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What is S2?

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Justin Heeren
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Overview

S2 is what we call the new version of our campaign server. If you've been using ShortStack to build contests, you've worked with the campaign server; it's what 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.

Campaigns built on S2 have a blue S2 indicator attached to the name of the campaign, as shown in the top left of the Campaign Builder.

The top corner of the Campaign Builder, showing the S2 indicator.

Our original campaign server, which we affectionately call "S1", was designed over a decade ago in 2010. It uses an older architecture that has limited our ability to introduce new features.

Note: As of August 2023, the ability to create or publish S1 campaigns has been deprecated. All new ShortStack features are now introduced solely on S2.

How To Access S2

You can access S2 and the new features via the Template Gallery when you create a new campaign.

Alternatively, you can convert campaigns that were built using S1 to S2 using our conversion tool. Information about how to use that can be found in the Upgrading Your S1 Campaign to S2 help doc, or you can check out this video:

 

New Features

The upgrade to S2 means that new features have been rolled out to the platform. These include:

New Widgets

All new widget types have been added, allowing campaigns to be set up more easily and allowing for more granular control over all the content on your contest, including:

  • Form Container Widget & Field Widget: Now allowing for even more customization, and more in-depth features like conditional logic and age-gating.
  • Entry Display Widget: The old Voting Widget, reimagined to give you a multitude of ways to display (and vote on) content. Your entries (especially ones with multiple forms of media) will have a much cleaner display with columns that are controllable via the Style Panel.
  • Search Widget: Makes finding a specific entry a snap.
  • 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.

Upload Field

Starting in S2, the Upload type of Field Widget has gotten a supercharge. In S2 campaigns, the upload field is able to accept multiple images, direct video uploads, different file types, and links to social media posts. This significantly expands the types of campaigns you're able to build with ShortStack.

Note: Uploads are subject to plan limitations.

New Templates

A beefier system allows us to provide new, more powerful (and fun) templates - including some gamified contest templates that your visitors will absolutely love. A few of our favorites include:

Other Improvements

S2 also boasts the following general improvements to your ShortStack experience:

  • Faster load times: The Builder will respond faster when working on campaigns using S2.
  • Refreshed themes: Take a look through our Theme Library in the Style Panel for all the new options.
  • Original file exports:  You’ll receive the original image and video files uploaded with the entry (with the exception of social media posts).
  • Entry Profiles: Control exactly what information you want to download via export or send to a third-party platform via integration/webhook.
  • More complex actions: Action Widgets placed inside hidden Container Widgets are disabled until the Container Widget is visible, permitting more complex actions to be achieved.

 

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