We have released a plugin for the Contacts app, which significantly enhances its functionality. You can quickly evaluate the difference by looking at the contact management panels shown in the picture below (before and after installation of the PRO plugin):

Important features of Contacts PRO

Advanced search by any field and various conditions including data provided by other apps; e.g., "find customers who ordered certain product within specified period". A search query can be saved as a permanent filter available in the left navigation bar for further use.

Field constructor enables you to add custom fields to contact profiles so that you can store additional information about your contacts, which may be required for your business needs.

Contact import from CSV files or simple text copied and pastes into a text field will enable you to quickly fill your contact database by transferring data from various address books and other sources.

Search and auto-merging of duplicate contacts helps to easily find contacts with identical email addresses or mobile phones and merge them to eliminate excessive records in your contacts database.

Online log of user and customer actions shows information about different actions performed in your Webasyst backend and in customers' online accounts: logins, logouts, adding and editing data, new orders, new support requests, registration, signup for newsletters, unsubscription from mailings, etc. This functionality will enable you to analyze online activity of your customers and employees to improve the overall efficiency of your business process.

Event planning in a common corporate calendar available to backend users.

Birthday list displayed on a calendar to help you remember the birthdays of all your colleagues, partners, and customers.

Email notifications on users' actions, birthdays, and scheduled events.

Notes can be added to any contact to store arbitrary text information about anyone.

Company is a new contact type. Person contacts can be associated with company contacts.

"On map" mode to let you view contacts' addresses on a Google map one by one or in groups.

Registration (signup) form is a tool for collecting contact information from your website visitors. They can submit their name, and email address or phone number. You can use these data to establish contact with your clients and thus create your unique contacts database to develop your business.

Special notes about transition from Contacts to Contacts PRO

After the installation of the PRO plugin, all your contacts and current settings will remain the same. Most basic functionality available in the Contacts app will also remain available with the PRO plugin. The most notable change is connected with contact categories. We have decided not to support categories, because in the PRO plugin we have introduced contact lists and filters, which offer more useful functionality and are a powerful replacement for categories.

In the basic version of Contacts there are two types of contact categories:

1. System categories are automatically created, maintained, and completed by other Webasyst apps. For example, the "Store" category is created when the first customer places an order in your online store, and this customer is added to that special category. Similar to the store, the first registered author of the a comment in the blog is added to special "Blog" category.
2. Custom categories can be created manually when you are using the basic Contacts app.

When the PRO plugin is installed, both of these category types are retained in the form of contact lists, and you can continue using the as before. However, once you delete any of them, you cannot restore it any more. Instead of that, you can run contact search by the conditions which were used to complete the previous category, and save your query as a permanent filter. A filter looks very similar to a category, but its internal operating principle would be different; a filter always displays up-to-date contact data returned at the time when you open a filter in your backend, while a category is completed and updated only when it is required so by the application it is connected with.

Example

Suppose a customer has placed his first order in your online store. This customer will be automatically added to the "Store" category. Later his order may be canceled. However, that customer will still remain in the "Store" category even though he has no new or completed orders any more and may even become your partner or colleague in the future.

Compare this behavior with that of a filter in Contacts PRO. Suppose that we perform contact search by condition "placed a new order in online store" and save this query as a filter named "Store (new order)". When a customer places a new order, he is taken into account by this filter and is displayed when you select this filter. When an order of such a customer is canceled, then the customer is automatically deleted from the filtered list. This is how you can use filter "Store (new orders)" to view an up-to-date list of your customers who have just placed new orders. Now let us create another filter "placed order which is currently in 'Completed' state". This filter will display all customers who have paid for ordered items and already received them.

So, instead of one system category named "Store" in Contacts app, you can set up an arbitrary number of various contact selection filters using Contacts PRO plugin; e.g.:

Placed order and chose shipping method "X"
Paid for order
Placed order which is currently being delivered
Purchased product "X" in September
Placed orders and sent support requests during past year
etc.

The purchase price of Contacts PRO is reduced at the start of sales: $89 $44.99.

This special offer remains valid until October 1, 2014.

Buy Contacts PRO now

Become one of the first users of this new software product! Contacts PRO will be the core component of the future Webasyst CRM, which we are currently developing. Your personal opinion and your suggestions will determine how the product will be developed and what features will be included in it.

Great news for Webasyst Cloud users! We are introducing new pricing plans, which will reduce your web hosting costs and will make Webasyst Cloud more attractive than similar services provided by other hosting companies. Now the price of web hosting in Webasyst Cloud begins at only $3/mo!

Before

“Standard” plan: $6.99/mo, 2 GB, up to 2% CPU usage.

Now

	Mini	Pro	Premium
	$3/mo.	$15/mo.	$25/mo.	If you need more
Disk space	1 GB	10 GB	20 GB	+ $0.06/day for each extra GB
CPU kernel load per hour	1%	3%	5%	+ $0.02/h for each extra percent of CPU load
Free .COM domain when paid for	12 mo.	6 mo.	6 mo.	If purchased separately, $14.95/year
Linked domains (sites)	1	5	10	+ $1.66/mo. for each extra mapped domain
Link your existing custom domain name	$0	$0	$0

Free domain name registration

We will register a new domain name or will extend your existing domain if you pay for 6 months of Cloud hosting (Pro and Premium plans) or for 12 months (Mini plan) in one order.

Extra usage prices

With any plan you have chosen, you may exceed basic resource limitations such as CPU load or disk space, and simply pay additionally for such extra usage. The prices for extra resource usage have remained the same as before (shown in the table above).

For example, your account may be associated with the "Mini" plan and occupy 3 GB disk space instead of 1 GB; in this case your monthly bill will include only $6.60/mo.

Hosted use of Shop-Script 5 now costs less, too!

Another good news is that we have reduced monthly cost of hosted use of Shop-Script 5 from $19.99/mo. to $14.99/mo!

Before these changes, the total cost of hosted use of Shop-Script 5 in Webasyst Cloud was equal to $26.98/mo. ($6.99/mo. for cloud hosting + $19.99/mo. for hosted use of Shop-Script 5). Now the monthly bill for the same service begins at only $17.99/mo.

How do I switch to new plans?

You can choose one of new plans in the Hosting app in your Webasyst account.

If you received 12 months of free Cloud hosting when you ordered a Shop-Script 5 license, then there is one more advantage for you: we have automatically upgraded your Standard plan to Pro, and the expiration date of the prepaid period has remained the same. Instead of 2 GB disk space you have now 10 GB space. When the prepaid hosting period expires, you can either extend your account with the current plan or choose a different plan in the Hosting app.

If you did not receive a Cloud account within the special offer, then your account still operates on the Standard plan (2 GB, $6.99/mo.). You may either keep this plan or choose a different one.

The Standard plan remains valid, but you cannot choose it when you create a new account in Webasyst Cloud.

Free web hosting with Shop-Script 5 license

Special offer "1 year of free hosting for ordering a Shop-Script 5 license" ends on September 30, 2014. You if would like to use this special offer, do not miss this opportunity!

Effective October 1, 2014 you will not be able to create a new account with the Standard pricing plan. We will continue to offer free Cloud hosting for customers ordering Shop-Script 5 licenses. With each license you will be able to receive one of the following options: 6 months for Mini plan, 3 months for Pro and Premium plans.

Why we recommend choosing new pricing plans

Hosting a website in Webasyst Cloud is more attractive than almost anywhere else! Now you may want to choose your own web hosting company only if you would like to control the software installation, if you need to edit files via FTP connection, or if you simply want your online store or website to be hosted on your own server/VPS. Should you need to have a fully functional online store or website, and be able to extend its functionality using plugins available in the Webasyst Store, then it is easier, faster, and more reliable to sign up for an account in Webasyst Cloud.

A complete online store only for $17.99/mo., or for $3/mo. with a purchased permanent Shop-Script 5 license, is one of the best offers available on the market today!

We are excited to announce a major update, upon which we have been working this summer and which has affected almost all Webasyst components: Webasyst framework kernel, Site, Contacts, Shop-Script 5, Blog, Photos, Helpdesk apps, and all basic design themes. Including the design themes, this update was applied to a total of over 40 software products, and all these products are already available in your Installer!

New vision for CMS

The main point of this update was to facilitate the use of Webasyst and Shop-Script 5 by beginners for creating a website or an online store. Because Webasyst framework is very flexible in creation of multiple websites powered by different sets of Webasyst apps connected with each other only by means of routing setup, website management has never been absolutely trivial. Because it is equally important both to provide maximum flexibility for experienced users and to help beginners quickly understand the basics without having to go into details.

In this update, we have made a large step forward by creating a new user interface for our design editor. Now you can edit settlement settings (routing rules) directly in the app you are currently using without opening the Site app. This significantly facilitates acquaintance with the software by first-time users! Before this update, you had to use the Site app to create online storefronts for Shop-Script 5, but now these options are available directly within Shop-Script 5 backend: select design themes, create new storefronts (e.g., for Facebook integration), edit storefront settings. This works for every Webasyst app which supports built-in design editor: Shop-Script 5, Photos, Blog, Site.

Personal accounts

We have added a new section to the Site app to allow editing various parameters of the customer account available in the website frontend: structure (navigation menu), registration and profile-editing form fields, email address confirmation option, etc.

The personal account is a special part of a website, which is powered by various apps. For example, one of its sections may be powered by Shop-Script (my orders, affiliate program), others by Helpdesk (my support requests) or Site (user profile), etc.

Integration between various parts of the personal account is ensured by use of the common navigation system provided by $wa->myNav() method called in design theme templates. With this integration, each section, being provided by a different app, still works completely by itself. This way we can expand the functionality of the personal account virtually infinitely. Webasyst apps which we will be releasing in the future (e.g., the Hub app we are currently working on) will be able to add their own sections to the personal account regardless of what other apps are installed in the framework.

Design theme Default 2.0

Demo: https://demo.webasyst.com

Design theme Default 2.0 has been rebuilt again and has become even more convenient and impressive! This time we have paid a great deal of attention to making it easy to use with any set of Webasyst apps you have installed: either only one of them (Shop-Script 5, Site, Blog, or Photos), or all of them at once. Most of the informational design elements (e.g., caption displayed in the homepage) have been arranged as extra design theme settings so that you do not have to edit template files to change them.

The updated Default 2.0 theme offers 24 brand new amazing color schemes (main banner backgrounds) to help you adjust website appearance to your specific needs.

Its mobile version has been redesigned, too, to become more comfortable for smartphone users.

Various enhancements have also been made to improve user experience for customers placing orders in Shop-Script 5 with Default 2.0 theme: "flying cart", optimized shopping cart page, improved product comparison, and many other features.

New Sidebar 2.0 design theme

Sidebar 2.0 has a brand-new look too! Check out the demo: https://demo.webasyst.com/

New Contacts

In framework kernel and in Contacts app, contact and user management mechanism has been redesigned as one of our steps to completing the big task of enhancing contact management functionality in Webasyst. Very soon we will show you a significantly improved version of our Contacts!

Shop-Script 5.2.3

The kernel of Shop-Script 5 contains not so many changes this time, except for design theme Default 2.0, which is included in Shop-Script 5 by default.

Very useful major update to Shop-Script 5.3.0 will be available a little later this year!

For web designers and developers

Please view the complete history of changes in the source code of Webasyst apps and design themes on GitHub: https://github.com/webasyst/webasyst-framework/

We are excited to announce the all-new affiliate program for Webasyst!

Recommend Webasyst and Shop-Script 5 to your friends, add links to Webasyst sites on your resources, spread the word on Facebook, blogs, and forums, or even place orders on behalf of your customers — and instantly earn money! It's that easy:

1. Sign up today in your Customer Center for free and get your promo link.
2. Spread the word.
3. Get cash.

How much you earn is defined by the total amount of orders paid by your referred customers during last 30 days:

• $1,000 and below: you earn 20%
• From $1,000 to $5,000: you earn 30%
• $5,000+: you earn 40%

You earn up to $120 from just a single sale of Shop-Script 5 license (worth $299)!

Affiliate program counts all orders for commercial apps and plugins authored by Webasyst:

• All order paid by customers you referred: customers who clicked any of your ?promo_id=yourname promo links. Referral cookie life is 30 days.
• All reseller orders: you may place and pay for orders on behalf of your customers. Your earnings for such orders will be credited to your affiliate account once orders are paid.

Orders for both Webasyst software licenses (downloadable software) and hosted service (Webasyst Cloud) are counted for your affiliate earning. For Webasyst Cloud you get credited for one full year your customer continues to use the service!

Payouts are performed on a monthly basis via PayPal. Minimal payout amount is $200.

Resellers

Resellers enjoy all benefits and rates of the base affiliate program. Unified affiliate program features and terms allow resellers to accept orders both manually on behalf of a client, and by referring clients to Webasyst and Shop-Script 5 websites — same affiliate commissions will be credited to reseller's account no matter which way affiliate orders were paid.

We are looking for resellers and Webasyst representatives around the world! In you don't see your country on the list of country selector in the top right corner of this page, then you have a great opportunity to become Webasyst representative in your country. Under special regional reseller program (which will become available shortly), we will add your country to the main country selector, and publish your company profile under your country link. Please follow our blog to be notified when regional reseller program is introduced.

Become a partner

We are happy to announce the release of Referral program plugin for Shop-Script 5!

Referral (affiliate) program is an effective online marketing tool which allows you to gather a community of partners motivated to spread the word about your online store and your website on the Internet and social networks. Everyone who joins your referral program receive bonuses for every friend they refer to make a purchase in your store. Referring is performed via a unique referral link (which looks like this: yourdomain.com/?promo_id=199251) every partner can get in his personal account on your website.

Everyone can become your referral partner! It only requires to sign up for an account on your online store and to review and accept your referral program terms and conditions — a personal promo link will be generated right away.

How to install

• As any other Webasyst app or plugin, Referral program plugin is installed using Installer app directly from your Webasyst backend.
• To enable referral program, you must first activate Loyalty (Affiliate) program in your Shop-Script 5 settings (Settings → Affiliate program).
• Make sure you have support for new frontend_my_affiliate plugin hook (introduced in Shop-Script 5.2.2.30933 on June 3, 2014) in my.affiliate.html template file of your design theme:
  Locate the line <table class="table"> and add this code before that line:
  
  

  <!-- plugin hook: 'frontend_my_affiliate' -->
  {* @event frontend_my_affiliate.%plugin_id% *}
  {foreach $frontend_my_affiliate as $_}{$_}{$_aff_plugins_active = 1}{/foreach}    

Buy plugin

Plugin price: $59
See details and buy: http://www.webasyst.com/store/plugin/shop/referrals/
Developer: Webasyst

For the last few months, our team was busy working on several important tasks for Webasyst and Shop-Script 5. And today I'm proud to present the results of our work — a major update that affected Webasyst PHP Framework and it's core apps: Shop-Script 5, Site, Blog, Photos, and Helpdesk.

Default 2.0

Brand-new responsive design theme family for all basic Webasyst apps — Default 2.0. Starting today, Default 2.0 will be included with every new Webasyst framework archive automatically. See the new theme demo here: http://demo.webasyst.com

Theme features responsive design optimized for laptops and all modern tablet and mobile devices. Four color schemes are available right out of the box. Theme is great for customizations— just fork from Default 2.0, and start building your beautiful custom themes.

@2x

The new Default 2.0 and all other stock themes are now equipped with automatic support for @2x images. Shop-Script 5 and Photos apps automatically generate bigger image thumbnails for users of devices with high pixeldensity displays, e.g. Retina displays. Automated @2x image support significantly improves experience of viewing Webasyst-powered websites using high-end devices.

CSV

Product import from CSV files in Shop-Script 5 has been totally reimagined! The new version features new import UI, support for selectable-feature products <{}> and other multiple improvements.

See the updated import guide.

Redactor

Webasyst's new WYSIWYG editor is powered by Redactor. We've been enjoying features and performance of Redactor for few months now, and now it's your turn — new editor has been integrated into Webasyst framework system, Site, Blog, and Shop-Script apps. Other apps coming soon.

Other improvements

• Product by-feature filtering now supports numerical and range features.
• Product by-feature filtering now displays product price and automatically selects SKU depending on search criteria.
• Added automated discount update on the order edit screen.
• New hooks backend_order_edit, backend_order.info_section.
• Fixed checkout flow report display bug.
• Multiple improvements and bug fixes.

Buy Shop-Script 5 now

An upgrade for old WebAsyst Shop-Script licenses (previous generation of Shop-Script) will remain available only through March 31, 2014. As of April 1, 2014, the transition from the previous generation to Shop-Script 5 will be possible only with the purchase of a new license at its full price of $329.

Until the end of sales of upgrades from WebAsyst Shop-Script to Shop-Script 5, the ordinary upgrade price $249 will be reduced to $149! If you are not yet using Shop-Script 5, buy an upgrade today and receive a Shop-Script 5 license at half of the base price!

UPD: The opportunity to upgrade licenses of WebAsyst Shop-Script to Shop-Script 5 at a special price is no longer available.

Shop-Script has been updated to version 5.2.1. New in this release:

• Checkout flow report displaying information about the number of customers who have completed their orders versus those who abandoned their shopping carts, and at which checkout step they did so. The report is based on the data collected since the installation date of Shop-Script 5.2.0, which was released in December 2013. Sample of checkout flow report based on data provided by one of our partners:
  
  
  
  
• Option to filter products by feature values added to dynamic category settings in addition to filtering by price and customer rating.
• Added option to specify custom values of the weight (with weight identifier) property for individual product SKUs.
• Support for variables , , and added for TITLE and META tags of products.
• Stock update log enabled also for cases when no stock is set up in store settings; in previous versions, this log was enabled only for multiple stocks.
• Option to enable secure (HTTPS) mode for checkout (/checkout/) and customer account (/my/) pages added to the settlement settings screen. Use of this option requires an installed SSL certificate for your domain name and helps ensure secure transfer of customer information during the checkout.
• Various improvements and bug fixes.

2013 has been a very productive year for Webasyst. In this year, we completed transition to the Webasyst framework, which was announced in 2012, and closed the sales of the previous generation of our software products. The key events of 2013 are these:

• The most important release was that of Shop-Script 5 in spring of 2013, followed by 48 updates.
• Over 1500 online stores utilizing Shop-Script 5 were registered.
• Over 450 developers received access to the Shop-Script 5 repository on GitHub.
• Webasyst Cloud was opened. The average uptime of the Cloud's servers is 99.994%!
• New Mailer and Helpdesk apps were released.
• Webasyst Store was opened, in which any third-party developer may publish his own apps, plugins, and design themes, and sell them to all Webasyst users.
• Third-party developers earned over $90.000 in Webasyst Store during the first three months of its operation!
• New websites webasyst.com and shop-script.com were opened, and the old website was closed.
• Over 1,000,000 people visited our websites in this year.

About our plans for 2014

We have created a reliable platform for the further growth of our software products and services, and in the next year we will make Webasyst even more convenient and feature-rich by releasing several new products.

• CRM: We will offer an advanced version of the Contacts app, which will be the core of Webasyst-based CRM solutions for small and medium businesses.
• Q&A: A new Hub app will be released, with the functionality of a knowledge base, a forum, and a question and answer portal.
• Ecommerce: Shop-Script 5 will be constantly enhanced and optimized. In the latest major update (ver. 5.2.0) we have implemented many of the features requested by our clients, and we will continue to add more useful functionality in 2014, too.
• Productivity: A new interesting solution will become available to facilitate collaboration in your company.
• Significantly more design themes, plugins, and apps will be published by third-party developers in Webasyst Store.
• We will add more partnership options; e.g., the expert catalog will be opened soon on our website.
• The geography of Webasyst users will be more expanded across the world.

Sign up for our blog, download and install Webasyst, create accounts in the Cloud, buy software in Webasyst Store!

Let 2014 be even more productive for you! Thank you for your co-operation and interest in the Webasyst platform!

Early 2014, we are opening a catalog of Shop-Script 5 & Webasyst framework experts on the webasyst.com website. This new catalog will replace its previous version and will contain information about specialists offering various complimentary services and custom solutions to users of Shop-Script 5 and other software products based on the Webasyst framework, as well as website optimization for search engines.

We invite partners!

Our company develops only basic software products and does not offer customization services. Therefore, we will be glad to recommend our customers to look for the desired specialists in our expert catalog.

Publication in our expert catalog will be offered for payment. The cost of publication will vary according to the specific catalog section; by the opening of the catalog (early 2014), it will be the same for all sections as shown below:

• Web design: $49/year
• SEO: $49/year
• Software setup & configuration: $49/year
• Programming: $49/year

A partner may choose any sections of the catalog to publish information about his services (publication in each section requires additional payment). In the future, these prices may be changed to take into account the number of partners and competition in each section.

Our decision to provide publication in the expert catalog for payment is based on the desire to maintain an up-to-date database of interested partners and experts in Shop-Script 5 and Webasyst framework in order to ensure smooth user experience for our customers and to avoid growing of the catalog into endless lists of abandoned partner profiles.

More and more Webasyst and Shop-Script 5 users send requests to our support team to inquire about information about specialists who may help them create a website or set up an online store, provide consultations on search-engine optimization, develop or modify web design or various software components, as well as help migrate from the previous generation of Webasyst products. We would be glad to recommend reliable partners to our clients!

In the Customer Center, a new section “Expert” was added; please use it to submit information about your company and open a preview of your profile page to see how it will appear in the catalog. In early 2014 you will be able to order publication and will begin to accept orders from the users of Shop-Script 5 and other Webasyst apps. Do not miss the chance of obtaining your personal page in Webasyst partner catalog on the very first day! The signup is available both for individuals and companies from any country of the world.

Become a partner