So I finally have some updates for you guys on the launch status of SnapPages. The new site will probably be launched by next week so I wanted to let you know about some of the changes that will happen along with that launch and why we are doing some of the things we are doing with the site.

The biggest change to the site is probably the fact that there will now be two types of accounts on SnapPages. The basic SnapPages account will remain free. You will still be able to use the Photo, Calendar, and Friend Manager applications as you normally would. The only difference to the free account is that we are now going to be adding a 1GB limit to the storage space that a basic user has. This should still be plenty of space for the majority of users out there.

In addition to the free Basic account, we will be adding a Premium account that will have a yearly subscription. The premium account not only gives you 10GB of storage space, it also gives you access to the Website Manager. The Website Manager will now have additional features that allow you to not only create great looking personal websites but also professional sites that you can use for your small business. Extra features like pointing a custom domain name to your site and added search engine optmimization features make this possible. Also the you will have at least 10 different themes to choose from and all of them are fully customizable.

You get all of these great features with the Premium account and it only costs $50 a year. If you’re not sure if you want to upgrade or not, a 30 day trial will be available. The reason I decided to include a Premium account is because I think it is really important to keep SnapPages ad free. This keeps the site simple and more user friendly. I’d love to hear any feedback or answer any questions you might have about this so be sure to let me know about them.

 For the mean time the Premium account will remain part of the private beta area of SnapPages. We will be opening some more spaces for people to get into the beta so be sure to sign up for that if you would like to get a Premium account. I’ll send out more details when the actual site launches.

This weekend I did a big update to the the Website Manager. Most the features that I described in this post have now been implemented on the site. The two biggest changes are the addition of the flash billboard tool and the complete reworking of the themes. Both of these bring some exciting new features so definitely take some time to check those out.

 With the complete reworking of the themes, many of you may have already noticed that your sites don’t look the same. This is something I warned about earlier. Because I rebuilt the theme system from scratch in order to make it more flexible and easier to actually create new themes, there was a lot of incompatibility with the old themes that couldn’t be avoided. I again apologize for any problems this causes, but it was something that couldn’t be avoided and will not happen again in the future.

You might also notice that a lot of the user interface has been updated in this latest version. Most of the changes were based on feedback I recieved that should make it more intuitive then before. Also several little bugs have been fixed during the process. The most noticeable one will probably be the bugs with the drag-and-drop system for moving around blocks of content on a page. Before this was a little unpredictable, but it should now react exactly as you expect it to.

 This will probably be the last big udpate to the site before we actually launch. I’ll be doing some little fixes and improvements here and there but there won’t be any big new features. I’ll be outlining our plan for launching the site here in the next couple of weeks so check back here for more information on that. So go check out the new features and let me know what you think!

I mentioned earlier that there would be some new themes for your websites in the next big update. Here’s a quick preview of some of the new themes that you will see. Each one will have different styles and variations to them so that you can really make the original.

Ok, I’ll admit that I’m probably the worlds worst blogger. I didn’t post one single update the entire month of April and for that I apologize. So what’s my excuse? Well my biggest one is that I’m still the only developer at the moment and I’ve been very very busy getting ready to fully launch the site. On that note if any of you are or know any awsome flash developers that are great with Actionscript 3 and OOP and looking for something to do, have them contact me. I’m really excited about some of the new updates to the website manager that I’m working on at the moment. I’m not exactly sure when I’ll release them but it will probably be the last big update to the site before the actual launch. Here’s a quick rundown on what I’ve been working on:

 Flash Billboards
Some of you might remember how years ago it was the in thing to have an intro animation playing before your website. These would usually be short animations that displayed some messaging and maybe a couple photos flying in and out. As a web developer we would refer to these as “skip intros” because no one ever wanted to actually view these animations because they were annoying and kept us from getting to the actual website. These intro animations eventually evolved into a smaller sized flash animation that would be displayed on the actual homepage. Usually they would run across the top somewhere beneath the website header and above the regular homepage content. That’s why they are called flash billboards. But enough with the history lesson, the reason I’m writing about these is because you will now be able to create your own flash billboards for your site. They will work a lot like a slide show. Basically you can select a photo you want to be displayed in the background of each “slide” and then some text that you want to animate in. Then the slides will transition to show the complete animation. Of course you’ll have a lot more cool options and things to do with them but the main point is that it will make your website look a lot more professional. I’ve yet to see anything else like it any website development application so it’s pretty exciting.

Themes
You may have noticed that currently there are a very limited number of themes available. This is mainly because the way the themes are created now takes a very long time and is not very effecient. So I knew that I was going to have to find a better way of doing it. I’ve been holding off on creating more themes until this process was greatly improved. I’m glad to say that after some good advice from flash guru, Guy Watson, I’ve come up with a solution that will allow me to create these themes much faster and at the same time give users a lot more flexibility to customize them. You’ll now be able to do things like reposition the text and logo objects in the headers as well as change the text and logo right there in the theme editor. The only issue is that the existing themes will have to be reworked. I’m going to do everything I can to try and make this process as seamless as possible for those of you who have already customized your theme but some things might not be the same after the update so you’ll have to go back and fix them. I’ll give more of an update on this later when I get closer actually launching the update.

Domain Names
You’ll soon be able to not only choose what you want your websites subdomain to be, you will also have the ability to point a custom domain name that you already own to a site. Currently your subdomain is by default you username but I think it make’s since to allow people to choose a different subdomain for their site if they want to. Pointing an actual domain name like (www.mywebsite.com) to your website will allow you to use your SnapPages site for anything you want to. You will even have the option to hide the black menu bar that goes across the top of your site that says “SnapPages” on it so that it looks more professional.

Then there are just a lot of little fixes that I’ve implemented. Thanks again for all the feedback you guys have been sending in. I’m going to try and get better with these updates so check back.

I’ve been working on a big batch of updates for the website manager, and some of you may have already noticed that they are now live on the site. There are several new features you’ll be able to spot, but also alot of what I did was to take the existing features and make them work better. For instance when you had several images on a page, I noticed they would load pretty slowly, so I’ve fixed that. Also in doing so I had to change the way images are saved so if you go to one of your web pages and the images look messed up, just go into your website manager and resave that page and it should fix the problem. Thanks to everyone who has been trying it out and sending me feedback on it. A lot of you sent bug reports/requests through the report form in the app and it’s been a lot of help. Hopefully you guys can see that even though I don’t respond to those, I have been reading them and I have implemented a lot of them. Here is a quick run down of what’s been added:

 New Features

• Templates are now built into the app to help you create new pages. Sometimes laying out content can be the hardest part if your not a designer so these templates do that for you. There are only a few right now but more will be on the way.
• You can now change the page layout even after the page has been created.
• The heading at the top of each is now optional. This is a great feature when creating homepages.
• You can now add email forms to your website. (still a few bugs with this)
• After you save your page, you don’t automatically go back to the main screen.
• and a bunch of other little things…

Bug Fixes

• Reduced load times of images on you webpage.
• Several windows wouldn’t allow you to cancel out of them.
• Dragging blocks should now be more accurate.
• Text wrapping around images
• Improved embed video feature to support more websites
• When editing a page it would not always scroll to fit all the content
• A page will still load even if an image fails to load in the website manager
• Usernames with “.” in the should no longer be valid
• and a bunch of other little things…

Also I’ve opened up the beta to 500 total people now so if you haven’t yet checked it out you can do so. Thanks again for all the great feedback, keep it coming.