It’s been a while since we last wrote, but be rest assured that we’ve been busy. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve done a lot of backend updates to make the site faster, handle larger invitations, and fix a number of pesky bugs.

Those are some things that you may not have noticed, but one thing we’re sure that you did was the new version of the address book. The most common request that we receive is for a better way to manage invited guests. The new address book is the first step towards significantly improving the process of managing your guest list. Rather than waiting for all parts of the process to be fully complete, we decided to release the parts that were ready, and get feedback on what people like and don’t like. This is your chance to help shape a critical part of the service, so we’d love to hear your thoughts (via the feedback tab of course).

Another feature which we’re really excited about is the ability to share invitations quickly and easily on Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other services. All you have to do is set an invitation to “Open” and the options will automatically show up once you send the invitation. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Finally, we’re continuing to add additional customization features to Anyvite. In addition to new designs and categories, we’ve also been adding new color scheme options. You can find the color schemes below the invitation preview on the design page. Simply click the arrows to the left and right of the color schemes to scroll through all of the choices. Experiment with a few and let us know what you like and/or what you think is missing and should be added in.

Alright, those were a few of the updates. Look for more in the coming weeks as we continue to build out the new manage guest list functionality and add in some new features. In the meantime, start creating your “Cinco de Mayo” invitations before it’s too late!

Yesterday, we rolled out a new release of Anyvite. This one has been a long time in the making and there are literally hundreds of fixes and improvements. The most noticeable is a redesign of the Invitation creation process. In the new process, you can customize the look of the invitation using our themes, mixing and matching our pictures, searching flickr, and/or uploading your own pictures. This new approach has everything you need to customize your invitation on one page instead of spread over multiple pages as it was before. Of course, you can skip this step and head right to entering the details by clicking the skip button in the top right.

Step two of the invitation creation process is now adding in the invitation details. The big change on this page is that we removed the section for inviting guests and moved it to step three. This helps focus the invitation details page solely on the details and makes it much less intimidating!

Another big change is the redesign of our navigation. Before, our sub-navigation was located in the right column on each page taking up valuable screen real-estate and often becoming lost in the items around it. Now, it’s located at the top of the page directly under the open tab.

This gives us more room on the invitation for important things like the guest list while centralizing all of the navigation in one place.

So check out the updated site and play around with the themes and create your holiday invitations. Let us know what you like and what you’re not so crazy about. We’ve received a ton of feature requests from you over the past month, and while you may not see your feature implemented this time, stay tuned because we’ve got some big things coming up!