We recently rolled out some great improvements to the Design Settings panel that will make setting these presets even easier. These adjustments are setting the stage for a larger overhaul of settings panels to support merged and separated mobile/desktop settings on a per setting basis. Our initial release of this change was with Canvas Backgrounds.

When visiting the Design Settings panel, you'll find that settings that were the same between Mobile and Desktop will now appear merged into one setting for quick easy adjustment across both layouts. You can easily separate the merged setting by clicking on the underlined title to split it back into separate mobile/desktop.

We find that this approach of merged values helps speed up design workflows and cause less customer confusion when adjusting settings. While also allowing the full flexibility to customize between mobile and desktop if you prefer.

We also improved the text style previews to better understand how your settings like Line Height and Bottom Margin will apply with multiple rows of text. And we also added an Inline Link preview option that you can turn on to see how inline links will render.

In the coming months you'll see similar support for mobile/desktop merged settings push out to many of the settings panels across the app.

We've recently added the ability for contributors to now view their client's DNS settings. This will allow you to more quickly launch your client sites.

When you go to your contributors list in your Account > Profile you will now see a DNS option below each client which will take you to view their DNS details.

Let us know what you think of this update.

We recently launched global blog templates in the design application! What are global blog templates, you may ask? They are a way to customize WordPress posts or pages with a unique layout that's different from the default post/page layout. For example, you could have:

• Full width content
• A single sidebar on the right/left
• A three column page

The possibilities are endless and your imagination is the limit!

Ok, there are other limits. Like the speed of light in a vacuum, or the universal gravitational constant, or Planck's constant. That last one governs the quantum nature of energy and relates the energy of a photon to it's frequency. You can kind of mash all three of these together to get something approximating time, or at least the observable age of the universe before which physics did not really exist, so none of these laws applied.

See, you came to learn about blog templates and now we are discussing physics. You never know what might happen as a Showit user! Go out and create some beautiful blog templates and then ponder the dimensions of time, which we still do not truly understand. Maybe you can solve it and win an award! Or just have a really difficult time sleeping at night like I do when I think about it too much.

Featuring a modern urban metro style, Cartera is a bold, minimalist design to prominently feature your site's most important assets. With a clean color palette, midnight shadows, and eye catching line work this design hearkens back to an updated art deco aesthetic. Bright, colorful images will leap from the page, showcasing your creations. This design is perfect for artists of all mediums with features including: homepage animated text, portfolio page with five project pages, and more...

Cartera means 'portfolio' in Catalan, the language of Northern Spain. It is sure to surprise and delight your visitors.

Something else from Spain that is bold and audacious is Tapas. I went out with a friend to try that one night. My bill was $87 and I was still hungry at the end. They kept bringing us out tiny plates of all manner of things. One of them was foam on a little cracker. They tried to tell me it was an olive/shrimp foam meant to conjure images of the Spanish Mediterranean, but I don’t know of one single organism on this planet that survives on foam or the esoteric concept of a location to which I have never travelled. I had to go across the street and get something else afterward so I didn’t go to bed conjuring images of being hungry inside my own house. Maybe I am an uncultured philistine, but I am going to be a FULL uncultured philistine. I guarantee this is far and away better than tapas.

You'll find Cartera available free in the Showit app. Try it out by adding a new design.

Showit is happy to announce we have added support for displaying WordPress custom post types within Posts View Lookup canvases for our Advanced Blog users.

If you know what custom post types are, you are likely excited for this news. If you do not know, they are a way to extend WordPress with custom content, turning your blog into a bespoke content management system (CMS).

Showit has always supported custom post types display through standard or custom archive and single post blog templates. But you'll find this new option available in a Posts View Lookup canvas which is typically used to feature a set of posts on another page such as a Wordpress homepage.

You will find custom post types underneath the existing post lookup structure in the design app. From here you can specify the custom post type slug to load, as well as refining the posts by category, tag, and taxonomy.

As an example, let's say you run the premier fan site for the movie Xanadu, a film about magic and roller skating and the magic of roller skating. There is lots of singing and dancing for some reason. I think Olympus has something to do with it. If you wanted to have information for each actor that appears in this cinematic masterpiece you could define a custom post type for that data. Then you could add posts for Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelley, and Michael Beck (who I only know from The Warriors, which would make for another great fan site). With those filled in, you can display the custom post type in their own canvas and dazzle your visitors with all kinds of information they never knew. Incredibly niche information about Xanadu and the people who starred in it.

If my first example doesn't quite connect, how about the idea of creating a separate set of Podcast episodes under their own post type of "Podcast"? Yes, you can do that and then you can use this new feature to display a few podcast posts on your homepage.

We here at Showit are excited to see what you create with custom post types, though I am concerned I am going to get flooded with pages about Xanadu, which is simply a peril of the job and one I willingly accept. I have to believe we are magic. Nothing can stand in our way.

We are pleased to announce we have added support for background settings to merge values between desktop and mobile versions of the site!

New:

• Mobile/Desktop Merged Background Values
  No more going in and making the change, only to have to laboriously drag your mouse to the other view to repeat the process. Now with a couple of clicks you can merge the settings and any changes are applied to both. If the settings are already the same, we automatically show them as merged, as though through magic. Easily keep your site in sync!

This is without a doubt the greatest merge since chocolate and peanut butter. Or nachos and cheese. Or mashed potatoes and gravy. I really should not write these when I am hungry. We hope you find these merges exciting and helpful, like the items listed above, and not strange and terrifying, like that movie The Thing. The one where the alien merges everyone's DNA together like some kind of monster Play-Doh. That would have been a really great tie in product, honestly. I feel like I missed my calling in toy design. I could have sold dozens of those. The road not taken...

We cannot wait for you to begin merging!

We made some improvements to how you view accounts for which you have contributor access!

New:

• Quick Login To Client's Design App
  You can now click on the Design App button to be taken directly into that client's designs from your Showit Account! No more needing to switch accounts in the design app itself, you will be teleported there magically through the use of special Showit elves, who we promise are not harmed in this process and in fact are given a cookie. I am told the elves eat an all cookie diet which I cannot recommend, but I do not know enough about elves or magic to dispute the efficacy. Once thusly teleported you can work your own magic on the client site!

• Client's Blog Admin Link & Details
  Immediately next door to the Design App button (hello, neighbor!), the Blog Admin button provides you with instructions for logging in to the client site directly, based on what tier the blog is on. No more puzzling through inscrutable tomes in dimly lit subterranean hallways under torch light. The instructions are right there in plain language, not riddles inscribed by eerie technocrats in their glowing digichambers.
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We hope these improvements will surprise and delight you, ushering in a new golden era of collaboration and productivity!

We just added a new feature to make it easier to update social links across your site design. Now you can setup your Social Links in Site Settings > Social and then in your design you'll find a new option under Click Actions for Social Link where you can select from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter.

Once you've got it setup on your design then it becomes a breeze to update your social URLs anytime they change.

We believe this new feature will be especially helpful for our designer community creating all of the amazing template designs.
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