All users are recommended to upgrade to this version. Upgrading from v7 is free and takes approximately 2 minutes, during which time your website will be unavailable.

See the complete change log.

All users are recommended to upgrade to this version. Upgrading from v7 is free and takes approximately 2 minutes, during which time your website will be unavailable.

See the complete change log.

All users are recommended to upgrade to this version. Upgrading from v7 is free and takes approximately 2 minutes, during which time your website will be unavailable.

Key changes

• Added built-in support for access keys
• Added built-in support for XHTML languages
• Added pagination support for custom menus.
• Many XHTML compliance improvements.
• Better performance when logging in with large numbers of users.
• Fixed a bug preventing entry of some Unicode characters inside custom scripts.
• Fixed a bug which could cause unexpected data loss.

See the complete change log.

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.

This is called a Zero Bug Bounce for a good reason - it will bounce back up again. We’re not claiming that SiteManager is bug free - no meaningful software is - but this is an excellent sign that we’re fixing issues faster than they’re reported, and that a solid release is imminent.

If you’ve ever wondered why software has bugs at all, you might want to read The Myth of Bug-Free Software:

“Look at some very solidly crafted code, for example, the space shuttle. The cost per line of code for the space shuttle is something like a thousand dollars per line. It’s so expensive because of the amount of care that goes into specifying the code, reviewing the code, the whole process they use. It is understandable that if you’re shooting up billion dollar spacecraft with human lives at stake, you’re going to put a little bit of care into that software. But everything has its cost.

The space program has had its share of bugs. Various Mars probes have flown off into the weeds. Rockets have crashed. But nevertheless the space program has a pretty good track record on software quality, but at tremendous cost. You can’t spend a thousand dollars per line of code in a dot com or even most major corporations. You simply can’t afford that.

People tend to think software is free, because it has no real-world presence. Software is not substantial like disk drives or automobiles—it is just people typing away at a keyboard. So, therefore, software must be free. But it’s not.”

For our part, we’re doing our best to make the latest release of SiteManager the most stable yet.

Further reading

• Hard-assed Bug Fixin’ - Joel Spolsky
• Bouncing Zero Bugs, Together - Fabulous Adventures In Coding

The latest test version (Release Candidate 4) of SiteManager is now available. This version focuses almost exclusively on bug and compatibility fixes, and adds support for Internet Explorer 8.

Highlights

Highlights

• Publication dialog shows thumbnails, hides unnecessary changes. Publication is faster.
• When editing a page, can jump directly into Template editor (and back) for that page.
• Added ability to easily add common ‘unusual’ characters (e.g. © € …) into Page names.
• Search results can now be clicked on to Publish, Delete (etc), as well as open the containing folder.
• Users can now create folders for Forms, Stylesheets and Scripts.
• Components further refined, in particular <sms:custommenu>, <sms:menu> and the new <sms:breadcrumb>. Total core components reduced to 40, with many legacy features being removed by default: discussion forums, polls, questionnaires.
• Opening most top-level folders results in more intuitive behaviour, with many panels opening automatically into a full sized mode.
• Significant speed improvements, particularly for large sites.

A complete list of all changes is recorded on the new Site Manager wiki. The wiki is a work in progress and further documentation will be developed during the remainder of April.

We expect there to be two more Release Candidate (RC4) this months, prior to launch, with much less changing in future releases.

What originally began as a functional upgrade, to address technical compatibility issues (with PHP5) has now become the largest rewrite of SiteManager since version 5.

Other than the name change (and a possible slight change in appearance) we expect this version to release with the same features as 6.1. From RC3, all documentation will be addressed as such.