructure costs that other deployable content management systems require. And LightCMS regularly adds enhancements which are added automatically with no downtime. On the whole, Burns counts the move to LightCMS as a great decision.

Learn how other organizations are growing and expanding their business with the help of LightCMS.

• Collision Media Balances Style and Substance with LightCMS
• Sugarillashop Showcases Passion for Fashion with LightCMS
• Israel Diamond Supply Shines with LightCMS
• Hoboken Coffee Roasters Brews Success with LightCMS
• Bethany First Church Stays Connected with LightCMS
• Council Road Strengthens Its Ministry with LightCMS

That’s the recipe at Hoboken Coffee Roasters, a warm, eclectic and rustic coffee shop opened in December 2012 in the Oklahoma town of Guthrie, pop. 10,000. Based on LightCMS, the Hoboken Coffee website is the digital sugar and spice for a small business that Trey and Mallory Woods launched with a vision, passion and a lot of hard work.

Married in 2008, the young Guthrie natives percolated a dream of opening a coffee shop. They moved from Oklahoma to Oregon, immersing themselves in the vibrant coffee culture of the Pacific Northwest. After a year, the inspired couple sold their car to purchase an espresso machine and rode bicycles the 2,200 miles back to Guthrie.

They found a downtown Guthrie spot for the coffee shop—a dingy old auto garage full of junk and lacking water, electricity and even a bathroom. In a labor of love over more than a year, the Woods painstakingly transformed the high-ceilinged space into what today is an aesthetically distinctive haven for coffee lovers from Guthrie and beyond.

Digital Destination for Coffee Lovers

Thankfully, building the Hoboken Coffee Roasters website wasn’t nearly as challenging as the top-to-bottom garage renovation. Recommended by a cousin of Trey’s, LightCMS proved to be an ideal platform for Hoboken Coffee to spotlight its brand and products and offer coffee for sale through an online store.

“I knew how important a website was, but I’d never done one and didn’t know how much work was involved,” Trey Woods said. “We’ve been extremely pleased with LightCMS. I can’t imagine how much money and time I would have spent with some other web company.”

With implementation by the LightCMS services team and graphics crafted by a professional designer, the Hoboken Coffee site has proven instrumental in attracting customers and driving revenue. Built-in search engine optimization (SEO) elevates Hoboken Coffee in Google and other search results, driving both website and in-store traffic.

According to Woods, it’s not uncommon for traveling coffee-lovers to find Hoboken Coffee on the web and hop off the nearby U.S. 35 interstate to refresh themselves with a cup of freshly ground coffee, with beans from Ethiopia, El Salvador and elsewhere. “We’ve had people from Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas… they’ll come in and say, ‘Oh, we were driving on I-35 and found your coffee shop on the web,’” Woods said. “It’s pretty cool.”

A Great Experience for Mobile Users

Many of those traveling customers access the Hoboken Coffee site by smartphones or tablets, getting a rewarding online experience through LightCMS responsive design capabilities that enable a site to automatically adapt to whatever mobile or other device is used to access it.

“People really appreciate how our website adjusts automatically to the screen size of a tablet or smartphone,” Woods said. “I’m a little surprised to see how many people visit a website from a phone—we can see that information through LightCMS.”

The LightCMS experience is easy not just for the site visitor—it’s simple for Hoboken Coffee as well. Ease of use in managing content, images and the online store means the Woods can spend more time roasting beans, brewing coffee and delivering the perfect cup.

While most business is in the shop, the online store lets Hoboken Coffee offer its fresh roasted coffee to customers far and wide. Meanwhile, the Woods have taken advantage of LightCMS’s built-in blogging capabilities to highlight news and events, aligning with the shop’s social media presence on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

“Our website represents us perfectly. I’m excited as a business owner to have a presence online that I can point people to and be proud of,” Woods said. “I would definitely recommend LightCMS to any small business owner.”

Learn how other retailers like yours are growing their online business on LightCMS.

• LightCMS Retail Gallery
• Sugarillashop Showcases Passion for Fashion with LightCMS
• Israel Diamond Supply Shines with LightCMS

That’s been the case at Israel Diamond Supply, a diamond and jewelry retailer in Tulsa, Okla., that sells at wholesale prices and is one of the largest privately owned volume dealers of certified diamonds and bridal jewelry in the U.S. Founded in 1991, Israel Diamond has seen traffic to its website and its physical store in Tulsa soar since implementing LightCMS in early 2013.

Replacing a static website that linked to product content and images hosted by a supplier, LightCMS’s built-in capabilities for search engine optimization (SEO) have enabled shoppers to find Israel Diamond on the web, which wasn’t happening with its previous site.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in sales—we’re up about 30% in terms of revenue compared to 2012,” said Chris Price, director of ecommerce at Israel Diamond. “The visibility our site has gotten through SEO and Google rankings has dramatically increased traffic. Customers always say, ‘I was looking at your website and I’m interested in this ring.’”

An Elegant Brand Experience

Designed by the LightCMS professional services team, the Israel Diamond site reflects elegance in colors, imagery and text while offering easy navigation across categories and some 6,000 products. A custom-built “Diamond Search” search engine gives shoppers interactive controls to find diamonds by shape, carats, color, clarity, cut, price and other attributes.

“We get compliments on the design of our site every single day,” Price said. “An online presence is obviously very important in this day and age and LightCMS gives us an easy way to get in touch with customers and potential customers.”

Besides the inviting front-end, LightCMS, selected over WordPress and several other hosted CMS systems, gives Israel Diamond excellent ease of use in updating site content and imagery, making it simple to keep the site fresh and up to date. Blog capabilities offer another way to engage with prospects and customers.

“LightCMS is very easy to use without having to worry about code on the back end—pretty much like updating your Facebook page,” Price said. “We have complete control of the content on our website so we don't have to rely on third parties to get things done."

Safe and Streamlined Online Shopping

Meanwhile, the integrated online store capabilities in LightCMS enable Israel Diamond shoppers to buy online, which wasn’t possible with the previous site. The company takes advantage of secure cart and checkout, order and light inventory management, email order confirmations, and integration with FedEx, UPS and USPS to offer a safe and streamlined shopping environment.

Learn how other retailers like yours are growing their online business on LightCMS.

• LightCMS Retail Gallery
• Sugarillashop Showcases Passion for Fashion with LightCMS
• Hoboken Coffee Roasters Brews Success with LightCMS

Too often, web designers and web design companies focus too much on the in-person meeting and not enough on the written proposal. However it’s the proposal—the document that stays behind after you’ve gone back to the office -- that has the power to tip the balance in your favor. It may be the only representation of your company that some decision makers see.

While the specific length and contents of a proposal will differ depending on the complexity of the web design project, there are some common guidelines you should follow.

1. Learn About the Customer

Use that first meeting to find out what the potential customer needs and how those needs match up with your services. Don’t pull out a standard presentation right away unless your company has a well-developed menu of packaged services to offer. Custom design shops need time to understand the unique requirements of the customer and then develop a set of services that would best meet those needs.

2. Invest in a Professional Presentation

Web design companies — especially the smaller ones — don’t always invest the time they should into creating professional presentations. They may rely on a good verbal sales pitch and casual outline of the proposed services to win the contract. But a well-organized, attractive proposal is critical to successful services sales. Take the time to design a template that will ensure quality proposals.

3. Be Upfront About Prices

You may think that stating a price will scare off customers. In fact, breaking down a project into a menu of services and prices reassures them that they know what they’re buying and may also prompt them to buy extra services.

4. Sell Your Skills

The presentation should have a title page followed by a ”brag sheet” or list of industry awards, major projects, important certifications, and customer testimonials to showcase your expertise. It provides tangible proof of your track record. If your firm has done a lot of work in one or two specific industries, consider creating two or three versions of the brag sheet to showcase what you know.

5. Be Clear About What Services are Included and What are Not

Otherwise clients may expect things that you hadn’t planned to provide. For instance, a customer might think photography or logo design comes with the web design package when, in fact, they’re extras. You might list those extras and their prices to encourage them to upgrade.

6. Offer a Contract

Make it easy for the prospect to say “yes” by including a ready-to-sign contract. Don’t ask the client to wait while you go back to the office to draft it. Keep the legal language brief and clear. The entire contract should be short: no more than two or three pages for most projects.

7. Provide a Timeline

The client will want to see estimated completion dates for the various parts of the project.

The end goal is to craft an attractive, easy-to-read proposal that shows how your web design firm can solve the prospective client’s unique problems, and then makes it easy for the client to close. It should have a simple structure, straightforward selling points and clear language. Five to 10 pages for a proposal geared toward a small or mid-sized client is a good length. Anything longer becomes overwhelming. Perhaps the best rule of thumb: consider what you’d want in a proposal if you were the customer.

Here are seven SEO best practices to follow to getting to the top of the search results.

1. Do your keyword research. You can't know how to optimize search engine results unless you know what search words are most popular and most likely to be used by the consumers you are trying to reach. Start researching these keywords using the Google keyword research tool to get a list of the most-used words that relate to your product category. You can also find out what keywords people use to find your site.
   
   
2. Create focused and unique content. Content is king and critical to improving search engine ranking. Not just any content will do though. Your content should be high quality and contain valuable and useful information from which your readers can learn. Developing fresh and relevant content on a regular basis is not always easy. By taking an integrated and team approach to content development, not only will you be able to generate fresh content on a regular basis, but you will also be giving your internal team an opportunity to share their thought leadership. Expanding your content development team to customers and partners is also a great way to generate new content and build stronger relationships. Just make sure to avoid overusing too many keywords or copying content from other sites. Search engines are programmed to look for patterns that indicate cheating. On the other hand, you do want to optimize each page to get the best ranking it deserves. Usually including two to four good keywords in the page, repeated a few times each, is a good goal, depending on the amount of copy.
   
   
3. Know your tags. HTML code includes several types of content tags. The important ones for SEO are the title tag, meta description tags, meta keyword tags, alt tags for images and your H1 and H2 tags. They all help to tell the search engines the focus of the content so they'll be noticed and indexed correctly. Some content management applications automatically generate tags for you. LightCMS, for instance, generates title tags and some header tags. The title tags should reflect the main focus of your content and include the most important keywords.
   
   
4. Leverage software tools. You can't tell how effective your SEO strategy is unless you are monitoring traffic. Google Analytics is a good free tool for checking performance, traffic volume, keywords used, and the loading speed of pages. Many web content management systems (CMS) such as LightCMS also have analytics capabilities and/or integration with Google Analytics. Web CMS applications can also automate a lot of tasks, such as generating URLs and meta tags. Another set of tools provided by both Google and Bing is Webmaster Tools. This is where you submit site maps, learn which keywords bring in the most people, find ways to optimize your site, get alerts to problems with your site, and other useful things.
   
   
5. Consider architecture. Site architecture is another important factor in SEO. Basic considerations include having a clearly worded URL structure with descriptive keywords as well as a clean navigation structure. Page load time or how fast your page loads is increasingly becoming a priority, so make sure that the pages on your site have clean code that’s optimized for loading. The size of images and videos should also be considered when building a site. These factors all contribute to page load time. Once your site is done, make sure you have an XML site map and submit it to Google and Bing using Webmaster Tools. Just as an HTML site map tells people what is on a website, the XML site map informs search engines. If you use a web CMS like LightCMS, the sitemaps are created automatically.
   
   
6. Keep to a schedule. SEO isn't a one-shot promotion. You aren't aiming for three weeks at the top, followed by a gradual drop to the bottom. The goal of SEO is to create a sustainably high ranking. That requires consistently updating your site and sticking with a schedule that web crawlers can come to anticipate. If you don't update content for weeks, the crawlers will learn not to check for new content very often. If you update every Tuesday, eventually crawlers will learn to come every Tuesday to update your listing.
   
   
7. Become a trusted source. The best way to be visible on search engines is to become a trusted source of information. That means providing content not just about your products but content to educate your readers about related issues. This is important because customers often start out as curious researchers. Someone who sees a person paddle boarding might be motivated to search on "water sport using board and paddle," and if he likes what he finds, he might next look for "how to paddle board" and eventually "buy paddle board."

The most sophisticated SEO strategy is to become an integral source of information for everyone — the curious as well as prospects and returning customers. The more useful and up to date content you provide, and the better organized and labeled it is, the more often your company will float to the top of search engine results.

A Year for the Record Books

The past year will forever be marked by one monumental event — the acquisition of our company by NetSuite Inc. We broke the exciting news of this acquisition on our blog in March. The announcement marked the beginning of a new era for LightCMS — an era of expanded possibilities. Now ten months into this new era, we're more excited than ever about what lies ahead. Here's a look back at the announcement that got it all started.

Element Fusion, the Creator of LightCMS, Joins Forces with NetSuite

A Year of Celebrating Success

In 2013, we put a new emphasis on celebrating the successes of LightCMS partners and customers. Part of this effort involved creating success stories that we have published on our website over the course of 2013. Here are a few examples.

• Collision Media Balances Style and Substance with LightCMS
• Church Spotlight: Council Road Baptist Church
• Retail Spotlight: Sugarillashop

If you have a LightCMS success story to share, let us know. We might just feature you in 2014!

A Year of Innovation

In the midst of monumental transition, we released and announced several major improvements to the LightCMS product throughout 2013. News like this is always fun to share and to reflect on as well. Those improvements included:

• New Feature! Sell Digital Goods with LightCMS
• Announcing New LightCMS Plans with No User Limits and No Transaction Fees
• Introducing LightCMS Professionals
• Major Upgrades on the Way
• Introducing One Step Credit Card Setup for Your LightCMS Store

A Year of Enrichment

We also published several articles designed to encourage and enrich our customers and partners with a wide variety of topics. Here's a look at a few of this year's highlights.

• Implementing Google Web Fonts on Your LightCMS Websites
• Five Reasons to Take Your Store Online
• Six Pricing Strategies to Fit You and Your Web Design Clients
• Quick Tips for Creating a Vibrant and Engaging Church Website

Here's to 2014

As memorable and exciting as 2013 has been, we believe that 2014 has even greater things in store for LightCMS and its customers. We're so excited about the year ahead and we can't wait to share it with you. As always, we are grateful for your continued support of LightCMS. We love working as your website partner. Happy New Year!

1. Move to Hourly Pricing

Clients often prefer fixed rate payment schedules because they see them as less risky, but fixed rate projects are not usually in the best interest of the designer. Web design projects are notorious for sliding scopes and extra tasks that get tacked on as freebies along the way. With hourly pricing, designers aren’t left holding the bag for dozens of extra tasks. Hourly pricing also ensures that the client only pays for work that is completed and is more flexible when it comes to expanding the scope of a project. Hourly billing tends to help designers focus on their work better, since they must account for every hour. To satisfy clients nervous about hourly billing, offer to set a maximum number of hours that can’t be exceeded without permission. Then, be sure to maintain good communication about the status of the project and the billable hours along the way.

2. Create a Hybrid Model

If you really can't go purely hourly, consider a hybrid model where some standard aspects of design work come at a fixed price, while more complex work or add-ons are priced on an hourly basis. The client gets the comfort of a fixed rate, while you're protected and can cover your costs if the project expands or requires extra work. It is also a best practice to always price by the hour for complex tasks, such as scripts or programming. The more complex the task, the more mid-project client changes you'll get.

3. Draft Detailed Agreements

Whether you charge a fixed fee or an hourly rate, you need a solid contract that lists payment schedules, rates, and all other details. Are images part of the job? Are you expected to create a logo? All of these issues and more should be covered in a legal contract. Otherwise you may find the client's expectations to be very different from your own.

4. Avoid Giving Freebies

No one likes to "nickel and time" clients for every little task, but odds are you're giving away a lot more than nickels and dimes. Write a short script or tweak a logo, and suddenly you've donated several hours of your billable time. Don't do this. It cheapens your work and, worse, once a client becomes accustomed to freebies, they'll expect them all the time. Multiply that by dozens of clients and you're working for a lot less than you think.

5. Require More Payment at the Beginning of Projects

A common way to structure payments is 50 percent down and 50 percent at the end of the job. However, this holds half of your revenues hostage until the end, with nothing to cover the second half of your costs. As an alternative, consider scheduling payments up front and at the midpoint (before a major client deadline). One possible division is 50 percent down, 25 percent before the customer content phase, and 25 percent before going live.

6. Get That Last Check Before You Hand Over the Files

Finishing a project means turning the files over to the customer. But once your client has all of the intellectual property, you have nothing to motivate any residual payments, other than a contract and an appeal to ethics. Don't count on everyone having sterling ethics, or a fear of breaking a contract. Instead, just get payment in full before you surrender your work.

The LightCMS content management system was selected to replace a difficult to manage, custom-built website. Its intuitive ease of use is a major benefit for the non-technical Bethany First Church staff and volunteers who maintain and update the site. And because LightCMS is so easy to use, the church can delegate responsibilities across a broad range of users, helping ensure that content is updated in a timely fashion.

“The ease of use of LightCMS makes my job much easier because I don’t have to worry about behind-the-scenes technical stuff or know HTML coding,” Miller said. “LightCMS makes me look smarter than I really am.”

For most religious organizations, a website is the go-to online resource for parishioners and prospective members and includes a broad range of information on services, ministries, events, volunteer opportunities and more. According to Miller, “the website is the main source of information for anything going on at Bethany First Church. In addition, most people, before they come to us for the first time, visit our website, so it’s very important they receive a great first impression and get a feel for who we are before they walk through our door.”

It appears that the Bethany First Church website is succeeding at delivering a great first impression as they have seen an increase in site traffic, time on site, and page views per session as more people are increasing their Internet usage and continuously coming back. Bethany First wanted to also cater to its more mobile-friendly parishioners who prefer to access information on the go, so they built the site leveraging responsive design capabilities allowing it to adapt to any screen.

Balancing Simplicity and Content

1. Display Your Contact Information Prominently

How often have you spent time searching for contact details only to find nothing? It shouldn’t be hard for people to find this critical information. Keep your contact information front and center and make it easy for people to get in touch or find your church. Contact pages with lots of details and maps are fine, but you should also keep your phone number, physical address, and email address on every page of your site, preferably towards the top.

2. Use High-Quality Imagery

Imagery is what attracts people to your blog posts or sermon series, and when it comes to imagery, the higher the quality the better. Years ago, using clip art to on your website was an acceptable practice, but the bar for imagery continues to rise. Images that are squeezed, stretched, and/or pixelated give the impression that you don't take care of your website. If you don’t have the resources to take your own quality photos, consider using high-quality stock imagery.

3. Apply a Responsive Design Template for Mobile Viewing

Supporting a mobile browsing experience was once a hassle requiring multiple CSS files and other tricks, but more modern, responsive design techniques have made this more approachable. By using a content management system, such as LightCMS, with built-in responsive design templates, you can easily create a website that can be viewed across any mobile device or tablet.

4. Upload Sermons to Your Website

Online sermons not only benefit church members but also visitors who may want to get a feel for what your church is like before they visit. With LightCMS, you can upload audio files directly on any page of the site. You can even set them up as a podcast. If your budget allows you to record video of your sermons, you can utilize Vimeo or YouTube to quickly and easily make them available on your website.

5. Keep Your Calendar Up to Date

Some people in your congregation might already know about that ice cream social because they read it in your printed bulletin, but the majority probably don’t know anything about it because your online calendar is not up to date. An accurate online calendar is the best way to keep everyone in the know and ensure that your church’s events are successful. It's also a good opportunity to showcase all of the activities you have available to your community.

As you can see, a vibrant website can be a powerful tool for today’s houses of worship. To manage your website effectively and implement the above tips, you need an easy-to-use website platform like LightCMS. Thousands of churches enjoy the power and simplicity LightCMS offers to their online ministry. To check it out for yourself, sign-up for a free LightCMS trial today!

As with all of our latest designs, Grasp offers a fully responsive display that adapts to fit beautifully in browsers of any width, whether on desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones.  We've also styled a custom login and 404 pages to go along with this design template.

To check it out, log in to your website and click "Design" on the top toolbar. Then click "Gallery" and Grasp is currently the first design in the list of featured designs. It only takes a click to preview the design, apply it to your website, or even download the source code to modify on your own. Plus, as always, you can customize the design in the LightCMS Design Editor as well.

1. Recommend LightCMS to others.

Our simple affiliate option is the easiest way to get started earning recurring revenue with LightCMS. Just sign up and use your custom affiliate links to promote LightCMS on your website, blog or through your social channels. For each new customer referred through your Affiliate links, you collect 20% of the subscription fees for the life of the subscription.

2. Sell software subscriptions with your other services.

You can take the LightCMS Affiliate program to the next level by making it a part of your business model. When a new client is hiring you for a website redesign, this is a perfect time to recommend a new web content management system as well. When they purchase a LightCMS subscription, you’ll receive the 20% affiliate commission without having to handle the billing and collections of subscription fees.

3. Create a one-stop-shop bundle.

Most clients need more than one service. Often they need not only design services or website hosting but also web content management software. Consider bundling a LightCMS subscription with your own consulting or support services. By bundling the services together and utilizing the LightCMS Reseller Program, you can increase the value of your packages and exercise the freedom to set your own prices for LightCMS subscriptions.

As you can see, LightCMS is more than just a content management tool. It’s also a powerful ally for your business. Because we built it this way from the beginning, we have been privileged to work with hundreds of world-class web designers who enjoy the benefits of earning recurring revenue from LightCMS. Won’t you consider joining them? Get started today!

Prior to launching its online storefront, the team considered platforms like WordPress before deciding on LightCMS. Their decision was based on several recommendations as well as LightCMS’s balance of ease of use with capabilities for order management, inventory and customer management, and a streamlined, secure shopping cart that integrates with such leading payment processors as Authorize.net, Stripe and PayPal.

Working with the LightCMS professional services team, Sugarillashop was launched in the Summer of 2013 on the LightCMS content management system platform and has grown into a beautifully-styled site that offers chic and edgy apparel along with everything trending in the world of fashion. Since then, it’s been a breeze for the two non-technical users to add new product content and images as the collection has grown to well over 500 SKUs.

“We’re adding new products almost daily and the site keeps getting bigger. LightCMS is very user-friendly and we never feel limited in what we can do,” said Stephanie Gonce, founder and owner of Sugarillashop.

With a solid foundation on LightCMS, the Sugarillashop team is confident that they will continue to grow and bring what once seemed like a pipe dream to fruition. “We are not worried about LightCMS’s ability to grow with us at all because it’s always on the cutting edge and provides us with everything we need even before we know we need it.”

To learn more about how Sugarillashop is leveraging LightCMS to grow its business, read the full case study here. You can also take a look at other examples of how retailers are using the LightCMS platform to power their online storefronts.

Making its web presence a top priority, Council Road Baptist Church in Oklahoma City replaced its custom-built legacy site after realizing it could no longer meet their needs or the needs of its ministry after six years of use. Times were changing and the way in which people communicate and want to receive or find information was also changing…fast. It was time for them to make a change.

"A website is the church's voice and face for all to see, both members and visitors. The communication and presentation of your church website can make all the difference to someone who is seeking a church home or looking for resources in their community,” said Brad Mardis, Director of Communications at Council Road Baptist Church.

Council Road needed a web platform that was user friendly so that the church’s non-technical program leaders and volunteers could easily update the site as needed. They also required that the site be mobile optimized through responsive design so that its visitors could view it from whatever device they chose.

The organization looked at WordPress as an alternative but found it to be overly complex with a risk of crashing. They instead selected LightCMS’s cloud-based content management system for it met all of its needs, including having the responsive design capabilities that would allow the site to automatically adapt to whatever device accesses it, whether it be a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Council Road Baptist Church launched the new site with the help of LightCMS’s Professional partner, Collision Media, last Easter, 2013. Since launching, the new site has resulted in an 88% increase in the number of unique visitors to-date with gains in page views and average time on site.

To learn more about how Council Road Baptist Church is leveraging LightCMS to engage with and grow its congregation, read the full case study here. You can also take a look at other examples of church and ministry sites powered by LightCMS.

The LightCMS dev ops team has already been expanded significantly, and this new team is drawing up plans for a major expansion of LightCMS's hosting infrastructure. This plan, which will amount to a 50% increase in hosting and server resources, will begin rolling out in the next few weeks. The expansion includes:

• Improving our concurrent connection capabilities
• Increasing our storage capacity
• Upgrading our load balancing systems
• Many more improvements to our front and back-end infrastructure

In order to bring these new systems online, we're scheduling a maintenance window of two hours beginning at 12:01am CDT (GMT-5) on Saturday, October 26, 2013. During this maintenance window, we anticipate a total downtime of approximately 30 minutes with the possibility of longer downtimes if unforeseen complications arise. As always, you can check our status page at status.lightcms.com for updates on the progress of this maintenance.

We're excited to bring you these upgrades as we continue to provide you with the leading solution for websites and online stores. Upgrades of this magnitude will position LightCMS for the exponential growth we anticipate in years to come. Exciting days are ahead!

PayPal Payments Standard and PayPal Payments Pro

PayPal is ubiquitous these days, offering ease-of-use and a sense of security for customers who use it. Merchants as big as WalMart and as small as home-based eBay sellers accept PayPal. There are two types of PayPal merchant accounts integrated with LightCMS – PayPal Payments Standard and PayPal Payments Pro.

The main advantage of PayPal is simplicity. It's easy for customers to open a PayPal account, and even those without an account can still get started using PayPal Payments Standard by simply providing their email address. The fee structure is also very simple. PayPal charges a flat 2.9% plus $.30 per transaction. In addition to shopping cart services, PayPal accounts also provide other advantages such as a free mobile credit card reader to enabling merchants to swipe cards in person.

Not all merchants like PayPal Payments Standard as an online solution as it redirects customers from the merchant's site to the PayPal website to complete a transaction. Stores concerned about having a professional image may want the transaction handled entirely on their own website. Those businesses may prefer to enable PayPal Payments Pro. The Pro service adds a $30 monthly fee but, in return, it provides merchants with more control over the checkout experience and allows LightCMS customers to provide a seamless checkout experience without redirecting to PayPal’s website. PayPal Payments Pro also includes the option of using a PC as a Virtual Terminal for inputting phone, fax and email orders outside of the LightCMS system.

PayPal’s PayFlow Pro

Payflow Pro is a PayPal-owned payment gateway solution for merchants who already have an account with another card authorization service and want to use it with LightCMS. Payflow Pro acts as a conduit to allow businesses with any pre-existing merchant account to utilize that account for online shopping cart transactions through the LightCMS platform. Therefore, Payflow Pro is best suited for merchants who already have a credit card merchant account through another vendor and want to use it with their website.

Authorize.net

The Authorize.net Payment Gateway is a more complex option best suited for larger companies and organizations. The benefit of Authorize.net is that it provides a myriad of options and features supporting payments through multiple touch points, including online. It also works with most any existing merchant account. The downside of Authorize.net is that it is a complex solution that takes a good amount of effort to set up. We include Authorize.net to allow those who already use it to connect it with their LightCMS website. If you’re setting up a new LightCMS store and don’t already have an Authorize.net account, our other solutions will likely provide an easier solution for you. The cost of using Authorize.net varies on a case by case basis and is determined by all the features you choose to enable on your account.

Stripe

A relative newcomer to the online payments scene, Stripe is making a big impact in providing a very simple, flat-rate payment option for those who want to sell online. Stripe lets merchants take credit card payments without having to maintain a separate merchant account or payment gateway. Instead, it stores card information and transfers payments to the seller's regular bank account once a week. Stripe’s fees are very similar to PayPal’s at 2.9% plus $.30 per transaction.

Stripe offers a huge advantage to its customers by providing a seamless checkout experience (without leaving the LightCMS website) with no monthly fees. Because of its advantages, LightCMS has even integrated the sign-up process for Stripe so that LightCMS customers can sign up for Stripe and enable payments on their LightCMS by simply completing one form inside the LightCMS interface. This direct integration plus the advantages of Stripe make it a natural choice for those looking for a simple solution for accepting payments through their LightCMS account.

Get Started Today!

No matter which payment processor you choose, getting payments connected to your LightCMS online store is as simple as can be. Simply choose Store Settings -> Payments on the LightCMS toolbar to make your selections and get set up. If you need help, you can always contact our amazing support team at support@lightcms.com.

All About Communication

At the core, churches are all about communication. They have messages to communicate to their congregations and to the outside world. Church websites should serve as central hubs of communication, and a simple-to-use content management system like LightCMS makes this possible.

Sharing the Workload

Churches often have multiple departments for adults, children, youth, music and more. Each of these departments has its own need to communicate. So, it's very helpful if a church can distribute the workload of managing website content across multiple people. LightCMS provides unlimited user accounts on every website with powerful permissions control so that churches can let the people in charge of each department manage their own content.

A Snap to Learn

Most every church relies on a network of volunteers and/or part-time staff to get things done. In general, this can be a challenge for website management. But with an easy-to-use content management solution like LightCMS, it's a snap to teach people how to update website content and make small changes on their own.

Delivering Key Features for Church Websites

LightCMS has a wealth of content management features to meet the needs of any organization. Below are five key features often used by churches and how LightCMS makes each so simple to use:

• The Blog Element. Blogging is all about sharing ideas and content regularly and this is what churches are all about. Articles, news, updates and more can be easily posted to LightCMS's blog element. Not only that, but including media with posts allows churches to share audio and video content as well.
• The Events Calendar. Churches generally have a lot of events and LightCMS's built-in events calendar makes it easy to share those events anywhere on a website.
• The Form Builder. There are many uses for our form builder, but one thing that's particularly helpful to churches is using it to register people for events. Within minutes, a church can launch a new sign-up form for any event and even accept registration fees online.
• Accepting Donations. LightCMS's built-in donation element is as simple as it gets, or churches can choose to integrate third party donation systems as well.
• Selling Products. Many churches occasionally sell products like sermon audio/video or items for fundraisers, etc. The great thing about LightCMS's store feature is that it can be used for selling just one product or hundreds – and those products can be placed anywhere on the website.

Fully-Featured for Churches of All Sizes

Perhaps the greatest feature of LightCMS isn't a feature at all. It's the pricing. LightCMS's pricing isn't based on what features you use, but rather the size of your website. We believe that organizations of any size should have access to all of the tools and functionality we provide. So, websites that use our entry-level $19/month plan get access to the same great tools as those on our higher-tiered plans. This is great news for churches who might not need a big website but still want a website that works well and meets their needs.

Don’t take our word for it, see how other churches are using LightCMS to create and manage beautiful, compelling websites that effectively communicate their church's message online.

Like many web design agencies, Collision Media started out working with open source platforms such as WordPress and Joomla, but quickly realized these systems were incapable of meeting its needs. Using these tools, Collision struggled to scale its business and grow the way it wanted to.

Collision Media moved to LightCMS’ cloud-based platform because of the ease of use it offered its clients and the simplicity of integration for its designers. Collision Media also takes full advantage of LightCMS's compatibility with responsive design techniques. This allows Collision to create websites that adapt to whatever device is accessing it—whether laptop, smartphone or tablet.

LightCMS’ intuitive and simple interface now allows Collision Media to complete and deliver more projects in a fraction of the time resulting in its ability to take on more projects and grow its business. To learn more about how Collision Media is leveraging LightCMS to expand and grow its design business, read their full Success Story on the LightCMS Website.

Systems are scheduled for maintenance on Saturday, August 24, 2013 from Midnight to 2am Central Daylight Time (GMT -5). We anticipate that you will be unable to access your LightCMS website(s) for the first 15-45 minutes of the maintenance window. As always, the downtime may exceed beyond the scheduled time if unforeseen complications arise during the maintenance process. Please know that our team has taken and will take all practical measures to minimize system downtime.

Thank you for your patience during this period of scheduled maintenance. We love our customers and appreciate your ongoing support of LightCMS! If you have any questions about this announcement, please contact us any time at support@lightcms.com.

1. Be a Salesperson

You prefer to think you're a designer, producer, or marketer, but to grow your business, you also have to be a salesperson. Selling means asking friends and existing clients for referrals, getting out into the community to network, creating and distributing marketing materials, getting active on social media sites and even cold calling possible customers to introduce yourself.

2. Don't Discount

It's tempting to try and grab hold of available projects by offering a low rate, discount, or even a freebie. That's a big mistake. It's much harder to raise your rates once you've set them. Plus, most customers base their decisions on more than just price. So, if you've got a quality service to offer, don't cheapen it with price cuts. This also applies to all the little extras you add in for clients and which you're loathe to add to the bill. If you added a service they requested — a third revision, additional graphics…etc. — put it on the bill. If you don't, you risk starving your business of needed revenues.

3. Set Reasonable Deadlines – and Meet Them

We all know we're supposed to meet deadlines, but all too often we struggle to deliver what we’ve promised on time. When you're competing against other agencies for business, meeting deadlines is a major factor in getting repeat business and referrals. The perception that you deliver what you promise is critical. You’re always in control of the timeline, so set reasonable expectations and meet them.

4. Return Phone Calls Quickly

Handle calls immediately when you can and always return missed calls the same business day. If you find it distracting to talk on the phone while working on a project, then divide your day so some of it is focused on creative tasks with other times set aside for customer calls. Getting back to people quickly will help you land more projects and keep customers satisfied.

5. Specialize

At first, most new agencies will take on every kind of work they can get, from newsletters and business cards to corporate logos and websites. But when business starts coming in regularly, it pays to focus on a specific niche or industry. Sharpening your niche will make your entire business more efficient — from focusing your sales and marketing efforts, to streamlining your daily tasks, to improving your customer support on finished projects. It’s better to become the go-to expert in a specific field than to try and do everything. A focused approach will also produce better referrals and help you grow your business to the next level.

WildInkPress.com running on LightCMS

In fact, there are many reasons to move your store online, no matter the size of your business. If your company still hasn't taken its first step toward online sales, here are five reasons why it should… and quickly.

1. Reach New Customers

How much more could you sell if you could reach customers across America or around the world? Online selling means you can. What if all those customers could purchase from you at any time? Online selling makes all of this possible, opening your business to more customers and purchases than ever before.

2. Give Local Customers a Convenient Alternative

People love convenience and there's nothing more convenient than a Web browser and online shopping cart. Even your regulars may get tired trekking out to your store, especially if they're older, ill, or just don't want to brave the bad weather. With the rising price of gas, and the constant shortage of time, more of your loyal customers might appreciate being able to buy from the comfort of their own home.

3. Get a Competitive Edge

Ecommerce can be a competitive feature for smaller stores in local markets. It can also give a small seller a leg up on the giant retailers like Walmart and Amazon. Supporting small and local businesses has become a popular movement so your customers may welcome the chance to buy from your Website rather than the big guys.

4. Look Bigger Than You Are

By establishing a professional website complete with an online store, companies can give the impression of a larger organization. It's not uncommon to find an online firm that looks as though it employs hundreds but actually has just three or four employees. A well-designed, inviting Web site with shopping cart functionality can make your business look like a big league player.

5. Build Your Brand Image

Creating a Web presence allows a company to tell its story to consumers with photos, videos, blog posts, case studies, and management bios. You can share your firm's history, philosophy, ethics, community involvement, employee culture – all of this can help bring your brand to life. When you combine these standard web content features with the power of an online store, your brand becomes far more than just a local player in a local market.

Creating an online store is not only a valuable step for virtually any business with products to sell, it's also much easier than you might think. Using a cloud-based, inexpensive and user-friendly content management system like LightCMS, a store owner can quickly create a website and add photos, slideshows, forms, downloadable documents, product listings and a shopping cart with secure payment options. Tools that were previously available only to large corporations are now within the reach of most any retail business. Why not take advantage of all that online selling has to offer?

Sell Physical and Digital Goods with a Single Platform

Digital Goods integrate seamlessly with LightCMS's existing online store features. This means you can add digital products to your store in the same way that you add physical products. It also means that you can list digital and physical products in the same storefront and customers can purchase any combination of physical and digital goods in a single checkout experience.

An example of the new product variant screen with options for goods that are physical, digital or both.

To facilitate this, we've created a new concept of Variant "Type." For each product variant, you can choose a type of Physical, Digital, or Both. For example, you could create a product for a music album you're selling. The album might have three variants — one variant for the physical CD, another variant for a digital download of the album, and a third variant to purchase both the physical CD and the digital download. You can offer your customers all of these options through a single product listing on your website.

When you select the "Digital" or "Both" variant type, you'll be asked to provide the digital file you wish to sell. You can upload a file, provide a link to a file elsewhere on the Internet, or choose a file that you've previously uploaded as a digital good. And here's some really great news — files uploaded as Digital Goods don't count toward your website's storage limits. So, no matter the size of your website you can take full advantage of this amazing new feature!

Automatic Fulfillment and the New Order Receipt

One of the many great things about Digital Goods is that order fulfillment happens automatically. You don't have to do a thing. LightCMS guides your customers through the process of accessing and downloading the digital products they have purchased.

To accomplish this, we're introducing a brand new Order Receipt. Every customer now gets access to a permanent, online order receipt for every order they place, whether the order is for physical goods, digital goods or both. A link to the Order Receipt appears on the order confirmation screen after checkout and is also emailed to each customer immediately after their purchase.

The new Order Receipt with download links for digital products.

For each digital product ordered, the Order Receipt contains a "Download" button, allowing the customer to download their purchased items. The download button can only be used three times or for 24 hours, whichever comes first. After that, it is replaced by a "Request Download" button. When a customer clicks a request download button, the store administrator is alerted and given the opportunity to re-enable downloads for the item if they so choose. Download requests show up on the store administrator's dashboard with handy inline buttons allowing them to approve or reject each request.

Store administrators can also access the download history for each file through the order history screen in the store admin interface. A file's download history shows the number of times the download button has been accessed, the date and IP address of each access and whether or not the download was a success.

Store administrators can view the download history for every digital asset on every order.

Generate Free Downloads for Promotional Purposes

Digital Goods also include the ability for store administrators to generate "Free Download" links. These one-time use links can be provided to customers for promotional purposes. The LightCMS Store tracks all generated free download links and whether or not they have been redeemed.

Provide New Versions to All Who Have Purchased

Want to provide automatic, free upgrades to customers who have purchased your Digital Goods? The LightCMS store makes this simple. Any time you update the file for a digital product, LightCMS not only makes the new file available to all new customers, it also automatically emails all customers who have previously purchased the product informing them that a new version is available. The download limits for this new version are reset, allowing the customer to download it at no extra cost.

Streamlined Product Editing

As a part of this release, we've also made some improvements to the store in general. Product editing screens are now divided into three tabs — Basic, Advanced and Images — making it easier to navigate the options when setting up your products. In addition, we've made some big improvements to the way variants and options work. These changes improve the user experience for selling all products on the LightCMS store including both physical and digital goods.

Premium Features at No Extra Charge

Digital Goods and all of the features described above will be added to all LightCMS websites at no extra charge. As you know, our pricing is based on the size of a website and not on features. We believe that every website deserves the very best and we're so excited to bring this Premium Digital Goods service to all LightCMS customers.

This release is currently scheduled for Tuesday, August 6th. Thank you all for your continued support of LightCMS. We look forward to bringing you these amazing new features!

Of course, just a few miles south of us in the City of Moore, the damage is immense. Moore is connected to Oklahoma City and is a part of our metropolitan area so we all feel the impact of such a damaging event. Naturally, in times like this, we want to do what we can to help those in need. If you would like to help support the Oklahoma families who have suffered severe loss during this time, we encourage you to consider donating to the recovery effort. 

To help connect you with organizations worthy of your donations, LightCMS's parent company, NetSuite, through its philanthropic arm, NetSuite.org, has listed a selection of funds that will support various aspects of the Oklahoma recovery effort on their Global Disaster Relief website. If you'd like to contribute, please visit globalgiving.org/netsuite to view the available funds and make a secure, online contribution.

Thank you all again for your concern for our city. We are blessed to work with so many loving and caring customers around the world.

No User Limits. No Transaction Fees.

That's right, all of our new LightCMS plans offer unlimited users and no transaction fees! Now you'll be able to set up user accounts for as many people as you wish, even on our lower-tiered plans. Plus, you'll save money when you sell products online with no LightCMS transaction fees. Keep in mind, you'll still be subject to the fees charged by your merchant account providers, but LightCMS will no longer collect any additional transaction fees on products you sell through our store.

Plan Name Changes

As you can see on the image above, we're changing our plan names as well. What were previously known as Basic, Plus, Advanced, Pro, and Premier will now be called Personal, Standard, Premium, Professional, and Unlimited.

The 14 Day Trial with Full Access

We're also moving away from the limited trial accounts we've provided thus far (free up to three pages) to a Free Trial model where new websites get full access to as many resources as they need at no cost for 14 days. After 14 days, websites will need to submit payment at whatever level their website requires based on the pages, storage, and products used.

One big advantage of the Free Trial model is that it will enable us to offer copy website functionality, a very highly-requested feature. Read more about this below.

Copy Any Website with a Click

The ability to create a new LightCMS website by copying an existing one has been a highly-requested feature for years. We're happy to announce that this new feature will be going live alongside these plan changes. The copy website functionality is dependent upon the implementation of a free trial model. Our previous model limited all new websites to only three pages so it was not possible to copy existing websites that had more than three pages. Now any website can be copied in its entirety with a click!

To copy a website, you'll visit Account -> Websites and choose the website you want to copy. Then, from the menu at the upper right, choose "Copy," and give your new site a unique name. That's it! The entire site with all of its content will be copied to create a second, identical website under your LightCMS account. This is great for using one website as a starting point when you're building out a new site.

Other Changes

Outside of what's mentioned above, all of our plans stay the same with two exceptions. Our Professional Plan ($69/month) will now have a limit of 100 pages (previously unlimited) and a limit of 5,000 products (previously 10,000). Our Standard Plan ($29/month) will now get an extra GB of storage for a total of 3GB. Also, resellers should note that the loss of LightCMS Transaction fees also means the loss of transaction fee profit sharing through the LightCMS Rewards program.

Opt In or Stay as You Are: the Choice is Yours

We're very excited about the advantages these plans and features offer to our resellers and customers, but we also know that some of you may prefer to stay with the plans you have now. So, we have built this release in a way to give our existing customers the option of whether to keep the plans they have currently, or to opt into these new plans and features.

As a result, if your LightCMS account exists before this release goes live, nothing will change for you unless you opt into the new plans. If you take no action, you will be able to keep your current line up of plans indefinitely. You'll still be able to add new websites that are free up to three pages, but you won’t be able to utilize the copy website functionality and all websites under your account will retain their existing characteristics including their user limits and transaction fees.

How to Opt In

If you want to take advantage of the new plans and features we're releasing, you will need to manually opt into the new plans. To do this, you'll need to follow these steps once the plans are live:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Choose “Account” from the User Session Menu at the upper right.
3. Click the “Websites” tab.
4. Select any of your websites.
5. Click the “Upgrade” button (you won’t be required to upgrade if you don’t want to).

After following the above steps, you’ll be presented with a page describing the new plans with an option to enable them. Once you enable the plans, you’ll be presented with the new plan change page, showing which of the new plans the selected site is on currently. From there, you can upgrade/downgrade your site, or simply return to editing by clicking any of the buttons on the toolbar.

When you opt into the new plans, all websites under your account will be migrated to the new plans automatically. User limits and transaction fees will disappear from all websites under your account. You'll gain access to the copy website functionality and any new websites you add or copy will enjoy unlimited access to the system during a 14 day trial period.

When you opt in, we’ll also grandfather any existing free websites. You’ll be able to keep them under your account at no cost indefinitely (please note that free websites will retain their existing limit of one user). Also, existing "Pro" plan websites will retain their Unlimited Pages and their 10,000 for as long as they remain on the Professional plan.

Launch: Week of April 15, 2013

We look forward to bringing you these new plans and features. They are scheduled for release during the week of April 15th. Stay tuned to our website, forum, and social media channels for more specific information on when they are live. Again, this update will have no affect on your LightCMS account unless you manually opt in to the new plans. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us any time at support@lightcms.com.

It's no longer necessary to establish a merchant account outside of LightCMS. Now, LightCMS customers can activate a Stripe account and begin accepting credit card payments instantly, right inside the LightCMS store settings. Here's a quick look at how it works.

Log in to your LightCMS website and choose Settings -> Payments from the store toolbar. Right at the top, you'll see information about Stripe. Click the "Activate Stripe Account" button and you'll be taken to the LightCMS Stripe set up page. If you already have a Stripe account, you can choose to use it. If you don't, you'll simply fill out the bit of information requested on this page, then click "Authorize Access to this Account" at the bottom. 

That's it! Your store will be ready to accept credit card payments and income from your sales will be automatically transferred to your bank account. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per successful transaction and allows you to accept all major credit cards. There are no other fees associated with using Stripe.

One note -- Stripe is currently only available in the US and Canada. If you are outside of these countries, or if you prefer to use one of our other integrated payment processors for any reason, you may still do so by selecting the "use a different gateway" link next to the Stripe account button.

We hope you and your clients enjoy the new one-step set up for accepting credit card payments on the web. This feature is up and running on every LightCMS website. Check it out inside your account today.

We've got some very exciting news to share with you today. LightCMS and Element Fusion have been acquired by NetSuite. NetSuite is a publicly traded company (NYSE: N) and the industry's leading provider of cloud-based business management software suites. We're excited that LightCMS is joining NetSuite's broad suite of applications.

We know that the news of an acquisition can raise a lot of questions, so we want to assure you of a few important things. 

First off, it's important to note that you can continue using LightCMS as usual. The impact of this change in ownership should be transparent. The LightCMS platform continues to operate as normal for customers and resellers. In addition, we want you to know that the LightCMS team is still in place and will continue to service and support the LightCMS product. In fact, we'll still be operating out of our Oklahoma City offices. NetSuite wants to preserve what has made LightCMS a success as well as continuing to improve it for years to come.

Most of you know that Element Fusion, the creator of LightCMS, always maintained a unique approach to business. We bootstrapped our company from the beginning, growing it steadily on solid profits and operating with no debt and no outside investment. An exit plan has never been a part of our strategy as we were always in it for the long haul.

At the same time, we always kept our eyes open for opportunities to expand and grow — opportunities that would bring great new things to our product and our customers. NetSuite presented us with just such an opportunity and, as a result, we are very excited about what the future holds. We can't wait to continue on the journey with you.

Thank you all for your continued support of LightCMS. We look forward to serving you for years to come. If you have any further questions, you may reach us, as always, at support@lightcms.com.

For the fifth consecutive year, LightCMS will be a part of SXSW Interactive, one of the world's largest gatherings of interactive professionals. If you find yourself at SXSW this year, we hope you'll stop by our booth (number 337) in the Austin Convention Center so we can meet you face to face.

This year's SXSW Interactive Conference takes place March 8-12 with the Trade Show firing up on March 10th. Stop by our Trade Show booth and you'll be able to meet some of our team, take a guided tour of our software, and even pick up your very own "Web Designers are Sexy" sticker!

LightCMS team members attending SXSW this year include Marketing Director Tim Wall (that's me), Support Director Chad Jaggers, Creative Director Matthew Sanders, and Software Engineer Matt Grimm. It's going to be great fun this year and we hope to see you there!

Are you going to SXSW 2013? Let us know in the comments below!