Author Dale Swanson

Our photo galleries and product detail pages now support an upgraded lightbox overlay experience.  Not only are the images, captions, and image navigation elements now properly aligned and optimized for mobile devices, but now we support the common mobile gesture of swiping between images.  As an added bonus for desktop/laptop users, you can now scroll or use the mousewheel to move between images as well.

The New Page Bar

The Page Bar is the small toolbar which is visible at the top right of your browser when you're editing a web page with our system. The Page Bar has been around since we launched the new user interface a while back, but today we're giving it an update.

Blog pagination -- this feature breaks up long lists of blog posts into separate pages, providing an auto-generated navigation element at the bottom of each blog list as well.

Note: pages generated by blog pagination are dynamic pages and will NOT count against the page limits of your website.

Once the feature is live, you can turn it on by visiting the settings of any blog element on your site. If the blog element uses one of our "list" skins (list, list with body, or list with summary) you will see an additional section for pagination immediately below the skin setting. Simply check the box to enable pagination and enter the desired number of posts per page. The default is 20 posts per page and the maximum allowed is 1,000 posts per page.

The blog settings screen allows you to enable pagination.

Once that is set, your blog list will automatically be limited to the number of posts you specified and page navigation will automatically be added to the bottom of the list (the page navigation is output using the exact same markup as our page navigation for product listings).

The page navigation automatically appears at the bottom of your blog list.
That's it! Blog pagination is super simple to implement. Check it out today!

Crazy4Xyng needs:  A system that could be easily updated and accessible for her team and customers. Video upload, form creation, photo gallery and document upload and storage.  

New Creation Design delivered.  From an amazing product video, before/after photos and document uploads the site has been a hit.  Literally... there were 1500 hits the first week!

Check out her site and find out more about Carrie's personal story here.  Contact Carrie today at 1-952-442-2578.

My goal is to keep blogging about website/blogging design and marketing.  This will focus on my experiences and where I believe the Worldwide web is taking us.

Have a blessed day!

I'm designing blogs now!  This one is a homeschool blog dedicated to Homeschoolers!  Check it out and contact me if you want a specially designed BLOG of your own.

Our client Premier Land Survey, LLC needed a fast, easy and great looking website. We delivered a great looking site and helped this start-up get off the ground.

My client is an amazing author and artist.  He wanted a website where he can sell his products.  Our easy to use, top of the line ECommerce solution was a great fit.

This site is still in production, but we will keep you updated.  Feel free to visit the site and see the progress.

First and foremost, we've officially launched "The Store," a revolutionary integration of robust functionality seamlessly embedded into the user-friendly DesignCMS system. You can now add products right onto your pages alongside your blog elements, photo galleries, calendars and more. Any element in any region on any page has always been our approach and the store fits right into this model.

The DesignCMS Store is a complete ecommerce solution built right into your New Creation Design website. The store lets you create products, organize them into product listings across your site, and provide your users with a seamless, secure shopping cart and checkout experience. Its powerful backend management system helps you fulfill orders and communicate with customers. The store is more than just a new feature, it's like a whole new product. You can find out more about the store on our new store page here on our website and the new store help section in the New Creation Design User Guide.

We want to emphasize that this launch is only the beginning. There's much more ahead for the store. Even as we've been wrapping up this launch, we've also been planning our next steps. We've got several major updates on the way, including a groundbreaking, fully-integrated solution for the sale of downloadable goods. Plus, we'll be enhancing the store's shipping capabilities with real-time Fedex and UPS tie-ins, and much more.

Launching an online store just wasn't enough, so we're also rolling out a lot of other great things today as well.

We've added twelve new designs themes to the built-in New Creation Design CMS design gallery. These new designs are built specifically for sites centered on e-commerce. As always, our designs are free to use as is or to be modified to your needs. Check out the following new designs in the gallery:

• Antiquarian
• CanoeHut
• Clear & Concise
• Collars & Cuffs
• Electrode
• GuloBoy
• NuFood
• Portmanteau
• PowerTap
• Simple Side
• Smoke
• Zeloni

In the next few weeks, we'll be rolling out a new, improved design viewer. The new viewer looks great and is much better at helping the user sort through our available free designs. 

This is an exciting day for us -- one of the biggest days in the history of our product and our company. 

Alright, enough said. Now go check out the store and let us know what you think!   If you are interested in hearing more about our amazing Content Management Websites...contact us today!

The biggest upgrade to DesignCMS in its history is coming soon. It's the culmination of years of planning and months of careful development. So what's so great about it? I'm glad you asked:

Robust Product Settings
Though extremely easy-to-use, the LightCMS online store offers powerful features. For each product, you can configure basic information, upload multiple images, create unlimited product variants with customizable options, track product inventory, track weight for shipping, add product tags, and much more.

Seamless, Secure Shopping Cart and Checkout
The user experience for customers is managed by an intuitive, well-designed shopping cart and checkout process that's built into every site. SSL security is automatically ensured. Payment processing can be handled by PayPal, Google Checkout, or Authorize.net.

No Additional Monthly Cost!

That's right! The new online store functionality will be added to all paid DesignCMS websites at no additional monthly cost (free websites will have access to store functionality in test-mode only). This means that all existing paid websites on the DesignCMS system will instantly be able to implement the store.

The only cost for using the DesignCMS online store functionality is a 1% transaction fee (2% on the basic plan) in addition to any fees charged by the payment processor you choose, such as PayPal or Authorize.net.
Plan Limits
The only limitation on the store functionality is the number of product SKUs you can have in your website's store. The SKU limitation for each plan level will be:

• Basic - 100 SKUs
• Plus - 500 SKUs
• Advanced - 2,500 SKUs
• Pro - 10,000 SKUs
• Premier - Unlimited SKUs

Scheduled to Launch June 8, 2011
We're so excited to bring you this update. Our team is working hard on the final details and planning to launch on June 8, 2011. There is no scheduled downtime for this update. At the time of the launch, we'll also be unveiling a completely redesigned DesignCMS website that will include new and improved help resources. More details on this and other store-related information to come, so be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. 

New Website Launched today!!!

www.ggpoutdoors.com

GGP Outdoors is a Victoria, MN based Residential Design and build company.  They came to New Creation Design, LLC to create a website design and content management system.  We are very happy with how the site turned out!  It has a wonderful gallery showcasing their landscape work along with easy to use form for easy contact by prospects.  Check them out today!

The first is another step forward in making the system more accessible on mobile and touch devices. We recently enabled touch devices to access element menus and settings screens. Now we’ve taken the next step in making the content areas themselves editable. Previously it was impossible to edit the content in text elements, blog posts, and calendar events because WYSIWYG editing is not compatible with mobile browsers. So we’ve improved this by presenting an alternate editing interface when you access the system through a mobile browser.

The new editing interface is very simple, allowing you to view and edit the raw HTML found in a content area. Login and pull up any content editing screen on a mobile device, and the new interface will appear, allowing you to make changes to the code in your content regions.

Again, this is just another small step designed to enable users to make tweaks and changes to the content on their sites from mobile or touch devices that don’t support WYSIWYG editing. There’s more to come in the area of mobile content management, so stay tuned.

Call New Creation Design today to find out more.

I want to reiterate that this is a pretty major upgrade, touching nearly every screen in the system. It represents a complete rework of how the system handles administrative screens. But this update is really just a first step in what will be a series of improvements. Think of it as laying the groundwork for many more changes to come. By unifying the administrative interface across all system pages, we offer ourselves the opportunity to bring you even more improvements in features and UI in the future.

New look and feel

The most visible changes are in the look and feel of the top toolbar and the administrative screens you encounter when editing content or adjusting settings. I want to point out that this does not change how our admin controls overlay on top of your website content. Rather, these change only impact the top toolbar and the screen you access when you click to edit content or settings.

The toolbar no longer uses drop down menus. Instead, available functions are listed horizontally as menu items. A new menu item, “content,” provides an easy way to get back to viewing the website with admin controls overlaid. The other menu items should be familiar as they are the same as those that exist currently in our drop down menus.

The settings screens follow familiar conventions, but offer an updated and polished look and feel.

Check out Kid Talk, Inc.  We re-designed their current static website and gave them a full content management site.  The design was built from on of our top of the line templates.  We changed the colors to make the site whimsical and added a calendar, photo gallery and more.

Check it out at www.kid-talk.com

New Creation Design has a new feature where you can sign-up for a Free 3 page website.  This is a cool feature in the marketing of our DesignCMS system.  It lets protential clients check out our system before they buy.  It's a great feature in the discovery process of your website.

Just go to www.newcreationdesign.net/sign-up to check out this cool feature.  Please forward it to anyone interested in getting a professional website where they can edit themselves and bring on the customers.

New Website - ASI Jet Ag division

www.asijetag.com

This is a repeat client who needed a high class website fast.  They were able to put their content, images and more into the website and it was up and running in days!

New website created for ASI Jet Center.  They just launched a new division called MSP Jet Center.

Our client was in need of a fast, high quality website.  We delivered!  Along with beautiful design, they are using our DesignCMS system which will allows them to utilize all the features it comes with.

Check it out at www.mspjet.com

Modern Aero Inc. needed a quick site for an expo coming up showcasing exhibitor's planes.  They needed a fall look along with a content management system.  We took one of the current templates and customized it to their needs.  They can continue to use the same site for future expos by changing colors and making changes through their CMS system.  Check it out at http://www.northernexposureaviationexpo.com/.

Waterbrooke Fellowship needed a new design along with a content management system (DesignCMS) where they can make weekly updates to their site.  They also required a blog, calendar, forms, photo gallery and more.  We were able to give them exactly one they needed.  Check it out at www.wbfellowship.org

When we talk to small businesses, we often find they're not too interested in "blogging." But, if we ask them about posting articles or news stories on their site, they are generally very interested in that. The truth is that blogging is nothing more than consistently posting articles on your site. Perhaps the term "blogging" has acquired some connotations that aren't appealing to small businesses. Nonetheless, blogging, or whatever you want to call it, is something that all businesses should consider.

Impressive benefits

Blogging can help you get results from your company website by doing the following:

1.     Establishing you and your business as an authority in your areas of expertise.

2.     Encouraging your site visitors to return often because of your regularly updated content.

3.     Building a dedicated readership for your content through RSS syndication.

4.     Making search engines pay attention to your regularly updated, keyword-rich content.

5.     Giving you a more personal voice through which to speak to your clients and customers.

6.     Encouraging your customers to talk back and interact with your website by leaving comments.

These are just a few of the key benefits of blogging on your company site. So, what does it take to make it work?

Slow and steady wins the race

Content is key. If you want to be successful blogging, you have to commit to generating new content regularly. My recommendation is that you post one new article per week to start. Even if you think you can post more, hold yourself back to one per week and see how it goes. You'll discover that it's harder than you think to generate new content every single week, but if you can do it, it well worth the time invested. A consistent, steady stream of quality content is all it takes to be successful blogging.

What should I write about?

You can post anything you want to share with the world. Here are a few ideas:

1.     News about your company

2.     Official company announcements

3.     "Get to know you" articles about employees

4.     Opinions on events or happenings in your industry

5.     Commentary on articles that others have written

6.     "How to" articles to help your clients and customers

7.     Posts featuring pictures of your company activities or employees

8.     Posts soliciting feedback from your customers, encouraging them to speak back to you in the comments.

9.     Information about giveaway and other special promotions

How do I get started?

You need do-it-yourself content tools in order to blog successfully. Your website needs to be running on a platform that has blogging built right in. With a weekly flow of new content, you need the ability to post articles yourself. If your site is already running on one of New Creation Design's content management systems, you're all set. If not, or if you need help getting started, just let us know and we'll be happy to talk with you more.

Our client, Mark Kuhne, is a gifted artist who needed a website and a Content Management System so he could easily update his site with new pieces of work.  We created a clean website through one of our templates and gave him a way to communicate his work through the new website.  We have ongoing SEO and Internet marketing so his art will be seen by millions!

Check it out at www.kuhnegallery.com