Free-Conversant News

What is Conversant?

Conversant is designed to help groups of all sizes work together by making it easy for them to share ideas, questions, files, and knowledge. It also has lots of features that make it very easy for a small group - or an individual - to publish dynamic web sites.

Conversant is software for your Internet (or Intranet) server. Standard features include tools for managing news pages and journals (weblogs), feature-rich event calendars, online discussion forums (with file enclosure capabilities), tools for publishing entire web sites, email and mailing-list integration, and many other services that are great for all kinds of business, project, and personal web sites and communication-centers.

Free-Conversant is Macrobyte's web site hosting service, based on Conversant. We offer everything from free sites, to inexpensive domain hosting, to dedicated Conversant (and traditional) servers.

What people are saying about Conversant...

This is the part I love about your software/company -- every time I ask a question, you reply with options, options and more options.
-- Brian Carnell

I'm beginning to use it and conversant is great. Congratulations Seth and Macrobyters.
-- David Harrod

The more I dig the more I'm impressed at just how well thought out Conversant is. This is really powerful stuff.
-- Duncan Smeed

Wow, This is what I called Super Charged Manila. Thanks for showing what is possible and great team work.
-- Paul Chow

Thanks, as always, for such a rapid response from the Macrobyte 'team'. You guys are great!
-- Duncan Smeed

I have fallen in love with your stylesheet tool. My intentions, however, are strictly honorable. I just did some things with h1, h2, and h3 even though I *still* don't really know how to code a stylesheet. Fantastic.
-- Mark Morgan

Conversant's Weblog II is incredible -- it's not done yet, but is already one of the most powerful online journaling tools around.
-- Greg Pierce
Power and flexibility! Five years, and I still can't get enough of this system.
-- Seth Dillingham

10/15/2000

Lots of New Stuff

We've been very busy, as we worked on a number of new and improved features for Conversant, which have now been rolled out across all Free-Conversant sites. You can read the full list on the support site, but here's a quick rundown:

Exciting new set of message macros
Advanced Query Page
Improvements to the fullThread page (allows you to easily implement a flat discussion group)
New JavaScript and StyleSheet features
Support for different MIME types, which was the last piece missing from the RSS syndication puzzle (or any other XML or plaintext formatted page)

Posted @ 12:14 PM

10/12/2000

Syndicating Your Weblog Content

Are you interested in syndicating the content that you post to your weblog? You can do it now, in Conversant, with dynamically generated RSS files. Steve Ivy figured out how to do it, with Conversant's existing feature set!

RSS files are used by services such as my.netscape.com and my.userland.com. Each "channel" on those sites comes from a RSS file served from someone's site. Now you can serve your own RSS files, and manage your own channel on those services!

Thanks, Steve!

Posted @ 6:47 PM

10/9/2000

Tangled in the Threads

Jon Udell mentioned Conversant in his most recent Byte.com article.

Seth Dillingham responds.

Posted @ 11:12 AM

Integrating the Event Calendar with A Conversant Site

Jim Roepcke is running a few Conversant sites, and his latest is an Edmonton Oiler's fan site. OK, that's a bit of an understatement... it's a complete news site (weblog).

We're mentioning it here because it's a great example of a weblog with a fully integrated Event Calendar.

Posted @ 4:48 PM