Thanks for checking in on our blog.  We are discontinuing and archiving this blog and shifting our release notes and general developer updated over to our GitHub account.  

You can view the release notes here: https://github.com/MonkDev/monkcms-release-notes

We are planning a major upgrade to the default media player used by the CMS. This new player will integrate both audio and video, have support for playlists, album art, HTML5 fallback, and will just generally look more up to date than the player we have been using. Here are a couple of screenshots:

• Audio player
• Video player

We're planning to make this the default player the first week of October. In the meantime, you can try it out using the transitional tags __audioplayerNEW__ and __videoplayerNEW__ (TinyMCE content areas will continue to use the old player until after the switchover). Those tags will go on working indefinitely, and when we do the switchover, the existing tags, __audioplayer__ and __videoplayer__ will begin returning the new player as well. The old players will be available using __audioplayerOLD__ and __videoplayerOLD__.

Here are some of the new attributes you can use with the new player tags:

• width: sets the width of the player in pixels.
  Example: width='640'
  (default: 400)
• height: sets the height of the player in pixels.
  Example height='480'
  (default: 300)
• autostart: sets whether the player should start playing as soon as it's loaded.
  Example: autostart='false'
  (default: true)
• playlist: sets whether the playlist should show.
  Example: playlist='false'
  (default: true)
• linktext: sets the link text for the player link (the tag returns the entire anchor element).
  Example: linktext='Play Audio'
  (default: Launch Player)
• image: sets the image that should be used if there is no sermon/article or series image.
  Example: image='http://example.com/image.jpg' (be sure to use full path)
  (default: http://my.ekklesia360.com/Clients/player/audio_holder.jpg)
• overrideImage: forces use of an image, regardless sermon/article/series images.
  Example: overrideImage='http://example.com/image.jpg'
  (default: null)

We're intentionally giving you a full month to notify your users, test the new player and perform any updates necessary to to client sites to make the switchover seamless. As always, please let us know if you have any questions about this change or anything else via our support site: http://support.monkdevelopment.com/

You are probably very familiar with the default behavior of the API, where if a particular tag returns nothing, the entire "show" line will be removed. This can be super-helpful for removing content that would not make any sense without API content. For example:

getContent(
  'sermon',
  'display:detail',
  'find:' . $_GET['sermonslug'],
  'show:<h2>__title__</h2>',
  'show:<p>Date: __date format='M j, Y'__</p>',
  'show:<p>Preacher: __preacher__</p>',
  'show:<p>Series: __series__</p>'
);

If you had a sermon without a series, you wouldn't want that extra "Series:" content hanging out there all alone.

However, there are some times where it would be equally helpful, and would simplify matters greatly, if you could just let the empy API tag quietly disappear without taking everything with it. Well, now you can! It's implemented as a global API attribute:

nokill='yes'

Here's more info. Say you have this Link List call:

getContent(
  'linklist',
  'display:links',
  'find:example-list',
  'show:<a href='__url__'>',
  'show:__name__',
  'show:</a><!--__url__-->',
  'show:<p>__description__</p>'
);

Note the HTML comment after the closing link anchor tag. This is done so that if the user leaves the "URL" field blank, you won't be left with a random closing tag. However, this method is a little squirrelly, since in some browsers, a URL with double-hyphens will break the output. It would be much easier and cleaner to just let the system output a link with an empty href attribute. So now you can, and it would look like this:

getContent(
  'linklist',
  'display:links',
  'find:example-list',
  'show:<a href='__url nokill='yes'__'>__name__'</a>',
  'show:<p>__description__</p>'
);

Obviously this is a very basic example, but we hope you find this increased flexibility useful.

Hello Resellers & Developers!

We have a great new feature to announce today: Custom Fields!

This feature pretty much speaks for itself, but all the information you need can be found in the docs: http://developers.monkcms.com/article/custom-fields/. Custom fields can consist of the following types:

• Single Line Text
• Paragraph Text
• WYSIWYG Editor
• Checkbox
• Image
• Video
• Document
• Audio

We hope this helps you develop the best sites possible on our platform. Please let us know if you have any questions or run into any issues with this: http://support.monkdevelopment.com/reseller/.

Hello Resellers and Developers! 

It's been some time since we've updated the blog with improvements that have been made to API. Here's a round-up of many of the improvements from our Foundations initiative:

• Nav items can now be set to link to any URL. This replaces the redirect template method you have used in the past and should make this process much much easier for your clients.
• Nav items can now be set to open in a new window. By default, this will add target="_blank" to the link element, but you can specify a different method if you like. See "Open in a new window" on the doc page for more information on how to set this up.
• Images can now be associated with individual blog posts. Find the new tags for show_postlist and show_detail on the doc page.
• Custom forms & events can now be copied.
• Link list items can now be set up to open in a new window. This capability will require changes to Link List getContent calls to work, see link list docs for more info.
• Required fields on custom forms will now automatically display an asterisk adjacent to the label. If you've added asterisks via CSS or directly in the field label, these can now be removed.
• Members API: You can now input a variety of information about users based on their profile information. See the full documentation. (Note that this page used to contain API documentation for /me/ pages. Those docs have been moved here.)
• A "groupby:group" parameter is now available for Blogs, Blogposts, and Sermons. More information is available in the documentation for Blogs and Sermons.

I also wanted to highlight two of our larger features that have API implications.

Easy Edit

Easy Edit helps people get to the content they want to edit faster and easier. By placing edit links directly on the client site, it's no longer necessary to hunt for that content you want to edit in the backend. ("Was it a Link List or a Section?") Click on an edit link and be whisked right to the edit screen in question. It's really that easy. Go ahead and try it out by clicking on the "Easy Edit" link in the backend's very top menu bar. 

We've received great feedback from users on Easy Edit. Options that are available to the developer specific crowd can be seen here: http://developers.monkcms.com/article/easy-edit/

Image Resizing API 

What this will allow you to do is specify certain height and width parameters to API tags which return image elements or URLs, and have those returned images be automatically resized. This means you no longer have to worry about the size of the images your clients are uploading; you can tell the API exactly what you'd like.

You can read up on the new parameters here: http://developers.monkcms.com/article/image-caching--thumbnail-creation/

Please keep the following several things in mind:

1. All sites must have a monkimage folder with permissions set to 777. The script that generates the thumbnails will attempt to create this folder, but some server configurations can prevent this. If the folder doesn't get created automatically, you can simply create it manually.
2. Images contained in the WYSIWYG interface will be dynamically resized after the release, depending on the height and width set by users.
3. "SMALL-" versions of images will no longer be created. Instead, the API tag that previously returned the "SMALL-" version will begin returning a dynamically resized version of the original image, using the same height and width as the "SMALL-" versions were previously returned as. You can still use those tags that currently return the "SMALL-" version, but their use will be discouraged in favor of the standard image and image URL tags with height and width parameters applied.

We hope you find these improvements to be as exciting for the advancement of the CMS as we do. As always, let us know if you have any comments or questions.

Thanks!

Hi Resellers! We just pushed some upgrades to the Notices module here's a video showing you what's new:

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2.6 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. In addition, there are a couple of new improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

• coordemail now respects the emailencode parameter for event/list and event/detail
• A hide_date parameter has been added for article/list
• commentNumber tag has been added for article/list and article/detail
• categorylinks and taglinks tags have been added for blogs
• Viewing member info on /me/ pages can now be restricted based on group membership

We hope these improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at http://support.monkdevelopment.com/reseller/.

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2.5 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here.

Of particular note is our transition to Roles for managing preachers, authors, event coordinators and the like. It is now no longer necessary to use a member or create a new member in order to create a Preacher. See the Ekklesia 360 blog post for more info. Your existing implementations will continue to work exactly as before. We made sure that this feature is backward compatible with what is already out in the wild.

In addition, there are a couple of new improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

• Job lists can now be filtered and grouped by location
• __id__ tag has been added to event list and detail
• Event calendar now adds group name slugs as classes when listing events
• Book categories can now be listed
• Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2.5 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. Of particular note is our transition to Roles for managing preachers, authors, event coordinators and the... tag has been added to event list and detail
• find parameter has been added to blog post detail

We hope these improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at http://support.monkdevelopment.com/reseller/.

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2.4 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. In addition, there are a couple of new improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

API

• formatAllDay attribute has been added to all eventstart tags, allowing you to specify a date format for all day events. This can be used in conjunction with the existing format attribute so that the same tag will work for all day events and non-all day events.
• find_id parameter has been added to event list and detail.
• __affiliate__ tag has been added for the Music module.

Account Manager

Over the next few days we will be releasing our new Account Manager functionality:

• Improves cash flow by automatically charging your clients credit cards. (optional).
• Implements a method by which your clients can alert you when they want to add an optional module or upgrade a subscription or hosting plan (optional).
• Improves communication on current pricing and options.
• Provides more flexibility and control when rolling out new pricing plans.
• Gives you reseller account control and new payment options for sites and packages you add to the system.

We will be updating all relevant documentation over the next few days and conducting trainings as necessary. The most immediate change will be the behavior of the system when adding a new site and changing module availability and limits (formally called Site Permissions). We have tested to ensure zero impact to existing sites. All current site permissions have been copied to a conversion package and applied to your sites. We have also assigned new packages to your reseller account and will work with you over the next several weeks to make sure we can accommodate your specific account needs.

We hope these improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at http://support.monkdevelopment.com/reseller/.

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2.3 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. In addition, there are a couple of new improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

• You can now link directly to a site’s backend environment by adding the site ID to the URL like so: http://my.ekklesia360.com/{site_id}/Dashboard/. This works for all custom domains and all screens in the backend.
• Feed items can now be linked to a custom path. This is useful if, say, you have a site that presents its articles as http://site.com/newsletter/{article-slug}/. You can now set the feed items to link back to there, rather than the default of /article/.

We hope these improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch. Our new support site can be found at http://support.monkdevelopment.com/reseller/.

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2.2 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. In addition, there are a few new improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

• API support for displaying form submissions (Forms API)
• Ability to search by group (Search API)
• Ability to filter tag clouds by group
• Ability to group and search sermons by passage (Sermons API)
• Pagination for Branches (Branches API)
• Pagination for Galleries (Galleries API)
• Ability to collect first and last name on newsletter signup form (Newsletter API)
• Ability to subscribe to multiple newsletters upon submission (Newsletter API)
• Donation iframe can now be styled
• __authorslug__ is now available for article detail
• Ability to sort sermons within series by order set in backend
• Ability to pull FLV URL if the video has an equivalent FLV (videoflash, Sermons API)
• Disable account ‘sign up’ link with protected content
• Ability to launch music module playlist in wimpy (Music API)
• find_skulist for product list
• Site login iframe has more styling hooks

We hope these features and improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at http://support.monkdev.com/.

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2.1 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. In addition, there are a few new improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

• Added emailencode:no which can be added to any getContent() which returns TinyMCE content. The new parameter supresses the anti-span javascript encoding of email addresses which is sometimes helpful when bringing that content in via AJAX.
• Added privatelink parameter for Page/detail, which allows you to specify a URL to redirect non-logged in users.
• Added a new global javascript file, http://api.monkcms.com/Clients/monkcms-dev.js. This file includes MonkCMS specific javascript code, and omits the jQuery library and the Thickbox plugin. Note that both are still required for login popups to work.

We hope these features and improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at http://support.monkdev.com/.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/963770552

Monk Development will hold a conference call for resellers and design partners to discuss:

1. Cobblestone Release
2. Data from Church Analytics Study (Our goal is that this data will help you educate and better serve your clients.)
3. Server Migration
4. Future Releases to MonkCMS & Ekklesia 360.

Title: Monk Reseller & Design Partner Call
Date: Friday, March 27, 2009
Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.  Your PASSWORD will be sent after you register.

System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.2 major release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. In addition, there are a few new API improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

• “Create an account” link on login window now has a unique ID.
• The order history API output now has additional CSS hooks.
• Pagination is now available for event lists.
• find_skutype now available for SKU lists.
• nonfeatures parameter now available for blog list.
• hide_series parameter now available for article list.

We hope these features and improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at http://support.monkdev.com/.

Hello Resellers and Developers! We are happy to announce the 3.1.1 minor release of MonkCMS. You can read our official release notes here. In addition, there are several new API improvements that are exclusive to the reseller and developer crowd.

• A more robust API for searches has been developed. Here’s an overview, and API reference.
• Wimpy audio player can now be skinned by specifying an XML file via the API.
• find_category can now find all categories (e.g. find_category:foo && bar), in addition to any.
• Added ability to set location a user is sent when logging out of front end site.
• Non-page nav items now use class="current" when selected by user
• Added ability to sort product families alphabetically
• Added the ability to search products by location
• Added pagination for Blogs
• Added pagination for Articles
• Updated Branch/detail to use same tags as Branch/list.
• Added groupby:city for Branch/list.
• Added order:city to Branch/list
• Added __fax__ for Branch/list
• Added __locationslug__ for Event/detail.
• Added __coordcellphone__ for Event/list and detail
• Added __longitude__ and __latitude__ for Event/list and detail

We hope these features and improvements make it easier for you to build high quality sites on the MonkCMS platform. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch at http://support.monkdev.com/.