As I've mentioned recently we are on a mission to optimize and increase stability of all our apps and today you should start to see some of the fruits of this. I'm no where near done going through and updating everything, however I stumbled upon a huge issue that I think could behind many of the problems users have been having with the page editor locking up on them, so I decided to fix that one and get it up ASAP.

As I've(and others) have suspected it was an issue with too much memory being required by the flash player and I couldn't really figure out what was causing this because nothing should be taking up that much memory, and on top of that I could never replicate the issue so that makes it hard to fix because it's sort of like shooting in the dark.

Thankfully with your help and feedback I've been able to determine that the spell checking that we added back in October was the culprit. You wouldn't really notice a problem until you added a lot of plain text blocks, then things start to really slow down. This is one of the reasons I didn't notice it because the text blocks should not be causing any memory issues because there isn't much to them. So to make a long story short, I've temporarily removed the spell check feature until we can ensure that it doesn't cause any further issues and everyone should see a huge boost in performance when they are editing their pages or blogs!

Thanks again to all of you who helped me get to the bottom of this one!

You might notice that the theme for our blog doesn't match any of the built in templates that we offer through the site. That's because it's a completely custom theme that I created to match the look and feel of our main site. How did I do it you ask? By using the new built in CSS editor that you get when you have a Developer account!

This was a feature that I wasn't sure was going to make it into the new Developer account we created, but I figured out a way to make it work so I just had to add it in there! This really opens up SnapPages to a new world of possibilities for users who know their way around a style sheet. You can basically make your website look however you want with this as we give you almost complete control over the CSS.

If you have a Developer account and you go to create a theme for either yourself or one of your clients, you will now see the option to create either a standard theme or a custom theme. If you select "custom" you will be taken into our CSS editor. When you start out we've given you a very basic CSS template as a starting point that you can modify however you like. If you don't want to use our editor, you can copy and paste it into any CSS editor you like and then when your done just copy and paste it back in. It's that easy.

You can create and share any custom theme with any of the active clients that you have in your Developer account, but those clients will not be able to edit the custom themes. You must have a Developer account in order to create or make changes to the custom themes.

This is obviously a very advanced feature which is why at this time we've decided to leave it only in the developer account. One of the main reasons that so many people love SnapPages is because it's so simple to use and adding this feature for everyone would certainly mess that up. Our ease of use is something that I take very seriously because it's so crucial to what SnapPages is. That's one of the reasons I'm so excited about the new Developer account, we now have a vehicle to add some of these advanced features without taking away any of the ease of use that all our Pro users currently enjoy.

Now that we've finished and launched the new developer account, we're turning our attention to what next. I've decided that our number one priority before we move on to creating any new features should be to completely optimize all of our tools and squash as many bugs as we possibly can so that everything runs faster and is more stable.

There are a lot of things that SnapPages does very well, but I know that there are some things that we can, and must, do much better and making our products more stable is one of them. We're committed to doing whatever is necessary in order to do this because that's what you deserve. We've already begun the process of going through much of the site with a fine tooth comb to see where can we speed things and how can we optimize. We might even be looking at upgrading our servers if we think it's needed.

Apart from these optimization efforts, I'm personally about to go on a massive bug hunt and I'm out to destroy any bugs I find with extreme prejudice. This will be a huge effort and we're going to need your help! If you know of any sort of glitch/bug/annoyance that we need to know about, I've created a new dedicated place in the forums to post these. Please let us know about any on going issues you are having here so that others can see them and comment if they are having the same issue as well. That way also we can get information from everyone having the issue so that we can find the problem and solve it. Here is a link to the bug report in the forums:

http://forums.snappages.com/forumdisplay.php?f=30

When you post here it would be very helpful for us to know things like what operating system you are on(Windows XP, Vista, Mac OSX...) and what browser you are using(Internet Explorer 6,7,8, Firefox, Safari...). Also try to keep in mind that we already have an area in the forums to post feature suggestions so it would be helpful as well if we can keep the bugs and the wishlist separate.

Thanks again for being the best users in the world, we really could not do this without your support and the great feedback you give us.

We've been getting some reports lately from different SnapPages users reporting that the system has been crashing on them, but for the most part this only seems to be happening on Macs and more specifically in Safari. Adobe just released a statement over the weekend that explained how a bug in the flash player that has gone un-fixed for quite some time may be to blame for these issues our users are experiencing.

Basically they claim that this is fixed in the next release of the flash player which is currently in beta. I would recommend anyone that is having issues with SnapPages(or any site with flash content) on their Mac go ahead and try the new beta version of this flash player to see if it fixes the issue. Also it would be helpful if you could report back whether or not this helps. Here is a link where you can download the beta version of the new plugin from adobe:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Keep in mind that this is a beta version of their flash plugin so it might still have some bugs in it as well, but from what they are saying this version should be more stable then what's out there right now.

We've made the entire process of creating a site for a client, as easy as possible from start to finish. Here's a quick rundown of some of the things that make these tools so great:

Simple Account Creation
You can easily create new accounts for your clients directly through the developer central tool that you get when you upgrade to a Developer Account. Also we make it easy to add existing SnapPages accounts into the system as well. You just send an existing user a request to gain admin access to their site. Once they accept, they will be added as an active client to your account.

Developer Discounts
A lot of you that sign up for multiple accounts have been begging for some sort of a discount so we only think it fair that we include one with this. It's basically a tiered volume discounting and the more active clients you have the more you save on new accounts.

One-click Logins
After you add clients you can simply login to their account through a new drop down menu on the main SnapPages menu bar. You just click on a clients name in the menu and you will automatically gain access to their account.

Project Management
We've also included a way for you to keep track of all the projects that you are working on with your clients. You can create a new project for each client, then inside the project you create milestones, or basically a to-do list of tasks that need to be accomplished before the project is complete. These milestones can be assigned to either you or your client so everyone knows who is responsible for what.

Client File Storage
When you work with clients, sometimes there can be a lot of assets that go along with creating the websites. For instance they might give you all the content in different word docs or PDFs. So we've created a central place that both you and your client can upload these files while you are working on projects for them.

Help Desks
I know from personal experience that when you get a lot of clients, it can be hard to keep track of all the things that they need help with our questions they might have. A support ticketing system is a very easy way to keep track of all these issues. We've built one right into developer central for this very reason.

Invoice Creator
When you are finished with a project, we've create a simple tool that will send out invoices to your clients that they can download in PDF form. Also when you use the system to manage your invoices, you can keep track of which ones are outstanding and which ones have been paid for every client. You can even setup recurring invoices in case you bill on a monthly schedule.

Client Connect App
When you become a developer you will get a new app in your account called "Developer Central" that has all the developer tools in it. When you add a client to your account, they will get an app called "Client Connect". This app basically allows them to interact with you on different things like projects and milestones. This is also where they can submit support tickets and view invoices that are due.

There are a few other perks you get with this system and you can learn more on the information page on our website found here. We hope that this will make some of your jobs a whole lot easier, and we're committed to making this system better and better so send us any feedback you might have on it.