We recently completed a simple but powerful upgrade to Gutensite that will allow much greater flexibility for page layouts. Traditionally when creating a basic html page ("my pages") you had the ability to work from a blank canvas, using the WYSIWYG editor to create anything you wanted. This is powerful, but good design is really beyond the capabilities of 99% of our users. And the entire purpose of the CMS is to allow anyone to edit the content, with the expectation that Gutensite will handle the design.

So we've introduced a few extra fields (under the "Extras" tab) which allow you to specify some common layout tricks: Heading, Sub-Heading, Pull-out Quote, List, Secondary Content Area, etc. When one or more of these are filled in, in addition to the general content of the page, a boring text page will suddenly come to life. This is a great way to spice up those long boring pages. Add some pull-out quotes, introduce a heading and sub-heading. Play around with the combinations and see what you come up with. We'll soon be adding a few more key feature fields, e.g. photo, promo-module.

Right now there is just one basic layout for these extra elements. But we will soon be adding various alternative layouts that you can choose from, based on specific layout ideas, or business needs, e.g. "2 Column Layout", "3 Column Layout", "Overview with Photo", "Detailed Description with 2 Photos", etc. Changing the layout design for a page will result in a totally new look for the page. And pro clients can have us create extra custom layouts that meet their own particular communication goals.

With this simple ability to alter page layouts, Gutensite has become a lot more flexible for enterprise level design needs. This is just a start, we have a lot of design related tools in the works. As always, we welcome your ideas.

We're cleaning house and slowly giving a makeover to all the designs for default specialty content pages. Most recently, we just redesigned the property list and details pages in keeping with the clean, modern theme that characterizes all the new default content. All our clients who didn't customize their property pages, will benefit from this free upgrade, giving their sites an instant refresh.

We have 3 new free design skins to add to our Free Design library (follow the link to see which are still pending). The San Vito was named after a small town where the designer spent a week with good friends drinking cappuccino in the piazza del popolo, waking to the chimes of the ancient bell tower and enjoying the slow life of Northern Italy. The template is now installed and ready for public use, the others should be live shortly. Like all three new designs, the San Vito is warm, textured, with a feeling of history. We hope it will appeal to Churches, Realtors, and Small Businesses that want to present an "old world" ethos.

The month of June brings three more new templates in the modern strain of design: Metro, White on White, and Wodka (light and dark). Be sure to checkout each of these new free design skins, they may fit  your site personality better than anything you are currently using. We believe these will be perfect for professional organizations that want a very clean, simple look. They may also work well for portfolio sites that want to feature large images. These templates present a simple home page, with limited options for custom "modules" or text area (which also means less need for updating content on a regular basis). Let us know what you think.

We have installed a new bold template called Endeavour, in honor of HMS Endeavour a Royal Navy research ship which was commanded at one point by Captain Cook on his first voyage of discovery in 1768. Our Endeavour has a large photo slideshow area on the home page, ample featured content areas, large chunky links, and some great hidden features. For example, individual pages can specify their own unique image which will show up in the header. If a page doesn't specify an image, it will display one of several random images you set for all secondary pages. This provides a great way to customize the look of each page of your site. We hope you like it!