Facebook Connect is now integrated into Gutensite's account system. You can allow all your customers to create accounts on your site, with the click of a button, by importing their basic information from Facebook. This can greatly increase your conversion numbers, by making it super easy to join your website. If they are already logged into Facebook, they will immediately be logged into your site as well. You can also take advantage of Facebook's many social features which can make your website more interactive and viral. It's good for ...

UPDATE: There seems to bee some confusion regarding the severity of the events described in this article. Before reading further, please take note that our server was not hacked, nor was any hacking attempt detected during this event (yes, we monitor for that). This event was simply the result of a sudden and directed increase in the number of connections being made to our server. It's never a fair fight when a group gangs up on one guy; unfortunately, that's exactly what happened to us, twice, today. It's called DDoS, which stands for ...

We don't say it enough, but I want you to know we are very grateful for your loyal support of Gutensite over the years. You make our world go around. Through these recent economic hard times, we've labored to keep our costs low so that Gutensite could be affordable to even the smallest business and organization. And we're proud of the fact that we've been able to tailor packages that fit every budget. We plan on continuing this commitment, while still finding ways to innovate and make improvements to the CMS for the benefit of ...

A new App launched today called Park Circa, which will redefine neighborhood parking in urban areas. Not a day goes by in a city like San Francisco where anyone who owns a car doesn't think about parking. Everywhere you go, everything you do, parking is a consideration. There are simply not enough spaces for everyone... at least that's what we think when we accept the status quo. But overnight, factors change and suddenly new possibilities open up. A few months ago I blogged about this concept of rethinking outside the box. Park Circa has ...

We've tried for many years to keep our billing rate as affordable as possible. But despite our low overhead and efficient processes, it has become clear that our current billing rates are not a realistic reflection of the costs for paying a competitive salary for the excellent work our team does. When we were just a small design firm with the two co-founders doing all the design and programming work for a combined, below-market-value salary (in exchange for the long term promise of profit from the business), we could squeak by on peanuts. But ...

Oh Joy, let the licensing wars begin. You may be wondering how Google Chrome's recent decision to abandon MP4 affects us? No one knows. Chrome is still a small percent of the browser market, but we would still like to support Chrome if we can. However, there is not a good alternative to MP4 that has universal support, so web developers' options are limited. Their WebM format will not play on mobile devices yet, so unless a site offers both MP4 and WebM formats, mobile browsers won't be able to play the videos! Unfortunately it is not cost ...

We just completed a total overhaul to our Audio and Video players so that they now take advantage of built in HTML5 support for audio and video. This makes our player compatible with all modern web browsers, including mobile devices like iPhone, iPad, Android, etc. For older browsers like Internet Explorer 8 (which does not support HTML5 video), and Firefox (which supports HTML5 video but is not licensed to play the MP4 format yet), we will still provide the old Flash audio/video player (but with a new skin), so your visitors will not lose ...

We've improved our algorithm for truncating text. There is always the danger that the preview version of the text you are shortening may have HTML in it, and if we simply truncate after X characters it can break the HTML (sometimes with ugly consequences). We had an imperfect work around for a while (that would strip the HTML in those cases just to be safe), but that meant sometimes the preview wouldn't have desired styling. So we just upgraded the function so that it detects and closes the HTML tags so that they are no longer broken. Nice ...

We now have a default "Coming Soon" page that lists your basic contact information and a message to visitors that the site is under development. This page can be customized if a client needs it to be more branded. It's useful for clients that have an extensive development cycle and don't want their new site to be found by the public. When the site is in development, it will automatically redirect all page requests to this coming soon page, unless the site is being viewed in our secure development mode. The site is also set to turn away ...

We've had requests from several clients for a simple way to add effects to their pages, e.g. to allow a button to toggle open or close additional paragraphs of information. So we've created a simple Javascript Library called Gutensite FX, based on the Mootools Library that is already running on every site. If Gutensite FX is enabled, you can add a CSS class to any element, and it becomes a toggle button. Add another CSS class to any other element, and that becomes the area that opens or closes. It's that simple. We only have a couple ...

We have added additional module areas throughout the site, so you can now add modules to any sidebar, and any header or footer of a page. Plus on any basic page, you can put a module in the main column (above or below content) or in a side column (with the content to the side and the module in a small column). Basic pages already allow you to add a lot of extra specialty information under the "Extras" tab, such as pull-out quotes, headings, sub headings, info lists, etc. These show up in a beautiful 3/4 column layout which adds a lot of ...

We have upgraded the default calendar functionality so that when an event is clicked in the Calendar or List view, it opens up a nicely designed "lightbox" with all the details for the event. This can be closed and the visitor is still on the original calendar page. This makes viewing calendar events more convenient. Previously we had a details preview that popped up and the visitor had to then go to another details page, then return to the calendar, etc. Our upgrade provides a much more streamlined workflow. We also took the time to ...

We've added a new setting (accessible on the Admin > Site Info) page, to allow you to disable the Search Engine Sitemap. By default all our sites are SEO optimized, but in some cases, a client may not want the search engines to index the site (until they are ready). So this option will turn off the sitemap.xml data, which search engines use to provide a map of what pages to index. It will also add a meta tag that tells the search engine to go away for now and not index the site.

Theoretically any access to Admin pages or Admin functionality should be initiated from the gutensite.com domain, e.g. http://www.gutensite.com/admin This has always been enforced for regular admin pages. But there were cases where this was not strictly enforced, e.g. the API used to be able to be accessed through yourdomain.com/admin/api/admin, however we are now strictly enforcing it to ensure that the administrative functionality is protected and necessarily secured by an SSL connection that we maintain. So the API URL for the ...

We deprecated several old URL formats for accessing core pages (this does not affect Friendly URLs). The old formats included: (1) www.domain.com/index.php?ct=site.contact, (2) www.domain.com/?ct=site.contact or (3) www.domain.com/site.contact all of these methods were very old and should not be used anymore. The correct format is www.domain.com/site/contact, and so we updated all the instances where the old method was used. Our CMS will still correctly recognize the old formats 1 & 2, but not 3, until the next upgrade. But any pages using ...

Check out our New Promo that runs through November 14th (early birds have better chance of winning so hurry). We're giving away one Free Pro Webmaster Package website for a year (after that if you like it you can keep it and become a regular customer). This has a $420 value, and there will be a winner in every city! See the Promo Page for more information.

After several years of unstable builds with our current JavaScript classes and functionality, the amazing Mootools team has released the latest version, 1.3 which includes great backwards-compatibility with all of our scripts: old and new. All of the functionality added recently including the TimezonePicker, newest Uploader, and several others heavily depend on the newest builds of Mootools in order to function at top speed and reliability. Though long overdue, this update will provide an excellent boost in all areas possible to ...

We just redid the structure of our website and wanted to make sure that all the friendly URLs matched the new structure. But when you change your friendly URL, any hard coded links to that page (on your site or from another site or in a search engine) will stop working and your visitors won't find that page that used to be located there. So we've implemented a great automatic system that archives the old friendly URL, so that people are automatically redirected to the new URL. Whenever you change a friendly URL on a page, Gutensite creates ...

Selecting your timezone can oftentimes be a daunting task because of all the options with cryptic-sounding GMT offsets and no real visual representation. We have taken the time to create a completely visually-oriented Timezone Picker with the following features: Map View of the World: Upon hovering over each section of the world, it will highlight the segment of timezone area associated with it. City Markers: Clicking a portion of the map will insert a marker (red dot) to the closest city of your clicked point. There are 397 cities ...

In order to support international language foreign characters, we've converted to support UTF-8. This should be a seamless transition for all, but it required quite a lot of changes to our code. POSSIBLE BUGS If you notice some strange looking characters on your website, or RSS feeds, or API interactions, this would be the cause. Tell us immediately. TECHNICAL CHANGES Changed php.ini default_charset=utf-8 Databases Converted to Charset=utf_8 and Collation=utf8_unicode_ci (should have been lossless and not messed up any ...