We have revamped the settings menu to enhance your user experience. The new layout is designed to streamline navigation by prioritizing frequently used features and consolidating related options. This allows for quicker access and a more intuitive interaction with your settings.

We believe these changes will make it easier for you to customize your experience and find the options you need without unnecessary clutter. As always, your feedback is invaluable to us; please let us know how these enhancements work for you!

Thanks to all users for trying out ChangeCrab badges, we've seen a great rate of adoption and we appreciate you giving it a try!

Great feedback from users so far

We've had some great feedback from existing users of badges, one change that's come out of this is a new badge variant. This will still show the bronze/silver/gold plan level, but it focus on "how many days since the last update", we hope this new option is useful for users who want to present an even stronger activity signal, more tailored to their update schedule.

Competitors are copying the feature (it's a good sign)

We're seeing competitors taking notice of the activity badge concept now, with both existing and newly started up changelog services talking about their own badge implementation. We're proud to have introduced a new standard tool to the market, and will continue to improve this based on user feedback and market research.

For more information on ChangeCrab activity badges check out our blog post here 

We've made several changes and additions in the areas of Subscriber and Category Functionality.

For Subscribers:

• Subscribers now have the flexibility to choose which changelog categories you wish to receive email notifications for.
• By default, a new user is offered the "All categories" option, but they can also select specific categories that are of particular interest, excluding those that aren't.
• Subscribers can effortlessly manage preferences at any time by using the "Manage preferences" link included in the notification emails, with no login required.
• If they have opted for "All categories," any newly added categories will automatically be included in their subscriptions.

For Changelog Owners:

• The Subscribers page now provides a comprehensive overview of each subscriber's category preferences.
• You can easily edit any subscriber's category preferences directly from the admin panel.
• There is an option to bulk add or remove categories for all subscribers who have custom preferences.
• Users can be unsubscribed or re-subscribed without the need to delete them from your list.

Email Updates:

• Notification emails now feature a "Manage preferences" link, conveniently placed alongside the unsubscribe option.
• Subscribers will only receive emails pertaining to the categories they have chosen to subscribe to.

We are excited to announce a significant update to our platform that revolutionizes the way you manage search engine and AI crawler access to your changelog. This enhancement provides you with more granular control, improved SEO capabilities, and enhanced privacy protections tailored to your needs.

What's New

Separate Controls for Search Engines & AI Crawlers

• Independent Management: Users can now control access for search engines (like Google, Bing) and AI crawlers (such as GPTBot, Claude, Perplexity) separately.
• Privacy Settings: Choose the appropriate privacy level for each type of crawler, ensuring your content is accessed according to your preferences.

Three Control Modes

• Block: Prevents any indexing or crawling, prioritizing user privacy.
• Allow: Enables standard indexing for optimal visibility in search results.
• Optimize: Facilitates enhanced indexing through automatic XML sitemaps, structured data, and optimized meta tags for better performance.

Enhanced SEO Features

• XML Sitemap Generation: Automatically create sitemaps to enhance search engine visibility for your changelogs.
• Structured Data: Implement Schema.org structured data to improve understanding and indexing by search engines.
• Canonical URLs & Meta Tags: Optimize your content with dynamic canonical URLs and tailored meta tags.
• Dynamic robots.txt: Automatically generated robots.txt files to guide crawlers effectively.

Improved Privacy

• Default Settings for Free Users: Your changelogs are now automatically protected, blocking both search engines and AI crawlers for enhanced privacy.
• Comprehensive Control for Paid Users: Gain access to all three control modes, allowing you to customize visibility and privacy according to your specific needs.
• Sensitive Content Protection: Better safeguards for sensitive changelog entries, ensuring they remain confidential.

Why This Matters

This comprehensive update empowers you with professional-grade tools to manage how your changelog is perceived in search results and how AI systems interact with your content. Whether your goal is to maximize visibility, maintain privacy, or strike a balance, you now have the flexibility to achieve it.

• For Free Users: Enjoy a privacy-first approach that automatically protects your changelogs.
• For Paid Users: Leverage advanced SEO tools like sitemaps and structured data to enhance your search rankings and overall discoverability.

Stay ahead with our enhanced controls and take charge of your content’s online presence like never before!

It's been a busy week! Here are our latest changes and additions to ChangeCrab:

- Added Zapier integration, this is available under the integrations section of changelog settings, you can use ChangeCrab as a Action in Zapier allowing you to integrate with thousands of apps, creating changelogs from them. The integration is currently in beta for 90 days, we'll continue to add functionality and zap templates going forwards.

- Added a RSS import option, this is great for importing an existing changelog from headway, or another RSS compatible platform. You will see this import option when creating a new changelog.

- Improvements to the StatusCake integration, a more presentable look and feel paired with the ability to toggle visibility on the hosted, sidebar and inline changelog variants, individually.

- Added ChangeCrab tools, 6 tools to aid users with Changelog creation, Text analysis, git history retrieval and more, check them out here

- All users can now export their changelogs, this is great for backup and ensuring that every user has full autonomy over their own data. This can be found under the "Export" section in Changelog settings, and the export formats are: Markdown, HTML(full), HTML(snippet), JSON, RSS, ATOM & plain text.

- We have a new logo! You'll see this updated around the app

- The changelog editor, a core component of the service - has undergone a visual makeover, we've also improved the user experience with a redesign of the flow.

- Some fixes and improvements for edge cases with permissions when inviting team members.

- And last but not least, have you seen our newest blog post? Some useful tips here on how to utilise the ChangeCrab API to your advantage!

Our changelogs now have a ready to go prompt for your AI tools, making embedding a piece of cake.

You will find this in the embed settings - let us know if you'd like to see a specialized version for a tool you use!

We hope everyone is having a wonderful Easter!

Behind the scenes, we’re hard at work making improvements, fixing bugs, and planning for the future. Our goal is to deliver the best possible experience for you — and that means listening closely to your feedback.

What’s happening right now:

• We are conducting a full review of historic feature requests and bug reports to ensure that any outstanding issues are addressed or added to our roadmap.
• Our focus is on delivering meaningful updates that improve usability, stability, and functionality.

Exciting features on the way:

• Full API Access: Easily integrate with our platform programmatically, enabling greater automation and flexibility.
• AI-Powered Tools: Generate changelogs, suggest improvements, and enhance your workflows with smart, AI-driven functionality.

We can’t wait to share more details with you soon. Stay tuned for updates, and as always — thank you for being part of our community!

We deployed some changes and fixes for the subscription system:

• Resolved several edge cases where subscriptions could fail erroneously
• Resolved an issue with currency detection
• Purchasing a subscription will now apply paid privileges to all teams on the account rather than a single team