We conduct frequent user tests and review your feedback from the blog and our customer support center to plan our development, and we take it all into account (drop-down menus anyone? we hear you). We can’t talk about all that we’re planning, but we’re happy to announce that we’ve just finished an exciting update to our award-winning SiteBuilder website-building tool. Here’s product designer Jerry to tell you all about it – Phil, Editor
We’re always trying to find ways to make it easier for you to build and maintain your websites, so based on your feedback we’re making some changes to SiteBuilder that we think will make it more efficient to use.
Visual Redesign
The first change is visual: when the update is made in the next few days, you’ll see that we’ve updated the icons in the toolbar at the top of SiteBuilder; same function, easier to identify icons. We’ve also refreshed the look of the element menus and shortcuts too, but that’s just the start for those…
Updated Shortcuts
SiteBuilder used to have four element shortcuts: Text, Image, Rectangle, and Site Navigation. By looking at which elements were used most frequently, we identified several that really should have a shortcut. So here’s the new list of element shortcuts: Text, Image, Photo Gallery, Media File, HTML, Rectangle, and PayPal Button.
If you want some extra screen space to work on your website, you can hide and show the shortcut bar by clicking the arrow button.
To make room for this expanded list, we removed the shortcut for Site Navigation. Why? Because most people create their websites using one of our design gallery’s templates with a site navigation already built in. Of course, if you’re starting your site from scratch or need to add another site navigation menu to your site (for example, to create a footer of links), you can still find that element in SiteBuilder’s element category menu. Only now you’ll look for it in the new Design & Links category…
New Element Categories
One key thing we’re doing is reorganizing SiteBuilder’s website-building elements into new, more useful categories. As we developed new elements over time, our old categorization got outdated, with too many main categories and none with labels. We wanted to regroup elements in a more efficient way that would be easier to use.
The new menu organizes all elements in five main categories, each of which has more specific subcategories to make elements easier to find:
- Content – Here’s where you’ll find elements for adding text, images, media content (like audio and video), and custom HTML to your site; everything you use to talk about your business in your own words, sounds, and images.
- Design & Links – These elements create the structure of your site, including navigational structure and the overall visual design of your site.
- Communication – This category has elements that let you interact with your customers, either through social media channels like your social networking site pages or a feed to your blog, or directly through email and chat. This category also has form elements that let you collect feedback and information from your customers.
- Information – This category holds elements for information display like your location, time and date, and the weather.
- E-Commerce – Anything related to selling through your website can be found here, like PayPal buttons and shopping carts, the SimpleStore add-on, and, if you have an e-commerce package, your Storefront.
Personal Elements
The five main categories hold elements that are best suited for building a professional-looking business website. The remaining elements have been given their own category called Personal Elements, because they’re often used on personal websites. If you want to access those elements, just select View > Show Personal Elements.
We know that there’ll be some adjustment for those of you who know the existing menus like the back of your hand, but we really believe that you’ll find the new categories make better sense and will be easier to learn and use.
Descriptions
Another goal of the redesign was to make it easier to understand what each element does without having to consult a help menu. In the new SiteBuilder, when you mouse over an element in the shortcuts bar or in the main menus, you’ll get a description of the element and some notes about how best to use it. If you want more detail you can always go to the Help tab (the one with the question mark on it) in the element’s properties editor, but now we’re putting the basics front and center so you can build more intuitively, and more quickly.
New Element
We’re also adding a new element called “Social Networking” to help you take advantage of the power of social networking sites to help you grow your business; we’ll be covering that in another post in a couple of days.
That’s it for now! We hope this refresh of SiteBuilder will make it even easier for you to build a great-looking website. We’ve scheduled the update for the next week, so stay tuned, and let us know what you think!
September 3, 2009 at 8:29 pm |
Thanks Jerry for the sneak preview and will look forward to seeing the depth of the new updates in terms of increased functionality in the program itself.
Susanmj
http://www.homesteadconnectionforum.com
September 4, 2009 at 6:14 am |
Homestead – this update is a little underwhelming for me – where are all the true enhancements to your product. From reading the above it seems that this is nothing more than re-arranging the furniture in the house – that’s it.
When will you truly add some new feature – like the FORMS items – this area is really laking – I actually have to use an external vendor for online form submission because the Homestead Form items are so basic.
Also – how about Sitebuilder for us Mac users – more and more people are using Apple computers yet you have no support for us. When will you use the resources of Intuit and really create some really useful features???
September 4, 2009 at 7:01 am |
WOW! I’m so excited to try this out! It looks like you guys have been really hard at work making all these changes. Thanks for making my favorite website building tool even better.
September 4, 2009 at 7:13 am |
I sure hope you have a flash application.
September 4, 2009 at 2:22 pm |
This is awesome! All of the updates that you mentioned are updates that I’ve wanted for my site and other sites that I’ve built for non-profits. I am anxiously waiting for the updates.
Homestead is indeed the best!
LaDonna
September 4, 2009 at 2:47 pm |
Excited about the idea that they are changing things… Site Builder has been in need of a big change for some time.
I hope they have .PNG support, and hand coding while still be able to use site builder (back and forth). Some other bells and whistles would be nice but these are the two things I would really love.
September 4, 2009 at 2:51 pm |
PS: Anyway to get the update early???
September 4, 2009 at 3:10 pm |
I hope you will give users the option of reverting back to the old version if they can’t get along with the new version.
September 4, 2009 at 5:33 pm |
I was *really* hoping you’d be announcing that SIteBuilder would now be Mac-compatible. (SIteBuilderLite is a complete waste of time.)
I know you’re an Intuit company, but couldja pleeeeease create a way to get SIteBuilder to be usable on a Mac?
September 4, 2009 at 7:42 pm |
What about upgrading the sitebuilder content so we can make more modern looking websites? How about some newer templates that don’t look like they are home brewed?
September 4, 2009 at 8:45 pm |
Sure hope there’s an element to create RSS feeds from text. My readers want to subscribe right off of my site, but they cannot. It’s time to join the 21st century, Homestead. I’m about to jump ship!
September 4, 2009 at 9:15 pm |
I’m glad you’re making a ton of changes to the SiteBuilder! Great job. Are you really going to provide dropdown menus?
There are a bunch of out there that are using SiteBuilder to do websites for clients who want to make changes and updates. One of the problems with this is the contact forms sends an email with Homestead as the sender. This looks really bad and I have to explain why the form response doesn’t say that it’s from their new website. This would be a nice change even if it’s just something generic like Your Form Submission or New Submit Info.
Thanks,
Jim
September 4, 2009 at 9:17 pm |
Any hopes of adding forums as an option? I’d really like to add one to my site…
September 5, 2009 at 4:04 am |
I hope you will give users the option to revert back to the old version should they not get along with the new version of SiteBuilder.
September 5, 2009 at 7:10 am |
Will we ever be able to use the full site builder on a MAC BOOK? It is so annoying having to have two computers, one just to update my site!
Joanne x
P.S I love homestead hence why Id rather have two computers than change companies! lol
September 8, 2009 at 12:04 am |
I don’t need all these revamp stuff. I’m so used to the commands and menus over the years that any redesign to move them around will only slow me down.
The key features that are missing are still missing, i.e. creating tables (like in Microsoft Word), and a single password sign-in facility for the entire site. Currently there is only single page password sign-in and each time you visit the page you have to re-enter the PW.
Also, why not add a Reader’s Comment Box feature in Sitebuilder, similar to this blog?
Francis
September 8, 2009 at 11:00 am |
Can’t wait until the updates are complete. Sounds exciting! Thanks for making my life easier.
September 10, 2009 at 12:51 am |
Have just finished looking over the new update. I think the new interface will be helpful for those new to Homestead and I love the fact that you’ve included some tips along with some of the elements such as the Clip Art and the advice to use sparingly. Also putting all those ‘really unnecessary’ elements under Personal was a good idea too.
Disappointed that the hinted at drop-down menu wasn’t included in the update or any of the other features users have been clamoring for. Is there another update imminent?
Thanks for the new look and I think once my fingers are retrained it will be a snap to use!
Susan
Homestead Connection Forum
http://www.homesteadconnectionforum.com
September 10, 2009 at 10:01 am |
Great stuff. EXCEPT it is still not blog-friendly. And then it is all the annoying stuff about here is how to SHARE my website. It is using most of the space on my PC. Helpful not for us…. ANNOYING.