Doodlekit - Latest Blog Entries

New Templates: Simple Group

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:56:00 -0500

This new group of templates represent the last of the 'simple' template designs for a little while (thus the name 'simple group'). I have pushed out 3 groups of simple/generic templates in the last few weeks that are meant to be usable by anyone for just about any kind of website. This one is probably the most generic of them all. I created both horizontal menu and vertical menu versions of this group. Feel free to post any comments about this template here.

New Templates: Zen Pro Group

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:33:00 -0500

I pushed out a new set of templates recently that I call the 'Zen Pro' group. These templates are simple and professional but have a relaxed design to them. I used slightly rounded corners on everything including the main title font I picked. They are meant to be generic enough that anyone can use them for just about any type of website. Feel free to post any comment about them here.

New Templates: Business Group

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:37:00 -0500

I rolled out a new group of nine templates yesterday called 'Business'. The core color I picked was a corporate, dark blue. I then added 9 different color combinations to provide different variations of it. Everything about it is professional, simple, clean and very business looking. I added some minor gradients to give it a little 'flair'. You can click on the image to the right to see the template in action. Take a look and see if you like :). Feel free to post any comments here about these new templates or any other template ideas you may have.

New Design Tools Update

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:38:00 -0500

The last few days Ben and I have been working on making the design tools a little easier to use. We know that the tools we had in our older version were successful because of their ease of use. Unfortunately, when we pushed out the new tools to provide more flexibility and options, they made things a little more complicated to use.

To help smooth this out, we have implemented the same interface from the older system into this new one. You will now see in the Main Settings some familiar looking features and buttons. While similar looking in design, these buttons pull up way more powerful tools than their older predecessor. The same design options are now available as before, its just that these are way better.

For those that feel the need to be adventurous, or want to change specific details of their templates, they can do so by clicking on the 'Advanced Design Tools' button. This will take them to the template designer where they can explore and play with just about every detail of their templates.

I hope these new changes make things easier to use and understand. Feel free to post any comments about them here.

Doodlekit New Release Is Out!

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:57:00 -0500

Surprise! Yep, its here! Seriously... I'm not joking! Doodlekit 2.0 is now officially available to everyone. There are lots and lots of new features and tools - more than I can go over in just a single blog post. This new upgrade is very big. Our design tools alone are 100x more powerful than our previous version (via your requests). And that's just the design tools :). Here is a breakdown of some of our new features:

New Templates
New Template Design Tools
New Template Sharing Options
New Bulk Image Uploader
New Advanced SEO Tools
New Gallery & Image Slideshow Tools
New Social Media Tools

Converting Your Old Website

To convert your website, you need only click on the 'Templates' menu in the Admin Tool and pick a template - that's it! If you want to play around with the design tools and customize your template, I would suggest creating a new 'Free' website with Doodlekit and to build your template on it first. Then you can export that template when you are done and import it to your real website. I would also suggest that anytime you make changes to your website template, that you create a backup 'copy' first so you can roll it back if you do not like your changes.

Have Fun!

Don't be afraid to play around with the templates. You can use the 'Template Wizard' to experiment with a custom design as well as just tweak an existing template. You can always make backup copies of your templates or pick a new template if you mess up. I am still working on the help files - those will be added as I create them. Hopefully the interface is intuitive enough that you can figure out most of the design options just by looking at the tools.

To our users I say: Thank you for your patience. Without your input and guidance we would not have been able to do this. To our new members: Welcome! We know you will love Doodlekit 2.0! Help spread the word about this release by liking this Facebook post.

Everyone have fun playing with the New Release!

New Release On Real Websites

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:04:00 -0500

Just wanted to update everyone on the beta testing. So far so good :). Our BETA testers are slowly edging into the design tools and coming up with some cool designs. I thought I would post a few for everyone to check out. Remember that these volunteers are still designing their sites and things will probably be changing on them for a while. Here are some links to real websites using the new release:

Feel free to post any comments here about the new design tools and the designs created from them!

Beta New Release Scheduled To Start Thursday, April 4th

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:53:00 -0500

Many of you signed up a few weeks ago to be the first people to test out our New Release. We had hundreds of volunteers. We are now at the point were we would like to start beta testing and will be contacting some of you to help out.

Emails will start going out Thursday, April 4th to those who have been selected. These emails will explain how to 'turn on' the new design tools for your website and switch over. It will also explain where and how to report any bugs you find.

Beta testers will be added gradually. Will will start with a small group of about 15-20 websites. As we feel more comfortable, we will add more. Hopefully this will progress rapidly and we will be able to roll out the New Release to everyone within just a few weeks.

We are excited to reach this point and thank those of you who volunteered! We can't wait to show off our new design tools!

Doodlekit's New Cloud Infrastructure

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:50:00 -0500

Over the last two weeks we were attacked twice by malicious hackers using the Denial of Service (DDOS) technique. Basically the attackers send enough traffic to our network so that regular traffic can't get through. The purpose of this is solely to bring a website to it's knees.

Up until this weekend we have been hosting our servers in a traditional environment, with physical servers in a data center that hosts other companies. Unfortunately, even though the attack was targeted at us, there was enough traffic to block out all of the other companies in that data center. To fix this, the data center "Null Routed" our IP Address. Basically they cut our connection to the internet to keep the other companies online. This is perfectly understandable, given the situation. However, it is not acceptable for us to allow your websites to be down for any longer than absolutely necessary. That's why we spent last week completely re-building our server infrastructure in the Cloud.

You've probably heard this buzzword a lot, but with Cloud hosting we basically use a provider that allows us to create our own virtual data center. We can create servers with a few clicks, or completely re-organize our infrastructure in a few minutes. We can automatically deploy new servers as traffic increases. Essentially, we have more control, so we can better respond to unfortunate situations like DDOS attacks.

Our new cloud provider has DDOS protection built in, and some of the best security in the world. It gives us the option to deploy servers in different countries, which improves the speed for international traffic. This change also paves the way for new features, like SSL certificates or dedicated servers for premium accounts. Just like our old system, the new infrastructure is completely redundant, meaning if one server fails, there's another to pick up the slack. And of course, we have full backups of all of your data.

This was an unfortunate bump in the road, however it's forced us to re-think things that will ultimately benefit you, our customers. We are now better equipped as we continue to grow and face new challenges.

And finally, I couldn't be more appreciative of our customer's support and understanding through these troubles.

Now back to getting ready for Beta testing the new Doodlekit.

Thanks, -Ben

New Template In Action: Heathbits

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:51:00 -0500

I thought I would post a link to Heathbits, my personal website, that is currently on the New Release. I am using one of the templates I created that will be in the general template library called Beige Brown Pro. I have made no custom changes to it nor added any custom CSS code. This is what the template looks like on my website by default. Anyone will be able to use it as well if they wish. I will probably make a custom template just for my website eventually, but right now I am a little busy getting out the New Release ;).

New Template: Retro Cosmopolitan Fabrics

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:30:00 -0500

Here is another variation from the previous posts template - this one is a little brighter. Once I have a general 'theme' picked out for a template I make, it's easy to make different color variations of it. We actually have a 'replace all colors' tool that you can use to help re-color any template you get from our library. Feel free to post any comments here about this template.

New Template: Retro Baby Fabrics

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:09:00 -0500

I'm still cranking out templates ;). Remember all of the templates I create are made using our New Doodlekit Template Builder Tools. You will be able to make templates like these yourself if you want to, or just use the ones I have created. Feel free to post any comments here about this latest template.

Server Upgrade Saturday, March 16th

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:09:00 -0500

Just wanted to let everyone know that we will be doing a server upgrade this Saturday night, around 10:00 PM CST. All websites will be down for a few hours at that time. This upgrade should increase performance and help prevent outages like those we have been dealing with recently.

Recent Server Attacks

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:29:00 -0500

As many of you know, this last week we had two outages caused by attacks to our servers by a malicious third party. First, let me state that there was no security breech whatsoever. No data was lost or compromised. These attacks were all external hits meant to overload our servers with traffic and force them to crash.

These types of attacks have been happening more and more lately to companies all over the web, and are becoming increasingly sophisticated and harder to prevent. Needless to say we are aggressively pursuing more permanent solutions to this problem. We know this is unacceptable to our customers and clients.

This will delay our new release a few more days as we focus on the issue at hand. Our #1 priority is always to keep your websites up and running as securely and safely as possible.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Recent Downtime

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:56:00 -0600

The system was down for a few hours today due to an issue at our Network Operations Center. It appears that there may have been an attack on our network, however it's too early to say for sure. What I can say is that no data was lost or comprimised, the issue was entirely outside of our system.

We'll continue to do everything we can to make sure your websites are up 24/7 and apologize for the loss of service.

Doodlekit On The New Doodlekit

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:27:00 -0600

If you are reading this post, then you probably have notice a change to the Doodlekit.com website :). Yes, Doodlekit.com is running on the new release and is using a new release custom template I made for it. As always, we eat our own dog food here at Doodlekit, so when it came to rolling out the new stuff, we thought we should take the first bite.

I will probably make some more 'tweaks' here and there and move some stuff around. As you know we are busy with getting the BETA out so I don't have the time to 'doodle' with Doodlekit as much as I would like right now.

I hope everyone likes the new look. Feel free to post any comments about the new site here.

New Release Update

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:48:00 -0600

As most of you know, Ben and I recently pushed out the code for the new release. You may have noticed some minor new tools and options added, but the bulk of the code has not been turned on yet for members to use. Integrating the new code with the old system did cause some minor issues that have (for the most part) been resolved. Any bugs you might find that we have missed can be reported here.

What's Next

Now that the code has been pushed out successfully, I have turned it on for a few select Doodlekit sites that I am testing. You can take a peak at one of these sites here: http://demo.doodlekit.com. As you can imagine with such a big release, I have already found a few bugs. I am currently testing these demo sites and and adding any bugs I find to our ToDo list. Ben and I are knocking these out as fast as we can. It will take several days of testing and bug fixing before we feel comfortable opening up the new release to our members.

Beta Testing

After I have exhausted my testing and feel that we have addressed every bug that we can, we will open up the new release to our Beta Testing Group. This group is a volunteer group of members who signed up to help us with testing. Not all volunteers will be used as we have way more than we need. You will be notified via email if you volunteered for Beta Testing and we picked you. We will provide you with instructions on what to do and how to report bugs.

The Real Release

Once our beta testers have reported all the bugs they can find and we have fixed them all, we will then open up the new release to the public. I will keep everyone posted as to how this is going and if we run into any major issues. Hopefully this will only take a few weeks.

Thank you everyone for your patience. We are very excited about this release and hope you will love it as much as we do!

Doodlekit Maintenance Tonight

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 09:26:00 -0600

The system will be down for about 1 hour tonight starting and 9pm CST, while we address some issues. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Release Rollout Successful - Post Any Bugs Here

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:22:00 -0600

We rolled out the new release updates successfully this morning, but there may be some bugs here and there that we don't know about. You can post any issues you notice here. Do note that this is just a code push to the servers - the new release has not been turned on yet. We still have some staging to do and then we will notify some BETA testers who volunteered to start testing it first. Once we feel we have ironed out all of the bugs from BETA testing, we will roll out the new release to everyone. Thank you for your patience!

Maintenance Outage Tuesday, February 12th

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:33:00 -0600

There will be another 1-2 hour outage for new release updates Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 @ 5:00AM CST. Again, these updates will not be visible to users till later.

The Big Release: Outage Early Tuesday

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:31:00 -0600

UPDATE: Rescheduled for Thursday, February 7th @ 5:00AM CST.

We start the rollout of the New Release of Doodlekit early this coming Tuesday morning, February 5th, 2013 @ 5:00AM CST. There will be down time till around 7-8:00AM CST. There should be nothing new with our tools visible to anyone at this time. This is just a rollout of the code to get it on the servers.

It will still be a while before we start opening up the sites to the Beta after this. There is a lot of stuff we have to setup and stage on the servers once its been pushed out.

We will keep you posted as to when BETA testing can begin. Thank you for your patience.