Reflect

Sushi & Robots

by Aaron Boeving on August 20, 2008   6 comments

We are going to start showcasing people's websites that they've developed using Reflect. To get things started, here's a brand new site by our friend Jina Bolton, www.sushiandrobots.com.

Got a Reflect site you want us to showcase? Let us know: .

Quality code

by Aaron Boeving on August 18, 2008   2 comments

Here's a quick excerpt from an email I got that sums up one of the great aspects of using Reflect: clean/quality code.

I was using Reflect as part of a company experiment/prove a point - to compare code quality of an adopted (crap) CMS system (used at my company) compared with a low-cost CMS like ReflectCMS. My point was well made and have peeps at my company talking like they've never spoken before ;-)

Rob Enslin

New "Assets" widget

by Aaron Boeving on July 24, 2008   0 comments

During the beta process, we've been making minor adjustments here and there to improve upon Reflect. We recently made an update to the old "File Widget" that we wanted to point out (this widget allows you to access all your files/links from any edit page). As we add more features, we'll continue to blog about them here. Oh, and keep your feedback coming. One aspect of this feature was directly based upon user feedback.

We've changed the "File Widget" to be an "Assets Widget". In addition to having images, docs, audio, and videos files, there is also a Links tab that gives you quick access to your site. This makes it super easy to add links to your content. Just click on the name of the page and it will automatically create a link in the editor.

Additionally, we've added a "View" icon by each file that allows a quick look at more information about that file. If the file is an image, you'll get an enlarged preview and a listing of all file sizes available. If it's another file like a PDF or Word doc, you'll get the file path with a link to download/preview the file.

We think these small enhancements make it that much easier to gain access and information about your files and links. We hope you feel the same.

We're still alive and kicking

by Aaron Boeving on July 03, 2008   2 comments

Well, it has a been a little quiet around here lately, and we wanted to post an update to make sure everyone knows we're still alive and kicking. Although it took us a little longer to get the private beta going than we originally thought, things are now in full swing. And we've been receiving some great feedback:

"The last week or so I’ve been beta testing Reflect. Nate Klaiber and our friends at ClearFunction have hit the nail on the head with their hosted CMS solution. It’s light, agile and flexible. You can build your own website in a few minutes or have a professional designer put the look and feel together for you. It’s competitively priced and offers a few well thought out features..." [...]

– Josh Walsh @ Designing Interactive

"I really liked it.  It is very simple, but still seems to let me do exactly what I want to do.  You've done a great job.  I look forward to playing with it even more." [...]

– Dana Kashubeck

"As a testament to how great Reflect is, in just a few short hours of work over the past 2 days I've been able to get two of my websites converted over." [...]

– Steve Erickson

So, if you haven't received your invite yet, still hold tight. We'll be adding more accounts in the order of how people signed up. Thanks to everyone for your patience!

What's the difference between a page and a blog module?

by Nate Klaiber on May 05, 2008   0 comments

Since showing our pricing model for Reflect, one of the frequently asked questions we have received looks like this:

What is the difference between a page and a blog? Do blog posts count against my page count limit? Couldn't I simply have the blog module serve as my pages and bypass the limit?

As Aaron pointed out in a recent comment: a Page is not a Module. You could have a blog with as many posts as your heart desires. Blog posts do not count against your page limit. Others have asked this same question in regards to getting around the page limit by having posts become your pages. These two things serve two different contextual purposes.

Let's take a look at the Blog Module. With this module you have the ability to:

• Create entries.
• Create categories and assign these to any entries.
• Create tags and assign these to any entries.
• Enable or disable comments at the module or individual entry level.
• Set comment moderation options. You can set what to do when you receive a comment (automatically approve, author must have previously approved comment, or administrator must approve), expiration options (never expire, 3 months, 1 month, 2 weeks), notification options (email all, email author of the entry, no email, or email a specific person), and finally, validate the comment against:
  • A Word Filter that you designate with a comma separated list of words.
  • A Bad Words text file that holds many commonly used bad words and their misspellings.
  • Akismet, if you provide your API key.
• You can set the base URL and provide your own permalink structure. This would let your entries look like: /blog/2008/09/17/my-catchy-title (or however you organized your structure with month, day, year, postname).
• You have templates based on listing, entry, category, tag, and author.

Now, compare this to a Page:

• You can add and organize hierarchically. You could have URLs like: /about/staff/nate-klaiber. At any point you could move pages around in the hierarchy.
• With the same URL structure as in above, you could have different layouts or templates based on each of the different pages. The staff entry page (nate-klaiber) could be a 2 column left sidebar, with specified navigation, and the /staff/ page could have a 3 column layout with different links in the sidebars.
• Pages have the ability to have nested pages, links, and forms.

Some things that are common between the two of them:

• All pieces of content have a publishing status that allow you to have drafts, and give you the ability to publish content now or in the future, and expire content accordingly.
• You have control over your page title (the browser title), meta title, and meta description.
• You have control of your permalink.
• You have access to your site files widget, so you can include them within any piece of content (images, audio, docs, etc).

Have any more questions? Feel free to let us know in the comments!

Reflect Pricing

by Aaron Boeving on May 02, 2008   17 comments

The private beta is just around the corner and we've had several questions about what the Reflect pricing will be like. We've decided to go ahead and post the pricing chart on this pricing and signup page. The signup will be disabled while we're in private beta.

Please feel free to leave your feedback on the pricing.

Reflect Update: Expanded Beta

by Aaron Boeving on March 26, 2008   24 comments

So what’s up with Reflect? Well, quite a bit, and we want to let you in on how things are going and our plans to launch Reflect in the near future.

For the past several months we’ve been steadily developing Reflect and launching websites on the system. During this time, Reflect has been used solely by Clear Function (Reflect’s parent company) and a few select web developers. But that’s about to change, as we’ll be opening Reflect up to the many of you that have signed up for our private beta mailing list. The process will be pretty simple: In May, we’ll be emailing the Reflect mailing list with an invitation code accompanied with instructions that will be used to sign up for Reflect. We’ve had such a large number of people sign up for the list that we’ll be phasing out everyone over the course of May until everyone has received an invitation. So, if you’ve signed up, be patient. Everyone on the list will eventually receive an invitation code. During this expanded private beta we hope to receive feedback from you as we put some finishing touches on Reflect before completely opening it up.

To whet your appetite, we’ve put together a short screencast showing you how easy it will be to create modules. One of the great things about Reflect is that you can finally say goodbye to installing blog engines and other content management systems. You’ll see from this particular screencast that it takes just seconds to create a photo gallery and a blog.

So, stay tuned. Reflect will be worth the wait.