February Update on Magic Pages

Usually I send these updates in the first third of the month – now, it's the 20th. But believe me, the wait is worth it.

It feels like Magic Pages has been turned upside down since the last newsletter – for the better 😄

Let's have a look what happened ⬇️

💰 New Monthly And Yearly Plans

I already announced it in January, but now they are live – the new monthly and yearly plans. Realistically, for most existing customers, this doesn't have too much real-world implications, since you are all on the lifetime plan. But having these additional plans makes Magic Pages Ghost CMS hosting even more accessible to new customers.

Here's a quick overview:

The plans only differ in the payment cycle and are identical in all other aspects.

💳 New Payment Processor, Local Currencies, and Regional Pricing

The update on the plans also comes with an update in the payment processor Magic Pages uses. So far, all payments were done through Lemon Squeezy. However, there were some things that were incredibly inflexible when combining lifetime and subscription products. Additionally, the charges for international payouts were so high, that I had to consider raising prices (especially for monthly plans).

With the new payment processor, Paddle, Magic Pages now also supports over 30 different currencies and regional pricing. It's not full Purchase Parity Pricing, since that does not quite work with a product like Ghost CMS hosting, but the new prices and currencies take into consideration whether a customer is from India or the United States.

🖲️ New Customer Portal

Yes, I already mentioned this last month as well – a new customer portal.

So far, to manage your domain, or anything else in regard to your Magic Pages Ghost CMS website, you had to log in at my.magicpages.co. Well, this just became a lot simpler.

You just need one login: your Ghost website. Inside your Ghost Admin dashboard, you will find a new navigation item: Customer Portal:

This is your new control panel. Want to know how many newsletters you sent this month? Or whether your domain is verified for newsletter sending at all? Yup, it's all there.

I am really excited about this 🎉

Now, here comes the tricky part: this customer portal is so deeply integrated, that it will take a bit to migrate existing customers. I will do that over the next 1-2 weeks and inform each of you individually, once the new customer portal is activated.

🌐 Updated Website And Identity

With these two major changes, I also needed to update the Magic Pages website. Instead of just changing the wording and add a pricing table, I decided to re-think the current website and visual identity as a whole.

When I started Magic Pages a little over a year ago, it all emerged from an old, existing project. So, I wasn't quite happy with some of the design decisions I made back then. Specifically the light purple gradients felt dated.

Instead, I wanted a cleaner look. Something that immediately tells you that this is a tech product. And well, here we are:

A softer look, a bit of a quirky, yet techy, font. The purple is still there, but as a real accent.

👻 What has happened on Ghost's side?

So, let's have a quick look at what has happened with Ghost CMS itself since the last update in January.

After a feature freeze over Christmas, regular updates are back and we've jumped from v5.75.3 at the time of the last update to v5.79.4.

Here are some of the highlights:

• ✨ TK Reminders have been added. While there has not been an official changelog article from Ghost, it's already in the code base. If you're wondering what TK reminders are (like me), here's a brief explanation: https://medium.com/blogging-guide/tk-notes-mediums-little-known-feature-used-when-editing-articles-f94a0c0f419d
• ✨ Adapted email sender addresses to fit the new rules from Google and Yahoo. If you haven't heard, Google and Yahoo got serious about domain verification for email deliverability. Ghost implemented some changes in line with this. In short: newsletter sender addresses are not verified through a confirmation email any more (since that is insufficient). Instead, sender addresses should use domain verification. On Magic Pages, this can easily be done in the new customer portal.
• 🎨 Updated design for new settings. The new settings in Ghost have been controversial in the last few months. There have been quite some debates in the Ghost community forum. Ghost has now improved the design a bit more – go have a look: simply log in to your Ghost site and click on Settings. I quite like it.
• 🐛 Lots and lots of bug fixes 🎉

So, that's it – February at Magic Pages. Quite packed, hm?

Let me know what you think of these new changes and if you see anything that can be improved. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Jannis