We are happy to announce another great round of features and new plugins! Yesterday we made the latest updates live, including the usual upgrades and bug fixes as well as some very cool new features.
Make sure you read ( or skip ahead ) to the end for a huge, HUGE, HUUUUGE announcement! Did I say huge?
Easy Redirections
You can now add unlimited custom redirections to your site. You can create easy to share links to send people to Facebook or Twitter. You could create links to events or an Etsy store.
As an example, check out our new link to Facebook: http://photographyblogsites.com/f
Easy Shortcodes
“Shortcodes” are used by all kinds of plugins to add things like contact forms and galleries to the content of pages. But it can get really complicated to remember how to use them, nevermind explaining it all in the first place.
With our new Easy Shortcodes plugin, you can add stylized text boxes, buttons and even tables to your pages with a couple clicks of the button. You can see it being used in this post for the colored boxes.
Paypal Buttons
Yet another shortcode tool… This one lets you create simple Paypal buttons anywhere on the site.
Google Translate
Another new “Optional Plugin”. Activate it and you can add translations to any page or post. You can automatically add it to each post or add it once to the sidebar of the blog. We will be adding more features to this and are looking for feedback about how it works. So let us know!
More Responsive image galleries
The “overlay” view for our galleries, the one that pops up in the little window over the page, had been set at a specific size. On smaller monitors and some pages on iPads, it would be too big and the navigation could be hidden. Well we fixed that and made it so the window is smarter and resizes to fit the monitor. It even resizes itself as you resize your browser window.
Better Social Sharing Buttons
We have several sharing plugins available – “Sociable”, “Tweet & Like”, and the “Pinterest Button”. Because they were all coded by different developers they did not always play nice together and might line up awkwardly if they were all active. So we reworked how they all play together and added them in a way that will look better and work together like they should.
Customizable Slideshows!
A subtle addition but a nice one for anyone getting creative with the home page layout. You can now customize the speed of the transition and chose whether images should fade or slide to reveal the next image.
The same options can be used on the “Sliding Panels” section as well.
Huge Announcement – Ecommerce is here!
Well. Almost here. It is alive and active on the sites. You can see it in action in our marketplace, and here on Roberto Valenzuela’s Picture Perfect Practice site. We also have it out to a couple early users as a test before making it available to everyone.
This will be our first “Premium Addon” and we hope the first of many. “Premium Addons” will be available as a one-time activation price as a way to add some higher level tools to any BlogSite.
What it includes:
- Unlimited products
- Downloadable products
- Customer tracking and automated emails for sales
- Shipping and tax options
- Customizable colors to match your site
- Multiple payment options – Paypal, check, COD
- Much, Much More!
Want to know more?
We will be doing a full blog post and email announcement later in the week. But if you want to let us know you are interested, email us and let us know!
