We're excited to announce some changes to the LightCMS pricing plans that we know you're going to love. These have been in the works for many months and we're pleased to finally bring them your way. There's a lot to cover here so please take a moment to read all the way through this announcement to discover everything that's new.

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.

Ever since we introduced our store functionality in 2011, LightCMS has been working hard to simplify the challenge of accepting credit card payments on the web. Today, we're announcing another big step forward with one-step credit card set up through Stripe.

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.

Twitter recently released a new opportunity for website owners to enhance the way their content is displayed when it is shared on Twitter. It's called Twitter Cards and today we're announcing automated integration of Twitter Card tags for every website on the LightCMS platform. Get more details below.

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:

<meta name="twitter:site" content="@lightcms" />

or

<meta name="twitter:site:id" content="24586843" />

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.

We're excited to tell you about a couple of new features that went live today. First, we've added built-in support for Facebook Comments to our blog platform. Second, we've expanded the capabilities of our own Magic Drop technology, released last month. Take a look at all the details below!

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!

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.