Happy new year from all of us at OpenCities! This release we’ve got plenty of shiny new features to brighten up 2019.
Watch the webinar for a complete look at what's new:
Show when things are happening with a calendar
Showcase a timeline of things happening in your area with our new Calendar module. Use calendars to list any page with a date, like events and meetings, so your community can quickly see what’s coming up. Once you’ve set up a calendar, drop it onto any page on your site.
Got lots going on? Merge your calendars to make a combined calendar that shows everything at once.
See a demo or check out the help topics for more info.
Visitors can save meetings to their personal calendars
To help your community keep track of upcoming meetings, we’ve added the ability to add a meeting to an external calendar, like Outlook or Google Calendar. It’s simple—if someone’s interested in a meeting, they just click Add to Calendar to save it.
See a demo or visit Upload meeting minutes and agendas for more info.
List development applications
Looking for an easier way to show development applications? We’ve listened. Now you can list development applications using their own content type. Your visitors will be able to see which ones are still ongoing and which ones are closed, and you can use maps to show them which ones are nearby.
See a demo or check out the help topics for more info.
Build password-protected subsites
You already have login pages on Intranets and MyCity sites, but now you can add login pages to subsites as well. The Site Login module will help you build extranets, or any other password-protected subsite you can dream up.
See a demo or check out the help topics for more info.
Send subscribers updates about their interests
Visitors to your site can now subscribe to content that they’re interested in, so you can keep them up to date.
- If they're subscribed to a page, you can send them an email whenever you update it.
- If they’re subscribed to a search, they’ll get a daily email updating them about any new pages that match their search terms.
Check out the Subscriptions help topics to learn more.
Synonyms and spellcheck to streamline searching
To help visitors find what they’re searching your site for, we’ve made some behind-the-scenes enhancements to search. Primarily, we’ve added to the list of synonyms in our database. The synonyms mean that if someone searches for waste they’ll also see pages that mention rubbish or trash.
The new synonyms are for words that relate to local government, which we chose by looking at the top ten tasks on all OpenCities sites. We couldn’t have done it without you, so thanks!
We’ve also added spellcheck, so if someone searches for wste we’ll show them results for waste.
Some little improvements
More flexible roles
Previously, you could only assign some OpenCities roles to your users by submitting a support ticket with us. Now, System Administrators can assign any role to anyone. Read more about roles
More ways to add map addresses
When you create a map, you can now use addresses that you’ve already added to OpenCities, or you can use addresses from Google Places.
More ways to add images
You can now add images to Service pages and Module Interface pages. We’ve also made it easier to add image galleries to WYSIWYGs. Read more
Edit pages when browsing your site
Before, you had to search OpenCities to find a page you wanted to edit. To make it easier, when you visit your site through the View Site button, each page will now have an Edit page button to take you back to the page editor.
We hope you enjoy OpenCities’ January 2019 features!