Verb CMS

Video Tuesday: Building Zips

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Today we're showing you how to dynamically create zip files using Verb's <v:zip> tag. For more videos and examples, check out our Documentation and Integration Center.

Video Tuesday: Permalinks

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Permalinks keep your address bar clean, is good for SEO, and is easy to implement with Verb. As always, check out our Documentation and Integration Center for more videos and tutorials.

Using With Google Product Search

As you may know, <v:rss> makes it easy to quickly create an RSS feed from any Collection in your site. Verb also takes this a step further by making it easy to create an RSS feed that can be submitted to Google Product Search, so potential customers can locate your items when querying this search engine. In this mini tutorial, we'll create an RSS feed that's ready to submit to Google Product Search.

Here's our example Collection that we're going to be working with; it's called "Records":

<v:rss> works with any Collection, so you can quickly create RSS feeds from your existing Collections.

Next, we'll need to write the code inside our rss.xml file. Normally it takes just one line of VerbML code to create an RSS feed; since we're submitting this feed to Google Product Search, we'll have to add some Google Base tags. Here's the contents of our rss.xml file:

<v:rss title="Action Verb Records" description="Records" path="records" title_field="record_name" description_field="description">
 <g:condition>new</g:condition>
 <g:id><v-></g:id>
 <g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>
 <g:payment_accepted>MasterCard</g:payment_accepted>
 <g:payment_accepted>AmericanExpress</g:payment_accepted>
 <g:payment_accepted>Discover</g:payment_accepted>
 <g:price><v=price></g:price>
</v:rss>

And we're all done! When we load up the RSS file in our browser, we can see the contents of the Collection is now accessible via RSS:

If our customers wanted to easily stay up-to-date on what records we have for sale, they could subscribe to this RSS feed using any browser or RSS client. Since we can use <v:rss> to output the contents of any Collection, we could just as easily create an RSS file for our blog or any other Collection our customers might want to subscribe to.

Since we integrated the Google Base Tags into our RSS feed, it's ready to be submitted to Google Product Search [just follow Google's instructions]. After we submit it, our records will appear in Google Product Search results, and we'll have increased traffic to our website without much effort.

Video Tuesday:

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Verb's <v:formmail> helps you quickly make a form that submits to an email address.

Want more videos and tutorials? Check out our Documentation and Integration Center.

New Feature: Fulfillment Methods Added

We've added new fulfillment methods to make Verb's eCommerce even better. Our Australian customers will be happy to know that they can now utilize Australia Post eParcel. For those of us in the states, you can now use USPS fulfillment with Endicia; this means you can print up postage right from your office!

To start using these new fulfillment methods, clicking on the 'Settings' subtab of your 'Store' tab:

Click on any of the Fulfillment Methods to add them:

(Australia eParcel)

(USPS w/ Endicia)

New Feature: Quickly Add New Child Collection Entries

When two Collections are linked by an Association Structure [single], it sometimes can be a pain to add a new entry to the Child Collection, when creating a new entry in the Parent Collection. Verb loves making your clients' lives easier, so we've added a new feature to make alleviate this issue. The Association Structure [single] create screen now contains a checkbox called Display "Create New" option. When enabled, it gives users the option of adding a new entry to an associated Child Collection, when modifying its Parent Collection. Confused? Let's try an example.

Here we are creating an Association Structure between two Collections called 'Shows' and 'Venues':

Notice the enabled Display "Create New" option. Now, when we add a new 'Show' to the 'Shows' Collection (aka the Parent Collection), we can select "Create New Venue" from the Venue select menu. We're then presented with an inline form where we can create a new Venue, without having to navigate to the Venue Collection:

Great. Now the next time a band on Action Verb Records goes on tour, we can easily add new Venues as we add new Shows.

Video Tuesday: Image Sizes

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Today we bring you a video on Image Sizes. Image Sizes allow you and your clients to crop your image files immediately after they are uploaded, and display them in the cropped format on the website. Verb lets you specify multiple Image Sizes, making it possible to display both a thumbnail version of an image and a larger one on the same site, without uploading more than one image. See our documentation page on the Image Structure for more information.

Our Documentation and Integration Center contains many more videos and tutorials. Check it out!

It's Easy to Integrate Coupon Codes

Following up with yesterday's lesson on setting up coupon codes, today we'll show you the code to accept coupon codes. Once you've set up your Coupon Code in the backend, all you need to do is add a simple code snippet to your store's page:

<v:store:if_discount>
 Special Offer code applied.
 <v:else>
  <v:store:discount>
   If you have a Special Offer Code, enter it here and click Apply: <v:text_field name="discount" />
   <input type="submit" value="Apply" />
  </v:store:discount>
 </v:else>
</v:store:if_discount>

We used the <v:store:if_discount> and <v:store:discount> tags to allow the user to input a coupon code. Lets see how this renders:

After entering our 2buxoff coupon code (that we created yesterday), we can see the discount is reflected in the total:

It's Easy to Setup Coupon Codes

The thought of adding coupon codes to your site's Store might make you worry about keeping track of convoluted rules, but we've done our best to keep this feature of Verb's eCommerce uncomplicated. To add a new coupon code, just click on the 'Coupon Code' subtab of the 'Store' tab. With two clicks, you can have a new coupon code. When you create a code, there's lots of options that you can choose to specify (or not):

Note all the fields that you can work with here:

Code: The alphanumeric code your user will need to type in to redeem their discount.
Description: A description of the coupon, for your own reference.
Fixed $ Amount: Removes a fixed amount from the total price.
Percentage % Discount: Removes a percentage from the total price.
Coupon Start Date: Allows you to specify a certain date when the coupon will start to be functional.
Coupon Expiration Date: The date at which you want to coupon to cease functioning.
Number Available: The total number of times this coupon may be used (by all customers) before it stops functioning.
Max Uses Per Customer: The total number of times this coupon may be used by a single customer before it stops functioning for them.
Minimum Order $ Amount: The minimum amount the customer may be spending before the coupon code functions.
Minimum Number of Items In Order: The minimum number of items the customer must have in their cart before the coupon code functions.
Apply discounts to shipping fees?: When checked, this sums the total with the shipping costs before applying the coupon code.

Video Tuesday: Verb and Flash

Verb can integrate seamlessly into the XML backend of your Flash site. Here's a small example where we'll automatically feed MP3s into a Flash MP3 player on our Action Verb Records website. The player plays songs specific to whatever Artists page we're viewing, and when we add a new MP3 to a certain artist in our site's Backstage, they are instantly

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available in the Flash player.

We have more videos in our Documentation and Integration Center.

Use the Right Editor

It can be a headache to edit, save, and upload the files via FTP onto your Verb site. That's why we recommend using an editor with integrated FTP. With one of these editors, you can type in your ftp information once, bookmark it, and then edit files directly in your web space. Every time you hit save, the editor uploads your changes to the file. Here's a few recommendations for possible editors:

Mac OS X

Coda has a great interface. We use it here at Verb, and so do many of our designers. Besides integrated FTP, Coda has many other advanced features that can make your coding process more efficient.
BBEdit is also a fine editor. We think it's impressive that BBEdit integrates with VMWare Fusion, giving you the ability to preview your work in Internet Explorer - on a Mac!
Smultron is free and easy to use. A good editor for basic text editing.

Windows

Coffee Cup will help our Windows-using friends edit code just as well as us Mac-nerds do.

If you have a favorite editor that we're not mentioning here, please let us know. We're always looking for new ways to make our designers' lives easier.

We're Hosted... And That's A Good Thing!

Are you concerned with the fact that Verb is a hosted solution? It’s something we often get asked about as designers assess Verb. Not having full control over your site is a scary prospect for many people, understandably. At Verb, we know that being a hosted CMS means added responsibility, and we take that seriously. We work closely with our webhost to ensure uptime and perform regular analysis to alleviate any bottlenecks.

There are many other benefits to using our hosted CMS. No longer will you need to toil with software installs, worry about security patches, or bargain with hosting companies. Your clients benefit too from the simplicity of only paying a single bill.

It’s our aim to provide you with a stellar CMS and the best hosting possible, all at a fair price. If you’re interested in more details about our webhosting, please contact us and we’ll answer any and all of your questions.

We <3 Feedback

If you're reading our blog, hopefully you're aware by now that we're a different breed of CMS. To add to the list of reasons why is this: we listen to our designers. Verb is an exceptional platform, but we aggressively seek new ways we can make it better, faster, and easier to work with. We've already added several features in response to the needs of our designers (see also: Blog Post Scheduling).

So today, we're reaching out and asking you to tell us what you think about Verb. Is something slowing you down? Is there a problem you're trying to solve and you don't know how? In return, you can expect we'll work with you to find a solution if one exists already (more often than not this is the case), or we'll log it as a feature request and let you know how long you can expect to wait before it's available.

So send us an email, or contact your account manager. We look forward to hearing from you!

An Introduction To Checkboxes

Verb's Checkbox Structure is a great way to store boolean values. Checkboxes hold a yes-or-no value which you can use with the <v:if> tag to perform conditional statements in your code. As an example, we'll add one to our Action Verb Record store, and perform a basic if-statement with it.

Here we are adding a new Checkbox Structure to our Artists Collection in the Backstage:

Once you've added your Checkbox, you can set it's value under the Content tab. For our example, we'll check the Checkbox under the Collection for 'The Sheets':

Great, now for each Artist we can perform an if statement to see if this Checkbox is checked, and it will only be true for 'The Sheets'. We'll do this on the page where we list our Artists, and we'll modify the Artists listing if they have the 'Has albums on sale' Checkbox checked.

<h3><v:a><v:text path="artist_name"/><v:if path="has_albums_on_sale"> -- Album Sale Going On Now!</v:if></v:a></h3>

Great, now 'The Sheets' appear with the modified title:

...and today's mini-tutorial is complete! Please contact your account manager, or email us, if you'd like to see more examples on how to use the Checkbox Structure.

Video Tuesday: The AJAX Attribute

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Verb's AJAX attribute can save you time and make your code more readable. As always, checkout our Documentation and Integration Center for more videos and tutorials.

Seeking Rockstar Developer Interns

Did the recession cause your internship offer to get pulled?
Didn’t get that YCombinator funding you were hoping for?
Or maybe you were just too busy partying to plan your summer?

Well you’re in luck. We at Action Verb just decided to move to a new office, which means that we now have more desks. Our empty desks are basically begging for interns.

Our internship positions are part-time [20-30 hours per week] and interns never work on Fridays. So read our offer and see if we can convince you to come chill in NYC for the summer. We’d love to have you.

ABOUT ACTION VERB:

Action Verb, LLC is a small, fast-growing NYC-based startup (founded by a Harvard ’08 graduate) that is revolutionizing the way web design firms operate.

Our first and main product, Verb, is a hosted content management platform that totally separates the internal content management interface from the public-facing websites. Designers build a custom backend interface for each site using our graphical tools by selecting what types of data structures are needed for each section of the site. (For example, a Record Label site might have a collection of Artists, each of which has Photos, Videos, Tour Dates, Blog Posts, MP3s and Links.) Their clients can then log in to Verb and add/edit content within the framework created by the designer. This content is made available via a PHP API, and through VerbML, our proprietary content presentation language. Verb also integrates eCommerce, targeted E-Mail Marketing, hosting, and more. See http://verbcms.com/ for a bigger picture and a demo video.

Verb is powerful enough that it enables small design teams (even those without programmers) to compete with big design firms for big projects. But it’s also quite addictive — most design firms that use Verb now use it exclusively, even for small sites. Verb is being used on more than 100 websites.

ABOUT THE INTERNSHIP OFFER:

We’re looking for two people to join our team as summer interns working on the Verb platform. You will work on real problems, and write real code that will be used in production.

We will work with you to identify and break off a problem that can be tackled fully while you’re with us. We want you to do something you’re interested in, and we have problems that run the spectrum from intensely algorithmic to frontend CSS work.

Possible intern projecs include:

rewrite VerbML parser in C using Ragel
optimize Verb XPath engine for performance, using the set of queries that are actually being run on our production sites
integrate Verb with GitHub to provide one-click deploy from github to a verb site
integrate our newsletter analytics with our eCommerce analytics to provide a clearer picture of the sales funnel that originates from newsletter links
import/export engines to allow clients to easily migrate from or to other platforms such as WordPress
or anything else that you can convince us is useful

Interns work 20-30 hours per week, and our schedule is fairly flexible — so please take time to go enjoy the city. We normally work from 11-7. So a typical schedule for interns would be 11-5, Monday-Thursday. Or you could do 1-7.

Our internships pay $3,000, spread over 10 weeks. If you’re here for less than 10 weeks (and you can be), prorate accordingly. We will also give you an unlimited ride MetroCard, so you can get all over the city.

We will bend over backwards to get you college credit for the internship, as long as you point us in the right direction for your school. If your college requires that it be an unpaid internship to get credit, we’ll see if we can get you that $3,000 some indirect way.

Given that we’re getting a late start, we’d want you to start as soon as you could. Unfortunately, this also means that finding housing in NYC will probably be a pain, and you’ll be on your own for that. Craigslist is your friend.

Ideal candidates will:

be rising college sophomores, juniors, or seniors. Exceptions can be made though, so if you’re the next Nathan Weizenbaum, please apply.
have a very good working knowledge of XHTML, CSS, Javascript (preferrably jQuery)
have solid experience with either Ruby on Rails [preferred] or PHP [we have some code in PHP that you could work on, but it’s hardcore, not fluffy web stuff]

In the vein of 37signals, we’d be very surprised if we hired anyone that doesn’t use a Mac. Let the flames begin.

To apply, please send your:

resume
cover letter (see http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1748 but don’t stress about making it formal, just tell us why you’re interested in us and why we’d be interested in you.)
design portfolio (if you have one and are interested in something more frontend oriented. totally optional.)

to kevin@actionverb.com.

No phone calls or recruiters, please.

Subversion and Verb

Verb recently began including integrated support for Subversion. This is awesome for our designers who code websites in teams or anyone who wants to keep better track of their source code.

Subversion is a source control tool that makes it possible to rollback your code to previous versions, or branch and merge your code with the code of your fellow designers. We recommend using source control even if you're coding independently; checking your code in often to a source control system enables you to rollback to a previous version if you ever need to. It also serves as a backup in the event that you accidentally make a big change to a file, or delete one altogether.

We do make full filesystem backups of your code automatically every six hours, but you don’t have control over this process like you do with Subversion. Additionally, recovering these backups requires contacting us, whereas rolling back to a previous revision in Subversion takes seconds.

To start using Subversion, make sure it’s installed on your machine. It comes standard on many operating systems, but it’s a free download if you’re without it. Once you’ve got the software installed, navigate in your Verb site’s Backstage to the FTP/Subversion tab:

Copy the address to your repository. Next, make sure you've created a user under the Users tab in your Backstage with permissions set to allow the use of Subversion. You will use these two pieces of information to checkout our Subversion repository:

By default, all that exists in the repository is a configuration file called '__verb.yml'. This file is important for the Verb Local Development environment; it provides the Local Development Environment with necessary information about your site.

You need to manually add the files you want to source control. Once you've downloaded them from your FTP server, use the 'svn add' command to mark them as needing to be added to your repository:

Next, it's time to check in:

Your files are now safely within source control! Just repeat the check in process once you've made edits to your files. To make your changes live, you'll need to deploy the latest revision in Subversion to your live site.

There are two ways to do this. One way is to return to the FTP/Subversion tab of your site's Backstage. Click the 'Deploy Subversion Site to Live Site' button, and click 'Okay' on the dialogue box to push your revisions out to the site:

Alternatively, if you have the Verb Local Development Environment installed, you may simply type 'verb deploy' at the command line.

Use the Subversion manual if you're in need of further reference. We hope to see more of our designers utilizing this powerful service. Our account managers will be more than happy to assist you as you make the transition over to source control.

How Does VerbML Translate to HTML?

VerbML is Verb’s proprietary presentation language that designers can code right into their HTML and PHP files. Because Verb is a hosted solution, Verb automatically processes your VerbML into HTML readable by any browser.

However, as a web designer, you’re likely interested in exactly how this happens.

To find out how a specific VerbML tag translates into HTML, use our tag library documentation. On each tag’s documentation page, we always make a point to demonstrate how a given tag is rendered.

Our tags that are translated into a single HTML tag also accept any attributes their respective HTML tags can handle. For example, Verb’s <v:img> tag is capable of accepting any attributes that the HTML <img> tag can accept. Whenever this is the case, we make this clear on the tag's documentation page.

Common VerbML Mistakes

While we do think VerbML is a pretty simple language to use, mistakes do happen. Today we'll cover a few things that even we stumble over sometimes. We might try to make this a reoccurring series as we notice new trends in our troubleshooting efforts. Remember, anytime you have a problem with your code, your account manager can help you find the culprit.

Remember What Context You're In

A common mistake early on is to try to specify a path to a Structure that doesn't exist, because you're in the wrong context. Say we have a collection called 'Artists' which contains Albums, Artist Bio, Artist Genre. Assuming Albums doesn't contain a Structure that's also called 'Artist Genre', this code won't work:

<v:collection path="Artists" filter_input="query">
 Here's the albums by <v:text path="artist" />:
 <v:collection path="albums">
  <v:text path="album_name" />
  <v:text path="artist_genre" />
 </v:collection>
</v:collection>

The problematic code is bolded. Since 'Artist Genre' is a Substructure of Artists and not Albums, this path is incorrect. To fix it, and grab the Artist Genre succesfully, we'd need to go up one level:

<v:text path="../artist_genre" />

Image Sizes Are Case Sensitive

Is the crop you setup in the Backstage not showing up on your site? One thing to check is that you spelled your Image Size correctly, and that you have the correct capitalization. The latter trips up a lot of people. Verb doesn't make Image Sizes all lowercase, nor replace spaces with underlines, as it does with xpaths. Instead, and Image Size called 'Big Square' should be used to like this:

<v:img path="about_us/photo_of_employees" image_size="Big Square" />

Don't Close Shortcut Tags

Shortcut tags aren't like other tags, in that they should not be closed (even self closed!). Here's a piece of code that would cause an error:

<div style="background: url(<v=/styles/background_image,480,360 />);"></div>

Instead, you should remove the self-closing '/':

<div style="background: url(<v=/styles/background_image,480,360>);"></div>

Structures vs. Superstructures

Here's a question that new designers sometimes ask when they begin using our documentation: what's the difference between a Simple Structure and a Superstructure?

Superstructures

The two Superstructures are the Collection and the Section. The difference between the two is that the Collection can hold multiple entries of data (think multiple rows in a database), while the Section only has one entry (think about a static text file). Superstructures are the only Structures that can exist on the top-level of your website and are used to organize your content. Superstructures can contain other Superstructures.

Simple Structures

Simple Structures are the Structures which actually hold data. Some Simple Structures include Text, Text Area, Checkbox, Date, File, and Video. Simple Structures always exist within a Superstructure.

Video Tuesday: Collections

Get the Flash Player so you can see an awesome video about Verb.

Today we're unveiling our new video tutorials. We've put them together to assist our new designers as they get started with Verb. Check out the Tutorials and Examples section of the Documentation and Integration Center for all of the available tutorials. We'll be posting one here every Tuesday as well.

Google Apps and Verb

Once you create a domain name to point to your Verb site, you’ll need to decide how you’d like to handle email. One solution is to use Google Apps. Google Apps is an online office suite that provides Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Video, and Google Sites to your clients. We recommend it because Google's email services are more full-featured than ours.

After you create your domain name you’ll need to setup your Google Apps. See the Google Apps website for how to complete their quick setup process. Once you add a domain, you simply need to click the ‘enable’ link under ‘Google Apps’:

So long as your Google Apps account is properly set up, this should be all you need to do. Your emails will be handled by Google!

The Principles of Verb's eCommerce

Today we're going to do a brief summary of Verb's shopping cart flow. Verb's integrated eCommerce is a framework that is both flexible and powerful. We've outlined the shopping cart flow completely in our documentation, but this will serve as a brief run-through.

Adding Items to the Cart

The <v:store:add_to_cart> tag outputs a form that, when submitted, will add an item to the customer's shopping cart. You might wonder how Verb detects what information to pass along to the cart. The answer lies in this tag's attributes. Information like the item name, price, weight, and many other details can be passed on to the cart via attributes. See the <v:store:add_to_cart> documentation page for a full list of available attributes.

The Shopping Cart

The shopping cart itself can be rendered using the <v:store:cart> tag. Within these tags, a <v:store:cart:items> tag can be utilized to output the information about each item that has been added to the cart. Any information passed along through the <v:store:add_to_cart> tag is accessible by this tag. Here's some sample shopping cart code that would exist within <v:store:cart> tags:

...
<ul>
 <li>Remove</li>
 <li>Image</li>
 <li>Item Description</li>
 <li>Qty</li>
 <li>Price</li>
 <li>Total</li>
</ul>
<v:store:cart:items>
 <ul>
  <li><v:checkbox path="remove" /></li>
  <li><v:img path="image" /></li>
  <li><v:text path="name" /></li>
  <li><v:text path="option_value" />
  <li><v:text_field path="qty" size="1" /></li>
  <li>$<v:text path="price" number_format="2" /></li>
  <li>$<v:text path="total" number_format="2" /></li>
 </ul>
</v:store:cart:items>
...

It's that easy to list out your items. Notice that Verb lets you style our output any way you like. As with any page you code with Verb, no barriers exist between you and your CSS/HTML.

Registration

It's usually necessary to collect billing and shipping information from your customers. This information will be sent along to the payment and shipping methods you set up in the Backstage. It will also appear on invoices that Verb creates. Within the <v:store:register> tag, Verb looks for appropriately named text fields which the customer enters their information. As an example, here's how you'd collect the customer's billing city information:

<v:text_field path="billing_city" required="true" />

Checkout

The <v:store:checkout> tag creates a form for the customer to confirm the order information, and also select from the available payment and shipping methods. You may again use <v:store:cart:items> to output the items in your cart. Also useful, <v:store:payment_methods_select /> creates a select menu populated with the Payment Methods setup in the Backstage, while <v:store:shipping_methods_select /> is populated with the available Shipping Methods.

There's More

Verb's elegant solution to eCommerce doesn't stop here. Need to accept coupon codes? Want to save user registration so the user can login in the future? This and much more is possible. Browse our eCommerce documentation for a full review of what you can do with Verb's eCommerce power.

Running MySQL-Backed Apps on Verb

Verb’s blogging capabilities meet the needs of 90% of our designer’s clients. We know that sometimes a client demands third party software, such as Wordpress. Because we don’t want our designers to create a separate webspace just for a single application, we’ve made it possible to make a MySQL database.

To do this, open the Backstage of your website and navigate to the MySQL subtab. Click the ‘Create New’ and Verb will create you a new database. The database name, username, and password will all shown on the MySQL screen tab now:

For security purposes, we don’t currently give designers the ability to have any more control over their MySQL databases than on this screen. We do allow the creation of multiple databases, however. If you’d like more specifics on what you can and can’t do with MySQL in Verb, contact your Account Manager or shoot us an email.

Your Data Is Safe

Because Verb is a hosted solution, we are often asked about the efforts we make to protect your data. In short, be reassured that your data is safe.

We store data on high performance servers in Secaucus, NJ and San Antonio, TX and perform remote backups 4 times a day to a backup location in New York, NY. We retain these backups for a variable length of time, but we do our best to keep at least all 6-hour backups for the last week, all daily backups for the last month, and all monthly backups for the last year.

The backup system that we use for client data is the exact same system that we use for all of our own business critical data.

We also have a comprehensive Privacy Policy that explains exactly how we will treat your data. You should read it to understand exactly how you're protected, but in short: we will not use your upload content for any purpose whatsoever, except to provide you with the Verb service. You own your content.

If you have any questions, please don't hestiate to contact us.

The 5 Different Conditions Can Test For

Because it is so useful, today we're going to do a refresher on how to use the <v:if> tag. The <v:if> tag is Verb's conditional tag which renders some content only if a certain condition is met. There are five different tests the <v:if> tag is capable of.

Here they are:

path - This is likely the most common attribute you'll use. It tests whether or not a specific value is set.
```
<v:if path="address">
 Our address is: <v:text path="address" />
</v:if>
```
param - This checks to see if a GET or POST parameter has been specified. For example if a page is listing search results, we could do something like:
```
<v:if param="query">
 Search Results for <v:text param="query" />
</v:if>
```

total_items - Tests against the number of items in a Collection.

<v:if total_items="4">
 Add some thing else to your cart! Your fifth item is free.
</v:if>

id - Tests against the ID of the current entry.

<v:if id="23552">
 Please keep this item out of reach of small children.
</v:if>

is - Checks the value of the path or param value.

<v:if path="location" is="New York">
 We provide free shipping in New York!
</v:if>

Pretty cool eh? You can also place <v:else> tags within <v:if> blocks to tell Verb what to render if a condition doesn't exist.

3 Newsletter Targeting Tips

Sending effective newsletters is a tricky business. Not only is the content of your newsletters important, but so is the destination. To make sure your clients are reading what you send them, make sure you're not sending them too many emails, or emails that are irrelevant. To help with the latter challenge, Verb provides ways for you to send your newsletters to specific groups. Here's three ideas.

Target By Location
Is your band touring through England? Alert the masses by shooting out an email to all your English customers. Under Verb’s Newsletter tab, create a new campaign and select the country or state you’d like to target:

Target By Order History
Another effective marketing strategy is to zero-in on a certain demographic of customer based on their order history. For example, if your online store were debuting a pricey new gadget, you might not want to bother your customers who haven’t spent much money in the past. Instead, you could tell Verb to email customers who have spent a certain about in a specified span of time:

Target By Hand-Picking
Verb allows you to make lists of customers in any manor you see fit. Maybe you have a list of VIP customers who you’d like to email a sneak peak of an upcoming product release. Just create a list under Verb’s Newsletter tab, then choose that list when creating a new campaign.

Scheduling A Blog Post

Sometimes is it necessary to publish a blog post at a later date, instead of instantly. While it has always been possible to do this manually, Verb recently added the scheduling feature, which makes it possible to enable/disable entries in a Collection at a specified time and date. Say for example you are debuting a new product on the Fourth of July, and you'd like to inform your customers of this immediately after it becomes available for purchasing. Verb lets you schedule a blog post that is made visible immediately on July 4th. Since this functionality is available for any Collection entry, you could also schedule the availability of the product itself.

Here's a tutorial on how to schedule an example blog post for Action Verb Records, our fictional record store.

Here we're adding a new post:

Note that we've opted to disable the entry. We did this by clicking the green dot at the top of the form, changing it to red. After saving this entry, we'll schedule it:

Finally, we can now see that our post is disabled but is schedule, as indicated by the clock icon:

As stated before, scheduling is not limited to blog entries. Because Verb makes no assumptions about what you're doing with your content, a Collection of Blog entries has the same available options as a Collection of Albums, Employees, Planes, Trains, or Automobiles.

New Feature: filter and order in verb() and verb_find()

Verb's PHP integration just got a lot better with the addition of 2 features ported from VerbML's tag: filter and order.

Now you can filter and order (sort) entries when using Verb's PHP integration just like in VerbML. This feature has been requested for a while and we're happy to finally bring it live on all sites.

Here is an example of the new feature in use:

$posts = verb("posts", array('order' => "DESC(post_date)"));
?>

For more information, please see the documentation for verb() and verb_find(): http://docs.verbcms.com/php_verb

New VerbML Tag:

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of a new VerbML tag: <v:rss>. Previously, customers looking to build RSS feeds of their site's content have had to roll their own. Of course, this was made quite easy by Verb's fantastic XML integration, but we knew we could do better. So we did.

Now, all that's required to create an RSS feed of any of your data is to create a file called rss.xml and put this tag in it:

<v:rss title="My Site" description="My blog feed." path="posts" title_field="title" description_field="content" />

You may specify an additional parameter to order the entries in your feed, and you may include multiple collections within the path.

We are using the <v:rss> tag to power this very blog, and it has already been rolled out on other sites as well. For more information, please see the documentation page at http://docs.verbcms.com/v_rss.

Redesigning Your Site? No Problem.

Verb allows you to define structures in a way that makes sense semantically, without getting tangled up in the design of your site. This has some powerful implications. For your clients, it should make it simple for them to navigate your structures in order to update their content. As a designer, it means that your content isn’t tied to the layout of your site.

With many other content management systems, you’ll find yourself organizing your content based on where it’s located on your site. In these systems, if you change your site, you have to update both the design and content structures. With Verb however, a site redesign doesn’t necessitate an overhaul of content structuring. We separate the content from its presentation completely.

The Tag

Verb’s shortcut tags are well documented in our Documentation and Integration Center, but we’d like to take a moment to remind you just how useful the <v=path> tag can be. While the tag can be used anywhere in your HTML/XML, it’s used most often to insert content into a tag’s attribute. This property of the shortcut tags makes it possible to solve many problems that traditional CMS platforms do not address.

One example of this is injecting Verb content into a Lightbox image viewer. Lightbox is one of the many JavaScript libraries that make it possible to view your pictures in pretty modal popups. Once you have the Lightbox JavaScript libraries included in your document, the code to display a picture with Lightbox looks like this:

<a href="image.jpg" title="my caption"><img src="image_small.jpg" /></a>

With’s Verb’s shortcut tag, we can easily insert the path to an image that is managed by Verb. Here’s what it might look like:

<a href="<v=picture>" title="<v=caption>"><v:img path="picture" width="50" height="50" /></a>

No problem! Verb’s shortcut tags can make your life easier, so it’s worth reading up on them. If you want the full list of capabilities (like accessing Permlinks or injecting PHP), see the shortcut tags' documentation page.

What's A Permalink?

Permanent links, or “Permalinks”, were first popularized in the world of blogs as a way to link back to individual blog posts. In Verb, designers use permalinks to link to individual entries in a collection.

Why use them? One reason is that they can keep your address bar looking much prettier. Instead of a confusing address with a long string of identifying characters, your address can look something like: http://www.mydomain.com/clean/permalink

Permalinks are also a good practice if you’re concerned about SEO. Search engine spiders give value to addresses that your links produce. Creating permalinks with meaningful names could result in your site appearing higher in search engine results.

For more information on how to use Permalinks in Verb, see our documentation page on Permalinks.

Introducing Your Client to Verb

Every designer that builds a website on Verb will eventually have to show their clients the Verb interface. Here's a checklist of things you might want to do before introducing your clients to Verb.

Prepare Verb for them. Under the Users tab, create a user account for the client to login to their site’s Backstage. When creating the user account, Verb will allow you to restrict what the user will have access to. If you know a user will never need to use a certain area of their Backstage – like if their site doesn’t have any eCommere, so they won’t be using the Store Tab – you might want to uncheck the applicable checkbox when creating their account. This makes the Verb experience more straight-forward for your user. Generally, clients will not need access to the Verb tab.
You might also want to hide or freeze data that they’ll never need to update. You can hide or freeze a Collection or Structure under the Verb tab. This ensures that no important content is edited by mistake.
Create External Structures that reference any other websites they’ll need access to. If they have an external Wordpress blog, create an External Structure that points to the login page for that site. Creating these Structures makes it so your client needs to keep only one link bookmarked – their site’s Backstage.
Show them the Usage/Billing tab. Make sure your client knows where to update their credit card information, how to change their plan, and where to keep tabs of their usage.
Introduce them to the Content Tab. This is likely the tab that they’ll frequent the most, as it’s where all content changes take place. Explain what each Collection and Section contains and any validations that you’ve created. If it’s relevant, make sure you show them how to enable, disable, and schedule Collection Entries.
Don't forget to show them the Newsletter, Store, and Customers tabs, if their site utilizes those features.

These steps should ensure that your client loves Verb as much as you do.

Our Support Is Awesome

Our current designers can attest that at Verb we make designer support a priority. Confused about paginating a collection? Choosing between credit card merchants? Don’t scratch your head for too long; In addition to our documentation, our Account Managers are there to help you work through every issue.

Verb Account Managers have helped designers construct many sites, so they can also make suggestions. If for example you’re creating your first blog with Verb, and you’d like to see some example code, our Account Mangers can code that kind of stuff up for you quickly. We’re committed to helping you get your sites up and running ASAP.

As we like to say, there’s no problem too big – or too small! – for the Verb support staff to help you with. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Who's Using Verb?

At Verb, we’re committed to giving designers powerful tools to develop with, while at the same time giving them complete design freedom. To some, a CMS and design freedom might seem like opposing forces. At Verb, we solve this issue with our carefully thought-out presentation language, VerbML, as well as an incredibly robust PHP API.

The proof is in the pudding, though. Let’s take a look at a few of our favorite sites that are utilizing Verb.

Flying Point Surf
Flying Point features a sleak surf shop using Verb’s eCommerce. Notice that they sell more than surf boards; Verb makes it especially easy to categorize your content on sites like this.

Gin Lan Media
Gin Lane Media is top-notch web design firm who consistently produce beautiful sites, often utilizing Verb in the process. In fact, when it came time to design their own site, Gin Lane opted to use Verb to make their site easy-to-update as their company’s portfolio grows.

Green Owl Records
Green Owl Records is a Brooklyn-based record label that believes “great music can be sustainable—both economically and environmentally.” Having their site designed with Verb means they can manage their artists, albums, and blog posts all in one place.

Tom Sachs
A great example of an effective portfolio site made with Verb. Notice also the added store. Verb’s fair pricing plan along with its easy eCommerce integration make it possible for even small sites to have a shop.

Snippet: adding a Show All option to a page select dropdown

Someone asked how to add a Show All option to the page select dropdowns generated by VerbML. Personally, I would place Show All as a link next to the dropdown, but if you really wanted to do it, here's how I'd go about it:

Page: 
<v:select id="pageselector" onchange="if (this.value == 'all') { window.location.href='/my_show_all_url'; return false;}">
 <option value="all">Show All</option>
</v:select>

Support for Haml and Sass!

Haml and SASS are meta-langauges that compile into HTML and CSS, respectively. They let you write code that is leaner, more readable, and more easily changed.

We use Haml and SASS for every website we make (even this one!), and will probably never go back.

However, Haml and SASS are typically pretty tough to use for websites that are static or hosted on a server that you don't fully control. This is because they are written in Ruby and designed to be used with Ruby on Rails.

But we've done all the plumbing to make Haml and SASS work automatically on Verb. All you need to do is upload a .haml or .sass file and hit it in your browser. We will automatically compile it to HTML or CSS and cache the compiled version.

I think we are the first shared webhost to do something like this.

Check out how cool Haml is. This code:

#shows
  .show
    %a{ :href => "/show" } See the show

Becomes this ...

<div id="shows">
  <div class="show">
    <a href="/show">See the show</a>
  </div>
</div>

Haml cuts out all of the extra typing and brainpower associated with closing tags and angle brackets everywhere. It also uses CSS-style identifiers for id and class. For more details, read the documentation.

SASS applies the same principle to stylesheets. This:

#main
  :width 97%
  p, div
    :font-size 2em
    a
      :font-weight bold
  pre
    :font-size 3em

Becomes this:

#main {
  width: 97%; }
  #main p, #main div {
    font-size: 2em; }
    #main p a, #main div a {
      font-weight: bold; }
  #main pre {
    font-size: 3em; }

Curly brackets are gone, and nesting style rules is now a matter of just using indentation! For more details, read the SASS documentation.

Of course, you can fully use VerbML tags inside Haml. They work just like HTML tags.

Create MySQL Databases directly from Verb

A lot of people install 3rd party apps (such as Wordpress) that require a MySQL database. You can now generate a MySQL database directly from Verb. Simply go to the Settings tab and select the MySQL subtab.

Databases are created instantly and ready for use with just one click.

Automatic PDF generation from HTML

In response to feature requests, we have built in support for generating PDFs directly from HTML (and you can use PHP or VerbML code too!).

Rather than fiddling with complicated software packages or PHP libraries, just design your PDF documents the same way you would design a webpage: with HTML and CSS. Almost all HTML and CSS is supported (the main exception being nested tables).

We use the dompdf library to handle PDF generation. Any file ending in .pdf.html will automatically be run through the PDF engine. Any file ending in .pdf.haml will be run through Haml and the PDF engine. Files ending in .pdf.php, or .pdf.haml.php will also be run through PHP.

Retain customers on your store with Amazon Universal Wishlist

If you're selling products online (through Verb Store or otherwise), you should consider implementing wishlist functionality. It brings back customers that want something but aren't buying it now. If you don't want to implement this yourself, Amazon has launched a service called Universal Wishlist that gives you this functionality by just inserting a script into your page.

To learn more, go here: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/vendor-button/

New title="" option in

We've finally solved the problem of updating <title> tags on pages that use templates. Simply put a title= attribute in your <v:template> tag and the contents of that attribute will be set in the parameter $title. You can then print it back out in your template file by using <v:text param="title" />.

For more information, check out http://docs.verbcms.com/v_template.

Add a search box to your site -- cool!

Take a look at Sikbox. You can use it to instantly add a searchbox to your site. Really cool.

New Feature: Build Entry title from Multiple Fields

Scenario: On your website, you have products that each have fields for Name and Color, in addition to price and some other fields. You want to create an Association (Multi) on another section of your site (say, the blog) that allows you to tag Products that are relevant to that particular post.

The Problem used to be: Only one field could be set as title, so it was impossible to see whether you were tagging the Red Doll or the Blue Doll.

Solution: Titles of collection entries can now be built from multiple fields. Simply select all the fields you'd like, and the full title will be built automatically for you. This will affect autogenerated Permalinks as well.

Let us know if you have any questions!

New asset_width and asset_height attributes in

You may have noticed that images and video can now be directly embedded in Rich Text areas on Verb. We have added 2 attributes to <v:text> to help you customize how these images and video are rendered:

asset_height - if this is a rich text field with embedded assets such as video or images, setting this attribute will scale these assets to be no bigger than this many pixels high.
asset_width - similar to asset_height, but for width.

More information here: http://docs.verbcms.com/v_text

New demo video available: Blog Blog as Fast As You Can

We're working hard over here on building more training videos so we can better show off the power of Verb. Here's the first result of our efforts. We hope to be making many more of these soon.

http://actionverb.com/training/BlogBlog.mov

Change to the way error pages are edited

We have changed the way that your sites' error pages (for example, 404 Error) can be edited. For all newly created sites, these will be stored in a folder called error_pages in your FTP root. You can edit them directly.

We did not make the change retroactive, because we do not want to break any of your existing sites. IF you have an older Verb site and need to edit your error pages, send us an E-Mail and we'll update your site to use the new structure.

New Feature: Browse Associations like Collections

A big drawback to Verb has always been that Associations were not able to be browsed in reverse. That is, let's say you have a collection called Properties that contains an association to another collection called Agents. It'd be nice to be able to click on Agents and then see a list of the properties that belong to just that one agent.

Now, we have built it out so that you can indeed do that. It doesn't make sense in all situations, so you must enable it for each association by specifying a name for the Reverse Association in the Verb tab.

Let us know if you have any suggestions!

Network Issues for NYC Time Warner Customers

Some customers that use Time Warner Cable in New York, NY have reported intermittent connection problems and slowness connecting to sites hosted on Verb.

After an investigation, we have determined this is an Internet routing problem occurring somewhere between Time Warner's network (rr.com) and the network of our upstream provider (peer1.net). These problems seem to be affecting all traffic between rr.com and our datacenter (Peer 1) in San Antonio, TX. Wordpress is also hosted in the same datacenter, and is experiencing the exact same problems.

We have confirmed that these problems are not being caused by us and to the best of our knowledge are isolated to this particular market.

We have reported this to our upstream network providers and to Time Warner Cable. Unfortunately, there is nothing more we can do at this time, as the problem is not with our systems.

Thanks for your patience.

New VerbML tag:

Want to use PHP integration but don't want to give up the VerbML looping constructs inside <v:collection>? Now you can do both, together. The new <v:php> tag will execute PHP code inside the VerbML interpreter.

Simply put PHP code inside <v:php> tags and that code will run inside that VerbML context. If it is inside a collection, it will run once for every collection element. The PHP variable $context will be set to the current context.

For more information: http://integration.verbcms.com/v_php

Launch: Verb Search

Managing a huge site with Verb? Now you can search all your content, any time.

Just highlight your mouse over the new Search tab in the top right and you can search any of your content. This feature has been added to all Verb sites. You don't have to do anything to activate it.

Please send any comments or questions to support.

Work for us: Verb Platform Evangelist job posting

Action Verb, LLC is a small, profitable, fast-growing NYC-based startup (founded by a Harvard '08 graduate) that is revolutionizing the way web design firms operate.

Our first product, Verb, is a hosted content management platform that totally separates the internal content management interface from the public-facing website. Designers build a custom backend interface for each site using our graphical tools by selecting what types of data structures are needed for each section of the site. (For example, a Record Label site might have a collection of Artists, each of which has Photos, Videos, Tour Dates, Blog Posts, MP3s and Links.) Their clients can then log in to Verb and add/edit content within the framework created by the designer. This content is made available via a REST API, PHP API, and through VerbML, our proprietary content presentation language. Verb also integrates eCommerce, targeted E-Mail Marketing, hosting, and more. See http://verbcms.com/features for a bigger picture.

Verb is powerful enough that it enables small design teams (even those without programmers) to compete with big design firms for big projects. But it's also quite addictive -- most design firms that use Verb now use it exclusively, even for small sites. Verb is in an invitation-only beta stage, but is already used in production on dozens of sites. The closest competing products are Squarespace and Good Barry, but we think we beat both of them in terms of flexibility.

We're looking for someone to join our team as a full-time Evangelist for the Verb platform. You will make demos, give presentations, and maintain relationships with our designer clients and potential clients. You will promote and defend Verb on forums, blogs, at conferences, and through guerilla marketing. You will ensure that our documentation is complete and helpful. You will write meaningful tutorials that help new designers bootstrap. You will devise and execute plans to increase the number of designers and websites using Verb. Some of these will be very Macguyver.

You will devote all your energy to evangelism and business development -- you will not be expected to contribute to engineering on Verb or any of our other products. To get you up to speed, we will place you with one of our current designer partners and you will work with them to implement Verb on two or three websites.

We think this is a great opportunity for a business-minded hacker that refuses to take a code monkey job or web designer that is looking to use his or her skills in a different way.

Anyone we hire absolutely must have:

- Either a 4 year degree from a leading university or compelling professional skills and experience (we don't so much if you went to school, we do care that you're smart, talented and motivated)
- a good understanding of XHTML, CSS and familiarity with Javascript and server-side technologies
- background working on web design / applications either technically or at a high level on the business side
- excellent writing skills (you will be writing documentation, examples, and demos)
- excellent people/networking skills (you will be representing Verb in person at conferences and interfacing with two types of clients regularly)
- strong motivation and ability to make decisions on your own

Ideal candidates will have:

- a complete working knowledge of XHTML, CSS, Javascript (preferrably jQuery)
- experience doing paid web design projects, either individually or as part of an agency
- experience with at least one server-side technology, preferrably PHP or Ruby (our software is mostly written in Ruby, but most web designers use PHP, so PHP demos, APIs, and documentation is critical)
- experience on an open source project

We'd be very reluctant to hire anyone that doesn't use a Mac though if you have a good story about why you use something open source we'd be willing to listen.

We're in NYC, but telecommuting can be an option as long as you're willing to travel to NYC occasionally. We envision this as a full-time position, but if you're finishing school, let's talk anyway. Start immediately, or as soon as you can. Compensation is cash and/or equity.

This position offers a reasonable base pay, significant opportunities for profit sharing short term and possibly equity long term. We are looking for someone excited by the fact that you'll be helping build a small company (you would be the third full time employee) and will not be at the bottom of a hierarchy.

To apply, please send your:

* resume
* cover letter - don't stress about making it formal, just tell us why you're awesome
* design portfolio (optional)

to kevin@actionverb.com.

Fix: Flash 10 compatibility issues solved in Verb interface

As some of you know, Adobe's rollout of Flash 10 has broken a lot of websites that rely on Flash-based uploading tools, including Flickr, Wordpress, Yahoo, and more. Clicking the button to upload an image or file would simply not work.

We just pushed a fix that should resolve these issues in the Verb interface. Please let us know if you experience any other Flash 10-related problems.

Thanks for your patience.

New Feature: Associations can now associate with multiple collections

Scenario: On your website, you are featuring content on the homepage that has a full write-up in an inner page. You'd like to "tag" the homepage content by creating an association item that lets your clients select which inside page the Homepage should link to. However, the homepage might link to a number of different types of content inside your website.

The Problem used to be: Associations could only be associated with a single collection, so it was necessary to create multiple associations -- one for each potential type of content. This was not an ideal solution.

Solution: Associations can now include as many collections as you would like. Simply select the additional collections from the dropdown menu and build an association that fits your exact needs.

This will be especially powerful when we release our new Permalinking features next week that will allow you to completely control how each Structure is Permalinked.

Welcome to the Verb Blog!

Finally, a place for the Verb team to communicate with developers using Verb. Here's to a great relationship!