The Genius Blog

Upgrade News

Great news! We’ve added a new tool to help sign up creators with the administration of their sign ups! Our new “move” functionality enables sign up creators to quickly move users on their sign ups to another slot. Did one of your dates get cancelled? Are you combining two events into one? Need to move a couple users to a different responsibility that better fits their skills? Not a problem. Forget the old method of deleting people off the sign up and signing them up again in a new slot. With our “move” feature, it takes only a couple clicks to move everyone from their existing slot to another open slot and send them an email notification in the process.

In addition to “move,” sign up creators can also “swap” two users from their existing slots. Choose the users you want to swap and we can notify them both by email of the change. It couldn’t be easier!

To find the new functionality, login to the site with the account you used to create the sign up and view the sign up. In the admin’s toolbar at the top of the screen, choose the “add/edit/delete people” button. You’ll see a new column for “move.” Check multiple users at once to move people to a new slot. Select one user at a time if you’d like the option to swap.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Big Upgrade News!

Here at SignUpGenius, we really want to woo our users on Valentine’s Day and show you just how much we care. We were all set with a box of chocolates and a dozen red roses to be delivered to each of you, when we were struck by an even better idea. Why not be creative and give our users a more unique pair of gifts? So we created two brand new features for you to love…SignUpGenius Payments and SignUpGenius Pro.



With SignUpGenius Payments, you’ll now have the ability to accept money on your sign up pages. Want to collect payments for a group gift, coordinate a fundraiser, sell tickets or products, or coordinate event registration with greater ease? Now you can by using the same simple sign up creation wizard you’ve always had available. If you’d like to explore all of the possibilities for using this useful feature, sign up for one of our upcoming webinars designed to familiarize you with SignUpGenius Payments.

ALSO NEW: SignUpGenius Pro

In response to requests from our power users, we designed SignUpGenius Pro as an add-on suite of features to make volunteer coordination even easier for large groups.

Now whether your organization needs to set up multiple administrators for a set of sign ups, collect event registration information with several custom fields, or store a larger number of unique images for sign ups, this tool is for you. Check out SignUpGenius Pro to learn more.

FEATURES:

• Multiple administrators for your account
• Expanded storage for custom images
• Multiple notification emails for your sign up page
• Multiple custom questions on your sign up
• Multiple admin-only hidden fields on your sign up

This Valentine’s Day, we hope you’ll still receive that box of chocolates and dozen roses from some adoring admirer in your life. But if you have to wait a bit for that special someone to come along, think of our new features and remember…you’ll always have SignUpGenius.

VIEW THE OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

Prepare to Fall Head Over Heels for Upcoming New Features

We’ve got something super sweet lined up to help you celebrate this Valentine’s Day. On Thursday, February 14th, SignUpGenius will release two major upgrades you’ll adore. Wondering how our simple online sign up service could get any better? Stayed tuned to our Facebook page and Twitter feeds for hints and come back for the big reveal right here on Valentine’s Day to find out. We do have to warn you…our special gift may leave you feeling a bit smitten for our online sign up service all over again.

New Christmas Themes!

We've just added some new themes to help with your ho-ho-holiday organizing!  Use one of our new looks or select from over 350 other professionally designed themes and get your event organized today!

Click on the thumbnails below for a preview.

Gingerbread Cookies - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category	Reindeer - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category	Holiday Dinner - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category	Bethlehem - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category
Ornaments - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category	Holiday Presents - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category	Santa's Sleigh - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category	Snowman Fun - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category
Hanukkah 4 - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category	Christmas Angel - See CHRISTMAS SEASON Category

Holy Upgrades, Batman!

Halloween may be over, but we’ve got so many new features being released… it’s downright scary! So put away your Katniss Everdeen costume (we know you wore one) and check out these treats we’ve prepared just for you!

Collect Phone and Address Information from your Volunteers
Our powerful email tools have always made it easy to coordinate your volunteers, but with some events you need more than just email. Want to collect your volunteers’ phone numbers so you can reach them the day of the event? Need your volunteers’ addresses so you can send them your monthly newsletter? Now sign up creators can choose whether entering a phone number or address is required as part of the sign up. The data you collect is integrated into our custom reports, which let you easily export the contact information to an Excel compatible file when your sign up is done! Now that’s handy.

Simplified No-Account Sign Ups
You spoke and we listened. Sign up creators kept telling us that some of their members didn’t want to create an account at SignUpGenius when they signed up, but they still wanted advanced functionality like email reminders and editing their sign up later. Other sign up creators were confused by the multiple access settings we made them choose from when they created their sign up. You weren’t satisfied… so we weren’t satisfied. We went back to the drawing board and decided to completely rethink the way we handled access settings and the way users sign up for things. What we came up with is a simpler, more powerful, and perfectly customizable setup. Now, we let the sign up creator pick and choose what users need to fill out in order to sign up. Accounts are optional by default and your users can receive reminders and even edit their items – all without having an account. We’re positive you’ll find the sign up settings are more intuitive and that no-account sign ups will satisfy even the most skeptical of your members! Welcome to a whole new level of genius!

Improved Admin Sign Up Tool
There are lots of ways people use our system. For a number of events, it is the sign up creator that is the one that is signing people up on the site using our admin tool. On a large sign up, this can be time consuming. Never fear - help is on the way! We’ve refreshed our admin sign up tool so that it’s much faster. Once you’ve chosen the person you’re signing up, you’ll see a pop-up view of your sign up that allows you to easily check multiple slots in one simple step! This format makes it much easier for you to coordinate where people should be signed up – and even let’s you sign up people for recurring positions easily. Sound simple? It is. So what are you waiting for? Get those volunteers signed up!

Modify the Header Text & Comment Text
We know you spend a lot of effort on your sign ups and want them to look just right. Now there are two more settings that help you customize it to get exactly what you need. First, adjust the column header on your sign up to specifically describe what your users are signing up for. Next, customize the text that shows next to the “my comment” field that is a part of every sign up. Customizing the comment text allows you to ask for specific items you want your users to enter. For example, if you are organizing a meal sign up for a new mom, you can customize the comment text to tell users to “Enter the meal you are bringing.” You can even require the comment be filled out and their answer will appear neatly on the sign up! Nice!

Ask a Custom Question
Need to ask your members more than can fit in the comment field? Maybe you need to know their t-shirt size? Or you want to find out whether they want chicken or steak for dinner? Is it important to know what classroom your parent volunteer is connected to? We can help. In addition to the comment, you can now design a custom question to ask your members when they sign up. Our new custom question tool lets you build a sophisticated question and collect your information via a drop down box, checkboxes, text box, memo field, or radio buttons! You can even add complex restrictions… like requiring your members to select at least two options but no more than three. If that weren’t enough, your custom question is integrated into our custom report so you can export all the data to an Excel compatible format when you are complete! Wowzers.

Simpler Email Invite Sending
Inviting your members properly is the key to great volunteer participation! We’ve introduced a more intuitive invite system to simplify the process of sending out your email invites. When it’s time to invite, you now have simple options that let you choose between sending to your existing group or entering new members. In addition, you can now come back at any time and resend your invites without retyping the emails. And to be sure you know how many to send, we now list the status of your previous email sends so that you know whether another message is necessary.

Whew! Now that’s an upgrade. We’re hope these changes make the system faster, simpler, easier, more powerful… and save you lots more time. We’ve got quite a few more things up our sleeve for this year, so check back soon for our next round of updates!

FAQs for this Upgrade

I’m in the middle of my sign up. Will my users be confused by the changes?
No. Most of the changes involve easier setup, management, and customization by the sign up creator. For the users, the sign up process remains simple and easy to use. In fact, the new features allow you to make it even easier for your members to sign up for something.

How will the new access changes affect my old sign ups?
None of the settings of your previously created sign ups will change – but the interface for administering them will look differently. For example, if you previously used our “public with email” access setting… that setting required that users create an account at SignUpGenius with their email address to sign up. By default, sign ups created when we used the “public with email” setting will still operate in the same way (users will still have to create accounts to sign up). However, if you want to utilize our new no-account option, you can login and edit your sign up and uncheck the setting that requires accounts. So to reiterate… everything will work exactly like previously by default – but you can update the sign ups to take advantage of our new options.

I like the old settings! Can I still create a password-protected sign up like I had previously?
Absolutely! You can still setup your sign up to work exactly like it did previously by determining which fields users can sign up for. The option for password-protection and group-only sign ups are still available under the advanced security options on our settings page.

If my users don’t have to setup accounts anymore, will they be able to update their data? Will this require more work for me as a sign up creator?
Under the new system, users can sign up with their name and email and bypass the account creation process. If they do not create an account, but have their email in our system, there are still two ways that they can edit their sign up item at a later time. First of all, your users will have the option when they sign up to send themselves an email with an “edit link.” That link will allow them to edit the item they signed up for at any time. They can keep that email in their email program and go back to it if they ever need to edit the item. Secondly, since the user signed up with their email address… if they were to go ahead and create an account with the same email, the user would be able to edit their data. If you do not require email addresses and the user only enters their name – there is nothing they will be able to do to edit their item in the future. This is the same way the “name only” sign ups worked previously on our site.

If my users don’t create an account, can they still swap their slot with other members?
Yes and no. To initiate a swap, you currently need to have an account. This just means that if a user would like to swap with another user, they register at SignUpGenius with the same email they used to sign up for your item… and then they initiate the swap. Any other users with emails in the system (regardless of whether or not they have created an account) will be available for the swap. 

Do I still need an account to create a sign up?
Yes, sign up creators still need to have an account. Having an account at SignUpGenius still has many advantages and advanced users that are utilizing advanced features at our site will still want to create an account. However, for those that have limited involvement in our site (perhaps they quickly sign up for one item), we've removed that barrier for them.

Will the phone and address information I collect be available to the other users that visit my sign up?
No. The contact information you collect is private and available to the sign up creator only. Email, phone, and address information is never displayed publically on the site. The only information that is displayed publically on the sign up form is the person’s name and the sign up comment. As previously, you also have the option to hide the name and comment for a completely anonymous sign up.

How can I ask more than one custom question?
One custom question will be included in our free version of SignUpGenius. However, we’re close to releasing a professional, subscription-based upgrade that will give you upgraded features including the ability to add multiple custom question and even include hidden fields that are only available for administrative purposes. If you are interested in being a part of the beta-test group that will have the first look at this new feature, learn more here.

What happened to the RSVP sign up? I can’t find that setting any more!
The settings for an RSVP sign up have changed slightly in our sign up creation screens. While the RSVP format can be useful for the right type of event - with our previous setup, we constantly had users accidentally choosing an RSVP sign up format when they really did not want an RSVP sign up. We’ve tried to make the distinction between standard sign up and RSVP sign more clear in the setup process. Instead of selecting the RSVP setting on the dates/time page, you will now choose the RSVP option in the “layout settings” area of the “slots” screen if you have created a sign up with one date.

I’ve got another question that’s not listed here!
No problem. Write your question below in the comments and we’ll be happy to answer.

40 New Themes!

Wanting a fresh look for your fall sign up pages?  Try one of our 40 new themes and get your event organized today! With 365 total themes to choose from and the ability to upload your own image - you can always find the perfect look no matter what type of event you are organizing!

Click on the thumnails below for a preview of our newest themes!

Archery - See Clubs & Groups Category	Art Pencils - See Arts & Media Category	Baby Stork - See Family Category	Back to School - See Education Category
Baseball 4 - See Sports Category	Bible Study - See Religion Category	Billiards - See Clubs & Groups Category	Calendar - See General Category
Car Pool - See General Category	Cheerleading 3 - See Sports Category	Chicken - See Food Category	Chili - See Food Category
Choir - See Arts & Media Category	Coffee 2 - See Food Category	Cross 4 - See Religion Category	Dessert II - See Food Category
Fishing - See Clubs & Groups Category	Football 4 - See Sports Category	Growing - See Clubs & Groups Category	Happy Hour - See Food Category
Hiking - See General Category	Marshmallow - See Food Category	Music V - See Clubs & Groups Category	Painting - See Education Category
Running 2 - See Sports Category	School Bus II - See Education Category	School Fun - See Education Category	School Supplies - See Education Category
Soccer 5 - See Sports Category	Swimming VI - See Sports Category	Talent Show - See Arts & Media Category	Tennis 2 - See Sports Category
Thank You - See General Category	Theatre - See Arts & Media Category	Tickets - See Clubs & Groups Category	Tools - See General Category
Torah - See Religion Category	Vote - See General Category	Waffles - See Food Category	World Kids - See Education Category

More New Features!

Summer’s almost over and we’ve just rolled out another set of new features! Planning your fall events just got even easier! Check out what we've just released!

Time Slot Creator
With our newly upgraded sign up creation wizard, you now create large time slot sign ups in a flash! Need to build a 24-hour prayer chain sign up with half-hour slots all day long? Are you creating a parent/teacher conference sign up with twenty-minute time slots for each parent? Maybe you’re planning a fall festival where volunteers sign up for 2-hour periods across multiple booths? Easy. Piece of cake. No problem. Enter your start time, end time and the length of your time slot… and our system will build all the time slots for you! Enormous time slot sign ups can be created in a matter of seconds. We think you’ll find lots of new ways to use our system with this great upgrade. Consider managing the reservations of your office conference room or sports facility using SignUpGenius – you can quickly build the time slots for the entire month and let people sign up!

Sign Up Slot Sorting
We know that when you’re building a sign up, you want it to look absolutely perfect for your group members! That includes the specific display order of your sign up items on the page. We’ve made this even simpler for you by integrating drag-and-drop sorting of your sign up items into the sign up creation wizard! Now if you forget a sign up slot when you’re first entering them, you can enter it later and easily drag it into the exact position you want it on your sign up. Nice!

Advanced Layout Settings
Our standard sign up format has always shown dates first (in chronological order) followed by your sign up slots. However, some sign up creators have asked to be able flip the format and display their sign up grouped by the slots first. We’ve listened and are pleased to announce that you can now choose which sign up format works best for you! The new slot-first format is perfect, for example, for a fall festival where you want to list all your booths in order first, and then the dates/times that people can sign up for each booth. Use this slot-first format in combination with the new time slot features to create a massive parent/teacher conference sign up for an entire school in just a matter of minutes. Once you see how flexible this layout change is for some of your sign ups, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!

Bulk Import of Sign Up Slots
We know that large organizations often manage sign ups on our site that contain dozens or hundreds of sign up items. Entering those items one by one into our system can be tedious and frustrating, especially for those that already have their list of sign up items in some electronic format. Now there’s an easier way. With our new bulk import feature, sign up creators can easily import hundreds of sign up slots in one quick step. When you’re building your sign up, grab your list of sign up slots from Excel or Word and cut/paste them into our import box – our system will create all the slots in one simple step. Now you can create an enormous auction sign up or donation sign up in minutes! Give it a try!

Multi-Edit and Multi-Delete
We think managing an existing sign up should be as easy as building it. And we’re always looking for ways to make it faster and simpler to save you more time! Our latest upgrade includes the ability to edit and delete multiple slots or dates in one step. It sounds like a small change, but wait until you see how much time you’ll save! Need to change the name of the event location across 25 dates on your sign up? Now it’s easy… select all the dates and you can update the location for all those dates in one step without updating anything else! Want to delete all 250 sign up items you entered and start over? No problem… select all the sign up slots and delete in one quick step. We know this little upgrade won’t win a Nobel Peace Prize or anything, but we are confident that frequent sign up creators will find it a huge help!

And… we’re just getting started.
Think these upgrades are great? Don’t tell anyone, but we’ve got some even bigger upgrades still coming that are going to revolutionize your fall signups! Keep watching our blog in the next month for the big news…

Fun New Features

Here at SignUpGenius, we’re gearing up for the busy fall season with lots of great new features to make organizing your volunteers and events even easier. Check out what we just released!

Multiple Names Per Account
Do you and your spouse share a single email address and both need to sign up for something? Or maybe you’ve wondered how you could sign up your child’s name on a sign up using your own account? Well, now it’s easy to sign up for things using a single email account while entering different names for different family members on the sign up page! When you login and sign up, look for the “alternate name” checkbox that lets you adjust the name that will display on the sign up page. You can even sign up multiple times with the same account, entering a different display name each time. If you make a mistake, you can go back and edit any of the names for your account. In addition, sign up creators also have the ability to adjust the display name of anyone on their pages! Give it a try!

Updated Admin Sign Up Tool
One of the most powerful features of SignUpGenius has always been the ability for sign up creators to enter people onto their sign ups themselves. We’ve made the process even easier with a complete refresh of the sign up creator admin tool. Instead of signing people up by typing in their information, sign up creators can now simply select from the members already in their group. Additionally, if the user needs to be signed up for multiple items, the sign up creator will no longer need to enter the person’s name multiple times. Instead, the sign up creator can quickly select all the slots that they want to sign this person up for and sign them up in bulk! The user will get one summary email of everything you signed them up for. Finally, we’ve streamlined this admin page to make loading and management much faster for very large sign ups. Enjoy!

Admin EDIT ability
One of our most requested features is now here! In addition to signing people up and deleting sign ups… sign up creators now have the ability to EDIT the sign up items on their page. Did you forget to add someone’s email or need to quickly adjust the spelling of a name? Now you can edit any of the items on your page at any time. To access this functionality, login as the administrator and view your sign up. Then click on the “add/edit/delete people” button in the administrator’s toolbar at the top of the page for complete control of everything on your page!

Better Grouping for Reminders
We’ve improved our automated reminder system to streamline the emails that you will receive. If you sign up for multiple time slots on the same day, our system will group the items together and send you a single email reminder!

Sign Up Timestamp
Need to know when your users signed up for various items? Now you can. Our custom reports have been updated to include the timestamp of when your user signed up. To run a report and view the timestamps, login and click on “custom reports” in the right hand column of the My Account page.

We’re not finished yet! We’ve got more great features coming to make this fall your most easily organized season yet! Check our blog during the summer for updates on what’s new!
 

NEW: No-Ads Sign Ups & Email Reporting

Spring is here and the signs are everywhere: the weather is getting warmer, the trees are budding… and here at SignUpGenius, we've got new features blooming all over the website! Today we’re excited to announce two major upgrades.

No-Ads Genius!
You asked for it and we listened! While using our website will always remain FREE for anyone that uses our advertising-supported sign up pages, you now have the option to pay a small subscription fee to remove any advertisements from your sign ups! It's easy and super affordable - and payment can be made by credit card or Paypal in a one-time payment or a recurring payment.

FIND OUT MORE!

Email Delivery Report
As our membership has increased dramatically… the number of email invites and reminders that we send daily has become staggering. We've been working hard to refine our back-end infrastructure to better track all these messages and provide feedback to the sign up creators.

Starting today, as the first of several email upgrades, we will be sending a notification report to sign up creators when their emails are not delivered! With this new report, it's easy for sign up creators to tell which of your emails bounced, which people were “out of the office”, or even which group members utilize a spam verification service that requires action for delivery. Our system compiles all the non-delivery information daily. If we spot any problem with the emails you sent to your group members, you will receive a single email report detailing all the issues approximately 24 hours after you sent the original email. This way you can correct any mistakes and make sure everyone gets the message you intended!
 

New Feature: Unlimited Slot Quantity

Happy Monday! To get your week off to a good start, we thought we'd announce a small, but useful upgrade to our site. We have just integrated a change to the sign up creation wizard that makes it easier for you to choose the exact quantity of volunteers you need for your sign up. Instead of being limited to the selections in the drop down box, you now have the ability to enter your own quantity! This works well for large sign ups where you need a hundred or several hundred volunteers for a specific position.

In addition, we have added an "unlimited quantity" selection. You can choose this option if you don't want a specific number listed on your sign up page and you want to leave the sign up slot open to as many people as are interested. If you choose the "unlimited quantity" option, no number will show besides the sign up slot and the sign up button will always be present no matter how many people sign up for a particular option!

Hope that brightens your day. Have a great week!

Announcing New Features!

Here at SignUpGenius, we're dedicated to making your life as a leader easier! We're constantly working to expand our system in order to make organizing your sign ups and events as simple as possible! Today, we're proud to announce several big upgrades that move us another step forward in our goal to provide you with the most powerful volunteer management tool on the planet.

And the best part? Just like the rest of our site - every single new feature… is FREE.

Store your images easily for
       use on multiple sign ups!

Add Your Logo or Photo to Your Sign Up!

Now it's easy to customize your sign up page for your group or organization by loading your logo or image right onto the sign up! When you get to the "themes" page of the sign up creation wizard, choose a theme with the background colors you want. Then look for the checkbox that says "Upload my custom image" to send your image to our server.

To make it even more useful for you… we've added a new theme category called "Colors." This category is loaded with background themes using popular color combinations. Select the one that fits your school or group colors, then add your logo or image to match.

Over 30 new themes in our "Colors" category!

And if that isn't enough - the custom images are completely integrated into our sign up duplication and transfer functionalities, making it super easy for larger organizations to share images across multiple sign ups. For example, a school administrator could create a sign up that includes the school logo, duplicate that sign up, and then transfer the copy to a teacher. That teacher now has access to the logo in her account and can use it on any of her sign ups going forward!

Finally - with any new functionality comes a new responsibility for safety and security. We're dedicated to protecting our users to make sure that no inappropriate images could ever get loaded and sent out to users. Therefore, our support team will manually review every image prior to publication for the safety of everyone that uses our site. The review process is fast and won't interfere with the creation of your sign up - but is one more reason you can be confident in using our site.

Easy. Highly customizable. Safe. Ready to get started? Login today and add an image to a new sign up or an existing one! It couldn't be simpler!

Add Social Media Sharing to Your Sign Up Page!

Your members can help spread the word!

The social media revolution is here - and you can't afford to be left behind! Sites like Twitter and Facebook can be powerful tools to help you recruit and communicate with your volunteers. Now, with SignUpGenius, you can automatically add "share" buttons to any of your public sign up pages. Users that sign up for something can easily spread the word to their entire social network and help do some of the recruiting work for you! This new setting is enabled by default on all new sign ups, but can also be disabled prior to publishing your sign up. So what are you waiting for? Get sharing!

Download Your Responsibility to Your Calendar or SmartPhone!

It's already great to get our automated email reminders when you sign up for something - but now you can also add your sign up responsibility to the calendar of your computer or smartphone with a click of a button! Users with an account at SignUpGenius will have the option to download their responsibilities to Outlook or Mac iCal after signing up.

After signing up, your members can easily add their
responsibilities to their calendars.

In addition, there is a simple button to add the event to your Google calendar - which syncs perfectly with any Android phone. For iPhone, iPad, or Blackberry users, you have the option to email yourself an ICS file, open the email on your device and easily add the event to your mobile calendar. Now it's even easier to keep track of all your volunteer responsibilities!

Login with Improved SSL Security

Privacy and security have always been top priorities for our site. As technology advances and changes, we're aways working to find better ways to protect our users. Even though we don't deal with financial information, SignUpGenius now joins a number of major sites in using SSL encryption for login and registration pages to better protect email/password information. To see the new feature, look for the HTTPS in the header of your browser and the safety seal on our login pages. We're proud to be one of the only volunteer sites to make this upgrade!

And More to Come

2012 is a big year for us and we've got plenty of additional great features in development. Continue to check our blog for the latest upgrades to the site!

Happy Sign Ups!

iCalendar Integration and New Themes

Happy Thanksgiving! We're so thankful for our loyal users that today we're rolling out some new items in time for the holidays!

iCalendar Integration
Having all your volunteer activities organized online by SignUpGenius and receiving the email reminders is great. But wouldn't it also be nice to quickly add those sign up items to your computer's calendar or smart phone? Now you can.

Anytime you sign up for an item on SignUpGenius.com, you will now have the option to email yourself an iCalendar (.ics) file. Click on the attached .ics file from your home computer to add the event to your MS Outlook calendar or Mac calendar. Open the email on your phone and click the .ics file to add the event to your mobile calendar! You can also access iCalendar files from your MyAccount page at any time to download them to any device. Click. Scheduled. Done. Nice!

New Christmas Themes
We've added 10 new Christmas themes and a few other requested themes to our list of over 275 professionally designed themes. Now there are even MORE great looks to choose from when you create your holiday sign ups. Check out the new themes below and then get your holiday organizing started!

CREATE A SIGN UP

Click on the thumnails below for a larger preview.

Advent Wreath - See CHRISTMAS Category	Christmas Lights - See CHRISTMAS Category	Christmas Music - See CHRISTMAS Category	Christmas Story - See CHRISTMAS Category
Donuts - See Food Category	Holiday Cookies - See CHRISTMAS Category	Holiday Gift II - See CHRISTMAS Category	Holly Jolly - See CHRISTMAS Category
Nutcracker - See CHRISTMAS Category	Popcorn II - See Food Category	Real Estate - See General Category	Santa's Helpers - See CHRISTMAS Category
Winter Beauty - See CHRISTMAS Category	Girl Scouts - See Clubs & Groups Category	Girl Scout Cookies - See Clubs & Groups Category

No-Ads Sign Up Sheets!

As most of you know, our sign up service is absolutely FREE. We support our business through the advertising on the site. However, we do periodically get asked by various organizations if there is a way to use the service without any advertising.

Now there is!

In November we will be launching a low-cost subscription service that will allow you to pay a monthly fee in exchange for the removal of advertising from your sign up sheets. We know that many of the nonprofit groups and ministries we work with don't have a lot of money, so we've decided to keep the cost low and we will have flexible billing options including recurring billing and discounts for those that pre-pay for multiple months. We will be announcing the exact prices publically when we officially unveil the service.

In order to ensure a smooth roll-out, we will be soft-launching the subscription service to a limited number of users before making the service available to the entire site. If you would like to be one of the first users to try our no-ads sign ups, please contact me personally for details.

Just to be clear - this new subscription service will be completely optional. Our site will remain absolutely free and will work exactly the same as it does now for those that don't mind the advertising!

50 New Themes Released!

Fall events are in full swing and we've got some brand new themes to add some extra pizazz to your sign ups! Why settle for a plain looking sign up? Now with over 275 professionally-designed themes to choose from - you can find that perfect look for almost any event!

Click on the thumbnails below for a preview of our new themes! Or use one of our previous themes and get your event organized today!

Create A Sign Up Now

Band II - See Arts & Media Category	BBQ Ribs - See Food Category	black and white - See General Category	Blood Drive - See Clubs & Groups Category
Burger & Fries - See Food Category	Car Wash - See Clubs & Groups Category	Communion - See Religion Category	Cross Country - See Sports Category
Dogs - See Family Category	Equestrian - See Clubs & Groups Category	Exercise II - See Sports Category	Figure Skating - See Sports Category
Global Business - See General Category	Gold ribbon - See General Category	Hot Air Balloons - See General Category	Ice Cream - See Food Category
Kids - See Education Category	Knights - See Family Category	Meal IV - See Food Category	Monstrance - See Religion Category
Motorcycle - See Clubs & Groups Category	Pajama Party - See Family Category	Party Streamers - See Parties & Events Category	Patriotic - See General Category
Photography - See Arts & Media Category	Pirates - See Family Category	Presentation - See Education Category	Purple & Yellow - See General Category
Racquetball - See Sports Category	Rock Out - See Arts & Media Category	Roller skating - See Clubs & Groups Category	Rugby - See Sports Category
School Kids II - See Education Category	Scouts - See Clubs & Groups Category	Scouts II - See Clubs & Groups Category	Scrapbooking - See Clubs & Groups Category
SignUpGenius Colors - See General Category	Soccer 4 - See Sports Category	Spa - See Parties & Events Category	Space - See Education Category
Spaghetti - See Food Category	Swimming V - See Sports - Water Category	Tea Party - See Parties & Events Category	Volunteers II - See General Category
Volunteers III - See General Category	Water Polo - See Sports - Water Category	Wedding 3 - See Family Category	Welcome - See Parties & Events Category
Western - See General Category	Yoga - See Sports Category

To the Cloud!

The busy fall planning season is coming soon and we've been "bulking up" to handle the load. This past weekend we upgraded our web servers and moved to a new cloud-hosting setup. This significant upgrade in our infrastructure will provide:

• Increased site performance/speed
• Redundant web servers to maximize uptime
• Easy scalability so that resources can be added easily as growth continues

With this new system in place, we're looking forward to a smooth fall... so bring on the sign ups!

NEW: Video Tutorials!

How do you take our simple sign up creation wizard and make the process of building a sign up even easier? Well, we're excited to announce that we've just released a set of video tutorials that will walk you through each step of the process! Now, even if you've never created a sign up before, making sense of all the features and settings will be a breeze as our sign up expert, Missy, will personally guide you via video from start to finish.

So what are you waiting for? Get a jump on the fall season and get your group or event organized today!

Take a sneak peak of the first video below... then click on CREATE A SIGN UP to get started!

Delivering Customer Service WOW.

SignUpGenius is proud to announce the release of our brand new HELP CENTER for customer support! If you've ever contacted us with a question, you know that we are fanatical about providing fast and comprehensive help to our members! With our new HELP CENTER, we are expanding our capability to provide the customer service "wow factor" to our ever-increasing member base.

Here's what's new:

SEARCHABLE KNOWLEDGE BASE: Our extensive collection of FAQs is now searchable so you can find your answer faster.

USER HELP FORUMS: Our new public forums provide a way for users to post questions and find answers from other people dealing with the same issue. 

MULTI-CHANNEL SUPPORT:  If you can't find the answer via our online Q&A, contact us in whatever way is easiest. Post a question to our Facebook page, send us a note on Twitter, or send an email to us on our support page. Any of those methods will open a support ticket for you!

MULTI-TIER SUPPORT: In preparation for the busy fall season, we've expanded our staff so we can provide even better service to our growing membership.

We're excited about this upgrade and want to continue to provide unrivaled user support to make your experience as easy as possible. Check out our help center today and let us know what you think!

Update on Site Outage 5/26/11

On behalf of our staff at SignUpGenius, I ask that you please accept our deepest apologies for any problems you experienced on the website today, 5/26/2011.

Earlier this morning, the datacenter that houses our SignUpGenius servers installed a security patch on a large number of their machines. Unfortunately, the update caused a major problem with an entire cluster of servers that resulted in numerous websites, including ours, experiencing problems or being unavailable for a good portion of the day. We knew of the situation within minutes of it happening and were in close contact with the datacenter the entire time. We were also pursuing alternate recovery possibilities in an effort to minimize downtime. Unfortunately, the fix took longer than anticipated. We work with a top-tier datacenter, so extended down-time like this is a highly unusual scenario and the problem was receiving urgent attention throughout. Because our email server was also down, communication with our users was difficult, but we did our best to keep people posted of the status via our Facebook page. We are happy to report that the site is now back up and running as normal.

We know that users like you place a lot of trust in us when you use our system and we deeply regret letting you down. Please know that reliability is something that we take very seriously. In the six months prior to today, our site registered a 99.8% uptime rating. We simply do not consider downtime acceptable and are continually working to upgrade and expand our architecture to manage our growth and ensure reliable service to our users.

It is our absolute passion to provide a site that saves you frustration and time, not causes it! We are so sorry if that wasn't the case today. If we can help personally to resolve any remaining issues or assist you with what you need to accomplish going forward, please don't hesitate to ask.

Dan Rutledge
Co-Founder, SignUpGenius.com 

Recent Upgrades

Build 3.208

A good website is a bit like an iceberg. 90% of the structure is "under the water" where you don't see it. We've been going deep lately... working on the kind of enhancements that you may not notice... but that make a significant difference.

This week we rolled out a major overhaul of the email system for sign up invitations and bulk emails. It functions nearly the same - but performance and scalability has been greatly enhanced. If you've ever created a very large sign up at our site (with hundreds or thousands of people) then you know that in the past adding large groups of emails into our system took quite a bit of time. We even had to request in the past that users with thousands of emails enter their emails in batches to help with performance and avoid timeout errors. Sending a bulk email to a group of thousands also took a great deal of patience.

Say goodbye to delay. The new system is setup so that very large groups of emails can be added to our site instantly. Bulk emails sent to huge groups are carefully cued and the sending is spaced out to provide maximum performance. As the sign up creator, you will receive a confirmation email once all your emails are sent to your group! In addition, we've added a number of safety features in place to make sure that your users don't ever receive duplicate emails from an accidental re-submission of the page.

Bottom line - if you work with a church, school, sports league, or organization with thousands of users... our system is now even better able to help you organize your events!

New Themes for the Holidays!

Here's a "Cyber Monday" deal for you... we've just released some brand new themes in time for your holiday sign ups!  Check out these festive themes and get your event organized today!

Click on the thumbnails below for a preview.

Challah - See Religion Category	Christmas Names - See Fall & Winter Category	Hanukkah 3 - See Fall & Winter Category	Holiday Cheer - See Fall & Winter Category
Christmas Kitten - See Fall & Winter Category	Nativity - See Fall & Winter Category	Stocking Stuffer - See Fall & Winter Category	Winter Wonderland - See Fall & Winter Category
Cheesecake - See Food Category	Fruit tray - See Food Category	Hockey 2 - See Sports Category	Salad - See Food Category
Volleyball 2 - See Sports Category	Snacks - See Food Category	Hanukkah 2 - See Fall & Winter Category	Bingo - See Clubs & Groups Category
Book Club - See Clubs & Groups Category	Boomerangs - See General Category	Cross 3 - See Religion Category	Faith - See Religion Category
Gardening - See Holidays - Spring & Summer Category	Book Bear - See Education Category	Valentines Bear - See Fall & Winter Category	Valentines 5 - See Fall & Winter Category
Wedding 2 - See Parties & Events Category	Worship - See Religion Category	Romantic Meal - See Fall & Winter Category	Under the Sea - See Parties & Events Category
Valentines 4 - See Fall & Winter Category	Dancing - See Arts & Media Category

NEW FEATURES

SignUpGenius Build 3.177

We've been working hard to keep the enhancements coming!  A couple small but useful ones were recently released:

Non Date-Specific Sign Ups
Sign up creators can now more easily create sign ups that have no specific date associated with the sign up slot.  For example, if you are creating a sign up where people sign up to bring donations, but the donation can be brought in any time... you can now remove any reference to a date on your sign up form.  Look for the "No Specific Date" option on the Date/Time screen of the sign up creation wizards. Nice!

Group Transfer Wizard
If you have a group of emails that you've been using for your sign ups and you want another user to also have access to that group of users... you can now transfer a copy of that group over to another account. Look for the Group Transfer link on the "My Groups" page.

Account Merge
So you're one of those people that have 10 email addresses, right? And you have multiple accounts at SignUpGenius and wish you could combine them? No problem. Login with one of your accounts and go to the "My Profile" page. There is an option for you to merge two accounts together. This feature can also be extremely useful in a situation where you use one email address at SignUpGenius... but then you get invited to a sign up using a different email address. Rather than having to create a second account, you can merge the two email addresses in our system and instantly have access to the sign ups for both accounts. Now that's handy.

Site Outage Update

On Tuesday afternoon, November 2nd of 2010, we experienced a perfect storm of circumstances that caused our site to slow and eventually go down temporarily. This is definitely not the norm for us, but it appears to have been the result of the incredible growth we've been experiencing combined with some uniquely bad timing. The problem server was restored at around 4:30 PM EST and has been running smoothly since.

We greatly apologize for this inconvenience and are doing everything we can to ensure reliability and manage our growth going forward.  In the last 4-5 months, we have had two major server upgrades and will be planning another one soon. We are expanding our technical staff and have been putting automated safety measures in place to ensure timely support response. Our company is experiencing some exciting exponential growth and we look forward to continuing to roll out new functionality and stability enhancements to make it more and more useful to our users.

Again, we greatly regret the inconvenience and frustration you may have experienced. If you would like to speak directly to us about the issue or need assistance related to your sign up, please contact us through this form.

NEW FEATURE: Sign Up Transfer Wizard

SignUpGenius Build 3.162

Sign up creators have even more power at their fingertips with the new release of the sign up transfer wizard!  Now sign up creators can transfer a sign up into another user's account for them to manage. This feature, used in combination with our duplication capabilities, is extremely useful for large organizations like schools that have many similar sign ups. Consider the scenario of a school that is planning parent-teacher conferences: A school admin could make a single sign up form to handle a classroom conference schedule. The admin could then duplicate the sign up multiple times to create identical copies. Using the transfer wizard, the admin could then transfer a copy of the sign up into the account of individual teachers who can then manage the interaction with their children's parents. In only a few minutes, an entire school can be setup with sign ups!

Look for the button to "Transfer a Sign Up" or "Duplicate a Sign Up" on the My Account page, under the "Icon View" of the sign ups you've created.

Also released this week is a much-requested feature: the ability to "order" the sign up items on your sign up in a way other than alphabetically. Sign up creators now get a choice whether to order their items alphabetically or in the order that they are entered into our system! This is extremely useful in scenarios where you want to enter TIME SLOTS on the items screen instead of on the date/times screen.

Look for the item order option on the "People Needed" or "Items to Bring" screen of the sign up configuration wizard.

Check Out Our New Themes!

The leaves are changing and it's time for fall festivals, Halloween bashes, school fundraisers, tailgate parties and more!  Check out these fun new themes and get your event organized today!  Which new theme is your favorite?

Click on the thumnails below for a preview.

Baby Boy - See Family Category	Art & Painting II - See Arts & Media Category	Baby Girl - See Family Category	Bake Sale - See Food Category
Basketball II - See Sports Category	Camping II - See Sports Category	Card Games - See Clubs & Groups Category	Cats - See Family Category
Chess Club - See Clubs & Groups Category	Circles - See General Category	Classroom III - See Education Category	College Bash - See Parties & Events Category
Cycling II - See Sports Category	Paris - See Parties & Events Category	Game Night - See Clubs & Groups Category	Goodbye Party - See Parties & Events Category
Halloween - See Fall & Winter Category	Halloween II - See Fall & Winter Category	Meal III - See Food Category	Mexican Fiesta - See Parties & Events Category
Movies II - See Arts & Media Category	Multi-Sport - See Sports Category	Music IV - See Arts & Media Category	Popcorn - See Arts & Media Category
Pretty Princess - See Family Category	Derby Race - See Sports Category	School II - See Education Category	School III - See Education Category
Science - See Education Category	Snacks III - See Food Category	Tailgate - See Sports Category	Volunteers - See Clubs & Groups Category
Blue & Yellow - See General Category	Chinese Party - See Parties & Events Category	Basketball III - See Sports Category	Animal Crackers - See Family Category
Golf II - See Sports Category	Italian Feast - See Parties & Events Category	Appointment - See General Category	Classroom II - See Education Category
Fall Festival - See Fall & Winter Category	Haunted House - See Fall & Winter Category	Trick or Treat - See Fall & Winter Category	Field Hockey - See Sports Category
Pretty in Pink - See General Category	Skiing - See Sports Category	School Books - See Education Category

Add Sign Up Buttons to Your Website

SignUpGenius Build 3.132

Now it's easy to add sign up buttons right to your website or blog and link directly to your sign up!  After you build your sign up, look for the "Web Buttons" link in the navigation on your "My Account" page.  Our simple wizard will help you customize your button and provide a snippet of code for you to post on your site.  It's a great way to get more people involved!

Classic Tall Button 150x90px, 5.3KB, GIF	Green Tall Button 150x90px, 5.3KB, GIF
Classic Wide Button 250x45px, 4.8KB, GIF	Green Wide Button 250x45px, 4.8KB, GIF

30 Fun New Themes!

Happy Fourth of July!  I hope you have a great time with friends and family this weekend and that your dog makes it through all the fireworks without too much emotional damage!  In honor of the holiday, here's 30 more reasons to celebrate! Check out these new looks you can give your sign ups!

Click on the thumnails below for a preview.

Art & Painting - See Arts & Media	Awards Ceremony - See Indoor Sports Category	Ballet - See Arts & Media	Bookfair - See Education Category
Carnival/Festival - See Spring & Summer Category	Carpool - See Family Category	Cheerleading - See Indoor Sports Category	Cheerleading II - See Indoor Sports Category
Concession Stand - See Food Category	Cycling - See Outdoor Sports Category	Dance Recital - See Arts & Media Category	Diving - See Water Sports Category
Fourth of July - See Summer Holidays Category	Graduation II - See Education Category	Martial Arts - See Indoor Sports Category	Mommy & Me - See Family Category
Music III - See Arts & Media Category	Picnic - See Spring & Summer Category	Running - See Outdoor Sports Category	School Kids - See Family Category
Softball II - See Outdoor Sports Category	Picnic - See Spring & Summer Category	Stage - See Arts & Media Category	Summer - See Spring & Summer Category
Swim Party - See Spring & Summer Category	Swimming III - See Water Sports Category	Swimming IV - See Water Sports Category	Track & Field II - See Outdoor Sports Category
Tropical Luau - See Spring & Summer Category	Wrestling - See Indoor Sports Category

New Spring Themes!

Spring is in the air and both the weather and the activities are heating up!  Check out these new spring themes and get your event organized today!

Click on the thumbnails below for a preview, then BUILD YOUR SIGN UP.  Or if you are new to SignUpGenius... find out how it works.

Baseball 2 - See Outdoor Sports Category	Baseball 3 - See Outdoor Sports Category	Cats & Dogs - See General Category	Cross - See Religion Category
Cross 2 - See Religion Category	Easter Bunny - See Holidays Category	Easter Eggs - See Holidays Category	Easter Lily - See Holidays Category
Kids Fun - See Family Category	Kids' Park - See Education Category	Lacrosse 2 - See Outdoor Sports Category	Soccer 3 - See Outdoor Sports Category
Spring Fun - See Spring/Summer Category	Spring Kids - See Spring/Summer Category

New Calendar and My Account Page

Build 2.63

I haven't had time to blog this week because I've been working hard to finalize the new "My Account" page and "My Calendar" page.  We've had a number of users ask for these changes and we really wanted to make sure that the functionality took a major step forward.  I'm happy to announce that these upgrades are now live!

Actually... looking at it now, I can't believe the site made it this far without these functionalities because they just make a ton of sense.  Here's what's new:

• You can now see a simple list of everything you signed up for on the My Account page.  No more clicking through to every sign up to see what you are responsible for.
• Old sign ups (those with dates in the past) are now automatically archived. They are still accessible, but your My Account page conveniently shows you only the events that are taking place in the future (because we find it difficult to participate in events that have already happened!). 
• You now have the ability to customize your view of the My Account page.  View the sign ups as icons, as a list, in a specific order, or open and close certain categories completely.  Go crazy... it's your page and you should see it how you want to!
• Members can now view all related sign up dates in a calendar view. Sort your calendar by category and then click on each event for quick pop-up details or to link directly to the sign up.

Leave a comment below or drop us a note on the help page to let us know what you think!

New Support for Group Email Aliases

New build 2.57
A couple small but useful items were recently added to SignUpGenius. The biggest news is that sign up creators now have the ability to work with group email aliases as part of their SignUpGenius email groups. Previously, entering a group alias (like a yahoogroups or googlegroups address that points to numerous people) could cause notification problems -- especially if an individual accidentally signed up for something using that address. We now have safeguards in place to prevent sign ups from a group alias --including the specific ability for a sign up creator to flag an email as a group alias when they enter it. Follow the simple directions when you create your sign up or group and it is now safe to use your group email alias!

Here are a few other new items you might spot:

• The create a sign up wizards now have an upgraded WYSIWYG editor for the description field that is compatible with the Mac Safari browser
• An upgraded "My Groups" page now allows you to sort your group for easier identification of a particular user. In addition, this page is now a standard web page instead of a pop-up window... which allows for easier viewing of all the members in your group.
• An upgraded "Send Email" page now allows sign up creators to view a preview of their bulk email before sending it to their selected group of users.

February 2010 SignUpGenius Upgrades

February wasn't all candy and roses for the staff here at SignUpGenius.  We've been working hard on a number of fun upgrades!  Check out some of these recently added items:

• Planning Resources:  A new site section with helpful tips and articles for group organizers
• Community Features:  You can now add your comments to any article and join the conversation!
• The Genius Blog:  News and advice from yours truly, Dan Rutledge, co-founder of SignUpGenius
• Revised Privacy Policy:  We decided to make this more clear to assure even the most skeptical users

We've also added a bunch of themes in the last month or so.  Click on the thumnails below for a preview.

Reading - See Education Category	Rowing 2 - See Outdoor Sports Category	Horses - See Outdoor Sports Category	Horn & Vine - See Religion Category
Rosh Hashanah - See Religion Category	Matzo - See Religion Category	Star of David - See Religion Category	School Desk - See Education Category
Valentines 3 - See Holidays Category	Balloons - See Parties & Events Category	Mardis Gras - See Parties & Events Category	Sympathy & Hope - See General Category
Rowing - See Outdoor Sports Category	Valentines 2 - See Holidays Category	USA - See General Category	Lacrosse - See Outdoor Sports Category
Hockey - See Indoor Sports Category	Football 3 - See Outdoor Sports Category	Football 2 - See Outdoor Sports Category

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