Administerweb is proud to announce the roll-out of WorkSpace Web 3.0. It is a long-awaited update to our Content Management System for websites and organizational communication.

What's new in 3.0?

There are some significant improvements that our customers will see:

• A completely new and more intuitive interface.
• Publishing workflow for authors, editors, and managers.
• The ability to save work as a draft multiple times before approval and/or publishing.
• Web page versioning, so you can recover up to the last four published versions of a web page.
• Better control of universal styles within content editors and the published content.
• Several bug fixes.
• Bug reporting. Customers have a way to report bugs directly from the application.
• User documentation and help. (This will go live this week.)

There are some things you won't see directly, but make everything else possible:

• A cleaned up and expanded application framework, allowing for new components and functionality to be added in quick iterations.
• Growing development documentation.

Disaster Plan

Finally, we have gotten a number of inquiries from customers and potential customers about what happens to their website or other WorkSpace application if something happens to us. I don't know if they know something I don't (?!?), but let me publicly declare that Administerweb LLC has a disaster plan in place that will continue to develop as we continue to expand our offerings and customer base. Documentation, cross-training among team members, and our colocation partnership ensure that your organization is safe with us. Now let's hope we're safe, too!

Grace and peace,
Kevin Parker, CEO

Tonight we will be performing email server maintenance from around 11:15pm central until 1:00am central. There is more to come, so stay tuned.

Merry Christmas from Administerweb!

In the spirit of giving, we are performing some exciting upgrades to the WorkSpaceWeb Content Management System this evening.  You may have noticed the announcement on your WorkSpaceWeb Dashboard if you've logged in this week.  Details about the upgrade will come later this week, though you will notice some new things and new messages if you log in to your WorkSpaceWeb Dashboard before then.

When is the upgrade?

Tonight from 8:00PM until tomorrow morning at approximately 1:00PM (updated).

What is affected?

You will not be able to log in and edit your site content during the upgrade process.  We will send out another notice with the CMS is back up.  However, your website will remain alive and fully functional during the upgrade process (with the possible exception of a short down time near 3:00AM for a restart).

What if I have an emergency?

If you experience weirdness on your site (your public site, not the Dashboard) in the next 48 hours, please contact us via your usual channels.  We will be up and around even though it's Christmas time.  We will also thoroughly test your site before we give you the "all clear."

What's next for Administerweb?

We will be revealing details about new features and new applications over the next few weeks here on our company blog.  We're very excited about finishing up some new clients' sites this week also, as well as getting started with the Park Plaza Church of Christ site very soon on a new website and our cool new relationship manager called GroupConnexion™.  Stay tuned!

Also watch for new training resources to help you make the most out of your website beginning in January.

May the God who ripped through the heavens in a passionate rescue effort for us bless your life with true peace and direction this winter.

Regards,

Kevin Parker, CEO
Administerweb LLC
www.administerweb.com

Today I was getting ready to send out an eNewsletter for one of our clients, and I realized that they had no Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. These documents are necessary for every legitimate website, so I created them for the client. Then I linked them at the bottom of every Web page on the site, as well as the bottom of eNewsletters. (Notice that all pages on our site have a Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy linked in the footer.)

Why do you need a "Privacy Policy" and a "Terms of Use"? Let me count the ways:

1. They explain to site visitors what the rules are for your site and content, what you guarantee (which is basically nothing), and what you don't guarantee (which is basically anything).
2. It explains exactly what information you collect and why, as well as how to unsubscribe from correspondence.
3. It covers you legally in regard to your site, and is therefore a best practice.
4. Having these is required to be "whitelisted" by email providers like Yahoo! to whose users you may send email or newsletters. These statements are also important to keep you whitelisted by the new "anti-phishing" software included in modern web browsers. These statements, like our email policies, tell other technology providers (e.g. Yahoo! Mail, Microsoft, AOL) that your site is a legitimate and safe organization for their users. We want to be good Netizens (Internet citizens).

This list is not exhaustive, but these reasons are plenty. Having these 2 statements further moves your site toward Web standards and a professional Web presence. As an Administerweb customer with a WorkSpaceWeb site, you get these statements created for you as a part of our service packages.

Be good Ne

This year we have had a good relationship with our dedicated server partner. They provided Administerweb with a solid connection and a great server. Plus, they're just nice people to work with.

However, it has become obvious that Administerweb's needs have quickly exceeded what our hosting partner can provide for in the long term. Because of other customers, our hosting partner has occasionally had to take our server offline for network updates at times there were not optimal to us.

So to improve our current and future service to our customers, Administerweb is moving soon to a new colocation facility and doubling our servers. We are also improving our technology by moving to UNIX-based operating systems for our servers, including Apple OS X Leopard Server. We're very excited about this move and some of the new technologies it opens up for us to make available to you.

How will this affect our customers?

This move will mean we have more control over our servers and can set our own update schedules. It will also allow us to improve the uptime and speed of our web applications. Finally, this will help us keep our increased bandwidth needs affordable to our customers. In short, it will make life better for all of us.

This move will not result in significant downtime. In fact, we will have all of our customers up in the new facility before make the transition so that it happens instantly in the middle of the night. You will be notified when this transition is complete.

We thank all of our customers, and we look forward to reliably serving even more.

Administerweb has been very busy (what else is new?) these past several weeks. So here's a quick update:

We have several new customers coming on board with WorkSpaceWeb™ sites. In fact, Bill Garlough and I are traveling to Monroe, Louisiana as I type (Bill is driving, in case you wondered) to visit with a great church and a ministry looking for website solutions. Yesterday on the trip I spoke by phone to yet another great church in Tulsa that is coming on board later this week.

We are very excited to announce our next Web application coming soon: GroupConnexion™. GroupConnexion™ is a relationship manager, productivity tool, and social network for your organization. In a time where budgets are tight and productivity must by high, WorkSpaceWeb™ + GroupConnexion™ can really increase your group's efficiency.

Please contact us if you'd like to know more as we work toward completion of GroupConnexion™.

Soon we will be adding the ability to subscribe to this blog via RSS. Also, you will be able to once again sign up for our eNewsletter. Stay tuned!

Later today I will be packing up and going to the ACU Lectureship to show off WorkSpaceWeb at an exhibit. If you are going to be in the Abilene area September 21-24, come by the Teague Center and see me. I'd be happy to give you a personal demonstration.

Now that WorkSpaceWeb has been up serving sites for a while, we've taken the time to actually move our own websites over. I can't tell you how excited I am that the complete redevelopment of WorkSpaceWeb CMS is complete! Everytime I build a site or help a customer refine portions of their new sites, I get excited about the power and elagance under the hood.

This does not mean that we've added everything we're ever going to add--far from it. WorkSpaceWeb is a hosted CMS. And we upgrade segments of it and develop new functionality weekly. That's part of the beauty of Web apps vs. box apps. All of our customers get all upgrades at no extra charge according to their monthly plans.

Keep watching here for product updates, appearances, and posts about how to make the most use of information technology for your organization.