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.