New feature: easy ‘inline’ slideshows and galleries

One of our most requested features yet is live and available to all Tank sites: you can now easily create ‘inline’ slideshows or galleries from any sequence of images.

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More cohesive skin-switching and about ‘orphaned’ content

We look at what happens when you switch your skin and introduce the notion of ‘orphaned’ content - and there is talk about a new range of skins.

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Overhaul of the edit screen, the control bar & the file uploader

We overhaul the edit screen, the file uploader & the control bar. And enable you to overhaul each of your pages too.

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Improved compression, smarter caching and a new reverse proxy

We’ve added ‘behind the scenes’ functionality to improve loading times, bandwidth consumption and responsiveness in both the app and your sites.

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Handsfree upgrades, one-step domain registrations and more

We now have functionality to allow you to upgrade sites and register domains by yourself.

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We’re really sorry about the downtime!

Tank, and all the sites built with Tank, went ‘down’ for approximately an hour between 12h00 and 13h00 today. The issue appears to be resolved, and as soon as we have more information as to cause we’ll update this post.

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Update: new site, new showcase, new support section

We’ve treated ourselves to a re-design of our own site: we’ve outgrown our own skin and it was time to introduce a couple of new aspects.

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New functionality: ‘add something’

With the release of Tank4.0 we wanted to address a couple of those small things that have been bugging us for ages. One of these aspects was the way one added things to a site.

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We took a nose-dive, and took you with us

We’re sorry. There was a hiccup during the roll-out of Tank4.0, and at 14h17 this afternoon all sites, including our app, went ‘down’.

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Almost in the clearing

We’re putting the final touches on to Tank4.0: and if everything goes according to plan it should be available to everyone in the next couple of hours, maybe even sooner.

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Breaking cover

We’ve been quiet for a while so we thought we’ll share a couple of our ideas to give you an idea of what we’re working towards: a realign of the interface that drives the app.

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On a need-to-know basis

We’re putting the finishing touches on tank’s long-elusive 4th feature: pods. It’s been keeping us busy, but apart from the development aspect, it’s more what one can do with pods that’s been keeping us busy.

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Alpha and Omega, and everything in between

Omega is now available to all sites via the skin tab. If you have a square logo this skin might be right for you.

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Beta-testers wanted for Omega

We’re looking for beta-testers for Omega, a new skin that will soon enough replace Tango.

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Alpha: redux

We’re revisiting Alpha and we’re keen to hear what (other) features you think we should include: keep reading to find out what we’ve got so far.

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Welcome to our new server

If you are reading this it means you are now viewing tank on our new server. We’ve been planning the move for a couple of months now - these things are never easy considering the amount of data involved - and we’re glad everything went so smoothly.

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Beta-testers wanted for Alpha

We’re putting the finishing touches on our newest skin - Alpha - and we are looking for a couple of beta-testers.

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It was time to up our game

You’ll notice an entirely new interface when you log-in next. We were under the impression that our previous interface was simple and easy to use, but, strangely enough, compared to the new version it wasn’t.

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It’s time for a tactical maneuver

The app is now officially in a hull-down position. We’re open for business, one step at a time.

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Running it past a couple of designers; part 1

We’ve been letting a couple of designers in to poke around our framework. No training, no manual, just a bit of direction via gtalk. It’s part of a general push to get designers more involved in this project, both from they way they work, to the way we operate. Pioneerunit was constructed during the chat.

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Too much reality for you to handle?

We’ve recently made a series of changes that affect everything, and, subsequently, if we had more sites running on the framework, the implications would’ve been quite time-consuming to fix. That said, we had enough real sites up and running to show us where to make these very changes.

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It’s all about jump-starting…

We’ve just finished up another portfolio piece, this time for a slightly different kettle of fish: a clubbing website called e-vent. It’s been my ‘contribution’ to the Cape Town (clubbing) scene, and has had it’s fair share of re-designs over the years. The site has been around since 1999 and has evolved into a small community commenting about the local scene, or lack thereof. I also post flyers on a semi-regular basis. I’d go as far to say it was a blog before that phrase was even coined.

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Time to eat one’s own dog food

Yesterday I decided that it is time to call a feature freeze. This might sound off-centre in context of so-called ‘rapid development’ and ‘organic growth’, but the thing is - the more things you add the more things break. The longer you put off polishing screens and ironing out bugs, the bigger the chance that you’ll never get to addressing those very issues. We have more ideas than we will ever get to implement. Usability, stability and that “wow” factor is as important.

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Say something already

We’ve just (ok a little while ago) enabled comments on the blog. When I say enabled I mean built the functionality from scratch. While I’m not the most appropriate person to get into that aspect (there are more qualified people around, huh Le Roux?), the point is that now more things are in place. Our blog is suddenly a blog. At last, we can start punting this site around and hopefully get some feedback.

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From CakePHP to Django

We started writing Dynamo in PHP using the CakePHP framework. Initially, we didn’t really have a plan, so I started on some pages and news functionality, showed it around, got input, went back, made some changes and the whole process would start again. We were basically prototyping. We would get ideas like the pages screen then implement it while writing loads of “throwaway code” only to move things around again later.

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