
Today, we are honored to introduce Sitemason 6 to the world. It's been a long 15 months since we announced our rededication to the core Sitemason product last year. It's been an extremely exciting and rewarding journey, and we are elated to share the fruits of our labor with you. Read on to learn about our adventure.
In Part 1 we discussed actual dollars for an average website. In Part 2, we'll dig into where those dollar estimates actually come from. Read on to uncover the mysteries of website costs.

Come April 6th, the Nashville community will turn its attention to TPAC to have their eyes opened and minds blown. This year marks the fourth annual TEDx Nashville conference, a sister program to the national TED conference who's purpose and devotion is to "ideas worth spreading."
Sitemason was extremely fortunate to work with the fine people organizing TEDx Nashville to build their 2013 website. Many props to Andy Bird at Friendly Arctic for the gorgeous design. Read on to get tickets and more information!
It's usually the first question we hear. In some ways we're exactly the right people to ask because we work with folks who need websites all day long. On the other hand, getting numbers out of us and our partners is like a long walk with grandpa; interesting and insightful, but probably more talking than you bargained for. Read on to learn how much a website is going to cost you.
Yesterday we invited a select few Sitemason users to an early beta program to test Sitemason 6. It's an understatement to suggest we're excited about this phase. We've poured a lot of ourselves into this reinvention in the past 15 months and we hope it shows.
If you are interested in joining the beta program, please email beta@sitemason.com. Look for a general beta release announcement for all existing Sitemason users in the coming weeks.
No matter how helpful Sitemason Library methods are, sometimes you gotta go custom. One common requirement is to break out from basic navigation menus to customize the display of a site's navigation. A simple example below:
One Level Navigation
<ul>
<?php
foreach ($content_xml->nav as $nav) {
echo '<li';
if ($nav->currently_displayed || $nav->current_site) {
echo ' class="active"';
}
echo '><a href="' . $nav->link . '">' . $nav->title . '</a></li>';
}
?>
</ul>
Read on for more examples of customizing navigation with PHP.
Nothing is simple about online commerce. In today's post, we explore the reasons why and the process we use to reveal the many mysteries of selling products online. Read on to pull back the dark cloak of online commerce and download the questionnaire we use to get to the bottom of commerce projects.
This certainly falls under "minor update", but we recently updated the Sitemason PHP Boilerplate Template to use html5boilerplate.com version 4, along with a couple other small improvements. Go get it!
Today we're launching a new series for developers to regularly offer tips and tricks for developing in the Sitemason environment. Our first tip is to use custom queries for testing code on a live site.
One thing that is very different for developers working on the Sitemason platform for the first time is developing in a live production environment. Read more to learn about a great way to easily switch between test and production code.
Update: My BarCamp session slides and notes are available at www.sitemason.com/barcamp
For the sixth consecutive year, Nashville is hosting BarCamp, the defining "un-conference" for our technology community. This year, I have the distinct pleasure of presenting "Adventures In Building Our Dream Interface". Go get signed up for the free day of fun and learning and checkout my session. Details and more about BarCamp after the break!