Element Fusion

Three new, free designs added to the CMS

Tim Wall — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:10:31 GMT

We've added three new design templates to the design manager inside our CMS systems. They are all variations on a single design, but they provide a great deal of variety as you can see below.

As always, these designs are free for you to use. You can download the source, modify them as you wish, or use them as is. As long as the website you're developing runs on our CMS system, you have license to use these any way you see fit. You can also have us customize one of these designs for you through our Design Xpress service if you wish.

Atmosphere - InnerCity

Atmosphere - MorningLight

Atmosphere - ReBirth

Now hiring: sales professionals

Justin Cowan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:18:55 GMT

Element Fusion is looking to expand our sales team. If you're an all-star sales representative and have a passion for the web and tech, we'd love to talk with you.

Why Element Fusion? Check out our top reasons to work here.

What we’re looking for:

Someone that loves all aspects of sales (from prospecting, to meetings, to closing the deal).
Someone that can provide amazing customer service to their clients.
Someone that prospects and doesn’t rely solely on company leads.
Someone that has the desire to work with and sell web technology solutions.
Someone with proven experience in outside sales.

The job requirements are:

An undergraduate degree.
1 year in outside sales (business-to-business).

Company benefits you’ll receive:

Aggressive training to get you up to speed on web design, our software, and Internet marketing.
Competitive salary plus commission on all sales with no caps.
A full set of benefits (health, dental, paid time off, 401k), plus “added value” benefits you won’t find anywhere else.
A work environment that is dynamic, fun, and driven to be the best at what we do.

Do you have what it takes to work with the “best of the best” in the industry? If so, please e-mail your resume, references, and salary history to jobs@elementfusion.com or use the form on our jobs page. We look forward to meeting you!

Launched!

Tim Wall — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:05:17 GMT

Here are a few sites that Element Fusion has designed and launched over the past few weeks. Unless otherwise noted, each site is running on our own suite of content management system products, giving the client control over their own site content.

Zoo Field Trips

First Presbyterian Church of Oklahoma City

Oklahoma Attorneys Mutual Insurance Company

Calvary Chapel Melbourne

Element Fusion provided design-work only for Calvary Chapel. This particular site is running on the church's own system.

Hoppes Construction

GracePoint Paradise Church

Support articles for new account and billing system

Tim Wall — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:27:09 GMT

We've added a host of new support articles to our CMS account support website covering the various functions of the new account and billing system launched this week. If you have questions about how to make use of the new features, check out these articles to see if your questions are answered there. Of course, if you still have questions, you can always contact us at support@publishpath.com for personalized help.

The support articles are located under the "Account and Billing Settings" section on the left hand menu. Once clicked, you'll also see a "Client Billing" submenu item that will show you just those articles relating to client billing. See the image below for a visual reference and enjoy the new features.

Introducing the billing system built for you and your clients

Tim Wall — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:02:36 GMT

Over the past three years, we've launched an enormous number of improvements to our suite of content management products, but today's release is quite possibly the most significant improvement to date. Not only because we've completely redeveloped the way the system processes payments and lets you interact with your account, but also because we've taken another huge step forward in our support of web designers around the world.

Built to support your web design business

The decisions we make about our software products aren't based on what's new or trendy. They aren't based on a desire to provide every type of functionality available. Rather, they are based on our time-tested experience in growing a successful web design business and our understanding of what it takes to make such a business succeed. It is that motivation which has led us to develop an amazingly powerful billing system and to offer it at no cost to every customer on LightCMS.

That's right — no cost. Accounts on LightCMS are free. There's no set-up fee or commitment of any kind to use our software. And now, bundled into every one of those free accounts, is the option to let us handle your client website billing for you. It can save you a ton of time and effort, which is what LightCMS is all about.

Time to take a look inside

We invite you to take a look at the all new billing system. Simply login to your website and click "My Account" on the top toolbar. Then, take a look around and let us know what you think. If you don't have a LightCMS account yet, you can create one for free in just about a minute.

In the days to come, we'll be posting more details about various aspects of the new system. Stay tuned for that. For now, if you're looking for more specifics, you can review our preview of client billing from a few weeks ago.

New account and billing system to launch Tuesday

Tim Wall — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:14:02 GMT

Well, if you've been following our blog over the past few weeks you know that we've got some major new features about to roll out on our CMS systems. About ten days ago we announced that we weren't ready for public launch, but that we were open for beta users. We had a good response to our beta invitation and have received some excellent feedback from our beta users over the past week.

Our development team has also been hard at work hammering out the issues that caused this delay, and now we are ready to release the features system-wide. We're scheduling that launch for Tuesday, June 23rd at noon CDT (GMT -5).

So, stay tuned Tuesday for final updates on Twitter and our blog. Once everything is live and running, we'll be posting more information over the following days to help explain all of the new functionality to you.

From the mailbag

Tim Wall — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:57:21 GMT

The CMS is very simple and straightforward, and you guys have done a great job making it easy for the end user. Thank you for that.
Isaac Fraim
Oklahoma Attorneys Mutual Insurance Company

No launch this week, but open for beta

Tim Wall — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:53:23 GMT

Well, it's been a wild week here. If you've been following our announcements regarding the new billing system, you know that we've been very close to launching this week. So close, in fact, that we could practically reach out and touch the finish line. That's why it's just as frustrating for us as we know it is for you to say that at the last minute we've uncovered an issue that's going to prevent us from launching to the public this week.

Open for beta users

While we're not quite ready to launch live for everyone, the system is fully functional, and we could benefit from having a few of you take it for a spin. So, if you're itching to get started and if you have some clients you can move to client billing very soon (even immediately), then we'd love to let you get started now. You'd have to be ok with the possibility of a few minor glitches along the way, but you'll have our full support in the process. In fact, we'll be very tuned into your activity and your feedback as we work toward taking the system live.

If you're interested in using client billing during this brief beta period, please email me (tim@elementfusion.com) ASAP. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about the process.

PLEASE NOTE: We've had a great response to our beta invitation and we've reached our limit for beta accounts, at least for now. However, we will continue to add more accounts as we are able so please continue to send in your requests and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. And remember, the full public launch won't be far behind (see below).

So when is it really going live?

We're going to take a step back and put a new, tentative date out there. That date is Tuesday, June 23rd. It could possibly be earlier than that, just as it could possibly be later. I can promise you one thing, we are working extremely hard to get this completed as nothing will make us happier than having this product live for everyone.

What's the issue?

The issues we've encountered are a bit hard to explain succinctly. They aren't really issues with the functionality of the system, but rather concerns about the potential for issues that could develop given a certain set of circumstances. With a few people using the system, we'll be able to monitor these issues closely and correct them if they occur. But, we just don't feel comfortable bringing everyone onto the system until we take a little more time to eliminate the potential for those issues completely.

Thank you for your continued understanding and support. If you are interested in using the system immediately while in beta, please let me know.

New billing entity to appear on your credit card statements

Tim Wall — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:38:46 GMT

As a part of our rollout of new account and billing functionality, we'll be changing our CMS billing to run through a new billing entity. This means that the name showing up on your credit card statements will change.

This affects all paid websites on our WaterCMS, SkyCMS and LightCMS systems. If you're paying for a website running on one of those products, your charges will no longer show up as coming from "Element Fusion, LLC." Instead, charges will show up as coming from a generic CMS billing entity.

This change will be implemented at some point before the new billing system goes live (that's currently scheduled for Thursday, June 11th). We don't have an exact date and time for the switch, so we just wanted to give you the heads up now. We'll be sending an email to all paid accounts on our system with more specifics so be watching for that soon.

New feature preview: automated client billing

Tim Wall — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:58:19 GMT

We've mentioned our new billing and account management system casually over the last few months, but today, we're giving our first "official" preview of what's about to be launched. There is a lot of stuff involved in the coming release but in this post, we're going to focus on the biggest new feature — automated client billing. This functionality will be available exclusively on LightCMS.

A preview of the website detail page in the new billing system (using sample data).

What is Automated Client Billing?

LightCMS has always given you the ability to manage all your client websites within a single account, but this new release makes huge improvements in the way you manage them. To this point, all websites under your account have been billed to a single credit card. The idea has been that we charge you our discounted rate and you bill your clients whatever you wish through your own billing system.

Automated client billing now offers you another option. You can choose to bill an individual website to a client's credit card directly. You set the price that the client pays and we pay you commission on the difference between our discounted price and the price you set.

If you bill my clients directly, won't they find out about LightCMS or Element Fusion?

No. We'll be running all CMS charges through a generic entity and that entity's name will show up on your clients' statements. You'll just want to tell them to expect charges from this new entity for their website service. We've even set up a website on the new entity's domain to help explain the charges in a non-branded way in case they have questions. Oh, and the entity's website's domain utilizes private registration as well.

How much commission can I earn?

With automated client billing, you decide how much commission you'll earn. That's because you set the pricing for the websites under your account. Our base pricing always stays the same, so the higher you set your pricing, the higher your commissions will be. If you utilize our suggested retail pricing, you'll earn around 35% commission on every website, every month. Of course, you can set your commissions higher or lower if you wish.

How do I receive my commissions?

Once you have websites paying through client billing, your profits will accumulate in what we like to call "your money pile." You'll see your money pile on most of the pages in your account management console. Whenever you're ready to withdraw them, you can simply click on "withdraw funds" and we'll send them to you by PayPal. PayPal is the only option (for now), so you'll need an account to withdraw your funds.

Do I have to use client billing?

No. When we roll out the new features, all of your websites will continue to bill to your account. You will have to manually change them to client billing if you choose to do so. You can move any number of your sites to client billing and the rest of your sites will remain billed to your account. You can also change a website back and forth between client billing and account billing whenever you wish.

Can my clients upgrade / downgrade their own websites?

Yes, if you choose to let them. You'll have to login to the account section and set up the names and prices for your website plans. Once you do that, clients who are being billed individually will be able to login and upgrade / downgrade their website. The pricing and plan names they see will be what you set for them to see. Also, clients who have free websites under your account will be able to upgrade themselves to one of your paid plans if they wish (you can turn off this functionality if you want). We'll cover more on how this works as we get closer to launch. Plus, it's all explained very clearly inside the new interface.

What else is new?

There's an improved user interface across the entire account management section; a simplified, filterable listing of all websites under your account; a full detail page for each of your websites; the ability to delete or disable any website under your account; detailed listings of billing activity for your account and for each client-billed website; and much more. We'll be sharing more about all of these features in the days ahead.

Enough already! When's it going live?

We know that many of your have been looking forward to this for a while, as have we! We are very, very close, but we want to be cautious about putting hard dates out there in case something unexpected happens that pushes things back. That said, we are unofficially and tentatively planning to launch everything on Thursday, June 11th, 2009. Again, that date might change so please don't make any plans around it. We're simply providing it to keep you in the loop on our plans.