2024 Updates

Well, it’s been way too long since we’ve done a blog update, but for good reason.  Mainly, because things have been running pretty smoothly and we’ve stayed busy!  In fact, we have done tons of updates in the past year that you may not be aware of yet…

Here’s just a few highlights:

3D Models with HD Resolution

We have done a number of implementations with 3D previews both in-customizer and in-website, as well as in our Render and Configur8 apps as well.  Typically we use a variety of traditional UX flows for the design or configuration options, and then visualize that in a 3D preview so that designing is still easy to do, but with the added bonus view in 3D so that it can be spun around in all directions, zoomed in and out, and inspected all in HD resolution.

Shopify Integrations

We often get asked about Shopify support.  We now have a couple different ways of integrating and some completed working Shopify integrations that use our customizer for a full customization experience.  For this we do not offer an “App” in Shopify since that comes with a lot of strings attached.  Instead, for now at least, we have a VERY lightweight easy copy-paste integration that drops into the theme code and wa-la, you can enable any product for customization with our full design tools, and Render for print.  This can be up and running in just a day or two.

Magento Integrations

We’re doing Magento integrations again but it’s only recommended for corporate clients.  We can integrate with the current version of Magento very quickly and easily to add Customization or Configuration to products on the front end in ways that can carry through to ERP, OMS, etc.

Rendering Capabilities

We’ve made a number of special rendering capabilities for multi-sided layouts, PDF output, common page size wraps, editing and rotation options, and a whole bunch of other stuff to make print files come out the right way every time for specialized cases.

WordPress/WooCommerce Plugin Updates

Our WordPress/WooCommerce plugins continue to be our most robust solutions.  This includes so much more than just customization and configuration, but also content management for saved designs, design collections, and built in growth strategies that you can really take advantage of to expand a site for growth.

And Much More

And, beyond this we’ve done a lot more, too.  Contact us if you have any questions about your own ideas or needs for customization of your ecommerce products.

New Site Design Custom Bags Launches Custom Handbags and Accessories with Personalization

Design Custom Bags is a new MyStyle enabled site that has launched which offers custom handbags, bags, wallets, card cases, and accessories. MyStyle Platform’s MyStyle Customizer enables customization with ease even for those who are not computer saavy.

Custom Handbags and Accessories

Design Custom bags offers a variety of bags and brands.  Design your own custom Louis Vuitton Bag, a custom Chanel Bag, etc.  Handbags are a unique expression of style so why not make it truly one of kind with a custom handbag or accessory.

CustomizeDesignCustomBags - Custom Louis Vuitton Bag - Add Text Quote Name Date

Personalize Your Handbag Today!

Check out their new MyStyle enabled website here: designcustombags.com

Fix For DIVI Theme WP Websites with Customizer & jQuery Errors

Our hosting partner Rocket Ivy has discovered the cause of an error that may cause the MyStyle Customizer to not operate correctly on some sites (never loads), that came from a DIVI theme update in their new “Performance” tab.

Here is a link to the blog post describing the error and the fix to turn off the deferring of jQuery Migrate:

https://rocketivy.com/fix-for-sites-with-divi-and-jquery-migrate-errors-in-console/

Rocket Ivy is our #1 trusted partner for hosting and website maintenance.

3D Capability Now Available

Welcome to 3D

We are proud to announce that we now have 3D capability available on the MyStyle Customizer V5.1 or higher. This feature allows our users to fully view their custom products in a fully functional three dimensional model. Directly in our customizer software. Your users will be able to upload, design, and then preview their creations in fully functional 3D!

How to use

For this example we will be using makecanvasprints.com

Select a Product

The first step is finding the product you want to customize and the selecting our customize option.

product,custom,3d,design

Add a Custom Design

After selecting customize you will move to our Customizer software where you, or your users, can choose to create a custom background within our software. Users can also upload their own images from the web or personal libraries.

Click For 3D Preview

Once the image or background has been uploaded and edited simply select the preview button and view your product in fully functional 3D!

Additional Functionality

While inside the 3D preview the user will have the added functionality of zooming in to have a closer inspection or rotating in any direction desired. The 3D preview feature adds a layer of immersion for the user and gives a better sense of what the final product will look like before it arrives. This feature will be available for our Premium Members here at Mystyle Platform!

Implementation

To have the new software available, Standard and Managed licenses should contact us to have this enabled for their mystyle sites or customizers.

New Standalone Sales Tax Reporting Plugin (free)

We’ve released a new free plugin to the WP Plugin Marketplace for anyone who might need it as we have.  It allows for an easy report with your site’s Sales by State and Sales Tax collected for any date range. This is critical info to reporting your sales tax quarterly in the United States.

The plugin is 100% free to use.

See our plugin page for more info.

WooCommerce Sales Tax Plugin (free)

Major Updates for Customizer 4.1.0 and WP Plugin 3.17.4

Spring Cleaning is in Full Effect!

Yesterday we shipped some major updates with bug fixes for various issues that have been reported in the Customizer as version 4.1.0, and also in the WordPress plugin 3.17.4.  The bugfixes, features, and/or updates include:

  • Text bug fix for duplicating text objects
  • SSL fixes for some non-SSL URL assets
  • Template Masking updates
  • Preloader updates (faster / more stable startup)
  • New Feature: Multi-Side Preview Mode (switch sides while in preview mode)
  • Multi-Side Product bug fix
  • New Feature: before-after animation for preview mode transition
  • Auto Drop Shadow bug fix
  • Duplicate Image bug fix
  • Background gradient vs Background Image rotations fix
  • Email skip fix for logged in users
  • Re-Selection of existing objects from menu bug fix
  • Auto-saving update (new delay time)
  • Various small performance updates
  • Author page “my designs” error fix
  • Private designs images in public author carts bug fix
  • Various CSS Style fixes and updates
  • Various small details updated

This is a cumulative update for the Customizer 4.1.0+ that is automatically remotely updated on our platform for all deployments – nothing for you to update there.

However, the MyStyle Custom Product Designer 3.17.4 WP Plugin itself will require an update from your WP Admin > Plugins page to apply that update.

As with any major update, please test your Customizer after updating and report any issues that you find in the support channel for your license and we’ll investigate right away.

We are continuing to push minor updates this week as any reports are made.

In the mean time, enjoy the new speed and updates!

New Feature: Build Your Own Custom Product Templates in WordPress!

We’re happy to announce a highly-requested feature:  Build Your Own Custom Product Templates right in the WordPress/WooCommerce Admin!

Premium MyStyle Product Templates Optional for DIY Webmasters!

With Premium Templates we set up each template by hand for each client remotely, and provide template IDs for use in their website(s).  This is still a service that is available, but is no longer required for most one-sided templates if you want to develop them yourself!

New DIY Custom Templates

Our new custom template options can be found the WooCommerce Product Data section of any product, in the MyStyle > Advanced tab.

See the screenshot below, where the example is setting up a Rectangular 18×14 inch product template:

mystyle-customizer-define-your-own-custom-template-print-specs-size

With these two checkboxes, a width and a height, you’re good to go with a basic rectangular template!  It will size down automatically to fit the web browser while designing, and it will render your print files at the full size when generating a print file.

Add Image Layers and More

There are even more beta features beneath these basic settings that are still being tested, but you can try those out to add image layers to your templates, like a background or foreground.

We’ll cover those features more in another post.

Enjoy!

WordPress 5.5 Bugfix for Community Design Gallery: MyStyle Custom Product Designer v3.13.9

If you are on the (now) current version of WordPress (5.5+) you will need to update your main MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin as well for compatibility.

The bug that was reported is that the design gallery examples in the Community Design Gallery do not click through to the design profiles as normal.

WordPress 5.5 Rewrite Rules Update

This is caused by an issue many sites have encountered from the recent WordPress 5.5 updates that have caused some rewrite rules to act differently than normal.

MyStyle Update Bug Fix 

Today we released the update that fixes this issue and will restore the normal community design gallery functionality for all public saved designs.

Other Recent Updates to Community Design Gallery

Additionally, you may notice the new features we recently added to the Community Design Gallery, Authors!  Authors can now find their saved designs in their normal WooCommerce My Account menu!  More on that in our next post!

Download our main WP plugin here:

MyStyle Custom Product Designer

Yama Tribe Launches with Customizable Yoga Mats and More

Ten years ago, yoga and mindfulness were a niche hobby that most people didn’t get involved in. Fast forward to 2020; articles about how to incorporate mindfulness practice into your life (and why you should) are being featured in major magazines, and unique yoga mats are in high demand. In our ever changing and high stress world, its a long overdue and necessary shift. Yama Tribe is responding to it with their recent launch.

Yama Tribe Launches Custom Yoga Mat Designer Powered By MyStyle Platform

Yama Tribe is a newly launched yoga brand that has taken their retail model to the next level, with 100% customizable yoga mats and yoga accessories. Yoga is a deeply personal part of many peoples’ lives, which is why MyStyle is a great match for these types of products. MyStyle helps customers create completely customized mats, apparel, water bottles and more, to reflect their own individuality. It allows them the creative freedom to upload their own images or use MyStyle preloaded graphics and pictures to design.

 

Yama Tribe

Making Yoga More Personal

MyStyle is designed to help companies create a custom experience for each of their customers. With yoga trending, that’s more important for a brand like Yama Tribe than ever. Customers value knowing their products will be one of a kind in any space, and that is becoming difficult with yoga classes getting more and more popular. Yama Tribe is also a personal project of the founders, created from a love for the practice and over ten years experience. MyStyle brings the personal touch of their mission to the fingertips of their customers and design software.

MyStyle is a Catalyst for Individuality

MyStyle makes designing unique, personal products, made of quality materials, easier than ever. Customers get to experience the same level of product they would find at any other competing site while still buying something that is uniquely theirs. MyStyle is one of the best tools a site can use to further and benefit from the growing popularity of custom products.

Check out Yama Tribe and their custom yoga mats!

Shop Yama Tribe

 

 

 

Renderer 3.23.2 Adds Render-to-Cloud with Share URL for Faster On-Demand Order-to-Print Workflows

For common print workflows where the printer is not the order processor, the new feature in the MyStyle Renderer version 3.23.2 is perfect for you.  Recently released, this new feature can really help speed things up for anyone with an order-processing and web-to-print workflow that requires sharing the print file with another person, team , or partner company: Render-to-Cloud!

Streamlining Common Web-to-Print Order Processing Workflows

A lot of MyStyle enabled clients and online stores have very similar fulfillment processes, that is, they always involve rendering a print file for production to make and send out the order(s) once the order is placed, to begin the on-demand production and fulfillment process.   Often, the person processing the order is not the same as the person creating the print.  In that case, the workflow would involved emailing or uploading the file to a dropbox, or an FTP, or something like that.  Well, no more!  Print files that are sent to someone at a production house or print department to do the print and/or dropship can now be sent without having to download or manually upload it to get a shareable URL or attachment.  Instead, you can now just send the print direct to the MyStyle platform cloud storage, included at no extra charge with all licenses!

Render-to-Cloud

The render-to-cloud option is found in the print image toolbar right next to the normal print file download buttons.

It depends how large your image is, but it typically takes a few seconds on a broadband connection.  Wait a couple seconds then…

Get Public Download Link to Share

Once the print image render reaches the cloud, a checkmark will show in place of the spinner, and a shareable public URL will be provided in the same window.  The green button will copy the URL for quick sharing.

Instant Download Link
The URL when, visited or clicked, will automatically download the print file to eliminate the Right-Click and Save-As type of steps for the production team receiving the URL.

This Is an Optional Feature for Sending to Out-of-House Production Teams

In-House Production Teams may not need this feature if doing rendering and printing in house. So, if you render and print your own images in the same place, you might not need this, as you can still  download and print the images just as you always have.

A Couple Steps Less is Always More!

For anyone else sharing print file links regularly, though, this might be a great time to say goodbye to your premium dropbox accounts, save a little money if current online storage methods are not necessary anymore.   Speed things up by eliminating a few steps!

Happy Rendering!

 

1CustomFaceMask.com Launches with Design Your Own Custom Face Mask

With the pandemic forcing everyone to adapt to what is called the “new normal” it is inevitable that the United States and other countries will have to accept face masks as a much more common part of life than ever before.

Giving Back to Help in the Pandemic with Personalized Masks: 50% of Mask Profits to Pandemic Focused Charitable Donations

1CustomFaceMask.com has teamed up with MyStyle Platform to provide not only a fun way to personalize your own masks, but also to aid in the mission to give back to the charities that are helping out the most in the pandemic.  For this goal, they have committed to giving 50% of all profits to pandemic aid charities like Feeding America.

1CustomFaceMask.com Launches Custom Face Mask Designer Powered By MyStyle Platform

MyStyle is a great choice for a product like a custom face mask, because it has all the main ingredients a customer will want to use.  Background colors and graphics, custom images, uploaded images, and custom text.  1CustomFaceMask.com is live now with MyStyle enabling users to design their own custom face masks on the site in minutes with ease.

No More Boring Flimsy Masks!

Boring, single-color medical looking face masks may have been the first wave of masks in the US, but quickly they have become much more.  Now more than ever, the market is in high demand for not only face coverings to where to the store, etc, but also for these face coverings to be more fashionable as they become part of your everyday wardrobe.

Fashionable Mask Trends Around the World

Asian countries have already had these customs for years, mostly because of air pollution, but nevertheless have adapted and have shown interesting fashion trends in the face mask world.

Helping People Have Fun with Face Masks

We hope that not only will personalization enable the world to embrace custom face masks in to their own fashion in a way that encourages and makes social distancing and safety measures more fun to participate in.

Design Yours Now!

Ready to create your own face mask and help the cause at the same time?  Head on over to 1CustomFaceMask.com and create yours today!

CSS Tip: Show Your WooCommerce Product Thumbnails In The Cart on Desktop and Mobile

For some reason WooCommerce has decided the default styles for the cart thumbnails should be very tiny or completely gone all together.  This leaves you with just text in the cart, which isn’t always what you want. To show the images, you can add some CSS to your WP settings or theme CSS file to always show the product images in cart.

example image source: 
https://MPFusa.org/custom-face-masks/

While I’m sure (re: hope) they have great data to back up the removal of images in the cart, some products need to be seen the full way through for a customer to feel good about what they have in their cart being the right stuff. If you agree, then this code snippet is for you. (copy/paste)

CSS Code:

/** MyStyle: Show thumbnail in cart larger than default 32px **/
.woocommerce-cart table.cart img {
width: auto;
min-width: 32px;

max-width: 100px;
}
@media(max-width:768px) {
/** Show thumbnail row in cart on mobile **/
.woocommerce-page table.cart .product-thumbnail {
display: inline-block !important;
}
/** hide colon above thumbnail for mobile **/
.woocommerce-page table.cart .product-thumbnail:before {
display: none;
}
}

How to Apply This Code

  1. Log into your WP Admin
  2. Go to the Theme Customizer > Added CSS (or similar place where your theme or system lets you put some custom CSS)
  3. Paste the code above & Publish
  4. Clear/Purge your site cache, if you have one

Conversion 101:
Custom Products Should Always Have a Thumbnail in the Cart

This is especially true with custom products, where you may have a few custom designs in your cart with the same product title, and the only recognizable difference is what each design looks like. For this reason, almost every MyStyle enabled site should override the default WooCommerce or theme CSS to show the thumbnail of the user’s creations in the shopping cart. You can do this very easily with a quick CSS tweak.

New Site eGO4Life.com Launches First Ever Custom elliptiGO Wraps with Full Personalization!

A new MyStyle site was launched this past week that is bringing an exciting new value add to their elliptiGO community with personalized wraps!

First Online Designer for elliptiGO Bikes in the World!

As far as we know there have never been any other online designers for elliptiGOs to allow people to use free graphics or upload their own, pick custom colors, etc.  This is going to be really fun to see what kind of creative bikes are dreamed up by the elliptiGO riders of the world!  We might just have to hit the streets with our own, so stay tuned for that :)

Personalize Your elliptiGO today!

Check out their new MyStyle enabled website here:  www.eGO4Life.com

 

Feature Upgrade: Background Libraries Category Browser

The backgrounds browser is Step 1 in almost all MyStyle apps for good reason. It’s an easy step that anyone can do and doesn’t require any content from the user, only choices. It’s fun and shows what you can do quickly and provides instant gratification to users by giving them great colors and stock backgrounds to choose from to get them on their way to creating an awesome design that they love.

The Issue with Long Lists and Pagination

The only problem is, sometimes digging through that backgrounds library seemed daunting and unorganized, and naturally the images at the very end of the list didn’t get very much action (very few people press previous page first to go through the list in reverse order, almost everyone just goes page 1, 2, 3 etc). So this UX needed to be updated to make it easier to find the content you love in the BG library.  Well, that’s where the Category browser comes in.

Enter the Library Category Browser

We’ve launched a new and improved component recently that is already proving to give users more control to get design they love.

Now in step 1 when you browse backgrounds, you’re greeted with a scrolling single page list of thumbnails that represent each category, and are labeled as such to make it easy to understand what each category tile is a collection of.  Now, a customer can see “Fine Art” for example without ever having to click to a next page, and they can click that to see our collection of great fine art images without having to dig through a whole list to find them.  This is way easier and more fun, and immediately makes it so much faster to create a design you already start to like in the first step.

Live and Doing Great!

This feature automatically updates in your app so you should already have it live on your own MyStyle enabled sites if you have a Step 1 for backgrounds (it’s the default, so you probably do).

Stats Show Increased Performance

We’ve already seen an increase in the amount of designs and purchases that make use of background assets that we do not normally see many sales on.  This is the proof that the new feature is getting used on designs that make it all the way through to sale, and that customers are happier than ever using MyStyle to personalize their designs with our collections of free graphics.

That’s great news for everyone using MyStyle!

Server Upgrade for MyStylePlatform.com – Clear Your Cache!

The server for this website (not our API or plugins, just mystyleplatform.com) has been upgraded to a new Google Cloud data center.

Google AND Amazon Clouds…

We’re happy to be using Google Cloud, a leader in cloud computing, in addition to Amazon AWS for our API itself still. It’s interesting to see and compare both platforms, and we may switch entirely to one or the other in the future, but for now we like this duality and in either case, performance is great.

Clear Your Cache

This upgrade required some IP address changes, so please Clear Your Cache if you’re experiencing any weirdness on MyStylePlatform.com or the MyStyle Renderer.

Faster Site Services

Otherwise, enjoy what should be a faster service from now on.

 

Cheers!

Renderer 3.20.1 Update: Edit and Switch Out Text and Emojis Directly within the Renderer

MyStyle Renderer Empowering Change

MyStyle Platform’s new Renderer feature empowers clients to edit and fix their own print files.  In just a few simple clicks, you can now edit and change text, emojis, etc.

Gone are the days of escalating renders just to switch out and edit text within your design!  MyStyle Platform is happy to announce our newly released feature that lets you edit a design’s text directly within the renderer.  Simply click, edit as desired, and save your print file!

How to Edit Text and  Emoji’s the Renderer

  1. Open the renderer and scroll down to the section “PRINT IMAGE(S)”
  2. Right click on the text/emoji/”object” you wish to edit.
  3. From the pulldown options, select “edit object”

4.  The “Text Lines” edit box will open.  The text you selected and wish to edit will be in the text slot “Text line#1”

 

5.  Highlight the text within the “Text line#1” & edit as desired

6. Edit text and click “Apply” to apply changes.

 

How to Download JPG Print File from Renderer

  1.  Click “JPG” button to download JPG  print file

 

Renderer 3.19.0 Update: New JPG DPI Support Means Photoshop and Other Software Now Will Open MyStyle Print Images at 300dpi or Any Preferred DPI

This is a very old, very small, very annoying issue with resolution of JPEG and PNG files that every designer and printer is familiar with, and we’ve finally beat it.  Especially when it comes to JPG, if it wasn’t made with Photoshop, even though it was the right pixel size, it just wouldn’t open up at the DPI that it was created for (ie 300), and Photoshop defaults to whatever it wants (usually 72 or 96).  Well, we’re happy to say in 3.19.0+ we broke through and were able to add a new feature under the hood that automatically fixes this and makes rewrites the file data so that it will open up at the intended DPI in almost any software – Photoshop, Print Software – etc. Ring the bells. We did it.

The Decades-Old JPG DPI Issue

You may know the situation well:  the image is the right size in pixels, but it’s reading at the wrong DPI and so the “inches” measurement of the image is not correct.  That is, until someone opens it up, and changes the DPI in Photoshop or print software manually to 300 or whatever it needs to be – most systems default DPI is typically 72 or 96 dpi, sometimes 100. But, most images are rendered for print at 300dpi (Pro Magazine-level print standard), so opening at 72 etc is annoying and can cause wasted time in the production workflow.

One Does Not Simply, Set the JPG DPI

The reason that 300dpi doesn’t open up in Photoshop or print software, though, is because the JPG file format doesn’t natively support resolution settings, so there’s traditionally almost no online resources for setting unsupported meta data.  In HTML5 it doesn’t have any parameters to specify resolution, it’s purely pixel data.  In the eyes of the raw JPG format, resolution is irrelevant, there is image data at a size of pixels, and the resolution can be whatever the screen (or software) wants it to be, which is subjective and relative to the system / software, so it doesn’t specify it natively.   Additionally, the file code is not easily read or edited, so it’s not something that anything besides graphic design software can or would try to set. The problem is that Photoshop etc doesn’t have a setting to allow you to set the default image resolution, it detects it from your system (ie “72”) and just goes with that.  That by itself, is also very annoying (re: Photoshop fix this please).

Many people point out that resolution is arbitrary and subjective, because the pixel size of the image is the actual size of the data, but nevertheless others will argue that in practice the default DPI within Workflows can be important to eliminate room for error or misunderstandings about the intended print size. So in fact, it can be critical for smooth operations from web to print regardless of the file format’s native data spec.  So, we’ve searched and searched, literally for years, and thanks to some new advances in Javascript in the past year, we’ve found a way to do it without Photoshop, and it was not simple, but low and behold – IT WORKS.

Interestingly enough, as we dissect the byte code for a JPEG we see that there are meta data points for resolution that do allow us to inject settings here that Photoshop will read, and they’re actually in Dots Per Meter, as if ANYONE would even use that when DPI is the standard!  Imagine how old that must be.  We digress.

The New Age Fix.  Good News: We’ve Made It Automatic.

We’ve developed a way to set this DPI setting within JPG output in our MyStyle Renderer software.  With 3.19.0+ every JPG  comes with resolution meta data.

Whatever it says on page is the DPI, will be the DPI when re-opened in other software:

Drumroll… JPG Opens with Correct DPI!

JPG output files will open up at whatever DPI it says in the Renderer when viewed in Photoshop or Print Software, including both if that was the template’s original setting, and if you change the resolution manually after rendering it and then download the JPG.

150 dpi?  Sure.  300? Of course.  632 dpi?  Why not!

Bad News: There Is None.

This should alleviate one of the most annoying parts of printing with JPGs, and we’re so happy to advanced this aspect of the workflow for everyone who’s taking designs from web to print like our team does every day.

Goodbye, Extra Manual or Batch Processes!

Please note that if you have batch processes already made that set the DPI for your print files as a workaround for this, you can (or may need to) adjust or get rid of that now to streamline things a bit more knowing that the DPI is already set correctly.

Less is more.

 

MyStyle Custom Product Designer Plugin v3.9.1 Released with Bug Fix

Just earlier today we released the MyStyle Custom Product designer plugin for WordPress/WooCommerce version 3.9.1. This version has a bug fix for some pages coming back with a 404 response code, although the page would load fine. This resulted from updates to meet WordPress coding standards.

How to Update to 3.9.1+

Go to your WordPress admin > Plugins and press Update on the main MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin.  The update should be quick and painless!

Reactivate If Necessary

We have had reports that some systems deactivated the plugin upon update.  If for any reason the plugin has an error while updating, it will deactivate.  Be sure to reload your plugins page after update to check and re-activate it as the new version, verifying that it did update to at least version 3.9.1 or higher.  In most cases this shouldn’t be necessary, but double-check just to be sure.

WordPress Plugin v3.9.0+ Mobile Viewport Improvements and DIVI Tweaks

Plugin Update:

We’ve corrected some issues view and mobile usability in the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin for WordPress/WooCommerce. This was an issue that some devices have had with the app not fitting the page well, sticking off the page to the right on small screens. We’ve also added a few more tweaks and tunes to make usability a little more natural for mobile. If you update to the most recent version of our core plugin (any version 3.9.0 or above), you will get the new updates that fix these issues for smart, responsive page auto-adjustments.

Viewport Zooming for Mobile Devices: Better Than Just “Responsive”

Responsive was always supported with the app, and the viewport zooming too to some extent, but it was limited and had some problems with some screen sizes.  In many cases, the theme often can leave the page unfitted for the app.   The viewport now automatically adjusts much better so that the design app can fit in portrait mode to the screen without any pinching or zooming.  Essentially, we’re doing the perfect pinch-zoom for the user, so that they don’t have to, and locking it in there.  We update this on page resize events so that if the user turns the phone or tablet sideways, it re-calibrates the zoom, in addition to switching modes from Portrait (buttons on bottom) vs Landscape (buttons on top/left).  This should help most sites automatically leave enough room for dragging on the handlebars on the sides as well.

Disabling Viewport Rewriting for the Customize Page

You can disable the viewport zooming in the MyStyle settings, if your theme or your custom code already takes care of this.  Just be sure to allow a minimum app width of 550px to allow for the application plus draggable side handle space.

Full Screen Button Moved Up to Top

Full screen, the app really works best. The full screen button, however, was beneath the app where it might go unnoticed. So, we’ve moved the button to the top of the page to make it quicker to see right away before getting down into the app on page by scrolling. This should encourage a lot more users to go full screen, where scrolling is eliminated entirely.

Scroll Handlebars

We’ve added some subtle handlebars to the left and right of the app for users to be able to scroll easier if they’re on a smaller size screen, since the main design area touch-and-drag will move the design elements rather than the page.

Adjustments for DIVI

DIVI is a popular theme for wordpress that uses an 80% page width.  We’ve overridden this now to allow the app to use more of page size by reducing their default margins and page size just on the Customizer page itself.

 

Print Image Renderer Now Offers Eye-Saving Dark Theme

If you utilize the MyStyle Print File Renderer with your production process, then at least one person on that team will appreciate this! We’ve released a new Dark Theme that can be chosen from the new minimized menu (three dots …). Once you choose this theme, it will fade the screen to dark greys instead of light greys.

Choose the Dark Theme from the menu and it will save your preference in your browser. Any time you use that browser it will automatically reload the theme. Click the same option again to turn it off and go back to the standard light theme.  Now that I’ve been using it for about a month in beta I can’t even go back to the light theme at all!  It’s soothing to use the theme.

I can also see why Adobe adopted a similar look in Photoshop as the dark neutral look allows for the print images themselves to really breathe and pop even in the darker ranges.

So, this can be a great eye saver (and battery saver) especially at night when darker UIs help reduce eye strain.  And, it looks pretty cool, too. Have a look:

dark theme print file renderer 2

If you  or your staff use the Print Renderer then enjoy the Dark Theme, your eyes will thank you!

If you don’t see it yet, clear your cache and refresh :)

Name Tag World Takes Website to Next Level with Personalization

Identity Systems Inc sought to expand on their already top position on Google search with a site that catered more directly to consumers with low volume orders as well as larger corporate orders.   By creating NameTagWorld.com and enabling it with MyStyle, they did exactly that.

Online Customization for Custom Name Tags and Badges On-Demand

To accomplish this, they’ve implemented the MyStyle Customizer as the design tools to allow their visitors to upload their own logos to company badges and name tag designs, and then order individually or in bulk.

This allows any user to put a company logo, or event themed graphic onto the name tag permanently, while leaving space on the tag to be written on.

Custom Reusable Name Tags

Why throw  away Name Tags after an event?  With reusable name tags, you don’t have to.  Name Tag World offers a variety of reusable name tags, and not just for markers, either.  Check out their erasable chalk name tags for a new spin on an old concept.

Chalk name tags can actually be a perfect reusable name tag option for coffee shops, startups, or any business that wants to have a little bit of a different look from the standard marker-style name tags.

Custom Metal and Plastic Name Tags

In addition to chalk, Name Tag World has a whole bunch of plastic and metal name plates that can have a metallic finish that really looks nice.  These will last a really long time, too, as they won’t rip or fade in the way that paper name tags can, and they look more official.  These are great for staff members, security, uniforms, or anything where a more official look is needed.  The best part is, these too can be customized right on their website.

Batching A Set of Name Tags

“Do I have to make one for every person?” 

This is a common and logical next question.  Of course not!  Just design 1 name tag, add a logo or customize as you wish, add an example name in the design where you want the name to go, select the font as you want it, and just make the 1 name tag design.  Then, at checkout, you can add a spreadsheet to your order and they will batch-print your order, inserting each name first.

Design Your Own Name Tag with Your Logo

Need a branded name tag or badge for your business?  Try out Name Tag World and you can use MyStyle to make yours in minutes.

Create a Custom Name Tag

 

 

Major Mobile Device Responsive Improvements

Last week we rolled out some major improvements to the MyStyle Custom Product Designer WordPress Pluin in ways that help the app the page of more WordPress themes without needing to edit or override your theme.

WP Theme Margins and Paddings and Viewports 

Previously, many themes margins and paddings and own approaches to handling the page responsively for all device sizes was having some issues with our iframe.  This meant that on some phones, especially smaller and older ones, the page would not “collapse” down elegantly to allow for the app to fit, and would not adjust viewport correctly to accommodate a PWA like the MyStyle HTML5 Customizer.

Major Responsive Updates in 3.2.X+

We’re happy to say that now, if you update your plugin to version 3.2.0 or higher, you will get a new option in your settings that should be ON by default, to override your theme’s viewport tag, and fit the page to the device better to accommodate the customizer app’s iframe on page. This allows the page to fit to the app more naturally in both portrait (upright) and landscape (sideways) hand-held orientations.  As always, just press “update” in your plugin list for the MyStyle plugin and it will self-update.  Then, visit your settings to ensure the setting for overriding viewport is enabled, which it should be by default.

Improved Portrait Mode

In portrait mode, you’ll notice the app buttons dock to the bottom of the window, much like popular apps do, such as Instagram, making it very familiar to the user and also much more in-reach of the thumb.

UI Zoom Fix for Retina Displays and HD Displays

This now works especially well for some devices when using Full Screen Mode, as we’ve corrected a zoom-level issue for both regular and retina displays that will compensate accordingly to make finger sized buttons where before tiny buttons would sometimes show on high-resolution devices.

Full Screen Mode

There is also a full screen mode button now on the page beneath the app window, that will snap the app to the top, left, right, and bottom edges of the screen automatically, for an even better experience. In this mode, the full-screen can be canceled by pressing the “x” that appears in the top right corner, as with most software.

Just WORKS Out of the Box!  Yes, That Means No More CSS Hackery.

This should help many WordPress / WooCommerce plugin users to integrate with their theme without having to do any custom CSS coding or adjustments, and make it much easier for a user to use the app on handheld devices without the theme causing it to go off-page, or not fit the screen well in general. All-in-all this should have a positive effect on sales ratios for any site that has a majority of users on mobile devices, which has by 2018, really become the norm.

If your particular theme still has any responsive issues, please let us know ASAP so we can push an update to accommodate your theme’s non-standard layouts or viewport scripts.

Happy Customizing!

WP/WC Plugin Update v3.1.2 – MyStyle Plugin Activation Bug Fixed for WordPress 4.9.x

Yesterday we shipped 3.1.2 with an update to fix new WordPress update errors with MyStyle plugin’s initial activation.

WordPress “Sandbox Security” Checks Caused New Bugs

WordPress shipped an update recently that includes a new “Sandbox for Security” feature that essentially runs plugin code, which can include front-end code, in the admin in a new way of pre-checking for errors. But, in fact it causes some errors, too, since front-end run time code can sometimes rely on non-admin page variables, and won’t be able to find them in the admin. This probably effects a lot of plugins who will have to do the same sort of patches we’ve just done.

Fixes Are Live

In any case, we’ve patched up the issues with this new WordPress change and everything should work fine now. Strangely this only seemed to affect some systems and not others, but for whatever reason activating the plugin would cause an error in this pre-check that would gallivant thru the admin notifications like an actual Fatal Error would occur if enabled, when really there was no error once activated at all. In any case, we’ve adapted to the new checks and fixed this issue in our latest release of the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin for WordPress / WooCommerce.

Here’s the official release notes:

v3.1.2 of the main WP plugin

* Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with our design profile shortcode and WP 4.9’s new Sandbox for Safety feature.
* Updated the readme.txt to reflect that the plugin is compatible with up to WordPress 4.9.2.

Closed For Holidays Until The New Year!

We’re booked solid until at least February, and we’re now closed for the Holidays.  We can estimate projects for February start dates but will not have any start dates nailed down until the new year. January start dates will require our standard RUSH dev rates (+50%), and February start dates will be normal pricing.

Customer service will be open for our retail sites and for urgent matters, but closed otherwise until the new year.  We will be completely closed from the 24th to the 28th for anything except service outages or downtime.  For critical issues like that please contact your account manager or Sean directly if they are out of office.

Wow what a year!  This has been a year of major change and transition for lots of companies, both partners and clients, as well as ourselves.  We’re happy to say numbers have really been popping this holiday in both versions of our app, with our mobile / html5 app now reaching all-time high design complete ratios, powering some of the highest sales ratios of all time!

We hope everyone finishes up a great holiday season!

Cheers and wishing everyone good fortune for all for 2018.

Product Personalization and Customization Solutions