Developers' Blog
Homebuild Update 1.8
Tuesday 22nd December 2009 1:11 PM
Our latest upgrade to the Homebuild system has mostly concentrated on improving Homebuild's performance. To accomplish this we have made improvements throughout the platform Homebuild runs on as well as to Homebuild itself.
We have upgraded the Homebuild servers to the latest hardware, upgraded the operating system, upgraded PHP (the computer-programming language Homebuild it written in), added various technologies to cache and speed up Homebuild pages; we have even upgraded our connection to the internet to allow for massive amounts of bandwidth without Homebuild slowing down.
Which all contributes to a massive 200% - 300% speed boost for Homebuild!
As well as the usual under-the-hood improvements, there are some notable additions to Homebuild itself inthis update.
Homebuild Shop: Google Base Integration
Shop owners are now able to have their products appear in Google search results. By adding your products to a Google service called Base, your products can now appear alongside others in Google's shopping results (just hit the "Shopping" tab when searching in Google).
Shop: Expanding Menu
Previously, customers navigated the shop by clicking into categories and products in the main listing. This allowed the maximum screen space to be given over to products. We have added a second option, however. Shops can now include an expanding side menu, allowing customers to quickly "drill down" through their categories to find the product they want. Existing shop owners wishing to include this new option may require a new template for their shop to allow for the reduced space left for product listings. Contact us and we'll talk you through your options.
Google Analytics: Track Downloads
You can now see which files your visitors are downloading in Google Analytics (previously you could only see which pages they looked at).
Better Tooltip Popups for News and RSS Pages
We have implemented a new type of popup for calendar-style news and RSS reader pages, bringing a fresher look and more reliable positioning to your pages.
Although, we have tested the new setup thoroughly, with such a massive overhaul, some bugs may have slipped through. If you find any problems, please let us know immediately and we'll fix them.
Posted 1:11 PM | Permalink
New Update Live
Friday 18th December 2009 12:04 PM
We have just moved Homebuild onto a new, much-improved server, in addition to upgrading the Homebuild code to the latest version. This is a large and complex upgrade, so please let us know immediately if you notice and bugs and we will endevour to get them fixed as soon as possible.
Thank you, and we hope you enjoy the speed and functionality improvements with Homebuild.
Posted 12:04 PM | Permalink
