After 3 months of development, beta testing and bug fixing, we're finally taking Jamroom 5.3 out of beta!

Jamroom 5.3 includes hundreds of updates, changes, fixes and improvements - all designed to make running a Jamroom site easier than ever.

For details on the new changes make sure and check out the Jamroom 5.3 kickoff blog post:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/blog/74/jamroom-53-kickoff

We'd like to thank everyone that has provided feedback during the Jamroom 5.3 beta - your input and suggestions were appreciated and have resulted in the best Jamroom yet.

As a team we're going to take a few days to "unwind" from Jamroom 5.3, then we will back to moving things forward.  We have already put together a list of the ideas we want to incorporate in the next version of Jamroom - we will be posting those in the future to get feedback and input from the Jamroom community.

We hope you enjoy Jamroom 5.3!

Thanks!

- The Jamroom Team

It's been almost a year and a half since Jamroom 5.2 was released , and today we're kicking off the Beta release of Jamroom 5.3!

Jamroom 5.3 builds on Jamroom 5.2 and adds some really cool new features.  Our plan is to run Jamroom 5.3 as a beta release for a little bit so we can get feedback and input from the Jamroom community on how things are working.  It should be much more stable than a "normal" beta, as it is improvements and enhancements that continue Jamroom 5.2, but this way we can be sure that those users running 5.3 know that things could change based on feedback.

So what's new in Jamroom 5.3?  We've been working hard for the last 4-5 weeks on some ideas we have had for a while to make Jamroom easier to use.  Most of the Jamroom 5.3 features are on the "ACP" (admin control panel) side of things, so updating to the new Jamroom 5.3 Core should be pretty easy - there's no template changes that are going to need to be integrated in to your custom skin (if you have created one).  Our goal with Jamroom 5.3 was to focus on usability - making things easier to use on a day to day basis for Jamroom admins.

New System Wide Recycle Bin

Jamroom 5.3 has a new system "Recycle Bin" that can help you recover if items (profile, users, blog posts, etc.) are accidentally deleted on your system.  You can configure the length of time items will remain in the Recycle Bin before being permanently deleted, and you'll find the new "Recycle Bin" tab in the Dashboard.

Updated ACP

We've updated the Admin Control panel with better search, new module categories that are designed to make it easier to find what you're looking for, as well as a new "Dashboard" tab that makes it easy to switch back and forth between the ACP and the Dashboard.  Module jumpers have also been updated with module categories to make it easier to quickly move to the module you're looking for.

Updated Dashboard

We've updated the Dashboard layout to now include the new Recycle Bin, as well as the core Queue Viewer.  We've also updated the Activity Log section to have the Debug and Error logs available, and have generally gone through all the Dashboard screens and tweaked and updated things to make it easier to get around.  There is a new "ACP" tab as well for Master Admins to easily switch between the ACP and Dashboard.

Improved HTML formatting and clean-up

Jamroom 5.3 will do a much better job of "cleaning up" malformed HTML that might be entered on the site - this can prevent a page from appearing "broken" because some embedded HTML did not have the proper closing tags (which can happen if you are truncating user input to include in lists on your site).  HTML is now scanned and all tags are "closed" that have been left open, which should prevent anything from spilling over.

CSS Sprite Icons updated for HiRes displays

The Core provided icons that are used throughout the site have been updated to serve "hi-res" versions to users on high density display devices (i.e. iPad and "retina" screens, etc.) - this should make things look crisper on these new devices.

New "Birthday Date" form designer form field

A new Form Designer form field has been added that allows you to capture dates before 1970 - this is something many Jamroom sites have wanted to allow them to have a "birthday" custom form field.

LOTS of small updates and Tweaks

There are dozens of other small updates and tweaks throughout the Core including an updated Queue Viewer with new Queue tools, updated Performance Check, streamlined ACP search, better layout of Config options and more.

Module updates too!

A lot of work has gone into the new Jamroom Core 5.3, but we also have A LOT of module updates that we're excited about too:

 - All new "Overlay" media players for the Audio, Video and Playlist modules - these new players are more modern and streamlined and look AWESOME on the page.

- Timeline updates to bring the "style" of the Timeline home index page in line with the other pages in the profile.

- All new Spam Blocker module that provides you with new tools to help fight Spam on your site - including user probation, detection of offsite URLs and HTML stripping.  This is a "rename" of the old Akismet module, and it still features integration with the Akismet Blog Spam detection service.

- Updated Aparna module (now in the Developer category) that makes it even easier to create custom modules - includes new Module Description and Icon fields that make your custom modules truly unique in the ACP.

- Updated Developer Tools including new "Reset Categories" tool that will reset your ACP to the new Jamroom 5.3 module category structure, as well as updates to module and skin packaging.

- Updated Search module with new keyword weighting and Rebuild Search Index tool.

We're really excited about Jamroom 5.3 and hope you find the new updates to be helpful and as awesome as we think they are.  If you are the admin of a busy Jamroom site, the new updates - the streamlined Dashboard and new Spam Blocker module - should really help your ongoing support work.

If you would like to participate in the Jamroom 5.3 beta, make sure you subscribe to the "BETA" channel in your Jamroom Marketplace Module:

ACP -> Core -> Marketplace -> Tools -> Release Channels - Click on "Make Active" to the right of the "BETA" channel

This will enable you to browse and install Beta items in the Marketplace.  After the change, going to the System Updates tab will show you the new Jamroom 5.3 release you can update too.

Make sure and join us in the Jamroom User Support forum with any Jamroom 5.3 questions and we can help.

We hope you enjoy Jamroom 5.3!

- The Jamroom Team

We’ve been hard at work for the past month working on a bunch of exciting updates and changes to Jamroom Hosting - new features and options that will help you get the most out of your Jamroom Hosting Server:

New Server Plans and Prices

We’re excited to roll out 3 new server plans (4G, 8G and 12G) that offer a smaller server for those that have been looking to use Jamroom Hosting, but couldn’t afford the $49 per month for our entry level server, or didn’t have the need for the larger amount of disk space.

These 3 new servers sizes feature smaller size SSD disks (4 Gig, 8 Gig and 12 Gig) - and you can get started with Jamroom Hosting from only $19 per month!  These 3 new servers have the same level of features that all other Jamroom Hosting servers enjoy - namely FREE modules and skins, daily backups and ticket support.  The only difference is the lower price and small disk space.

We know there’s quite a few of you who have contacted us since we rolled out Jamroom Hosting looking for a lower priced plan - we’re excited to finally roll that out.

All Jamroom plans have been updated with a new plan name as well (i.e. the “old” 2G server is now the 48G server, etc.)

To get started with one of these new servers click on the big orange "Hosting" link on your Profile.

New 7 Day Free Trial for new Jamroom Hosting users

Have you wanted to check out Jamroom hosting but weren’t sure if it would work for you?  We’re now offering a 7 day free trial of the new Jamroom 4G server so you can check it out.  You can test out all the Jamroom features “for real” for 7 days.

All Server bandwidth is now UNLIMITED

We purchase bandwidth from our provider in bulk, and by far the majority of our hosting servers are under their bandwidth allocation in any given month.  So we’ve decided to remove this “cap” all together - all servers now have unlimited bandwidth - within reason of course   Our goal here is to make it be one less thing you have to think about or worry about.  We will let you know if you’re using an INSANE amount of traffic and will work with you to make sure you’re accommodated.

One Click Server Upgrades - and Downgrades

Previously you had to contact us via Ticket to get your server “downsized” - our Hosting tools can now downsize your server for you as well - as long as your used disk space amount fits into the smaller plan.  Our goal is to make sure you feel like you’re getting a great value for your Hosting - if you’re not using the power of your current plan, downgrading is easy.  If you’re not sure - let us know - we can recommend the proper server size for your existing Jamroom work load.

New Email Delivery Log

One of the most frequent tickets that is opened for hosting is that a Jamroom site owner will have one of their users contact them and tell them they are not receiving email notifications from the Jamroom site.  We now have an easy to browse Email Delivery Log (located in the Domain settings for the site you want to check out) - this lets you easily see any email errors or issues that might be happening when delivering email to your users.

Updated “Change Jamroom Admin Info” tool

You can now change the user name and/or password for ANY Jamroom Master Admin account in your Jamroom.  Did you forget your master admin account password?  You can easily set it now from within the Domain Settings section for the Domain you want to set the password for.

We’ve also spent time tweaking and updating a lot of functions to make them more robust and easier to use, so we hope that new AND existing Hosting customers will find the new updates as awesome as we do

If you have any questions about Jamroom Hosting, make sure and join us in our Jamroom User Forum:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum/jamroom-hosting

and let us know how we can help.

Thanks!

The Jamroom Team

We've been hard at work here "behind the scenes" improving Jamroom Hosting, and while many of our recent changes are small, there's been a lot of work put into making the system faster, more stable and easier to use.

Today we have just taken the wraps off a big piece of our hosting puzzle - Server Backups.  Previously when you wanted to restore a backup of your server, you would have to open a ticket with us and we would handle the restoral for you.  However, it was a FULL server restoral - in other words, the entire server was wiped out and restored.  While this worked just fine, it was often "overkill" if you happened to be working on a new domain and just needed a few things restored.

With our new Backups we are rolling out today, all backups are handled at the Domain level - just like everything else in Jamroom Hosting.  This lets you restore a single Domain on your server without impacting (or even shutting down) your server.  This way any other domains on your server will be unaffected.  We've found that often the users that need a site restored are those that are doing active development on a NEW site - so this makes things A LOT more flexible as you can simply restore the domain you are working on to the previous backup.

Currently we are maintaining one FULL backup, and then a weeks worth of Incremental backups , and you can restore to any of them in your Domain Settings section.  Note that if your site is really large, it can take several hours for the restoral to be completed.

You will find the new "Restore from Backup" option in your Domain Settings section.  We have also reorganized the Domain Settings section to hopefully make things a bit cleaner and simpler to understand.

Some other updates:

• You can now change the Master Admin user name (as well as the password) from your Domain Settings -> Change Jamroom Admin Info section.  Note that this requires the Master Admin be user_id #1 - if you have deleted and re-created the Master Admin account, then this will not work (you can contact us if you are locked out of your Jamroom for any reason).

• The "Import a Jamroom 5 Site" tool has been updated to be a bit more robust and can now work with FTP servers that are running on a different IP Address than the web server.

Hopefully these new changes make it even easier for you when you're working in the Hosting control panel.  If anyone has any questions or spots any issues, please let us know

Thanks!

This is a quick blog post to outline some changes we have just rolled out in regards to Support Subscriptions for Jamroom:

The yearly "VIP Member" subscription has been removed - there is no longer a yearly subscription needed to gain immediate access to Marketplace modules and skins - all users now have access to purchase and download new Jamroom modules and skins at the time of their release.  The VIP Member was the very first subscription we offered for Jamroom, but with our subscription offerings increasing to now include hosting, we felt this was a subscription we no longer needed to offer, and user feedback was that having to wait for new releases was not a popular idea.

If you are currently a Yearly VIP Member we want to thank you for your support , so please make sure and do the following:

- Log in to PayPal and CANCEL the yearly VIP Member subscription profile - this will prevent you from being charged again when your subscription anniversary rolls around.  Unfortunately we cannot cancel the subscription from our end.

- After you have canceled, please contact us at support [at] jamroom [dot] net and let us know what Marketplace Item you would like for FREE .  For your support of Jamroom we would like to give you a free marketplace item of your choice (developed by us, The Jamroom Network - no 3rd party modules or skins)

All User have full access to the Jamroom Support Forum - VIP Subscribers do get an additional perk by having access to set a Forum Signature where you can set a link to your Jamroom site - regular members do not get access to set a Signature (spammers aren't likely to be subscribers).  All users now have unlimited access to the Jamroom Support forum.

No more Backstage Forum - the backstage forum has been set to "Read Only" - if you have posted in the Backstage Forum for help, please make sure and create a post in the User Support Forum:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum

The team will no longer be posting or following up in the Backstage forum, and within the next 30 days the backstage forum profile will be set to private and no longer be available.  We know this is going to be a bummer for some of you, but it's going to help us streamline our support - the Jamroom user base has grown considerably over the last 6 months and more often than not we have not been able to follow up in the Backstage forum as it is.

If you cannot post to the main User Support forum (for whatever reason) you will want to subscribe to the VIP Support subscription and have us help you using priority ticket access.

These changes will help streamline our subscription offerings, as well as our support - if anyone has any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.  These changes should have minimal impact on the majority of users, but we know change can be hard - please let us know if you have an issues or concerns.

Thank you!

After more than a month of development I'm excited to announce that we have released the first beta of the new Site Builder module!

The new Site Builder module has been built from the ground up to provide a flexible, fast and easy to use framework for creating "widgets" in Site Builder pages.  Going forward this will allow us to easily create new widgets for specific use cases, as well as make it much easier to integrate existing modules into the Site Builder widget system.

Some highlights of the new Site Builder:

• Single Module - the New Site Builder is now just a single module.  Where previously there were four, the new version has all the required functionality bundled into a single module.  This should remove any issues that would be caused by not having all the old Site Builder modules activated or configured.

• Works with Any Skin - skins no longer need to be customized to work with Site Builder - any skin will work "out of the box".  The only change that is needed is to add the new {jrSiteBuilder_menu} template function in the location you would like the Menu Editor to place it's content.

• New Widget Browser - the new Site Builder module presents you with a familiar layout and interface for the Widget Browser - one that has been modeled after Jamroom's ACP (Admin Control Panel).  It's very easy to see at a glance what widgets are available to be used in a page.  New Widget Settings allow you to show different widgets to different user groups - all on the same page.

• New Menu Editor - the new Menu Editor makes it easy to create fully customized menus with support for offsite URLs as well as custom OnClick Javascript code.

• New Page Layout and Config - there is an all new Page Layout tool for adjusting the rows and columns on Site Builder pages, as well as new Page Settings that allow you to create pages that are only viewable to specific users or groups.

Our hope is the new Site Builder is easy to use for both users that are new to Jamroom and Site Builder, as well as experienced users who are looking for a powerful way to customize their site.

Some notes on upgrading and running the new Site Builder:

• The new Site Builder is a BETA release - we feel it is solid enough for daily use, but also know that once we release it we will get user feedback to help drive the direction the module will evolve in - and we want to get everyone involved as early as we can.  To install from the Jamroom Marketplace, make sure you have enabled the BETA channel in your Marketplace -> Tools -> Release Channels section.

• If you are currently using the existing Site Builder modules and you install the NEW Site Builder module, your existing Site Builder pages, menu items and widgets will be migrated to the new SB, and the existing Site Builder modules will be disabled .  Nothing is deleted in the "old" Site Builder setup.  If you encounter issues in the upgrade, you can disable the new Site Builder module and re-enable the old Site Builder modules.  Please let us know you encounter any issues.

• At this time only the Elastic, Lucid and NingJa skins have been updated with the new {jrSiteBuilder_menu} template function.

• NingJa Users - when updating to the new Site Builder, if you have NOT previously used the old Site Builder, you will need to customize the header menu to suit your needs by clicking on "Menu Editor" from the Site Builder menu.  The NingJa skin comes with quite a few choices in the header menu "out of the box" - however these menu items are part of the header_menu_desktop.tpl template, so are not preloaded into Site Builder.  If you have customized your header_menu_desktop.tpl file and would rather use that, you can modify the template and remove the {jrSiteBuilder_menu} template function call.

Make sure and join us in the Support Forum if you have any questions, feedback, suggestions or issues with the new Site Builder:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum

We're here to help and hope you enjoy using the new Site Builder!

After several weeks of beta testing, Jamroom Hosting is now live for everyone!

If you are looking for high end Jamroom Hosting that doesn't slow down , Jamroom Hosting has you covered.  Built from the ground up to be 100% tuned for Jamroom you can run your Jamroom site with confidence knowing the platform is fast AND you're covered by VIP Support .

You'll find the new "Hosting" option right in your profile menu - it is the bright orange button when viewing your profile that says "Hosting" - simply click on that to get started with full featured Jamroom Hosting:

• All Servers are fully managed and backed up daily .
• Create as many Jamroom Domains on your server as you like.
• One click install of any Jamroom Distribution (Jamroom Core, Genosis, Site Builder, etc.)
• Unlimited Modules and Skins for Jamroom domains on your server(s).
• Instant setup on our cluster of fast, dedicated Media Conversion Servers.
• Easy to use Control Panel for managing all your servers.
• Mailgun integration for super reliable email delivery.
• SFTP Access to Jamroom on your server for direct file access.
• Priority Ticket support for help with your Jamroom questions.

I want to thank all of the feedback our beta testers have provided so far, and while we're now "out of beta" that doesn't mean we're done thinking of ways to make Jamroom Hosting even better, so if you have feedback please let us know.

Make sure and checkout out the Jamroom Hosting documentation for guides on getting started and how to use Jamroom Hosting:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/documentation/jamroom-hosting

We're excited to launch what we consider the "next chapter" for Jamroom!

Thanks!

I'm really excited to announce something that our customers have been asking for for years - Jamroom Hosting !

Hosting is something we've long been asked to do, but have always deferred it to hosting providers that we felt were better equipped to handle the myriad of options that you can get in a hosting plan.  However, one thing that seems to be getting harder to find is high quality and high performance hosting .  Hosting has pretty much been a "race to the bottom" in price, which in turn almost always leads to a decrease in performance.  While dedicated servers and VPS's have also become cheaper, if you are not a system administrator these types of options are not usually viable.

So we've been hard at work here building a new type of hosting for Jamroom - one that is 100% dedicated to running Jamroom about as awesome as you can run it.

This means we have included some really cool stuff:

• Every Server is a dedicated, fully managed VPS that is 100% dedicated to you.
• All Servers are fully managed and backed up daily .
• Create as many Jamroom Domains on your server as you like.
• One click install of any Jamroom Distribution (Jamroom Core, Genosis, Site Builder, etc.)
• Instant setup on our cluster of fast, dedicated Media Conversion Servers.

This last one is awesome - all your Audio and Video media conversions will be handled by our cluster of dedicated Media encoders - this frees your server from having to do media conversions at all, which can be very CPU intensive (and if you are currently on a low end hosting platform you know it can take A LONG time to convert large video files).

We've built a custom Control Panel that runs here on Jamroom.net and gives you access to creating new Jamroom Domains on your server(s) as easily as clicking a button.  This makes it a perfect setup for those that are running multiple Jamroom sites (web design firms with clients, savvy webmasters that run multiple sites, etc.).

It's also perfectly setup for development, as each domain is mapped to a secondary domain - this allows you to create your site on the secondary domain and when you're ready to "go live" all it takes is a click of the button to swap to your "live" Jamroom domain.

UNLIMITED MODULES AND SKINS

The other awesome part of hosting with Jamroom Hosting is that for all domains on your servers, you can install unlimited modules and skins!   As long as you are hosting with us, there's no charge for any module or skin you would like to install on any domain on your Jamroom server.

Have a lot of client sites you want to setup?  No problem - you can set them all up on your server with whatever modules and skins you need.

OPTIMIZED FOR JAMROOM

All servers that are created in your account have been optimized for running Jamroom - this includes:

• custom MySQL settings for the size of your server
• custom PHP settings to allow much larger uploads
• optimized PHP cache settings to make Jamroom fly
• Mailgun SMTP for super reliable email delivery

One thing that is important to point out is that these servers are 100% dedicated to Jamroom - there's no "Cpanel" or "WHM" or "Plesk" control panels here - these types of control panels offer hundreds of different hosting options and choices, and almost always make the server they are loaded on much slower.  So if you need Cpanel hosting, or the ability to run non-Jamroom scripts on your server, you'll want to stick with a "normal" hosting provider.

COMING SOON

Right now we are in the process of putting the final set of features and touches in place to get Jamroom Hosting released to everyone - our goal is to go live by the end of February.

If you would like to get involved earlier with us, we're looking for a few beta testers who want to give us feedback on how things work, and also want to get a special deal on pricing.  If you'd like to be involved in beta testing Jamroom Hosting, please contact us at support [at] jamroom [dot] net.

We're really excited to get this rolled out as soon as we can - if you have any feedback or questions, please let us know in our support forum .

Thanks!