Referral program, inject HTML snippets, workflows for forms, and, more...
Big shoutout to all our early adopters for helping shape this product. Thank you for driving us towards awesomeness!
28 January 2021 • 5 Min Read
Over the past 2 weeks, we’ve silently rolled out some major features and minor updates in Draftbox. In this post, we’ll cover these updates in detail:
- Major improvement in featured image (thumbnail) presentation in the blog feed. Draftbox now maintains 16:9 aspect ratio for featured images to make your blog feed look beautiful.
- Introducing Workflows for forms
- Connect your subscribe form with Mailchimp, Revue and ConvertKit without using Zapier. Double opt-in support available via these integrations.
- Send your contact form submission/new subscriber notifications to your Slack channel.
- Inject JavaScript/HTML/CSS snippets into all pages of your site, either in the <head> or at the end of the <body> tag.
- Introducing referral and rewards program. Share Draftbox with your friend/colleague and get 3 months free of Personal Pro worth $36! Your friend also gets 1 month free of Personal Pro worth $12.
- If your content is not saved while writing a post, then navigating to a different page will prompt a warning for unsaved content.
- Change/remove animation on blog feed cards. Also, add a border to blog feed thumbnails.
- Add alt text to images without adding a caption.
Let’s dive deep into each update 👇
Improved blog feed thumbnails
Problem
As more and more users started experimenting with featured images, we realized that featured images need a better blog feed presentation, especially for the images with text. One of the major issues was 4 different size of cards throughout the blog feed.
Solution
Fix the aspect ratio. We set the aspect ratio to 16:9 for all type of cards in the blog feed. This doesn’t just solve the presentation issue but also gives a fair idea about the featured image's ideal size. Let’s checkout before and after to visualize the impact.
Before 😟
After 🙂
To get the best results, use 1200px x 675px dimensions for your featured image. Here’s a Canva template for you to generate some awesome thumbnails!
Workflows for forms
1/ Subscribe form
Your audience, your tools. You can now connect subscribe form to Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and, Revue, without using Zapier! You can also enable double opt-in to help you improve deliverability. You can now connect subscribe form with Slack to get notified about each subscriber (and celebrate with your team 😀).
2/ Contact form
Never miss a message from your visitors. Connect your contact form responses with your Slack via webhook or receive a mail on your email via Zapier when you receive a new submission.
Try now: Visit Draftbox dashboard and open your site. Select Workflow from tabs on Subscribe/Contact Form under Forms from the side navigation.
Inject HTML Snippet
Now you can add CSS/JS/HTML to your site. This opens up the realm of endless possibilities! This feature is available with all paid plans.
💬 Let us know in the comments → how would you use this feature?
Try now: Visit Draftbox dashboard and open your site. You can access this feature from the side navigation under Advanced Options → Snippet Injection.
Referral and rewards program
With this update, we’re introducing Draftbox referral and rewards. Share Draftbox with your friends/colleagues, and when they create a site with Draftbox, you get 3 months of Personal Pro worth $36 for free! Your friend/colleague also gets 1 month of Personal Pro worth $12 for free.
Here’s what you can do with the Personal Pro plan:
- Remove Draftbox branding
- Inject JS/CSS snippets
- Unlimited form responses
- Integrate with Facebook Comments, Tidio, Tawk.to, Fathom, and Simple Analytics
- Auto-distribute content on Medium, Dev.to, and Hashnode (coming soon)
- Real-time preview (coming soon)
💬 Let us know in comments → how would you pitch Draftbox to your friends/colleague?
Share now: Visit Draftbox dashboard and open your site. You can access this feature from the side navigation under Referral & Rewards.
Never lose your content again
We can understand the pain of losing content because you pressed the back button by mistake or Chrome crashed! We decided to solve this problem so that no one has to ever go thru this pain.
With the latest update, if you’re writing a post and you try to navigate back or refresh or close the page, Draftbox will show you a warning. 👇
Blog feed card animation and border options
Now you can change the animation style (when the user hovers/taps) of your blog feed. Here’re the available options:
- Show cursor pointer
- Show animated stacked shadow
- Show animated bottom border
Also, now you can add a border to blog feed images. This can help if you’re using light colours in your featured images.
Try now: Visit Draftbox dashboard and open your site. You can access this feature from the side navigation under Content & Layout → Blog Feed.
Add alt text for images
Before this update, Draftbox used to use image caption as alt text. It was a band-aid approach that had to come off. Now you can add alt text without adding a caption and keep caption and alt text separate.
Minor updates/fixes
- Improved social link alignment (for when there are more than 7 socials added).
- Improved buttons alignment in covers/CTA (for when there are more than 2 buttons).
- Clicking on author avatar from blog feed/post will take you to the author’s profile.
- Moved email field on the contact page below name field for smaller devices.
- Improved colour for highlight (mark) in theme.
Let us know your thoughts/comments/feedback about this update in comments below. 👇 Your feedback is driving this product towards awesomeness, keep 'em coming!
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