SiteManager blog

We’re delighted to announce the launch of the finished SiteManager 7. Existing customers may now apply to upgrade.

Our pricing model has changed, as we’re opening SiteManager up to a larger audience of web design and marketing agencies.

Feature highlights

• Massive improvements to speed (up to 5x faster), reliability, scalability.
• New role-based toolbar, streamlined for ease of use.
• Bookmark sections of your site for easy selection / editing.
• New inline search facility, with advanced filters.
• One-click cleanup of HTML from external sources (e.g. MS Word).
• New template editor, simplified languages for developers: reduced 180 core components to 40.
• Full XHTML and HTML support.
• Many new components: lightboxes, carousels, slideshows and more.
• New integration options: embed external applications in your websites.
• New installer: upgrade to future versions in minutes (previously hours of manual work).
• Use folders to categorise Templates, Stylesheets, Forms.
• Fully compatible with Internet Explorer 8.
• Runs on PHP5 and 4 (previously only PHP4).
• Many bug fixes and usability tweaks.

In total we’ve made over 1,000 separate improvements to SiteManager 7 and modified over 1.2 million lines of code.

New pricing model

There is no longer an up-front cost for SiteManager. You simply choose one of four bands, and pay an agreed monthly charge:

*Prices exclude applicable VAT.

All prices cover the use of SiteManager as a hosted and managed service, with web-based support.

Prices do not include phone support, training, account management or other services your existing hosting may be bundled with. We’ve simplified our core offering for the best prices possible, but can still offer these services if you require them.

Enterprise customers may choose to license SiteManager for installation on their own servers, with entitlement to patches and a higher grade of technical support.

Upgrading to SiteManager 7

For the majority of existing websites, a fixed fee of £250 (ex. VAT) covers your upgrade. Once upgraded, your hosting charges may change (see above). If your website was developed by Silktide Studios, please contact them for details.

If your website is midway through development (i.e. not yet live), you should be upgraded for no charge.

Upgrading your site may involve significant work, depending on how old your site is, and whether it uses bespoke components. Because the underlying technology (PHP) has changed significantly, some of these may need work to be fully compatible. In most cases this work is covered by the £250 upgrade fee. In some extreme cases, we may deem this work impractical without an additional charge.

Bespoke components

From SiteManager 7 onwards, we’ve ceased offering the development of bespoke SiteManager components. Instead, there are a variety of new options for integrating external components, which will appear inside your website, but are actually developed separately.

There are many reasons for this:

• No custom components means less code to maintain.
• Less code means we can release SiteManager faster and more often in future.
• Less code means less to break, meaning higher reliability.
• More independence for you: develop your own components, no need to be tied to SiteManager.
• More of our time on what we do best: develop SiteManager.

Our sister agency Silktide Studios will be happy to help develop bespoke components for you, and have the advantage of being experts at working with Silktide’s own technology.