Spruz Owners' Community For owners of websites powered by the Spruz Platform

We have completed the release of Spruz version 2.0. This was a big step in the development of the Spruz platform for 2 reasons. Number one, this update allowed us to make many structural changes to the platform and page builder that so that we may deliver more data rich elements, page types, etc. while keeping a high level of flexibility. Number two, we have rolled out platform improvements that bring more stability, faster page load times, and scalability to the Spruz network.

The most noticeable change in this update is the new and improved Page Builder. The new page builder has been designed to make it easier to find and edit pages, the builder has been cleaned up and improved over all. One of my personal favorites is fewer page refreshes when making changes and updates to the site. This makes for a more seamless experience when modifying your website features.

Please remember changes you make to your website are cached for visitors not logged into your site. It may take up 1-5 hours for those changes to be applied for site visitors.

Here is a brief list of page builder features;

• New on page element adding
• Integrated site style sheet to see a better representation of how elements will appear on the main site. This will make it easier for you to correct color issues that may make things easier to read for your site visitors. We also added an option that allows you to turn off your styles.
• New and improved drag and drop
• Ability to collapse elements to make it easier for them to be moved.
• New page layout support. This will allow us to add new layouts for placement of elements, rather then the 4 box layout. Blank pages have been put into the element based system to make it easier to manage. Blank pages create an element based page with 1 column for all your content.
• New and improved quick button for setting what page content you want on your home page.
• New global area selection. This allows you to decide if your site has left, right or both side global areas for navigation and other content you may place there that needs to be on every page.
• We have made the page builder unbreakable, this means it can not be broken accidentally through bad HTML or Java scripting.
• New editor for custom content, making it much easier to use. Built in image uploading will be added in the next few weeks.
• The forums and profiles will now inherite the top navigation box/global area.

Some overall platform improvements

• New changes in the way information is cached from the databases for visitors not logged in. It is important to note that visitors not logged in will not see new site changes for up to 4 or 5 hours. We will be adding an option for you to control cache times in a future update.
• Numerous platform stability fixes where applied.
• We have added additional data caching on data collections that are not changed very often. You should see a difference in page loading times.
• Our overall scalability has been tested and improved to allow the platform to host an infinite number of Spruz powered sites. We have new hardware on the way that will be able to take advantage of this change.

The main purpose of this update was a lot of backend improvements that will further allow us to provide the most flexible site and community creation portal on the net. You will be amazed on the new page elements and systems you will see added over the next few months.

Please keep in mind like anything new, there may be unforeseen issues. Please report problems by using our support tickets or posting in our forums.

I want to thank you all for the support!

To post questions about how to use Spruz and the platform please use our forums http://www.spru

Did you know you can use your own domain name or register a new one to use with your Free Spruz website? Replace the yourname.spruz.com with yourname.com or .net, .org, etc. You can add your own domain to your site for only $24.00 per year with additional discounts for 2 years. There is no requirement to upgrade the site for adding your own domain.

To get started go to http://www.spruz.com/?page=upgrade, once there select if you want to register a domain or use one your own. Then select the upgrade option to keep your site free! That is all there is to it!  

Spruz offers premium site packages that give many added advantages over our free websites. Upgrading to our premium site packages is very easy and you can switch back to a free site at anytime without losing any information.

Some of the features you will enjoy with Spruz Premium include;

·         Removes advertisements and gives full control over your own Ad Space. You can place your own advertisements to make money from your site or decide to not to display ads at all.

·         Ability to export your members and their emails to excel for use with your favorite email marketing software.

·         More file space, up to 20GB

·         Unlimited Bandwidth

·         Unlimited site modifiers

·         Unlimited Support Tickets

·         Unlimited Phone Support

·        

I want to first thank those of you that have made us aware of issues within the new update V1.99 that primarily consisted of an update to the Forums. We have been working hard to address problems and I am sure many of you have noticed that when we are contacted with quality details about a problem they are fixed quickly.

We have incorporated some really great stuff into the new forums. For example you now have full access to all your Icons and Smilies on the forum. This means you can upload your own images and smilies. When it comes to the look we have included access to the CSS file that controls the appearance of the forums or the forums will take on the color scheme of the rest of your website.

In the past 24 hours we have fixed the follow problems:

• Fixed problems with the styles and images being copied to the sites local files.
• Corrected the rating buttons so that will rate posts.
• Corrected a number of styling issues that did effect the appearance on some sites.
• Forum conflicts with site modifiers.
• Improved the font size on the forum view.
• Corrected a problem when Deleting Threads and Replies. Replies would be removed but the thread/topic would stay
• Added a link in forum options so that if the Style Sheet is not copied correctly or is damaged you can reset the theme and file structure.
• Fixed alternating row colors
• Fixed forum ad spot

New additions in the last 24 hours

• Added Forum option: You can set the option to require login for users to view the forums as a whole
• Added Forum option: You can set the option to require login for users to view forums based on the forum.

We are still aware of some page load time issues. If you are effected with page load issues please let us know in a support ticket.

Advisories

I wanted to address some of the most common questions:

"Forums do not show Topic or Replies" Forum counts update when a new topic or reply is added. Thus if you have a forum with posts in it, post a quick topic or wait until someone posts. At that point the counts will update.

"My forums are all centered" This is a problem with files not being copied correctly. Go to Forum options and click on the link to reset theme CSS and images. It is possible that you would see a cached version of the page. Delete your history and temp files if you see not change.

"We want the old forums back!" This brings me to a quote I remember “…people don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.” - Terry Pratchett

Comment and Forum Rules

I wanted to let you know I am very disappointed in how some people post comments, on every major update. I have see so many immature posts that I have had no choice but to delete them. We are still beta, because we are still improving and rolling out features that may be largely untested. We give the opportunity to use Spruz completely free, Spruz is one of the few places where, you will see the founders taking there time to personally answer user questions.

Do not post comments that directly insult the creators or staff of Spruz. This includes cursing, name calling, etc. Spruz is developed completely in the US by a very small team. We take Spruz very ser

We have been rolling out several small updates to prepare the system for Spruz 2.0. Included in a new update published to the system today, includes the ability for all upgrade premium sites to have full control over word filters. This means no more forced bad word filter. A nice feature of our word filter included the ability that allows you to replace words with other types of context. We should have a video released in the next few weeks that will give some examples on taking advantage of word filtering and the power it has.

We have been working hard on getting 2.0 ready for release. The forums are coming along great, I am sure many of you are really looking forward to this update. Our focus with the new forums has been making it much easier to use and to understand. We are hoping to have 2.0 ready for release by the end of next week.