SiteBuilder 3 Released! SiteBuilder 3 Released!
Wed, Mar 30 2005

SiteBuilder 3 is the latest release of our core Content Management System / Web Application Engine. SiteBuilder is the software that provides the foundation for all the sites we develop, allowing us to build extremely complex sites with advanced functionality in a very short time. Rather than start from scratch for every site we can start with the SiteBuilder framework, define the site sections required, put on a custom "skin" (or design), and add in all the site content.

This saves us a huge amount of time and allows us to provide sites with extremely advanced functionality at a far lower cost than if we started from scratch every time.

SiteBuilder version 3.0 is the next major step forward for SiteBuilder. New features in version 3.0 include:

  • A streamlined installer that allows us to set up new sites even more quickly and easily than before. We can go from nothing to a configured Content Management System complete with Customer Relationship Management, Emarketing, and News in under 5 minutes!

  • An entirely new "Online Store" module to allow you to sell products online. This module is the successor to the old "Products" module, but re-written from scratch to allow much more flexibility and many more features including smoother bulk product imports and integration with MYOB.

  • An entirely new "Payment Gateway" module that provides enormous flexibility in payment methods. With support for a range of transaction types including real-time credit card processing, offline card processing, and invoice / account billing, you can set your site up to accept payments in the appropriate format for your business.

  • An entirely re-written shopping cart. The new site-wide shopping cart allows items from various sections of the site to be added to the cart and paid for all at once. This feature is far more powerful than it sounds, because different sections of your site may have totally different content types. For example, maybe you have one section that sells products, one section that allows users to sign up for training courses, and another where they can register for "premium" site membership. The new shopping cart allows all these different kinds of items to be put in the cart and paid for at once rather than requiring multiple transactions. The new shopping cart also has more display modes, allowing you to make the contents of the shopping cart visible to users on every page in a "mini-cart" format so they have instant visual feedback on what they have already added to the cart.

  • Syndication. You've probably heard of "blogs" and "newsfeeds", where a site publishes a list of news items and allows users to "subscribe" to the feed using special software called a "news reader" or a web browser such as Firefox that can act as a news reader. SiteBuilder 3 includes a syndication feature that allows content from various sections of the site including a "news" section or a "blog" section to be published as an RSS or Atom syndication feed.

  • Podcasting. If you've been following the IVT News emails recently or read my articles in The Age or Sydney Morning Herald you'll have heard of Podcasting, the craze that allows businesses and individuals to produce their own "radio" programs for distribution via the Internet. Podcasting is an extension to syndication, with MP3 audio files enclosed within the syndication feed. Podcasting support has been included in SiteBuilder 3 so if you've been getting excited about it now is the time to talk to us about setting up a Podcast for you or your business!

  • Subtemplates everywhere! Subtemplates allow much more flexible control over page layout. Previous versions of SiteBuilder provided templates to control the overall page layout, allowing pages to be displayed using a different "style" for each site. However, some content such as product lists and news lists were still in a fixed format such as with an icon on the left and a title. Subtemplates allow even list layouts to be totally customised on a per-site basis.

  • Automatic sitemap generation. A sitemap provides an overview of the sections of your site in one simple page, making it a great way for visitors to see where everything is. They also help with search engine rankings because it makes your site easier for search engines to index. SiteBuilder 3 includes a "Sitemap" module that allows a sitemap to be generated automatically for your site, and updated automatically whenever a change is made. No more manual updates to sitemaps!


The features listed above are just the start. SiteBuilder 3 also has a bunch of less significant features as well as a lot of internal changes.