No User Limits. No Transaction Fees.

That's right, all of our new LightCMS plans offer unlimited users and no transaction fees! Now you'll be able to set up user accounts for as many people as you wish, even on our lower-tiered plans. Plus, you'll save money when you sell products online with no LightCMS transaction fees. Keep in mind, you'll still be subject to the fees charged by your merchant account providers, but LightCMS will no longer collect any additional transaction fees on products you sell through our store.

Plan Name Changes

As you can see on the image above, we're changing our plan names as well. What were previously known as Basic, Plus, Advanced, Pro, and Premier will now be called Personal, Standard, Premium, Professional, and Unlimited.

The 14 Day Trial with Full Access

We're also moving away from the limited trial accounts we've provided thus far (free up to three pages) to a Free Trial model where new websites get full access to as many resources as they need at no cost for 14 days. After 14 days, websites will need to submit payment at whatever level their website requires based on the pages, storage, and products used.

One big advantage of the Free Trial model is that it will enable us to offer copy website functionality, a very highly-requested feature. Read more about this below.

Copy Any Website with a Click

The ability to create a new LightCMS website by copying an existing one has been a highly-requested feature for years. We're happy to announce that this new feature will be going live alongside these plan changes. The copy website functionality is dependent upon the implementation of a free trial model. Our previous model limited all new websites to only three pages so it was not possible to copy existing websites that had more than three pages. Now any website can be copied in its entirety with a click!

To copy a website, you'll visit Account -> Websites and choose the website you want to copy. Then, from the menu at the upper right, choose "Copy," and give your new site a unique name. That's it! The entire site with all of its content will be copied to create a second, identical website under your LightCMS account. This is great for using one website as a starting point when you're building out a new site.

Other Changes

Outside of what's mentioned above, all of our plans stay the same with two exceptions. Our Professional Plan ($69/month) will now have a limit of 100 pages (previously unlimited) and a limit of 5,000 products (previously 10,000). Our Standard Plan ($29/month) will now get an extra GB of storage for a total of 3GB. Also, resellers should note that the loss of LightCMS Transaction fees also means the loss of transaction fee profit sharing through the LightCMS Rewards program.

Opt In or Stay as You Are: the Choice is Yours

We're very excited about the advantages these plans and features offer to our resellers and customers, but we also know that some of you may prefer to stay with the plans you have now. So, we have built this release in a way to give our existing customers the option of whether to keep the plans they have currently, or to opt into these new plans and features.

As a result, if your LightCMS account exists before this release goes live, nothing will change for you unless you opt into the new plans. If you take no action, you will be able to keep your current line up of plans indefinitely. You'll still be able to add new websites that are free up to three pages, but you won’t be able to utilize the copy website functionality and all websites under your account will retain their existing characteristics including their user limits and transaction fees.

How to Opt In

If you want to take advantage of the new plans and features we're releasing, you will need to manually opt into the new plans. To do this, you'll need to follow these steps once the plans are live:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Choose “Account” from the User Session Menu at the upper right.
3. Click the “Websites” tab.
4. Select any of your websites.
5. Click the “Upgrade” button (you won’t be required to upgrade if you don’t want to).

After following the above steps, you’ll be presented with a page describing the new plans with an option to enable them. Once you enable the plans, you’ll be presented with the new plan change page, showing which of the new plans the selected site is on currently. From there, you can upgrade/downgrade your site, or simply return to editing by clicking any of the buttons on the toolbar.

When you opt into the new plans, all websites under your account will be migrated to the new plans automatically. User limits and transaction fees will disappear from all websites under your account. You'll gain access to the copy website functionality and any new websites you add or copy will enjoy unlimited access to the system during a 14 day trial period.

When you opt in, we’ll also grandfather any existing free websites. You’ll be able to keep them under your account at no cost indefinitely (please note that free websites will retain their existing limit of one user). Also, existing "Pro" plan websites will retain their Unlimited Pages and their 10,000 for as long as they remain on the Professional plan.

Launch: Week of April 15, 2013

We look forward to bringing you these new plans and features. They are scheduled for release during the week of April 15th. Stay tuned to our website, forum, and social media channels for more specific information on when they are live. Again, this update will have no affect on your LightCMS account unless you manually opt in to the new plans. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us any time at support@lightcms.com.

It's no longer necessary to establish a merchant account outside of LightCMS. Now, LightCMS customers can activate a Stripe account and begin accepting credit card payments instantly, right inside the LightCMS store settings. Here's a quick look at how it works.

Log in to your LightCMS website and choose Settings -> Payments from the store toolbar. Right at the top, you'll see information about Stripe. Click the "Activate Stripe Account" button and you'll be taken to the LightCMS Stripe set up page. If you already have a Stripe account, you can choose to use it. If you don't, you'll simply fill out the bit of information requested on this page, then click "Authorize Access to this Account" at the bottom. 

That's it! Your store will be ready to accept credit card payments and income from your sales will be automatically transferred to your bank account. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per successful transaction and allows you to accept all major credit cards. There are no other fees associated with using Stripe.

One note -- Stripe is currently only available in the US and Canada. If you are outside of these countries, or if you prefer to use one of our other integrated payment processors for any reason, you may still do so by selecting the "use a different gateway" link next to the Stripe account button.

We hope you and your clients enjoy the new one-step set up for accepting credit card payments on the web. This feature is up and running on every LightCMS website. Check it out inside your account today.

We've got some very exciting news to share with you today. LightCMS and Element Fusion have been acquired by NetSuite. NetSuite is a publicly traded company (NYSE: N) and the industry's leading provider of cloud-based business management software suites. We're excited that LightCMS is joining NetSuite's broad suite of applications.

We know that the news of an acquisition can raise a lot of questions, so we want to assure you of a few important things. 

First off, it's important to note that you can continue using LightCMS as usual. The impact of this change in ownership should be transparent. The LightCMS platform continues to operate as normal for customers and resellers. In addition, we want you to know that the LightCMS team is still in place and will continue to service and support the LightCMS product. In fact, we'll still be operating out of our Oklahoma City offices. NetSuite wants to preserve what has made LightCMS a success as well as continuing to improve it for years to come.

Most of you know that Element Fusion, the creator of LightCMS, always maintained a unique approach to business. We bootstrapped our company from the beginning, growing it steadily on solid profits and operating with no debt and no outside investment. An exit plan has never been a part of our strategy as we were always in it for the long haul.

At the same time, we always kept our eyes open for opportunities to expand and grow — opportunities that would bring great new things to our product and our customers. NetSuite presented us with just such an opportunity and, as a result, we are very excited about what the future holds. We can't wait to continue on the journey with you.

Thank you all for your continued support of LightCMS. We look forward to serving you for years to come. If you have any further questions, you may reach us, as always, at support@lightcms.com.

For the fifth consecutive year, LightCMS will be a part of SXSW Interactive, one of the world's largest gatherings of interactive professionals. If you find yourself at SXSW this year, we hope you'll stop by our booth (number 337) in the Austin Convention Center so we can meet you face to face.

This year's SXSW Interactive Conference takes place March 8-12 with the Trade Show firing up on March 10th. Stop by our Trade Show booth and you'll be able to meet some of our team, take a guided tour of our software, and even pick up your very own "Web Designers are Sexy" sticker!

LightCMS team members attending SXSW this year include Marketing Director Tim Wall (that's me), Support Director Chad Jaggers, Creative Director Matthew Sanders, and Software Engineer Matt Grimm. It's going to be great fun this year and we hope to see you there!

Are you going to SXSW 2013? Let us know in the comments below!

Removing "Billing" from the User Session Menu

We will remove the "Billing" option from the User Session Menu, which is the drop down menu accessed by clicking on your username at the far right end of the toolbar. The three tabs of information currently accessed under this billing section will be moved under the account section as follows:

• The "Account Billing" tab will be renamed "Payment History" and will be added to the "Account" section.
• The "Client Billing" tab will be renamed "Profits" and will be added to the "Account" section.
• The "Change Plan" tab will be removed. The ability to change your websites' plans will continue to be accessible on each website's detail screen which can be accessed on the Account -> Websites tab.

Changing "Upgrade" to "Subscription" on the User Session Menu

Finally, the "Upgrade" option on the User Session Menu is being renamed to "Subscription." This is just a name change and doesn't change any of the content found on that screen. As you can see in the image above, these changes will reduce the options on the User Session Menu from five to four as follows: Account, Subscription, User Profile, and Sign Out.

Please note that some of the options mentioned above are only available in certain situations, so not all LightCMS customers will see every option.

How It Works

Twitter Cards work in much the same way as Facebook's Open Graph. That is, they look for special tags included in the headers of your web pages and use the information included in those tags to construct visual representations of the content on your pages. When people include a link to a page of your site in a tweet, Twitter includes the Twitter Card along with the tweet so people get a nice summary of your page right inside their Twitter feeds.

Enabling Twitter Cards on your website can increase the visibility and visual appeal of your content when it is shared by others on Twitter. It can also encourage more people to follow you if you highlight your own Twitter account by including the appropriate tag (more on this below).

The Required Fields are Automatic

The first step in setting up Twitter Cards is to place the required tags on your website. Fortunately, we've already done that for you. The tags are active on your LightCMS websites right now!

Most of the required pieces of content are already specified by LightCMS's Open Graph tag integration. Twitter uses Open Graph content if no Twitter-specific content is provided. They do this so that site owners can avoid duplicating all of this information. We have relied on the Open Graph tags already present as much as possible, but there are a few Twitter-specific tags we had to provide, as follows.

twitter:card
This tag is specific to Twitter so there is no Open Graph equivalent to fall back on. LightCMS sets the card type for every page to "summary" by default. This is by far the most common Twitter Card type. There are only two types of cards besides summary -- photo and player. These additional types can be used in specific cases where your entire page is dedicated to featuring a single photo or some type of playable media. If you want to set a specific page to a different card type, you can do so by including your own tag in the "Additional Header" field for that page, and that tag will override our automated tag.

twitter:image
Facebook allows for multiple Open Graph image tags to be included and generally uses the first one included on your page as the default. Wouldn't it be great if Twitter would also use the first Open Graph image? Sure it would! But alas, they don't. Twitter uses the last Open Graph image on the page. Why can't we all just get along? Anyway, to fix this issue, LightCMS adds a Twitter-specific image tag that essentially tells Twitter to use the first Open Graph image on the page (if you'd like to review how our system generates Open Graph image tags, see our blog post about Open Graph).

twitter:description
Description is an optional tag for Open Graph, but it is required by Twitter. So, we generate a Twitter description for every page, if possible. We first look for a meta description. If there isn't one, we look to the first text element in the main content region or the first text element elsewhere, if needed. For blog posts, calendar events, and product pages we use the summary or, if there's no summary, we use the body / description. In all cases, the Twitter description is truncated to 200 characters, as required by Twitter.

One Tag to Add Manually

There's one more optional tag you might want to add to your site. Twitter lets you specify the Twitter account to associate with your website content. When you do, Twitter includes your username and gives people the chance to follow you right from the Twitter card. Generally, you'll want to use the same Twitter account across your entire site, so you can drop one tag into your website settings and it will work for every page. LightCMS can't generate this tag for you automatically because we don't know what Twitter account to use.

You can use your Twitter User ID or your Twitter @username. The @username is easiest. The only downside is if you ever change the username on your account, you'll need to update your tag. Using your account ID will keep the link intact no matter how many times you change your username.

To add the information, log into your LightCMS Website and click "Settings" on the top toolbar. Select the Advanced Tab and scroll to the "Google Analytics" box. Put the following line of code into this box:

or

Of course, you'll want to replace our username or account ID with your own. If you need help finding your Twitter ID, try using this tool.

You Have to Apply!

As opposed to Open Graph, which is used by Facebook for every webpage that includes their tags, Twitter Cards are only used on sites that have been approved by Twitter. Once your tags are in place, Twitter requires you to fill out their submission form for consideration.

If you want, you can submit your site right now, because we've already included the required tags for you. But if you want to check things out first, you can use Twitter's preview tool to see how a particular page's Twitter Card will look once approved. Twitter claims approvals generally take between 5-10 business days. Reports from users vary on how long it actually takes.

See It in Action on LightCMS.com

This very website (lightcms.com) has already been approved for Twitter Cards already. So, why not share a link to this post on Twitter? When you do, you should see our Twitter card associated with your tweet!

Get the full specs on Twitter Cards here on their reference documentation.

This fancy iPhone panorama shows our own support guru, Ashten Wellman, giving instructions to the group as they gather in the developer room. What's interesting is that it looks like Ashten is facing the wrong direction, but I think that might be due to the trickery of the panorama.

Project Manager, Brian White, was one of the LightCMS team members who spoke to the group in our conference room. Brian gave an overview of time management, project management, and the design process we follow here at LightCMS. He also wore this fancy sport coat to try and make the rest of us look bad.

Here's LightCMS designer, Evan Brandell, demonstrating design techniques at his desk. Evan was fortunate enough to get to work with a student who shares his love of woolen caps.

We're thankful to Metro Tech and these students for paying us a visit today. Best of luck to all of them in their future endeavors!

Years ago in times long forgotten, the web was a much uglier place — java applets here, flashing text there, animated GIFs everywhere, and lots of boring typography. Most of these problems were the result of poor taste or misguided content decisions and they have gradually disappeared as the collective consciousness has grown to despise them. However, one problem that has only recently been solved is the issue of lackluster typography. Read along to learn how to transform your headlines and body copy into unique works of art.

A Brief History of Fonts on the Web

When font tags (and later, CSS stylesheets) were introduced, a visitor had to have a specific font installed on their computer to be able to display text using that font. If they didn't, the web browser would render the text in its default font, which almost certainly resulted in a visual appearance undesirable to a site's developer.

As you can imagine, the list of web safe fonts (those that are installed by default in almost all operating systems and internet-enabled devices) is a small one. This led to the use of font stacks, which are essentially lists of reasonably similar fallback fonts used in the event that preferred fonts aren't available. The fonts in a stack still have to be present on the visitor's system, but being able to define several options gives the developer peace of mind that at least one of them will be available.

Font stacks are still used today. In a CSS file a typical font stack looks like this:

When CSS2 was released, techniques to allow font embedding finally began to emerge. Embedding allows fonts to be displayed even if they are not installed on the visitor's system. There are several ways to embed fonts, but the easiest by far is through the use of hosted font services. 

There are multiple reputable web font vendors out there, but we'll be using Google Web Fonts for this demonstration. It's extremely easy to use and, unlike many of the alternatives, it costs nothing.

Step 1: Choose Your Fonts

Before you embed fonts into your site, you need to browse Google's selection and pick the ones you want to use. Visit http://www.google.com/webfonts to start browsing. 

The type of font you pick depends on where it will be used in your site. Thick, bold fonts are great for headlines while thin, narrow fonts are generally better for body text. Fortunately, Google has included a nice interface that allows for filtering based on font properties. 

As you add fonts to your collection, they'll display in the bottom navigation panel. You can add as many fonts as you want to a page, but keep in mind that each font will slow the loading time of your site.

Step 2: Get the Code

In the bottom navigation bar, click the "Use" tab and Google will show you a summary of the fonts you've selected as well as their effect on page load time:

Scroll down a bit and you'll see the code snippet that has been generated for your selected font styles:

Step 3: Embed the Fonts on Your Site

Copy your code snippet and browse to your LightCMS site. You have two options for embedding the code:

1. If you are comfortable editing HTML, the code can be inserted directly into your site template. Paste the snippet anywhere inside the head section of the template.
2. If you don't know how to edit HTML, this code can be inserted site-wide using LightCMS's Google Analytics setting. This option is found on the Settings -> Advanced tab, then scroll down to Google Analytics:

Your site will now load the needed font resource files every time a page is visited. However, we still need to tell the browser the elements on which we want to activate the font.

Step 4: Apply the Fonts

This is the hardest part because it requires some CSS knowledge. We need to add the new fonts to the font-family attribute of the target elements on our site. If you're not comfortable editing your site's CSS files, you can make use of the Google Analytics setting again to insert the required code.

Since I chose a thicker font, I'll be applying it to the headings on the site. This is the code I'll insert into the Google Analytics setting on my LightCMS site:

That's all there is to it. Save the settings and preview any page on your site to see the headings in action. Here's how my demo turned out.

Go Forth and Beautify Your Typography

Now that you've seen the basics of implementing a web font I encourage you to branch out and find interesting ways to use your new found knowledge. Neat effects can be achieved by adding color or text shadows and by applying the fonts to different elements such as buttons or site navigation. Keep it tasteful but have fun!

As with all of our recent designs, Origami offers a fully responsive display that adapts to fit beautifully in browsers of any width, whether on desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones. To check it out, log in to your website and click "Design" on the top toolbar. Then click "Gallery" and look for Origami in the list of featured designs. It only takes a click to preview the design, apply it to your website, or even download the source code to modify on your own. Plus, as always, you can customize the design in the LightCMS Design Editor as well.

Get the Help You Need

Now you can easily find an experienced LightCMS designer to assist you with your LightCMS project. Every LightCMS Professional has proven their experience with our platform. Browse through our Professionals listing and you'll be able to see examples of each Professional's work, their price range, location and more. When you find a Professional you'd like to work with, simply click the contact button on their listing, fill out the form, and we'll send your details to them immediately. Contacting a Professional doesn't obligate you to anything. The Professional will simply get in touch to discuss your project, answer your questions, and offer a proposal. Then, you get to decide if you wish to proceed.

Custom Design or LightCMS Setup

Currently, LightCMS Professionals offer two types of services. The first is Custom Design, which can include a range of services that vary by provider. Some Professionals may offer fixed-price Custom Design packages while other may charge by the hour. Each Professional will be able to provide details about their Custom Design services. In any case, Custom Design provides you the opportunity to get a beautiful and world-class look that's tailored to meet your needs.

The second service Professionals can choose to offer is called LightCMS Setup. Setup is a fantastic, time-saving service offered at a fixed price of $500. LightCMS Setup takes care of all the details of setting up your LightCMS website such as applying a built-in design, tailoring it to your brand with the Design Editor, adjusting settings for your website and store, and even building out your home page content. You can see if a Professional offers LightCMS Setup by looking at their Professionals listing.

Become a Professional

If you're an experienced LightCMS designer who would like to offer your services to LightCMS customers, you can apply to the LightCMS Professionals program as well. Simply visit our Professionals page to get the details and to complete the application form.

44% Growth!

While reports of economic struggle continue to dominate the news cycles, we are incredibly grateful to report that LightCMS saw another year of outstanding growth in 2012. LightCMS accounts increased by 44% this year. As you know, LightCMS is debt-free with no outside funding and has been profitable since its launch in 2006. Our longevity, growth and profitability give LightCMS a solid advantage that benefits all our customers.

Brand New Interface

Can you believe that less than one year ago, the LightCMS toolbar interface looked like this:

In 2012, we streamlined the toolbar interface and now it looks like this:

Much better, we think!

Design Editor

Following the new interface, we launched one of our biggest improvements to date. The new Design Editor allows anyone to customize our built-in LightCMS designs with easy-to-use tools. We also revamped the entire design center to fit within the new toolbar interface. Selecting and customizing a design is easier than ever!

Image Element and Magic Drop

In 2012, we added a brand new element to the platform. The Image Element replaced our Photo Gallery Element, combining the power of the photo gallery with a brand new ability to easily display single images at the right size every time. In addition, our new "Magic Drop" technology made it even easier to create new elements by simply dropping files right onto a LightCMS website.

LightCMS Affiliates

We launched a new partner program, LightCMS Affiliates, in 2012. As a LightCMS Affiliate, anyone can earn substantial commissions when they refer customers to LightCMS. This addition expanded on LightCMS's industry-leading partnering and profit-sharing opportunities.

The Summer of Love

Who could forget the LightCMS Summer of Love? It brought us week after week of rapid-fire feature releases that lasted well beyond the summer months, encompassing nearly half of the year. The Summer of Love features are too numerous to mention here, but for full details check out our Summer of Love recap post.

On to 2013!

It's fun to look back and marvel at all that has happened this year. But at LightCMS, our focus is never on the past. Instead, we're already looking to 2013 and gearing up for another amazing year. We truly believe that when December rolls around again, we'll have an even more great things to reflect upon.

Of course, none of this would be possible without you, our customers. We are extremely grateful for the continued support you provide when you entrust us with your business and also when you share so many notes of encouragement with our team. We have the best customers anywhere and you truly make it a joy to continue the work we do every day. We wish all of you a very happy holiday season and we look forward to continuing to serve as your website partner for years to come.

Jonathan chose to benefit Peru Mission with his donation. Jonathan was kind enough to answer a few questions about his Shine the Light! project. See below for more about his great work. First, here's a quick look at Peru Mission's new site.

Q&A with Jonathan McCoy

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.
Over the last decade I've had the opportunity to work in a range of non-profit environments and in the process have developed a passion for helping organizations better connect and engage people with their causes through design and marketing. At Outbox, we work with visionary organizations to tell their stories and extend their reach through print and online media. We love working with non-profits because by partnering with them we're helping to make the world a better place.

Why did you choose this non-profit organization?
Peru Mission is a unique organization that is whole-heartedly committed to creating a sustainable, holistic urban ministry throughout Peruvian communities. We have had the joy of working alongside them for several years in both printed and online initiatives, so when creating their new website on the LightCMS platform, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to nominate them for the Shine the Light! program.

What inspires you most about their work?
I'm inspired by the vision of Peru Mission. Although founded by just a handful of individuals with a heart for planting churches in Peru, it has grown into a holistic ministry that meets peoples' needs through a range of activities such as meeting medical needs for families, offering hope to women entrepreneurs through micro-finance loans, planting vibrant urban churches, and reaching university students through outreach. Peru Mission is also fully committed to training and growing the next generation of national leaders.

How did you go about addressing the specific needs of this organization?
Peru Mission is multi-faceted and they have a lot going on. It is vitally important to keep its supporter base informed of the good work happening. So, we used LightCMS's built-in blog functionality to create a collection of blogs dedicated to each area of their ministry. These blogs create individual feeds targeted at specific ministries but also show up in an overall news feed showcasing all the work happening across the minsitry.

What was unique about this project?
The site was originally built on a different CMS platform which required too much additional HTML and CSS maintenance for ongoing updates. LightCMS was a great alternative for Peru Mission because it combined the feature set needed while making updates as simple as possible for team members who aren't familiar with HTML.

A Few Words from the Benefited Organization

We also asked Caleb Sutton, Communications Director for Peru Mission, if he would tell us about how this new website is helping his organization. Here's a bit of what he had to say.

"We love our new site. It gives us a one-stop place on the Web for people to learn about what we do and to get involved. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to partner with us, and this website allows us to do just that.

We also love how easy it is to use! Not all of our team members are tech-savvy, so having a platform that is easy to manipulate is crucial if we are going to be consistent in putting up fresh content. The LightCMS platform has demystified website editing for us. A big part of this is the blog platform LightCMS offers. Since we have so many diverse ministries, blog tags allow us to easily categorize our news so that supporters can quickly read what interests them the most."

To find out more about how you can participate in LightCMS's Shine the Light! program, please visit our LightCMS giving page.

Facebook Comments Integration

Now you can utilize Facebook's Comments plugin on your LightCMS blog with just a few clicks. Using Facebook Comments offers several benefits including the fact that comments left on your blog are shared back with your commenters' friends and followers. Previously, we published a tutorial on setting up Facebook Comments manually, but now support for Facebook Comments is built in and can be deployed by simply adjusting your blog element's settings.

To enable Facebook Comments, visit the settings for your blog element and click on the Advanced tab. Look for the "Facebook Comments" section. One required piece of information you will need is your Facebook User ID (or the User ID for anyone you want to be able to moderate comments). Finding your Facebook User ID can be a bit tricky. There are several ways to go about it, but here's a handy online tool that can help you find it quickly.

Enter your Facebook User ID and then check the box to "Use Facebook Comments." You'll be presented with a few other options you can set such as the width of the comments box, the number of posts to show, and the color scheme. You can also, optionally, enter a Facebook App ID if you create your own Facebook App to let you moderate all comments in a single location. For more information about Facebook Comments, you can check out Facebook's own documentation on this plugin.

Even More Magic with Magic Drop

Magic Drop is a new technology we announced about a month ago. Magic Drop lets you drag files from your computer and drop them directly onto your LightCMS website. LightCMS magically interprets your files and sets them up as the appropriate elements. At the time of launch, Magic Drop supported image files and zip files containing images. Now, we've expanded Magic Drop to work with many new file types. Here's an overview of everything Magic Drop can do.

• Image Files. Drop image files and LightCMS will create an image element. A single image file creates a single image. Multiple image files create a photo gallery containing all the images in slideshow mode.
• HTML, RTF, and TXT Files. Drop any of these file types and LightCMS will convert the content of your file to HTML (if needed) and load it into a text element.
• XML. Drop an XML file and LightCMS will interpret it as a blog import, creating a new blog element and filling it with posts and other content found in the XML document.
• Most Other Files. Drop most any other type of file (or multiple files) and LightCMS will create a Files and Links element containing the files you drop. File types include (but are not limited to): PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, WAV, XLS and most video files.
• ZIP Files. Drop a zip file and LightCMS will ask you if you want to create a Files and Links element or a Photo Gallery. If your zip file contains images, choose Photo Gallery. If it contains anything else, choose Files and Links.

All of these improvements are already live and running inside your LightCMS. We hope you enjoy using them as much as we enjoyed bringing them to you. As always, stay tuned because there's much more to come!

Leap Logic Creative is a long-time partner of LightCMS. Their proven process of consultation, branding and development along with LightCMS's powerful toolset has made a fantastic combination. We thought we'd take just a moment to share a little bit more about Leap Logic Creative and to hear a few thoughts from them about their work with the LightCMS platform.

About Leap Logic Creative

Leap Logic Creative is a Birmingham, Alabama based web development and branding studio specializing in combining creative works with powerful technology to turn web visitors into customers. They bring tremendous quality and value to their own clients and also partner with agencies and design firms for consistent long-lasting relationships.

Location: Birmingham, AL
Website: leaplogic.net
Contact: info@leaplogic.net

Q & A with Michael Thomas of Leap Logic Creative

How does LightCMS make things easier for your business? 

At Leap Logic we've used a lot of CMS solutions through the years and we haven't found a solution as easy for our team to build upon and with as robust a feature set as LightCMS. Our design team doesn't have to worry about implementation because LightCMS can handle anything. Development takes less time on LightCMS compared to other solutions which results in lower fees, happy clients, and happy developer families (due to less late nights).

What are your favorite characteristics of LightCMS?

It's simple enough to build a site from scratch in a week but also very flexible for clients who manage their own content, as most of ours do. Also, the team behind LightCMS is very professional. They're real people, not just screen names. They value our input as a vendor and they listen to their design partners. They also have a vision for the product beyond the next billing cycle.

Any words of wisdom for those considering LightCMS?

No CMS is perfect for every situation, but if you or your team want a flexible, stable, easy-for-clients solution to power your beautiful designs then give LightCMS a try. If you like to focus on clients and designs, not backups and bug fixes, then LightCMS is made for you.

Everyone loves magic, and we've got a new trick of our own to share with you today. We're calling it Magic Drop Technology and it's live and running on your LightCMS website right now.

Drop Files. Save a Bunch of Steps. It's Magic!

Magic Drop allows you to drag files from your computer and drop them directly into any region on your LightCMS website. LightCMS creates the appropriate elements and adds your dropped content to it, saving you a whole bunch of steps in the process. Currently, Magic Drop works with image files and zip files containing image files. Magic Drop will be expanded to support additional file types and additional elements in the future.

Drop a single image file and LightCMS will create a new Image Element containing that image. Drop multiple image files or a zip file containing multiple images and LightCMS will create a single Image Element as a gallery with multiple images.

This is just the beginning for Magic Drop technology. Stay tuned for updates on its development. For now, give it a try. We think you're going to love the magic!

Resellers: if you'd like a white-label version of the above graphic to use on your own site, you may access it here.

The Image Element with AdaptiveImage Technology

We added a brand-new element to LightCMS. The Image Element uses our own AdaptiveImage technology to intelligently display images at the right size for any device or screen. You can use the Image Element to display individual images or to create brilliant photos galleries or slideshows with multiple images. A few weeks after we launched the Image Element, we enhanced it further with powerful, built-in image editing and effects.

Mobile-Friendly, Responsive Design

We announced our new strategy for adding mobile-friendly, responsive designs to the LightCMS platform. Following our initial announcement and the re-release of Haus in responsive form, we deployed a series of new, responsive designs to the platform. In addition, we rolled out enhanced mobile support on photo galleries to improve the user experience when viewing photo galleries on smaller devices.

Blog Improvements

The LightCMS blog received a lot of attention during the Summer of Love. New blog features include Pings, Pingbacks, Meta Descriptions for Blog Posts (also applies to Calendar Events), and Pagination. In addition, we've added a new option for blog comments through seamless integration with Disqus, the world's leading discussion platform.

Facebook Open Graph

All LightCMS websites now offer fully automated integration with Facebook's Open Graph protocol. This means that your pages and posts look better when they are shared or liked on Facebook. Open Graph integration also gives you the opportunity to control how your pages appear, including managing the images that are used by Facebook when displaying a link to your page.

The LightCMS Affiliate Program

Now you can be rewarded for sharing LightCMS with others. Refer a website to LightCMS and you'll earn 20% of that website's monthly revenue for the life of the site. The numbers can really add up. Check out the LightCMS Affiliate Program today!

Store Improvements

The LightCMS store functionality continues to grow in popularity and the Summer of Love added a couple nice improvements for those who sell products on their LightCMS websites. Separate product option dropdowns improve the customer's experience when configuring a product with several options. We also added the ability to specify handling fees on a per-variant level. These fees are bundled with shipping charges and added to the customer's order at checkout.

Design Editor Enhancements

Customizing your design with the LightCMS Design Editor has never been easier. The Summer of Love made it easier to access the Design Editor with a single click from the new Page Bar. We also added the ability to add or edit your website's background image as well as controlling background images on any region that can be accessed through the Design Editor.

Tools for Custom Design

For those who create their own designs with LightCMS, we added a few niceties to our industry-leading design system. First, we provided even more control over specific page layouts through the addition of several new special templates. Then, we provided an alternative to using special templates through the implementation of new dynamic body classes.

Additional Features

The new ESC Hotkey provides a simple way to log into your site from any page. It also offers a far more streamlined way to move to editing mode when you are navigating your site and come across something you'd like to change. Also, central sign-in through LightCMS.com offers all LightCMS customers a central place from which they can log in to any of their websites.

Much More to Come!

It's been a great summer with lots of new features added. We're thrilled about the work our team has been able to accomplish over these past few months. But be assured, the end of the Summer of Love doesn't really change anything for us. We're always hard at work on new features and improvements to keep LightCMS at the top of its game for our customers. You can look forward to some great things coming over the next few months and beyond. Stay tuned!

A Giant Leap for Our Database Servers

We'll be completely replacing all our database servers this weekend with brand new machines. This improvement in hardware and software is huge and will continue to keep LightCMS's infrastructure well ahead of the fast-growing demand on our resources. This type of operation can be quite invasive, but our team has been planning and testing for this event in order to create a process that will minimize service disruption as much as possible.

We will begin this upgrade at 12:01am CDT (GMT-5) Monday morning, October 15, 2012. We anticipate a maintenance window of approximately 30 minutes, but we encourage you to plan for at least an hour. Our team will keep you updated throughout the upgrade process via our system status page. 

We do not anticipate any downtime for public-facing websites during the upgrade process. Visitors to your websites should be able to view them without interruption. However, you will be unable to login to your websites during the upgrade window. If you are logged into your website when the upgrade begins, you will be logged out and any unsaved changes will be lost. Additionally, website visitors who attempt to post comments or complete forms on your website may experience errors during the upgrade window. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Thank you for your understanding and your continued support of LightCMS. We look forward to continuing to serve as your website partner.

Disqus Comments Integration

In another big boost for the LightCMS blog element, we're adding built-in integration with Disqus, the world's leading commenting and discussion platform. Simply check a box on your LightCMS blog element settings, enter your Disqus ID and LightCMS will replace its built-in commenting system with the Disqus system. Disqus plugs into your LightCMS website seamlessly. Users never leave your website when they interact with your blog posts via Disqus.

When using Disqus comments, you'll get access to Disqus's full set of features, including:

• Real-Time Discussion.
• Threaded Comments.
• Social Sign On.
• Integrated Moderation.
• Moderation Dashboard.
• User Analysis and History.
• Spam Control.
• Word Filtering.
• and more...

Using Disqus comments will require you to set up a free Disqus account. For more details on using this feature, see this article on our support site.

Central Sign In via LightCMS.com

Have you ever forgotten where to go to log into your website? Do you manage a large number of websites under a single account and wish there was a central place to log into all of them? If you answered yes to either of those questions, you'll love this new feature — the centralized LightCMS sign in page. Simply visit the sign-in page, enter your LightCMS email address and password, and you'll be logged in and directed to your LightCMS website. If your email address is associated with more than one website, you'll be presented with a list of websites. Click a website and you'll be logged in and directed to that site.

Once this feature goes live next week, you'll find a link to the new central sign-in page at the top right of every page on LightCMS.com.

Expanded Background Control Through the Design Editor

The Design Editor allows you to control the color and image used as the background for your website with its simple-to-use tools. This functionality was previously limited to the base styles of the website, meaning you could only control the background for the whole site, not for individual sections of a site.

Now, we've expanded background control to all areas editable through the Design Editor. So, for example, you can adjust the background color of the navigation bar or set an image to serve as the background of your sidebar. Any area that can be controlled by the Design Editor can now have its background color and/or image adjusted.

Dynamic Body Classes

Those who code their own designs for LightCMS are going to love this new addition. We're now automatically adding dynamic body classes to certain special pages throughout the LightCMS system. Here's a list of the new dynamic body classes and how they are applied.

• dynamic-shoppingcart - added to the shopping cart page (/shoppingcart)
• dynamic-productdetail - added to all product detail pages
• dynamic-blogdetail - added to all blog post detail pages
• dynamic-tags - added to all blog tag pages
• dynamic-calendardetail - added to all event detail pages
• dynamic-login - added to the log in screen (/login)
• dynamic-searchresults - added to all search results pages
• dynamic-404 - added to all 404 error pages
• dynamic-sitemap - added to the sitemap page (/sitemap)

These new dynamic body classes can serve several purposes, but most significantly they can reduce the number of HTML files in your LightCMS designs. As you know, LightCMS allows you to include special HTML templates to control the output of many of these same pages. Now, in many cases, you can get by using a single template (such as Inside.html) while targeting these dynamic body classes and using CSS styles to adjust their layout as desired.

If you're confused about dynamic body classes, don't worry. This is an advanced feature designed for those who code their own LightCMS designs. You can get more information in our documentation for creating designs, or feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

Slate is a beautifully intuitive template created over months of planning and design, with each element of the CMS handcrafted in its display. Slate features some stunning extras such as a highly-polished sidebar region on its homepage which can be used to create a sophisticated display of recent blog posts, upcoming calendar events, and more.

As with all of our recent designs, Slate offers a fully responsive display that adapts to fit beautifully in browsers of any width, whether on desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones. "What about the iPhone 5 and its wider screen when viewed in landscape mode?" you ask. Not a problem for responsive designs like this one, which automatically adjust their layouts to accommodate any screen size.

We are sure that businesses and organizations of all types will find Slate a simple and smart tool for creating a refined website. To check it out, log in to your website and click "Design" on the top toolbar. Then click "Gallery" and look for Slate in the list of featured designs. It only takes a click to preview the design, apply it to your website, or even download the source code to modify on your own. Plus, as always, you can customize the design in the LightCMS Design Editor as well.

More designs are on the way, so stay tuned!

Get Rewarded for Sharing LightCMS with Others

When you tell others about LightCMS, you're introducing them to a website solution that can solve their hassles and transform their business or organization. It feels good to help others. It feels even better when you get paid for it! Now, through the LightCMS Affiliate Program, you'll earn substantial revenue when you share the joy of LightCMS with those around you.

Earn 20% for Life

As a LightCMS Affiliate, you will earn 20% of the monthly revenue generated by websites you refer for as long as those websites are running on our system. There's no limit to the amount you can earn. Refer more and more sites and you'll build a base of passive revenue that pays you month after month.

To get started, you'll need to fill out our Affiliate Signup Form. This will get you access to our affiliate system where you can find the personalized tracking links you'll use to share LightCMS with others. Post your personalized links on Facebook, Twitter, your website, in email — wherever and whenever you mention LightCMS. Whenever a person clicks your link and then signs up for a LightCMS website, their website will be associated with your affiliate account and you'll earn 20% of any monthly fees they pay for the life of their site.

Designers, Affiliates and Resellers

As you know, LightCMS has a strong commitment to designers and provides an enormous amount of functionality to support those who use LightCMS to create websites for their own clients. The LightCMS Affiliate Program extends this commitment, providing designers a new option for earning revenue from clients on LightCMS.

Now designers have a choice of how they want to set up each client's website. They can set a website up under their own account as a reseller, or under a separate account, owned by the client, but referred by the designer as an affiliate. A designer can act as a reseller for some clients and an affiliate for others. In either case, the designer can earn revenue from their clients' ongoing monthly website fees.

To get a more detailed overview of these programs, please take a look at the new partners section of the LightCMS website. This section provides information on our affiliate and reseller programs and can help you understand them more thoroughly.

Get Started Today

The LightCMS Affiliate Program is waiting for you! You can get started today by filling out the brief application form. Once you're in, you'll have access to your personalized tracking links so you can start earning as you share LightCMS with others. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments below or email our support team at support@lightcms.com.

If you haven't checked out the new Image Element yet, you might want to review this post which includes our Image Element video. It's an amazing new element that makes it incredibly easy to drag and drop high resolution images that get displayed at the right size every time.

Today's release enhances the Image Element, giving you the ability to edit your images and apply brilliant effects, filters and more right inside the LightCMS platform. These tools are powered by Aviary, a leading, cloud-based image editing solution that is now seamlessly integrated into LightCMS. You can use Aviary's powerful tools on any image uploaded to the Image Element, including single images, photo galleries, and slideshows.

To access the image editing tools, log into your site then locate an existing Image Element or create a new one. Select "Add or Edit Images" from the Image Element's menu and you'll see thumbnails of all the images currently stored in that Image Element. Clicking a thumbnail will load the image editing tools for that image (you can also click the "edit" link below the thumbnail). 

Once loaded, you can use the vast collection of image editing tools to make your changes. You can crop, adjust, resize, apply filters, color correct, and much more. All of your changes will be previewed live for you right in the interface. You can undo and redo changes as long as you are working inside the image editing interface. When ready, click the "Save" button to process your changes. Once you save the image, your original image file will be replaced with the modified version and your new, edited image will appear in the Image Element.

Advanced effects and filters are just a few of the many available image editing tools.

Please note the image settings that used to be accessed via the "edit" link (captions, descriptions, links ... etc.) can now be accessed via the small information icon at the lower right of each thumbnail. Of course, you can still reorder your images by simply clicking and dragging any thumbnail to a new location.

We're very excited to bring you this incredible upgrade. It's already up and running inside your LightCMS account at no additional cost. If you haven't tried out the new Image Element yet, I highly recommend you take some time to discover all it has to offer. Uploading, managing, editing and displaying brilliant images and galleries on your site has never been easier. We look forward to seeing all the ways you make use of the new Image Element.

You can access these designs along with all of our included designs by logging into your LightCMS website and clicking the "Design" link on the top toolbar. From there, look for the "Gallery" link to access our built-in gallery, filled with hundreds of designs that can be applied as is to your website and customized with our built-in Design Editor. Of course, you can also download the source code of any design and use it as a starting place for your own work.

Stay tuned. There's much more to come...

Two New Designs

Spread and Vanity are the names of two new designs now available inside your LightCMS account (see screenshots above). To access them, log into your LightCMS website and click "Design" in the top toolbar. Then, click on the "Gallery" link to view all available designs. From there, you can apply these designs to your website, customize them with our design editor, or even download their source code to make your own modifications.

These new designs are fully responsive and will automatically adjust to look great on screens of any size, from smartphones to tablets to desktop displays.

Per-Variant Handling Fees

We've also added a new feature in the LightCMS store. You can now specify handling charges for your products at the variant level, so that each variant can have a unique handling fee. Handling fees are bundled into the shipping charges that the customer sees. Customers don't see how much of their shipping charge is made up of handling fees.

Enjoy the new designs and features. We've got much more on the way so stay tuned!

The temperatures have dropped below 100 degrees but the Summer of Love is still going strong. Last week we slipped in a nice addition that we wanted to point out. It's the ability to add meta description content to blog posts and calendar events.

Meta description content allows you to provide a brief summary of your page, post or event that is often used by search engines and other systems to summarize information about your page. Additionally, when you provide a meta description, LightCMS uses it to populate the Open Graph Description tag which is used by Facebook when people share your page with their friends (get more details about LightCMS's Open Graph implementation on this post).

You've always been able to add meta descriptions to pages, but now that ability is expanded to dynamic pages such as blog posts and calendar events. You'll find the meta description on the advanced tab of the settings for your post or event. Enjoy the new feature and stay tuned for more!

Properly displaying images on websites has always been a challenge that LightCMS has worked to make as simple as possible. Now, with new devices and screen resolutions such as retina displays the challenge is even greater. We're up to the task, though, and today we're announcing a new element that puts LightCMS customers even further ahead of the curve. It's the new Image Element. Take a look at the video and read more about it below.

AdaptiveImage Technology: The Right Size Every Time

Simply drop your full-resolution image into the new Image Element and LightCMS will display it at the optimal size for its placement on your site. Not only that, but LightCMS will also detect if the user has a retina display and, if so, will upgrade the resolution accordingly. Drag the Image Element to a new region and its size is automatically updated. The Image Element even accommodates responsive design, resizing the image dynamically for browsers at any width on any device, including mobile phones.

The new image element with a single image automatically output at optimal dimensions

The Image Element's AdaptiveImage technology goes a step further with a mobile-first, two-step approach to image display. When a page is requested, the Image Element immediately loads a small-scale (480px wide) version of the image, sized to fill that space needed. Then, if a larger image is needed, it swaps in the higher-resolution alternative. This all happens behind the scenes and goes largely unnoticed, but the approach offers several advantages.

First, it ensures that mobile devices get their images faster and with less bandwidth usage. Second, because the smaller image doesn't require JavaScript to load, this technology ensures that an image is displayed even on browsers that don't have JavaScript enabled. Most platforms rely exclusively on JavaScript and leave non-JavaScript browsers with no image at all. But the LightCMS Image Element provides fine-tuned image display for browsers that support it, while still ensuring that all browsers still display the image, even without JavaScript.

You can disable our AdaptiveImage technology by changing the element's settings. Doing so will cause the Image Element to output the image file exactly as it was uploaded in all cases.

Drag and Drop Right Onto Your Page

Another big upgrade with the Image Element is the ability to drag and drop one or more images right onto your page. Whenever you add an Image Element, you'll see a drop zone which invites you to drag in your images. The drag and drop functionality is available for all browsers that support it, which is most all modern browsers except for Internet Explorer. 

Of course, you can also simply click the drop zone to upload through a file system as well. Uploading this way has been improved to allow the selection of multiple images in most browsers by using cmd+click (ctrl+click in Windows).

Single Image or Photo Gallery

The new Image Element will be replacing our existing Photo Gallery Element, and it will include all of the current Photo Gallery functionality. Uploading a single image will cause the Image Element to function as described above. Uploading multiple images will automatically convert it to Photo Gallery mode. If needed, you can force a single image to behave as a Photo Gallery by checking the "Force Photo Gallery" box on the advanced tab of the element's settings.

When we launch the Image Element, all existing Photo Galleries will be automatically converted to Image Elements and will continue to function exactly as they have been functioning.

Launch Details

The Image Element is scheduled to launch next Thursday, August 23, 2012. We wanted to give you advanced notice so you would be prepared for the change and be able to communicate to your own clients as well. Our video (above) is white-label (there is no mention of LightCMS) so you can share it and embed it in your own communications about the Image Element if you choose. You can find the video here on our white-label YouTube account and get your embed code from there.

We look forward to bringing you the new Image Element. Please let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.

How Can I Make Use of These Amazing Layouts?

You can access these new designs and all of LightCMS's freely available designs by logging into your website and clicking "Design" on the top toolbar. Then, click the "Gallery" link to access all of our available designs. From there, you can apply any design to your website, customize a design with our built-in Design Editor, or even download the source code of a design to edit on your own.

We hope you enjoy these new designs and remember, there's much more to come!

The New, Responsive Haus Template

Haus has been the default design for LightCMS for about six months, and today we're giving it a significant upgrade. The biggest improvement is that it has been equipped with a mobile-friendly, responsive design which means the design "responds" to the width of the browser in which it is being viewed. Responsive design is a modern approach allowing a single design to work well on desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices.

You've always been able to create your own responsive designs with LightCMS, but the new Haus template is the first responsive design built into the system. It won't be the last! In fact, Haus establishes a new model for future designs as they are added to LightCMS. We're gearing up to deploy a host of new mobile-friendly designs over the coming months, and they will all be fully responsive.

Remember, you can use Haus as is, edit it in the Design Editor, or download its source to manipulate and use as your own!

More Responsive Fun

With this release, we've also begun the process of updating the layout of many of our elements with responsive qualities. For example, the system-generated shopping cart is now responsive by default and adapts well when displayed inside a mobile-optimized design. Future updates will continue to improve the responsiveness of built-in LightCMS elements.

And One More Thing...

We've also established a new practice of including a Changelog file with every new design in order to continually track changes made to each design by our team. You can find this file in the root directory of the new Haus design and all future designs to come!

The Versatile ESC Hotkey

Perhaps you've experienced a situation like the following. You're viewing your LightCMS website and you notice something you want to edit, but you're not logged in. To get logged in, you type "http://www.lightcms.com/login" into the address bar following your site's domain. But then, after you login, you're now on the home page, not the page you want to edit. So, you re-navigate to the previous page where you can finally make your changes.

If you've been wishing for a faster way to get logged in and start editing we've got you covered.with the new ESC Hotkey. Now, when you're looking at that page you want to edit, simply hit ESC and you'll be taken to your login page. Once logged in, you'll be automatically redirected to the page you were viewing!

But that's not the only trick up our sleeve. The new ESC Hotkey is a very versatile friend. It also performs the following tasks:

• If you're logged in and looking at one of your pages, the ESC Hotkey will toggle been the preview and edit modes.
• If you're viewing any system setting screen, the ESC Hotkey will cancel and return you to the page you were editing.

The ESC Hotkey is already live and active in your LightCMS account. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below!