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Enchancements Added & Other News (Most Recent First)

We are continually enhancing VirtualCharity and our customers automatically get these enhancements free of any additional charge.

Click future enhancements for details of future work

14.03.2010	Manager Only Option on Navigation An option has been added in order that it may specified whether a main navigation link can only be seen and accessed by a website manager.
05.03.2010	Webserver Memory Increase The memory on the webserver that Virtual Venture websites sit on has been increased four fold. This should address recent problems with speed of response and early indications seem to indicate a significant improvement.
12.02.2010	Internet Explorer Support Please click here for details of Microsoft's IE support. Please note Microsoft appear to be indicating that the latest support date published for IE6 is 13.07.2010.
02.02.2010	Optimization to Statistic Reporting The initial screen load was shown to hav increased five fold after optimization
02.12.2009	Delete option added in Enquiries The original thinking was that no delete option should be provided as there should be a permanent record of any enquiry made through the contact us form. However, due to the large number of automated robots searching for contact us pages and filling them in (spam) the delete option has been added so that the offending enquiries can be removed. This means that the statistics report reflects accurately the number of genuine enquiries.
30.11.2009	Preview button added to Site Pages In Site Pages you will now see an Internet Explorer icon which will enter your page in a new window. The user interface was WYSIWYG anyway but this preview allows you to see the page in the context of your website.
26.11.2009	Contact Us Parameters added The link to the contact us page has been enchanced so that the message can be autopopulated. Use contactus?message=Your message in the link box to use this. You can also add &subject=Your message subject to alter the subject of the email you receive or also add &confirmation=Name of a Page so that after submitting their enquiry it shows this page.
24.07.2009	Group Feature added to bulk email facility which enabled the user to bulk email a specific group of users.
04.07.2009	Menu Trail added to enable the user to see more clearly where they are in the menu structure.
16.06.2009	Three Level Sub Menus added to cater for expanded sub menu navigation.
26.11.2008	Export Function added to the control panel so you can export data from your database in Excel format to integrate with your non web based systems.
02.09.2008	Preview Button added in News maintenance to enable the user to preview inactive news articles prior to setting live.
14.08.2008	Bulk Emaling enhanced to allow a test email to be sent and the ability to bulk email a specific group of recipients.
02.01.2008	News Feature added. An additional feature added to complement the News Extra feature. This feature being a full length news facility enabling larger news items with associated images. It auto archives and headlines can be displayed on the home page or other pages in your website.
10.12.2007	Gallery functionality added. The website manager can create as many galleries as required and also set up sub galleries within galleries. The image width and height can be set and the software will automatically resize images for you. A template can be applied to automatically frame the image for you.
07.09.2007	Statistics graphs modifed to show Predicted Values
11.06.2007	CLASP The Carers Centre launch their new Virtual Charity website at the beginning of National Carers Week at BBC Radio Leicester, see www.claspthecarerscentre.org.uk for more details.
17.05.2007	Organisation functionality added. The website manager can import a list of organisation details from an Excel or CSV file. These can then be searched/browsed by users of the website in various orders. This functionality originally developed for CLASP but has obvious generic application.
15.05.2007	Auto Logout for increased security. The website manager can set the number of seconds a user can be logged in for before they are automatically logged out if there is no activity. Caters for the situation when a website manager who can edit content logs in and then leaves their PC unattended.
14.04.2007	Events functionality has been added so that managers of the website can easily enter a title, date and location of relevant events. Users of the website can then easily access forthcoming events in date or event name order and optionally view the archives for a touch of nostalgia.
28.03.2007	A Discussion Forum has been added so that users registered on the website can post their view on important issues that effect them. This is considered particularly useful for those who find it difficult for those who find in difficult to communicate in other ways.
28.02.2007	An enhancement has made so the user can edit the Description Metatag that is used for display purposes by some search engines. This is also advantageous to optimisation and ideally the description should contain relevent keywords.
27.02.2007	An enhancement has been added to the Statistics Module so that a graphical analysis of donations aborted or confirmed can be viewed.
22.02.2007	An Donation Module has been added that allows user to make a donation and then records that information including whether they selected Gift Aid or not.
20.02.2007	A Statistics Module has been added so that you can view a monthly graphical analysis of the number of visitors, page requests, enquiries, users registered and users who logged in.
02.02.2007	A Google Search facility has been added so that users of your website can search for pages that match their search criteria.
15.01.2007	Change made so that it is not neccessary to have the login box on the home page. It can now be a Covert Login if required.
11.12.2006	An Accessibility Stylesheet has been provided. The user of the website now has the option of displaying the website using a large font, high constrast stylesheet. This option has been added with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in mind. This is of great importance for all. Even small businesses are subject to the DDA as well as bodies such as councils, schools, charities and the Odeon Cinema! (see Odeon reels out accessibility excuses) who already pay attention to it. The International Olympic Commitee was fined under similar legislation, see Website acessibility is now getting serious in the USA . In time we expect legal predecent to influence compliance.
25.11.2006	Enhanced Order Selection. The ordering of items throughout the system has been enhanced with an additional option to order by clicking on a column title. The original option of drop down boxes remains but we believe this new enhancement will enable users to order what they are viewing more quickly and easily.
12.11.2006	Minimum Subscribe Option added so that a minimum number of days that a user has to be subscribed for can be entered in the Site Details option on your Control Panel. If a user attempts to unsubscribe before the specified number of days has elapsed since they created their login then the attempt is disallowed. You need to state this in your terms.
08.11.2006	Dynamic News Extra feature modified so that it now displays a random item and then cycles through the list; rather than starting from item one each time the page is refreshed.
03.09.2006	Automatic Email now sent advising a user that they have Intranet Access when their user is given privilege to access the Intranet.
29.08.2006	Dynamic News Extra feature added enabling managers of the website to create a dynamic news feature to appear on their website. News Extra items can be activated or deactivated (rather than deleted) by the website manager. Ultimately a catalogue of News Extra items is created from which the website manager can select.