Kontrolit Version 3.6.0
After several months of development Kontrolit v3.6 has been released. Thanks go to our partner network and customers who have helpfully suggested various improvements to Kontrolit. The suggestions are evident in usability improvements, new features, and updated modules. Further, from bug fix to feature request, these issues follow-through on our commitment to deliver flexibility and power to partners and end users alike.
Today, Kontrolit Version 3 powers many sites including the homepages of Yeovil Vision, 4Networking, Insure Your Motor, Urecruit, and many more.
The Kontrolit V3.6 release contains many improvements, some visible from the first click, and others hidden beneath the hood. While the complete list of changes is too lengthy to list here, we have included just a few of the reasons we're so excited about Kontrolit v3.6.
New Features
Upload multiple images in one go
We use Kontrolit for our own site; we also help customers populate sites with their content. If something takes you a long time to do, it takes us a long time to do. Uploading lots of different images into the image manager used to be a time consuming task in previous releases as you had to either carry them out one at a time or know how to zip them into a single file. Kontrolit v3.6 makes uploading multiple images easy. Simply select the images from your local computer and upload.
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| Selecting images to upload (click for larger image) | Multiple images being uploaded (click for larger image) |
Site editors get to:
- See progress indicators for each image being uploaded as well as an overall progress bar
- View total number of images being uploaded
- Ability to knock out individual images from the upload set
Embed components into central document areas
How it used to be: Depending on your site design Kontrolit allowed you to embed components (predefined blocks of code) into certain areas of the web page. This was normally the top, left, right and bottom of the page.
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| Screen from Kontrolit.net showing two components in the left hand column of the page | Components embedded into the document |
How it is now: Site editors can now drop components into the central area of a web page. This new feature greatly increases the power of the component system as it provides site editors with many more opportunities to use components to support their content.
Management Information
Management information is critical to the success of any web site. Along with our web site traffic reports which are updated in real time showing you hits, visits, keywords etc. the following reports are also available:
- New documents per month
- New enquiries per month
- New users per month
- Top web sites searches – find out what the popular searches are, make sure you have content to fulfil those search terms
- All web site searches log – a more detailed look at what is being searched for on your site
- Log of which users have logged into the site and when
For sites running an online shop the following Management Information is also available:
- Number of orders by status (paid, delivered, cancelled etc.)
- Number of orders per month
- Total revenue per month
- Top product searches - find out what the popular search terms are
- All product searches – a more detailed look at what is being searched for on your site
Vote/Poll component
Polls are a great way of conducting basic market research and also allowing site visitors to interact with the site. The Kontrolit poll component allows administrators to have unlimited voting options, the ability to turn off voting and if necessary to require visitors to sign into the site before being allowed to vote.
Great updates to core Kontrolit modules
It’s not just about new features; the Kontrolit.net team are always looking at ways of improving the existing modules. Kontrolit v3.6 has some important updates to 3 of the 14 core Kontrolit modules.
Updated Kontrolit Shop
Product grouping & personalisation: Grouping of products allows the shop owner to display their products in a more efficient way. For example if you were selling shoes then you could group the products together by size and or colour. Hence there would be only one details page for that item and the customer would need to select the shoe size and colour before adding the item to their basket. The Kontrolit grouping mechanism for the shop is very powerful in that it will allow the site owner to program their own groups and methods for grouping. As an example the visitor can select colour from a drop down list or radio button list depending on how the site owner has set up the grouping method.
The grouping tools can allow a site owner to add personalisation to a product. For example if the site owner was selling clothes which had the option of adding the person’s name to the item during manufacturer the site owner could provide the visitor with the option of adding their name before adding the item to their basket.
Voucher code system: Vouchers can be added to a shop site so that the visitor can either receive a fixed or percentage discount on their order. Site owners can control vouchers by having start dates, end dates, set them to run once and/or multiple times.
International Shipping: Countries can be grouped together into regions by the site owner and unique shipping costs can be applied to any region. Site owners can now easily ship their products anywhere in the world.
Turn off VAT against a country: Depending on the goods being sold will depend on if you charge VAT when the customer is from a different country. The site owner can turn off VAT against any country they wish.
Turn off VAT against a customer: Some customers may not be charged VAT depending on the goods being sold, their location and/or status. The site owner can edit the customer account to prevent new orders for the customer from being charged VAT.
Unique SEO Tools Module Updated
Better targeting of key phrases: Documents can now be assigned target key phrases. When site editors are working on a document they can easily see what the target key phrases are and therefore what they should be optimising for. Also when site owners run SEO reports they can easily see at a glance documents that have no target key phrase attached to them, this quickly shows potential new opportunities for further optimisation.
Traffic lights for site targets: Every site has unique online competition. So the amount of work required to get good rankings will vary from site to site. Site owners can specify simple targets like the number of new documents to be added to the site every month. Site editors then see a simple traffic light system of red, amber and green on the admin panel home page to tell them how well the targets are being met. This then leads to site owners being more proactive with generating new content, creating Google site maps etc.
Site visitors now have a quick method of just dropping in an email address regardless of whether they have registered on the site or not. Site owners now have a choice when using the mailing list of either sending the email to users who have registered on the site (forum, shop or members) or non registered users (just dropped an email address in).
It's the little things…
There are also many small improvements that enhance your Kontrolit experience. Here is a quick highlight of some of them.
Only the components that you are using are turned on: By default all the components are turned off for new sites apart from the ones being used. This makes it much easier to manage components . Don’t worry all the different types of components are still available, just select “New Component” and choose from one of nearly 50 different types including, polls, marquee text, gallery slide shows and custom etc.
Components are assigned to areas: When creating or editing components you can assign them to different areas of the document e.g. header, left, right and footer. This makes it much easier to make sure you don’t add a component designed to be landscaped for the header into a right column.
Find out who has locked the document: When a document is locked mouse over the symbol to find out who is currently working on it and when they begun editing it.
New easy method to select the correct transition speed for some components: Instead of entering the transition speed in milliseconds choose from very slow, slow, medium, fast and very fast.
Easy way to insert YouTube videos: You don’t need to mess with source code views and objects anymore. Just paste the address of your YouTube video and we will automatically embed the video into your document.