ArticleLive NX 2.0 Released

After 7 months of continuous development and testing, I'm please to announce the release of ArticleLive NX 2. We were originally going to release the new version as NX 1.8 however it contained so many great new features that we decided that it should be classified as a major product release.

Existing customers can download the new release from the client area. New customers can purchase here.

The new release contains many new features, bug fixes, improved usability and code optimizations. Here's a rundown of the standout new features:

• SendStudio Integration - From the settings page you can integrate SendStudio NX directly into your site in under 2 minutes. Simply specify the path to SendStudio NX as well as your user account details and click save. A newsletter subscription box will then be displayed on your site and you can choose which mailing list your customers should be added to when they subscribe. You can even store their first name in your mailing list as a custom field.
• ArticleMarketer Support - You can now receive articles from ArticleMarketer automatically as well as iSnare.com
• New Article Submission Process - The create/edit article screen in the control panel is now one page, instead of the three. After weeks of usability testing, tweaking and code changes, I'm sure you'll agree that it's now even easier to add content to your site.
• Design Mode - A brand new feature that's unique to Interspire products. Design mode allows for the rapid editing of templates within ArticleLive, using a simple point, click and drag interface. A video and instructional text is provided within the application.
• Article Images - There is now the option to add a 'teaser image' to an article. Traditionally ArticleLive has always just displayed the author image for each article, now there will be an option to choose from no image, the author's picture or upload a 'teaser image'.
• Updated Search Code - We've updated the method used for searching to enable ArticleLive to work with more articles than before. The search is faster and more accurate. You can also search by date and within category descriptions.
• Template Selection & Downloading - Changing and selecting your template now takes place on the new 'Templates' page in the control panel. You can quickly see all available templates via the thumbnails and clicking on one will select it as your current template. From now on ArticleLive will come with one default template. To get new templates there is a 'Download Templates' tab on the 'Templates' page of the control panel where new templates can be automatically downloaded and installed into your copy of ArticleLive. This makes it much quicker to upload the ArticleLive files via FTP.
  
• Podcasting - You can now add podcasts to both articles and blogs within ArticleLive. There will be links to the podcast feeds on the website which users can click to add the feeds straight into iTunes or another compatible program. The podcast settings can be configured from the settings page under a new tab named 'Podcast'.
• Website Tools - A brand new section has been added to the control panel. The main tools that are included with the NX 2 release are database backups and author emailing. Database backups let you generate a complete backup of your database and download it as a file for safe keeping. It includes all of the SQL commands to rebuild your database tables and content. Author emailing allows you to quickly send out emails to users within selected groups.
• Advanced Commenting System - Comments are now threaded. Website visitors can reply to other user's comments and have their comments grouped together, so a conversation doesn't get lost. Users can now also include a website when submitting and their name will link to it in their post. The author of the blog/article is now also identified so they stand out from the other comments. In the control panel, approving, disapproving and deleting comments has now been converted to an AJAX method, so it's much faster and you don't lose your spot on the page. We have also included two new anti-spam techniques - IP blocking and URL limiting (see the settings page for more information).
  

In addition there are various usability changes to make the overall process of creating a content-driven site a nicer experience, including an integrated help and documentation system. Help is available through the ArticleLive NX control panel from the 'Help' link. There are also two new template available via the download templates option: 'Burst' and 'Fitness'.

To install ArticleLive NX 2, just follow the included docs/install.txt guide. To upgrade you should follow the docs/upgrade.txt file available within the zip. The upgrade wizard allows you to upgrade from any previous version of ArticleLive and is completely browser-based. If you are upgrading from NX 1.7.1.2 and would prefer to keep your current template because you've made modifications modify your template so it's compatible with ArticleLive NX 2. There is a list of detailed template changes in the docs/template_changes.txt file, which is included in the zip file.

Here are some screenshots of the new features in ArticleLive NX 2. We'll be updating the web site over the coming few days:

Send Studio Integration	Selecting a template
Editing template files	Changing language text in design mode
New threaded comments	Approving comments ajax style
Backing up the database	New article submission process
The new Teaser Image option	Podcasting options