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Do you ever get those email chain letters at work with funny pics?

Why not stick them on your corporate intranet (or even your website) to stop your email servers getting clogged up. Sending an email containing a URL to a web page is far quicker and easier than a big bloaty email full of pictures and it's a good way to get people to look at your website.

Hosting Pricing Structure Update

As part of our roadmap for 2006, we have updated our pricing structure for hosting [archive:Confluence] ([archive:Builder]) as follows:

Clients who's hosting rate has changed will remain on their current rate if their band cost has been increased or will be moved on to the lower rate if their band cost has been decreased.

As usual, a 10% discount is given for paying quarterly in advance and a 20% discount is given for paying anually in advance.

We will be adding various value added features to certain hosting bands over the coming weeks and months so watch this space!

And, yes, we will be coming up with some more imaginative names for the hosting bands - if you have any ideas for a good naming convention, send them in am email to gfraser@adaptavist.com

Builder 1.4 - Comming Soon...

Just a quick note to let you know we're still busy working on the Builder 1.4 Confluence Theme which will be compatible with the latest [archive:Confluence] 2.1.1 and for the first time available for hosting on external sites!

We've had a large number of enquiries regarding the theme since we first released it for use with our hosted clients' accounts. If you don't know what the Builder Theme is, you are looking at it right now!

The Builder Theme allows [archive:Confluence] to be used to create professional looking websites and intranets by changing the page layout slightly, adding a customisable menu and footer bar to your content and enabling a far higher level of customisation of page elements such as headings and colours, etc.

The release of the theme has been delayed a little bit because we've been working on our "Confluence Farm Manager" - currently an internal tool which enables us to more swiftly manage our ever-growing hosting service (more news on this at a later date).

We now have a full set of beta testers for the Builder Theme v1.4 and will be contacting them individually when the testing commences. In addition, any of our hosted clients will be able to upgrade their account to the latest Confluence (v2.1.1) and the Builder Theme v1.4.

There are some known issues with Builder Theme v1.4 that may affect some existing/prospective clients should they use it:

• It requires Confluence 2.1.1 - due to the changes in the user management introduced in v2.1.1 (and Builder's reliance on that aspect of Confluence), we decided to skip v2.0.x and focus on the latest version of the software.
• Labels are not shown when viewing a page (due to popular demand from existing clients) - to view and edit labels for a page, you must edit the page. We hope to have an option as to whether or not to show labels when viewing a page later in the year when Builder 2.0 is released.
• The theme will initially not support the "labels heat map" (accessed from the tab within "Browse Space" on the default Confluence theme). We hope to add support for this by version 1.5.
• The visual (WYSIWYG) editor does not work in Firefox when using the Builder theme - we hope to have this fixed by version 1.5 (or sooner if one of our beta testers can find what's causing the bug). However, the visual editor does work in Internet Explorer.

As soon as Builder 1.4 is released, we are going to start work on version 1.5 - essentially adding support for the label "heat map" and fixing the visual editor bug in Firefox.

It should also be noted that, as with the current version, the Builder Theme only allows customisation of the space-level pages. Have a look around our website to get a feel for what is themed and what is not. We intend to add support for global pages in Builder version 2.0 (so you can set it as the site theme and/or a space theme).

Website Restructure Begins

The process of restructuring our website has just started so you may notice a few broken links and there could be some pages that don't make much sense for the next few days.

When Adaptavist was formed, our first product offering - Builder - was a combination of Confluence, our Builder Theme and our hosting services.

Now that we are planning to release the Builder Theme seperately for use on external sites, we need to extract the Confluence and Hosting components from our [archive:Builder] product section.

The Builder Feature Tour has become the [archive:Confluence - Feature Tour] and we'll be creating a new version of the Builder Feature Tour that relates specifically to the features of the Builder Theme.

A new section - "Host" will be added to the site, specifically for Confluence hosting. At a later date we plan to offer JIRA hosting, although our current focus is Confluence.

The three sections - Confluence, Builder and Host will eventually share the same price calculator to make it easy to buy any combination of items.

Website Restructure - Phase 1 Complete

The first phase of our website restructure is now complete.

The old Builder section has now been cleanly split in to three categories:

• [archive:Confluence] - although an existing section, the Builder Feature Tour has now been moved here and renamed [archive:Confluence - Feature Tour] as have a few other bits and peices.
• [archive:Builder] - a dedicated section for the Builder Theme, including a new [archive:Builder - Feature Tour] amongst other things.
• [archive:Host] - a new section dedicated to our hosting services.

We've also added a note that we give a 10% discount for JIRA licenses/renewals/upgrades - for more information on JIRA, an awesome issue and project management system, hop over to Atlassian's Website

We'll be adding some additional content and making other minor changes over the next week or two, but for now... Welcome to our new look website!

Our next big website-related task is to add in a better online purchasing system but first we must get [archive:Builder] 1.4 released!

Confluence 2.1.x Compatibility

After lots of long hours by numerous developers around the world, most plugins have now been upgradeded to work with Confluence 2.1, including:

• Most of David Peterson's macros - see: RandomBits.org
• The Calendar plugin
• Adaptavist's Content Formatting Plugin, Rate Macro and the html-tag have all been upgraded for use with Confluence 2.0.x and 2.1.x

You can find out which Confluence versions are supported by various plugins by clicking here.

Soon, the Confluence 2.1.x revolution will begin!

Builder 1.4 Launched

To mark the launch of [Builder v1.4], we're giving away a free copy of this much sought-after theme...

After countless late nights, we've finally launched Builder 1.4 for Confluence 2.1.2 and above.

What is Builder?

You're looking at it now! [archive:Builder] is a theme for Atlassian's [archive:Confluence] product that simply makes it more customisable:

• Dedicated space for a full logo banner
• Customisable menus
• Far more control over look and feel of your content
• Customisable footer bar

Builder allows you to use Confluence to:

• Deliver your coroporate website or intranet, by making it look the way your marketing department require it to
• Develop your online documentation at a faster pace, because you don't need to worry about the way things look
• Publicise your conference site, by making it look more professional and unique
• Accelerate your open source project, because now you can easily update the content and spend more time coding
• Promote your charity site, because you can make it accessible to a wider audience
• Present your personal home page, because you can tweak the design until your heart's content
• All of the above: Because you can customise each "space" independantly or make them all look the same.

If you want to find out more about how [archive:Confluence] and [archive:Builder] can benefit your organisation, please Contact Us.

Availability

This is the first version of the Builder theme that is available for external hosting. For pricing, please see [Builder - Price List]

The theme is still free for clients using our [archive:Host] service and we've been busy upgrading our clients' sites to the latest version of [archive:Confluence] and [archive:Builder].

Builder 1.4 will officially go on sale on Monday 30th January, 2006. To find our more, see our [archive:Builder] product section.

Win a Copy of Builder!

If you want to win a copy of the latest version of the Builder theme, including 12 months support and upgrades, all you have to do is come up with decent names for the bands of our [archive:Host] service:

We're sure you'll agree that the current names, B-F and X, are truly pants! We've had a few entries so far but no clear winners so there's still plenty of opportunity to win!

The Prize

The winner will receive:

• A shiny copy of the [archive:Builder] v1.4 theme for use with their existing Confluence 2.1.2 installation
• 4 hours email assistance within a 1 month period to help configure the theme
• Free upgrades for 2 years

Submitting Your Entry

Send us an email listing your choice of name for each of our hosting bands.

Example:

B = <whatever>
C = <whatever>
D = <whatever>
E = <whatever>
F = <whatever>
X = <whatever>

The type of Confluence license determines which hosting band a client starts at but clients can then upgrade to any of the higher bands if they want more resources (eg. if their site starts getting really big and they need more RAM). As such, the bands can't be named after Confluence licenses.

The contest will run for at least 1 month. There is no closing date as such to this contest - we'll keep it running until we receive an entry that wins!

Judging Criteria

All submissions will be judged by Adaptavist staff based on the following criteria:

• Complimentary Names: Each band should have a distinctive yet complimentary name - the band names should be clearly different from one another, but have some common theme
• Incremental Benefits: Upgrading to a higher band results in more resources and will eventually result in more features - we want the names of bands to reflect this
• Impressiveness: We want names that sound impressive - we're techies after all
• Unique Name for Band X: We want a very unique name for our "custom" band X - preferably one that conveys the fact that it's tailored to a clients specific requirements

In short, just help us get some awesome names for our hosting bands!

Terms & Conditions

[Click here for Terms & Conditions].

Builder 1.4.1 Complete

In previous news articles, and elsewhere, we'd indicated that the Builder 1.4 theme would not provide access to labels (eg. popular labels list, etc). We had hoped to release Builder 1.4.1 in February or March, but ran in to a small problem - we finished it a month ahead of schedule and we had to release it today!

You'll find the link on our View menu above:

We've also fixed several other minor annoyances, including:

• Icons for "Log in" and "Sign-up" fixed
• Add page to favourites button fixed
• Numerous improvements to menu in terms of performance and reliability
• Bigger edit boxes in theme config and their width is automatically defined by page size

The next version will now be based almost entirely on feedback from our clients - both existing and prospective. If there's something you want in the theme, please Contact Us and help shape the future of this product.

Builder 1.4.1 Official Launch

The [archive:Builder] 1.4.1 Confluence Theme is now officially available for use with third party sites.

Based on customer feedback, we are offering the theme at an introductory price of £125 GBP. This includes a perpetual license to use the theme as well as 12 months maintenance (support and upgrades).