New Update: Email Verification and a Note to Teachers with Student Accounts

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When you sign up for a new LiveBinders account, you will need to verify your email address before you can create the account. This is a standard security practice for most online applications.

This does not impact our paid subscribers or our existing free users except when they change their email from their My Profile page. When the email address is changed, a verification email is automatically sent to the new address.

NOTE: For teachers who have students creating accounts under their email address, it is recommended that teachers verify their email before the students sign up.

How to verify your email.

Screenshot of your My Profile page highlighting the Confirm Email section

First, please check your My Profile page to confirm that the address is accurate.

If your email is correct, go to the section in your account that says “Confirm Email” and click on the “Send Email” button to send the verification email to that address. Once you receive the verification email, open it and click on the button marked “Confirm email.”

If you need to change your email address, add your new email to the address field, then hit the ‘save’ button. An email will automatically be sent to that new address. Once you receive the verification email, open it and click on the button marked “Confirm email.”

Example email with the Confirm Email button at the bottom of the page

As always, if you have any issues with verifying your email, please contact us at support @ livebinders.com.

New Update: Adding the Option for Multi-Factor Authentication.

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What did we do?

We recently released an update to our site that gives you the option to log into your LiveBinders account using Two-Factor authentication, also known as Multi-Factor Authentication or “MFA.” This is a secure way to prevent any uninvited hackers into your LiveBinders account.

You can enable this MFA option from your My Profile page after you log into your account. NOTE: If you are already using Google Single Sign-on to log in, which has it’s own MFA, you do not need to enable our MFA. But, if you decide to switch, you will need to first create a password in your LiveBinders account, and then you can enable your MFA.

Why Use an Authenticator App.

Did you know that hackers can redirect your text messages or gain access to your phone carrier and then access your text messages? Using text messages as a means to receive your two-factor login code is less secure than an authenticator app because it is easier for hackers to gain access to your text messages online, than it is to physically access your phone.

With an authenticator app, a code is temporarily generated that you get through the App and it expires within a certain time period.

How to Enable your MFA

1. Install the Google Authenticator App on your phone. Go to your App store on your phone and search for “Google Authenticator.” Make sure it is created by Google, LLC.
2. Log into your LiveBinders account and go to your “My Profile” page.
3. Scroll down to Multi-Factor Authentication section and click on “Set Up” button.
4. Scan the QR Code with your Authenticator App and type in the Code that is generated into the empty box.
5. Click “Continue” It will give you a success message letting you know that the next time you log in, you will need to use your Authentic.

To see screenshots and more, please go to our Help Guide binder.

Automatic Logout Implemented

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We’ve been continually improving the security for our LiveBinders platform, and one recent addition we’ve implemented is to automatically log you out of your LiveBinders account after 8 hours of inactivity. This may have come as a bit of a surprise to our long-time customers who have been accustomed to always being logged in when they are ready to access their account.

As always, if you are going to be away from your computer or will be accessing your computer at home, please make sure to log out of your account or close the browser window you are logged into.

Insert a Binder in a Binder

You have always been able to embed binders inside binders, but now it is even easier than before. Just click on the “+ Content” button in the editor. You can either select one of your binders or insert a link from someone else’s binder. The binder will show up in “Presentation” mode so that it minimizes the space that is taken up at the top of the binder.

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to insert a binder in a binder including:

• An infinite number of tab levels
• Mixing private content with public content to control viewing access
• Breaking your content into smaller groups
• Speeding up the loading of a very large binder
• Referencing someone else’s collection of content on your subject

Please stay tuned for our next feature: Insert a shelf in a binder.

Welcome to Our New Editor

Thank you to those who provided early feedback on our new editor!  We believe this update will make it easier for you to edit your binders.  Here are some highlights of this release:

• New editor layout
• Simple Dropbox integration
• Easy QR code insertion into your binder
• PDF files in the binder will no longer be displayed on top of the edit window
• File uploads can now be done as links in a text layout

You can now add Dropbox files or QR codes from the new “Add Content” menu.  Just click on “Add Other Content” in the “Add Content” menu.

For tutorials on the new editor, please see this page:

http://www.livebinders.com/welcome/tutorials

As always, we welcome your feedback. We have had so many great suggestions from the LiveBinders community. You just keep making this product better and better!

Search Within a Binder

We have a new feature in LiveBinders that you may notice right away when you open a binder.  On the top bar is the ability to search within a binder.

This feature currently only searches tab names,.  We will eventually add the ability to search other content within the binder, but this should be enough to get you started.

This feature currently only works in “Play” mode and not in “Edit” or “Present” modes.

Thanks so much to everyone who requested this feature!  We really appreciate your feedback.

A New Look/Navigation for LiveBinders Shelves

Tina and I are very excited to announce a new look for the LiveBinders shelf! We believe this look, combined with more logical navigation, will make it easier to find your way around the LiveBinders site.  Special thanks on this release go to Dawn Wall, Dean Mantz, and Mike Fisher for the valuable input that they provided while we were working on this.

We have also added some often requested features with this release which include:

• List view of binders – We love those binders with long titles and descriptions, but sometimes they are hard to see, so we created a list view so you can see it all.
• Search public shelves – Have you ever done a search and found too many binders? Try the same search on shelves, someone has probably already pulled the best binders into a shelf for you.
• Link to tab – Have you ever wanted to share a specific tab in a binder? I do all the time when I send out the Tips and Tricks binder.  Now you can have the binder open directly to a specific tab or subtab of your choosing. Just click on the “E” at the bottom of the binder in the “Share” box and grab the URL from there.

There are lots of details about these new features in this video:

Thank you to everyone in our community for sending in those feature requests. We are working on a lot more of them, so if you don’t see yours today, don’t think that we forgot about you!

Create Your Own Binder Collections with Shelves!

We are very pleased to announce this feature since so many of you have requested it!

Now you can create your own shelves to organize not only your binders, but other people’s binders as well. Here are some reasons that you might want to create shelves:

1. To collaborate with a group on multiple binders
2. To collect the best binders on a given topic
3. To create separate shelves for your students and for parents
4. To organize binders by subject (both your binders and binders from other authors)

The nice thing is, when other people’s binders are updated, you automatically have the latest version on your shelf. These new shelves can also be embedded, so you can put them in a website, wiki, or blog.

In fact, you don’t have to have your own binders at all, you can just curate all the great binders that are already out there on your shelves.

Our LiveBinders community has shown us some amazing applications and uses for binders. We can’t wait to see what you do with shelves!

Here is how you can create and add to your own shelves:

You will notice that your “My Binders” page has changed its name. It is now “My Shelves”.

All your shelves will be located on the drop down menu under “My Shelves”.

To add a binder to a shelf, click on “Add to Shelf” either from the drop-down “Add” option in the upper right corner of the binder’s “Edit” mode, or from the “Options” menu located under the binder.

When you click on that link, you will have the option to add that binder to an existing shelf or create a new shelf.

These shelves can be emailed as links or embedded as widgets in your blog or website. This is easier on Blogger and other similar websites, but can be done on WordPress like the example below:

Please see our help menu or video for more details on creating your own shelves.

Here is an example of a shelf of the winners of the “Top 10 LiveBinders for 2011”.

Thanks again to those who requested this feature. As always, keep those enhancement requests coming. We love making LiveBinders a more useful tool for you.

More than 20 Tabs added to LiveBinders

We wanted to let you know that we have added several new features to LiveBinders over the last few weeks:
More tabs – You are no longer limited to 20 tabs in your binder.  Now, when you go over 20 tabs, there will be arrows on either side that let you scroll through your tabs:

Present mode – You can use present mode from within a binder. This mode is great for classroom use to show the binder content with no distractions.

Share your shelf – We have made it easier to share your public shelf with a link in the “My Binders” tab.

Easier to use FAQ – Have questions about LiveBinders?  Our updated FAQ should help you find the answers:

Thank you to the LiveBinders users who reported bugs and requested features!  Please continue to let us know how to make LiveBinders better for you.

Sincerely,

The LiveBinders Team
http://www.livebinders.com

Comments Added to LiveBinders

We have now added a comments feature to LiveBinders so that you can comment on binders in the same way that you would comment on a blog. You just press the comment button at the bottom of the binder. You must be logged in to leave comments.