iMinistries Church Website Content Management System Version 1.5 is Coming

Mozilla Firefox updated their browser to version 6 two weeks ago. While Firefox is one of our favorite and most used web browsers, this update created a few issues within our Content Management System. We were happy to report that the update to Firefox did not affect how people viewed or even interacted with your website. However, it severely affected Site Administrators.

After reviewing the various issues, it became apparent to us that a major update would have to be worked on. You might say that the iMinistries CMS is growing up. Next week we will be releasing iMinistries 1.5. This release will happen on August 29th.

Calling it 1.5 isn’t by accident. For the last several months, we have been working on an even bigger release to our system that we refer to as 2.0. This will be a game changer and we can’t wait to unveil it. We will begin to update you on those developments later in the year.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the improvements we’ve made with this release. Many of them are under the hood. However, a few will be noticeable improvements to how our system functions. Below are a few of note.

Browser Support

This is our biggest update and the one we are most happy about. From the public perspective, iMinistries websites have always worked in the major web browsers. We test every website in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari. From an admin perspective however, this wasn’t always the case. A few key features in the editor didn’t function as expected so we couldn’t say that we supported all major browsers within Site Administration. This is no longer the case! With this release, you can make updates to your website using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

As always, we recommend that you keep your web browser up to date (we’re talking to you, Internet Explorer 6 users!). Check out http://browsehappy.com/ as it lists all the current web browsers and provides links for download.

Images

• Upload multiple files at one time using the revised image uploader.
• Edit images using the Image Editor. This new feature gives you the ability to:
• Change image opacity.
• Crop images.
• Adjust image orientation .
• Adjust the image size.
• Control the margin on each side of an image.

Be careful as you can easily over write your original image.

Content Editor

• Full screen editing mode. No more distractions when editing your website. When enabled, the editor will take over your entire screen. Click the button again and it will be reduced to its original size.
• Paragraph styles now displays the font, color and size which makes it easier to choose.

Ministries

• We’ve given you the ability to highlight a ministry.
• In an upcoming release you will be able to add a thumbnail too.

Support

Before we close, we have one request. In a word, this update was extreme. As always, we will be monitoring the error logs to try and fix bugs before they become wide spread. While we have tested everything quite extensively, if you experience a bug simply go to  http://support.iministries.org and submit a ticket. When you do, be descriptive. Here is how.

Example

• The URL that the error occurred on - "http://www.iministries.org/ContentEdit.aspx?type=A&site_id=10267&organization_id=0&parent_id=0"
• What were you doing - "I was trying to create an Ad."
• The browser, version and operating system - "I was using Firefox 6 on a Mac."
• What happened - "When I hit save, the page said <and you can copy and paste in the error message that is provided>"