Reflect

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   13 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.