Lulu Release 8.1 will go live on April 12th at 7am Eastern time. Downtime is expected to be 1 hour, but we're reserving 7-9am just to be sure. This is a major release, with substantial
Awesome New Features:
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New and improved cart! Will be able to add new features to it on a regular basis (couldn't do that with the old cart), for now it just has a few cool new things:
- Address book that remembers your shipping prefs.
- Saved Credit Cards
- Multi-ship. Put one or more items in your cart, select multiple locations from your address book, and we'll send them out on a single order. You can even use different shipping methods, and mix domestic and international orders.
- Quick checkout. If you've bought something through our site in the past and none of your info has changed, you can checkout in 3 clicks:
'Add to Cart' -> 'Checkout' -> 'Place Order'
- Consolidated the 'new users' and 'existing users' code.
- Removed the annoying 'Are you sure?' alert window on the last page of checkout.
- You can buy ISBN's with PayPal again.
Actually, that's a lot of cool new things! Please note that although it
has been zealously tested, it is a big change. Please report any buggy
behavior to this thread immediately. In addition, this new cart is still
a little rough in spots. We'll be polishing it and refining it
continuously over the next few weeks.
File Basket 1.0
- FTP uploading to Lulu! username.lulu.com/password and you can upload files directly using your FTP client of choice.
- 500Mb limit.
- No downloading or browsing from the FTP side.
- Link to File Basket in Wizard 'Browse my Files' and at the top of the 'Publish' page.
- Drag and Drop user interface.
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http://www.lulu.com/author/manage_basket.phpLandscape Books!
- 9x7 books available in Coil, Perfect-bound and Saddle-stitch.
- Same cost as 6x9 books.
- Color and Black and White available
- Slightly different page restrictions - see help.
- Important note: don't upload 'Landscape' (the file setting) source files! Just make a 9x7 'portrait' book.
- Note: we don't have a default cover for Landscape yet, and the cover gallery covers will stretch. Use 'em with caution.
Royalty Splitting (Business Customers - Limited Beta)
- Create additional remission addresses.
- Designate royalty splits by percentage on a per-book basis.
Flash Walkthrough link on Homepage
- Audio Tour of the basics in book publishing.
- Free Lulu swag item to the first person to guess the narrator. Lulu Employees, PP's and LM's not eligible. :-P
Behind the scenes stuff:
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- Consolidated all of our headers, footers and many other files.
- Killed off the unused /themes/ templating system.
- Deleted scores of unused images.
- Search engine optimizing tweaks.
- Basic API built (Business Customers - Limited Beta)
- Tweaks to forum code.
Pretty Pretty:
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- Redesign of homepage.
- Redesign of main help page. Now more helpful.
- New binding images in wizard.
- Consolidating all news and press releases.
- 'Help' has its own tab. Congratulations Help!
- 'Also Bought' cleaned up, not duplicating and made pretty.
- 'Also Bought' now on content pages.
- Links to the Lulu Swag Store:
http://www.lulu.com/swag/ - Tweaked the 'Email a friend' so it looks less like spam.
- Moved the Logo to /images/
- Cleaned up the Services Marketplace. (Vile yellow begone!)
- Killed off the link to our initial software offerings. Will be replaced with something way better soon.
Bugs Stomped:
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- Broken Thumbnails on the 'Also Bought' app.
- New, better spaced icons for blogs.
- Retiring 2004 calendars en masse.
- Added Support forum links to help page.
- Better link to Service Provider Storefronts.
- Service Storefronts do not display book cover default image.
- Service Storefronts do not show 'From:' in front of price.
- 'Buyer' accounts don't see links to publish books.
- Added a note to disable popup blockers in publishing wizard.
- Pulled IE warning with Cart II.
- Strange characters (%20) in conversion status bar fixed.
- Lulu footers back on forums.
Other Cool Stuff
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- Automatically remove Lulu commission when you buy your own books.
Previously, we only dropped the author royalty. Users could still buy books without the Lulu commission by setting the royalty to zero, but why hassle our beloved Lulus like that?
-
http://www.lulu.com/static/street_cred.php Features an awesome Quicktime movie!
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