Today we’re releasing a major update (v3.4) to the GBS daily deal software which includes many improvements and new features. If you haven’t already updated from GBS v2, we strongly encourage you to do that soon as we’ll be discontinuing support for it within the next few weeks and removing all documentation and related forums. For those of you that are updating to v3.4, you’ll be pleased to see that we’ve expanded the shipping and tax features to address several needs. Per your request we’ve incorporated a new voucher activated notification and you may can now easily turn on/off any or all notifications if you wish to do so. What’s more, we’ve streamlined the administrative panel for easier navigation and created an add-ons section so you can quickly see what’s new in the GBS Marketplace from within your own dashboard. Finally, we’ve added a new help section, implemented the new WP 3.3. feature pointers, and generated a guided tour to help new users quickly get GBS setup on their site.

Support For GBS v2.X Discontinued

The launch of v3.0 brought many updates that improved upon the function and capabilities that GBS v2 offered. We encourage every GBS user to update to v3.4 as we will be discontinuing support for GBS v2.X in the next couple weeks.

New Shipping Functionality

Free shipping – Allows you to not charge shipping fees for a product.

Flat rate – Set the shipping fee to be the same regardless of the quantity the buyer orders for a particular item.

Flat rate per item – Permits the admin to set a single shipping price for each item.

Quantity based – Allows the admin to set a shipping rate based on how many items are purchased.

Rates based on location (state and country) – Enables the administrator to set the shipping rates based on the location the item is being shipped.

New Tax Functionality

Rate based – Allows you to set a percentage of the sale.

Rates based on location (state and country) – Set a specific tax rate according to the location of the buyer.

Notification Updates

Voucher activated notification – Sends a notification to purchasers for each new voucher that is created. We’ve included a bunch of shortcodes too!

Disable notifications – Now you can easily disable any notification by simply selecting it from a dropdown menu and checking the box underneath.

Administration Panel Changes

GBS add-ons panel – You can now view all GBS add-ons and browse the GBS Marketplace from the comfort of your own administration dashboard.

Admin panel redesign – The GBS admin panel was becoming a bit cluttered so we’ve organized it into various tabs for easier navigation.

New Guidance Tools

WP 3.3 includes some new tools that we have implemented to improve the overall experience for new and existing GBS users.

Help section – Click on the Help tab in the upper right corner of your site to see the new GBS Help section.

Feature pointers – As you login to your GBS site, you’ll notice that we’ve taken advantage of a newly released feature for WP 3.3 called pointers. These are little flyout notes we’ve added to include additional information about a specific GBS feature.

Tour guides – As a new GBS user, you will see that we’ve constructed a tour using pointers to guide you through the important aspects of operating GBS.

Minor Updates

Facebook Connect – We updated the Facebook Connect integration to accommodate for API changes.

Maestro card compatibility – This was included in the core software.

Shipping address included in reports – The buyer’s shipping address has been added to the purchase reports for each deal/product sold.