Earlier this month, we released Start11 on Steam. With that milestone now behind us, it’s time to turn our attention to Fences 4. In the coming weeks, Fences 4 will arrive on Steam - but you can add it to your wishlist now.

We still have a couple of hurdles that we need to cross, but seeing as we piloted our new course for shipping applications on Steam with Start11, we expect that Fences 4 will follow a similar trajectory. That being said, unforeseen issues can always arise, but we are confident that at this point in the preparation process, we are closer to the finish line than the starting point.

Add Fences 4 to your Steam Wishlist now!

If you are wondering why Fences 4 didn't launch on Steam when it first released, it's because Steam requires specific processes to flow through its infrastructure. These requirements, which were new for Fences 4 (but not Fences 3), required us to re-work how updating and purchasing functions for the app.

With Start11 out and our new deployment solution working as expected, Fences 4 will be arriving on Steam soon.

After the release of Fences 4 and Start11 on Steam, we expect future product releases to have a tighter window from their availability on Stardock and being released on Steam. We believe the heavy lifting of the migration to Steam is now behind us and look forward to building new solutions in the months ahead.

For years, Stardock has offered an affiliate program that allows our partners to re-sell Stardock products and earn a commission each time a transaction occurs. Since the platform we used for this was a bit outdated, we re-worked the foundation earlier this summer and are ready to reboot the program with a new foundation. 

Today, our affiliate program is up and running using Impact, which provides robust tracking and dashboarding capabilities. To register as an affiliate, join the platform using the link below, create a tracking link, and then share it with your audience. It's quick and easy!

Sign Up: Stardock Affiliate Program

Once you have been accepted into the program, you will have access to a dashboard that tracks clicks and sales; the dashboard is updated daily, but not in real-time.

If you were participating in our previous affiliate program, make sure to check your email for a message from me. You will need to switch over to our new program in order to continue participating.

We are still in the early stages of uploading all the assets that can help you promote various Stardock products, but if you have any specific requests, make sure to message us via the built-in messaging.

The solution we are announcing today is where we will be investing for the foreseeable future for most resellers of our products. But, we also do provide discounts through our wholesaler program; if you are interested in going this route, you can send an email to affiliates@stardock.com.

We talk to customers every week about how they are using our products to help us develop the next wave of updates. We hear about how Start11 is used to standardize desktops across various endpoints, but the uses for Fences vary from simple file organization to advanced auto-sorting of documents as they arrive for outside parties.

I want to talk about how I have been using Fences 4 as we continue to expand the scope of initiatives that we are undertaking. If you weren’t familiar, we recently added another developer to our team, which means more projects are moving along much faster and organization is essential to our success.

On my desktop, I keep Fences sorted by projects that are actively in-flight. While the desktop image in this post is using mock files, the idea for creating the image came from how my desktop is actually sorted with two active project files, quarterly documents for reporting, and a folder portal for access to my Stardock OneDrive folder.

The key is keeping project files sorted into their respective Fences, which I do by affixing the name of the project at the end of the file. For example, in one scenario you have Marketing Start11 and Marketing Fences4.

Keeping my project files organized on my desktop significantly reduces the amount of time I spend hunting for a specific file related to a project that is in motion. The auto-sorting rules mean as long as I keep up the habit of my naming convention, I will always know where my files will be located.

While this methodology may not work for everyone, it has proven valuable in organizations where files are specific to projects; we have seen Fences used like this in law offices, manufacturing, and healthcare.

We would love to know how you use Fences to keep your desktop organized. Are you keeping icons grouped, PDFs auto-sorted, or simply mirroring your Download folder to the desktop? Let us know in the comments.

This week, we are releasing a new update for Start11 that brings the version number to 1.25. To make the product compatible with our upcoming WindowBlinds 11 release, we're adding a few minor features. 

v1.25 contains two quality of life (QOL) improvements:

• Using the scroll wheel, you can now navigate pages on supported menus 
• When searching, you can now see the path for files and documents via tooltips. 

Along with the new features, there are numerous bug fixes as well.

As I said above, this update is meant to make Start11 compatible with WindowBlinds 11. We don't have a release date for WindowBlinds 11 yet, but this version update puts us a step closer toward releasing our first beta for it. Stay tuned! 

If you have not purchased Start11 yet because you are waiting for it to arrive on Steam, we have made good progress in preparing the app for that platform. We have a wishlist page up here - the application should be available on Steam soon.

We have been testing this Start11 build with our beta testers for a few weeks, but if you run into any issues with this update please make sure to file feedback in our support threads for tracking. If you want to learn how to opt into our beta release, you can find that information here.