It's hard to believe it's been 5 years since we started building "2.0", a complete ground-up rebuild of our platform that will distinguish us from every other website builder and CMS on the market (seriously, no other platform has the features we have built). It's been an over ambitious project for our small team, trying to compete against the high standards set by hundred-million-dollar businesses, using only our very limited resources. But we did it, we're almost there! And it's going to amaze you.

A month ago we launched our first website on this new platform, City Church of San Francisco has been with us for over a decade, and were willing to endure the unpolished beta phase, in order to benefit from all the new features and design. The site is a great example of some of the design and features that are standard on the new platform. Please visit their website and be sure to let us know what you think!

We have launched several other sites since then, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks. The admin is still not ready for mass public use yet, so we will be rolling out sites one by one to give ourselves a chance to respond to bugs and stabilize all the features. We don't have a hard release date for the new platform, but hopefully in the next few months. Once it's ready, we will be opening up the new platform for all new websites. And then we will provide existing clients the option of migrating to the new platform (if/when they want, usually when they are ready for a refresh or have a business need of new the new features).

Benefits of the New Platform

Design

• Stunning Modern Templates. Brand new tempates that are visually stunning, clean, impactful.
• Layout Options. Every different Content Type (e.g. Article, Profile, Event, etc) gives you the option of easily selecting from multiple layouts that give you more creative and marketing control.
• Mobile Friendly. Mobile optimized templates with Lazy Loading of images (the best size for each device).
• Beautiful and Easy Admin. The new control panel is much easier to use with simplified design, quick searching and and advanced filtering, delightful media management (images, documents, videos, etc).
• CSS Animations. Our templates all include subtle but exciting animated transitions to highlight loading, buttons, logos, etc.
• Parallax Scrolling. Toggle on Background images behind modules and text to give your page a more impactful design.
• Embeded Background Videos. Enable background videos in your header or transitional areas on a page to add excitement to your website.

Functionality

• Content Versioning. Track changes, revert versions, schedule publishing of one or more versions in sequence, e.g. new design or content to appear on a holiday, and then revert back to original after the holiday passes.
• Streaming Content. You can create "streams" (list collection pages) that will display all the content that you have tagged to appear on that page. This lets you focus on creating content and then easily syndicating it on all the relevant pages on your website.
• Landing Pages and Modules. You can create stunning landing pages that are optimized for conversions, which utilize a flexible module system that lets you add lots of dynamic and interesting content to every page.
• Strong SEO. Optimized for Search Engines through implementation of standard SEO best practices.
• Human Optimized for Conversions. Optimized for converting human visitors into leads or sales, through beautiful landing pages, easy to implement site-wide or page specific Value Propositions, Calls to Action, easy in-context contact options, lead generation forms, etc.
• Easy Searching/Filtering. You can enable the ability to search/filter on any list page (e.g. podcasts, blogs, etc).
• Visitor Layout Options. Give your visitors the option of viewing a list in different layouts (e.g. list, cards, featured, etc).
• CRM. Capture leads from contact forms, or by allowing users to create accounts (to access specialty private resources or functionality). Use this list of users for your business purposes.
• Live Editing. 2.0 will include user-friendly live editing, so you can browse your site and make changes directly on the page, visually reorder content, add modules, add images to your slideshows, etc.

Administration

• Advanced User Management. Unified user accounts (site and admin) to elevate permissions for website members, give granular access for writing, editing, publishing, admin (on general types of content or only one specific piece of content).
• Site Management. Easily switch between and manage multiple websites from a single user account.
• Versionable Site Settings. Test your settings before publishing them.

Technical

• Powerful Api for Third Party Integration. Access all your data (push or pull) through our powerful API, which lets you integrate with any third party service or internal databases and business processes.
• Open Technology and Modern Popular Frameworks. Your team (or third-party developers) can easily implement fun and/or powerful features on your website, using your site data (push/pull) from the API and the popular Angular javascript framework to achieve almost anything you need (e.g. interactivity, forms, calculators, in site apps, etc).

There are many more features for each of our niche markets (e.g. brand new IDX Search and List widgets), and this is just the MVP (Minimal Viable Product). Once the MVP is stable, we will be spending our time developing all the exciting new specialty functionality that will set us apart even more. More news to come!

If you are interested in getting on the wait-list for the Beta, send support an email request.