Enjoy a better ShortStack experience with S2

Our highly-anticipated campaign server upgrade is here. Learn more about the improvements and how they impact you.

S2 is what we call the new version of our campaign server.

The campaign server interacts with our Builder to show you a preview of your landing pages as you build them and is responsible for displaying your published landing pages. Upgrading the campaign server has allowed our team to make major performance and functionality upgrades, as well as improve processes for adding new features in the future.

Our original campaign server, which we affectionately call S1, was designed a decade ago in 2010. It uses an older architecture that has limited our ability to introduce new features. Going forward, new features will be introduced solely on S2; however, S1 will continue functioning as-is for an indefinite period of time.

New: The Entry Display Widget

We’ve redesigned the Voting Widget and renamed it the Entry Display Widget. The Entry Display Widget is designed to more seamlessly present entries where multiple media elements have been submitted.

The most notable differences between the S2 Entry Display Widget and the S1 Voting Widget are that the Entry Display Widget has:

A simpler tiled layout, where the number of columns is set in the Style Panel;
A new pop-up view that displays when an entry tile is clicked or tapped;
Settings that make it easier to configure which custom fields appear within the entries.

What’s new in S2?

New: The Upload Field for Forms

One of the biggest features we’re bringing to the table with S2 is what you can upload to a form – multiple images, videos and social media posts.

With the new upload field, your audience can upload multiple images*, directly upload videos* and submit social media posts, none of which is supported in S1. This opens the door to running a number of new promotions, including:

Before and after contests, where people submit photos of a transformation before and after it happens (e.g. before and after room makeover, before and after haircut);
Multi-image contests, where participants submit multiple images to enter (e.g. a pet food giveaway where entrants can submit a photo of each of their pets);
One-step video contests, which allow people to upload their video directly to ShortStack instead of hosting it through another service and then linking to it;
TikTok contests, where people submit their TikTok posts to display in a gallery for a chance to win;
And much more!

*Subject to plan limitations

New: Code Redemption

Our code redemption feature allows you to reward entrants for submitting a valid code.

New: The NavBar Widget

Our new NavBar Widget allows you to add a responsive navigation bar to your landing page. Navigation bar elements can link to different sections within your landing page, trigger actions on your landing page and send users to external URLs.

New: The Paging Widget

With our new Paging Widget, you can create sub-navigation within your ShortStack campaign. Break your content up between different pages and use URLs to direct visitors to those sub-pages. Paging works well with the NavBar Widget to allow seamless navigation between different sections of your campaign.

New: Email to Vote Restrictions

We’ve added a voting restriction to our arsenal of voting tools. Now you can require people to submit and verify an email address in order to vote. Upon clicking the vote button, the voter will see a pop-up asking them to enter their email address. After that, they’ll receive an email with a verification code. Then they’ll enter the code into the pop-up on your landing page so their vote is counted. This is a perfect tool for contest administrators who don’t want to limit voting by IP address.

New: The Categories Field

You can now use a single form to collect all of your entries across multiple categories. Just add a Categories field to your form and enter the categories you want to use. Then use the Entry Display Widget to display your entries by category.

New: The Tracking Widget

Our new Tracking Widget makes adding Google Analytics and Facebook pixels easy. Just add your UA code and pixel IDs, then choose from the tracking options available. After you launch, you can see how many page views and form submissions you receive in real-time.

New: Invite-only Landing Pages

Sometimes you only want to grant access to content to people you specify. In S2, we’ve added the ability to create invite-only landing pages. These landing pages can only be accessed by people on your ShortStack list(s) who have received an invitation link via email.

Further Improvements

Faster load times: The Builder responds faster when working on S2 landing pages.
Original file exports: You’ll receive the original image and video files uploaded with the entry (social media posts are not exported). In contrast, S1 resized images to fit inside a 1000×1000 pixel box.
More complex actions are possible: Action Widgets placed inside hidden Container Widgets are disabled until the Container Widget is visible, permitting more complex actions to be achieved.

Future Improvements

Right now, we have the following improvements in the works:

Better localization for your landing pages: We’re making it easier to support multiple languages and allow you to reuse translations from landing page to landing page.