WebCards News and Updates

New Release: WebCards 2.5

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of WebCards 2.5. It is available to download in the Member Centre.

The main new features are the addition of monthly subscriptions and pay-per-card. This gives you huge flexibility in terms of charging for cards. We have phased out the use of credits but the data will still be saved so you will know which members have purchased credits in the past.

Further enhancements include a Flickr image finder and the ability to send the full card content directly in the notification email.

If you are not currently a WebCards member please subscribe today for an instant download.

New WebCards Release: Version 2.3

We are pleased to announce the availability of WebCards version 2.3.

Version 2.2 was a bit of a low key release and as such many people did not take the opportunity to upgrade. So here is a summary of the latest features from the last two versions:

• Full and complete support for stamps
• Audio manager
• Add poems to inspire your users
• Custom fields
• CSV import of user contacts
• Option to change order of categories
• Text version of html emails automatically generated
• Added configurable cookie domain for more reliability
• Add category cache
• Numerous bug fixes

The latest release is available in your Member Centre. If you are holding off extending your subscription now is the time to extend it.

If you are not currently a WebCards member please subscribe today for an instant download.

If you have any problems feel free to post in our forum or submit a support request.

Looking for a few testers

The latest version of WebCards is pretty much complete now and almost ready to be released.

To iron out any last minute bugs I am looking for a few people to test it before it is offically released.

If you are interested please email me at chris.charlton@gmail.com

WebCards Version 2 Released!

I am very pleased and extremely proud to announce that WebCards version 2 is released and ready to be downloaded.

WebCards is no longer free, but it comes at an excellent price with amazing support and 6 months unlimited updates.
No other e-card software offers you so many great features at such a small price. We are certain that you will be totally happy with your purchase of WebCards.

WebCards comes with a great feature set which includes

• Support for member accounts
• Option to charge users for sending cards with PayPal support
• Search engine friendly URLs
• Bulk Image Uploader
• Ability to add images to multiple categories and support for infinite subcategories
• Advanced options and bandwidth-saving settings
• Automatic thumbnail generation
• Ability to both upload and link images
• Robust ban settings – ban by email address or IP address – also includes IP search tools
• Template manager

You can also take a look at our full Feature Tour to see a lot, lot more.

If you have any questions please feel free to reply to this post or post a message to our brand new Support Forum.

Enjoy the new release!

Upcoming Feature: Bulk Upload

I just wanted to let people know about the latest feature coming in the next version of WebCards: bulk upload.

You simply upload all your chosen images to a specified folder (“import”) and refresh the page. All the images in the folder will be listed. You can choose which ones to upload and choose and name an category for each one. Thumbnails are automatically generated. There is no messing about with advanced options and it is a very quick way to add a lot of images.

The screnshot on the left shows what the bulk uploader looks like in the admin centre. As you can see, you don’t have to import all the images and you can choose which ones to upload.

I am keen to know what you think of this feature and anything you think needs adding or changing with it. Please post any suggestions you have on the forums.

New Feature: Search Cloud

Introducing the latest WebCards feature: the search cloud. OK, it ’s not a major new feature but I just want to let people know that latest WebCards development news.

If you don’t know what a search cloud is, it is a list of recent search terms with more emphasis given to terms that are searched for more frequently. More popular search terms are shown with a bigger font and less popular terms with a smaller font. They are popular on a lot of the social networking sites, such as last.fm and technorati.

The search cloud can be “dropped in” anywhere you like but I currently have it on the advanced search page.
You can take a look at the latest WebCard feature on the demonstration page. Although the demo is not particularly useable at the monet, you can still use the search feature and you can see how the search cloud changes.

Let me know what you think of it over on the forums.

Release: WebCards French Language Pack

For those of you who wish to support the French language on your WebCards installation, we invite you to download the WebCards French Language Pack. This Pack is suitable for WebCards 1.3.

The translation was done by Webcard Forum member Cattss and you can read their announcement on the forum.

There is a detailed explanation on how to use Language Packs in the documentation but it is a very simple process.

• Download the pack from the downloads page and upload it to your “export” directory. Do not unpack the .tar archive.
• Log in to your admin centre and click “Import/Export Language” under the “Languages” section.
• Choose the tarball lang-Francais.tar and choose a name for the language. French of Francais would be the most logical.
• Simply click “import” and the language will be ready for use by your users and administrators.

Big credit is due to Cattss for the excellent translation.

Release: WebCards Version 1.3

I am pleased to announce the availability of WebCards version 1.3 for immediate download.

This new features of this release include those announced in the previous blog post, including a new mailing class (PHPMailer), admin profiles and an administrator log. Please see the changelog for more details.

This release was made a few weeks ago but the announcement was delayed until some bug testing could take place. The feedback from the WebCards community has been excellent and some changes have already been fixed in the main release code, particularly the installation file.

An upgrade file is required to upgrade from version 1.2. Please read the upgrade instructions very carefully before you attempt to upgrade. Take a look at the upgrade documentation for more information.

Please feel free to post any bug reports or request help over at the WebCards forum.

A Few New WebCards Features

I thought I would share a few of the new features that I have added to WebCards over the last few weeks. I haven’t posted a development update in a while and I am keen to let people know how development is progressing.

1. New mail sending class

I have implemented PHP Mailer into WebCards. This replaces the old SMTP class that was used. I don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel and so decided to include an excellent, well-maintained mail class for sending mail. Sending email is very much the heart of WebCards, it is important that it works. Using PHP Mailer expands the sending methods to include mail(), SMTP, sendmail, Qmail and potentially even Gmail if you wish.

2. Admin profiles

Each administrator has their own profile which includes standard information such as name and email address and the ability to change their email address. This opens up the possibility for user permissions and also enables the implementation of a password recovery feature.

3. Administrator logs

In addition to the email logs, WebCards now features administrator logs. This tracks all activity such as editing images and templates, logging in, deleting cards and also tracks the cron logs when delayed cards are sent.

Please post on the forums if you have any comments or feature requests. Some requests that have been posted on the forums are already being implemented in the next WebCards release.

Fix for Database Error

Many users are experiencing an SQL error when upgrading to WebCards version 1.2.

The error looks similar to this:
MySQL said: Unknown column 'click_img' in 'field list'
Error number: 1054

It is caused by some missing fields in the database.

To fix this please download the patch www.mywebcards.net/12_db_fix.zip.

The main download file has also been updated.

If you have any problems please post on the forums.