This update is the result of 18 months of work and we are rolling this release out to existing customers over November, December and January. For new customers the roll out will be over February and March.
Design Builder
This is the biggest update to ever have been developed since we started Edit Websites back in December 2002. Charity Edit is packed full of features to make it easy to add webpages, podcasts, photos, events and more to your website but what has been missing is the ability to design the site yourself. We have had a few basic templates and provided a great design service but charities have not been able to have a full drag and drop experience of creating their website until now.
We started the detailed planning of the design builder back in May 2020, with development starting in January 2021. We've been working pretty much solidly on the design builder developments all through 2021 with up to 6 developers working on this at any one time. We are now super excited to release this so that you can benefit from creating a completely fresh new website.
There is no extra cost or increase in subscription - all Charity Edit sites will get this update free of charge.
Here are some of the features of the new Charity Edit Design Builder.
Fully responsive
Create your website and it will automatically be responsive for the different screen sizes (no need for separate content for mobile/ desktop homepages). You can also choose to hide certain widgets from showing on tablet or mobile devices.
Use Widgets on any page
Widgets can now be added to any of your pages. Do you want to show a listing of upcoming events on any of your pages? Now you can.
Lots of Widgets to choose from
These are the widgets we currently have (with more to come soon):
calendar - show upcoming events
rotator - add rotating graphics, set publish and expiry dates for each image
latest articles - show a listing of the latest articles
poll - create a question and up to 4 answers and let people vote
daily message - create a message for each day and Edit will show the relevant one for each day
social media links - add links to your social media pages
Facebook - embed your charity facebook page
Twitter - embed your charity twitter page
Instagram - embed an instagram post
video - embed YouTube and Vimeo videos to your site (no HTML needed)
podcasts - your latest message added to any page
search - add a search widget to any page
text/ images - add text and images anywhere within your design.
To get started on creating a new design for your site, go to the new Design Builder option in Global Office. If you don't see this then your site has not been upgraded to the Design Builder - it is coming soon. If you would like to request earlier access then contact the helpdesk by clicking on help within Global Office and filling in a support ticket.
Headers/ Footer
As you create different layouts for your pages, we know that often the top or bottom part of your pages tend to stay the same, so we have made it easy to share a header or footer across multiple pages.
Background Images or Videos
You can now add a video or image to appear behind the main content of the page.
New Web Editor
We've updated the Web editor to the latest version. Features include:
image resize directly in the editor - no need to edit the image and manually set a width, height as you can now click the image and drag to resize
Add captions to your images
insert videos/ maps using the new Insert Media button
Restricting Styles in the New Editor
For sites that have a number of content editors we've added the ability to restrict the styling that content editors can apply to their pages. Whilst it means no more Comic Sans text on a red background, it does mean that pages can conform to the styles defined by the site. If you want to restrict the styles shown then administrators can go to Settings > Site Options and restrict the styling so that only the Paragraph/Headings are shown but fonts, font colours, background colours are hidden
Extensible Database (XDB)
The Extensible Database is a way to create an area of your site where there is a lot of similar types of records. See our support site for an overview of the XDB. We've now added an update so that an XDB can be updated or created by importing a CSV of all your records.