brickCMS 2.4: New Version Released

We are pleased to announce the release today of the new version of our CMS system: Brick CMS 2.4!

New features include:

• HTML5
• Multi-address shipping
• Back in stock
• Affiliate code system
• Improved checkout
• HTTP Compression

HTML5

Brick is already using xHTML version 5 - the system that is to be launched by W3C.org in 2014.  Whilst it's still going through the approval process with W3C.org, Brick's websites will already be fully HTML5 compliant upon launch.

Example: http://­validator.­w3.­org/­check?uri=­http%­3A%­2F%­2Fwww.­brickweb.­co.­uk

Multi-address shipping

From now on it's possible for your customers to select different shipping addresses and shipping methods for separate items of their order.

At the point of order on the product page they can specify an item's delivery location whilst adding it to the basket:

On the shopping basket page they will see the items grouped with their respective delivery locations:

This makes it easy to create a single order that will be delivered to more than one destination.

Notify me when back in stock

If a product is out of stock then visitors can ask to be informed when it comes back into stock.

On the product page a link will be given when the product is out of stock:

Upon clicking this a Product stock request form is opened:

The visitor will receive an email as soon as the product is back in stock:

Your customers will know instantly that your product is back in stock and will be able to purchase directly!

Affiliate code system and filter orders by affiliate code

Another new development is the issue of a code (you choose the code text yourself) to anybody who can help you to sell your website products.  It will appear as follows: 

http://­inkthreadable.­co.­uk/?affiliate=­brickweb

This will enable you to track all orders placed using the affiliate code under Orders Manager:

Improved checkout

We have restructured and simplified the checkout stage as follows:

new CAPTCHA

In the continual battle against SPAM on websites we use a variety of CAPTCHA systems.

The latest one was developed by Google, but we found this far too complex (symbol recognition was difficult), so we created a new version:

This makes it possible to simply copy and paste the code: it is still protected from SPAMMers, but you don't need to type it manually!

We continue to work to protect websites against SPAM and our next system - currently under development - will not request spam protection codes at all.

Ability to specify order of banners

Some of our customers had requested the ability to set the order of the banners on their website, rather than having them appear on a random basis.  We have developed this so that you can run the banners in whichever order you choose by going into Ads Manager.  There is also the option to turn on 'Shuffle':

HTTP Compression turned on

This provides a much faster download rate for your website.  Where we had formerly used HTTP Zip compression to speed up page load where there was a large amount of data (eg in Orders Manager in the Control Centre), we found that issues remained with caching compressed pages.  This had not been supported by Internet Explorer until version 10.0.  Now we can compress and cache most pages and as a result websites download much faster.

NOTE: All new websites will include these new features. If you want to add these features to your existing website then please contact us.