The FirstVoices development team has been working hard on the new release of FirstVoices 3. All new updates have been prompted by the hard-working Language Teams and community members, whose valuable feedback, ideas and suggestions have been crucial in making FirstVoices a better platform.

If you have questions about any of the updates listed below, or have ideas for ways to improve FirstVoices, please contact us at: hello@firstvoices.com

What’s new? 🌄

Editing for songs and stories

The FirstVoices team have redesigned the create/edit form for songs and stories – both of these have a new look on the new website.

Create/edit songs. There is a more streamlined upload form for songs and their lyrics which should be more simple and straightforward to use, compared to the old site.

Create/edit stories. The areas to upload and edit stories and their pages is back. There are separate areas for managing the cover page and the individual pages, and there is now a single-page preview so you can see how everything looks together.

• Coming soon: Knowledge Base pages about song and story management.

Contact forms for FirstVoices users

The “Contact Us” widget is back! Language Administrators can now add a contact form to any page to receive inquiries from FirstVoices users visiting their site.

• New/Returning Widget option: “Contact Us”

• When creating the widget, you will see a list of what email(s) the messages will be sent to.

• By default, contact forms are set up with the last contact email that we confirmed with language administrators – or otherwise will default to messaging FirstVoices staff at hello@firstvoices.com.

• Only logged-in users with FirstVoices accounts can send messages at this time (as spam prevention).

Media search and Dashboard improvements

• Media Library search features. Use a search bar to find the audio, image, or video files that you are looking for in your Media Library. Like the rest of the search bars, a “fuzzy” search makes sure you find something close to what you were looking for.

• “Sign Out” button on the Dashboard. Need to leave in a hurry? There’s a new sign out button in the language team Dashboard for your convenience.

What’s improved? 🐞

Dashboard bugfixes and styling

• Improved validation on various create/edit forms. Forms should be less buggy and behave more predictably while you are entering your content.

• Fixed thumbnails, sizes, and image/video dimensions in site Media Libraries. Images and videos will now show the actual file sizes and dimensions of all your media files when you browse your library.

• Fixed missing “Upload Files” button on smaller screen sizes. If you are using an iPad to enter content in the Dashboard, the “upload” button should fit on your screen and show properly.

• Fixed a bug with editing custom pages. You should be able to edit custom page headers correctly.

• Rearranged buttons in the Dashboard area. The buttons should be in more intuitive positions now.

Bugfixes on site homepages

• Fixed buttons on Alphabet pages and widgets. The first letter is now selected by default, and the buttons work correctly for all characters (including letters like “.” / period)

• Fixed banner image auto-sizing. The correct size should now be used, so homepage banners will not be blurry.

General improvements

• Styling improvements on public-side Dictionary/Songs/Stories view.

• Visual improvements on mobile and tablet screen sizes.

• Performance improvements for content loading and search.

• Performance improvements for media loading.

What’s next? 👀

Got feedback? 🗣️